Private Theatricals

V.

MRS. GILBERT kept her word, and presented the young men to each of the boarders; but for all that, the talk did not become general. After dinner she went off for a nap, and the young men both followed Mrs. Farrell to the piazza, where they seemed to forget that there was any one else. She was very amiable to both, but a little meek and subdued in her manner; if she encouraged one more than the other, it was Gilbert. She was disposed to talk of serious things, and said that one could not realize the New England Sabbath in town as one could in the country; that here in these hills the stillness, the repose, seemed to have something almost holy about it. Two young girls in gay flannel walkingskirts and branching shade-hats passed Mrs. Farrell where she sat with her court, and she who passed nearest dropped a demure glance out of the corner of her eye, and a demurely arch “good-by” from the corner of her mouth.

“What for?” asked Mrs. Farrell, breaking abruptly from her pensive mood.

“ Those brakes,” said the girl over her shoulder, having now got by.

“ Oh come! Won’t you go too? ” cried Mrs. Farrell; “it’s an old engagement. Wait, please!” she called to the girls, and ran in to get her hat, while they loitered down the path.

Gilbert walked forward to join them, and Easton stayed for Mrs. Farrell, who delayed a little, and then came out in walking-gear which had the advantage over the dresses of the young girls that foliage or plumage has over dress always: it seemed part of her.

“If you’ll be so kind—yes,” she said, giving Easton her light shawl, while she fitted her hat-cord under the knot of her hair. “ It’s a little coolish sometimes in the deep woods, and it’s best to bring one. Don’t you think,” she asked, dazzling him with the radiant, immortal youth of her glance and smile, “ that the worst thing about growing older is that you have to be so careful about your miserable, perishable body? I hope I’ve not made you do anything against your principles, Mr. Easton, in getting you to go with me after brakes on Sunday ? We don’t often do such things, ourselves.”

“No,” said Easton; “ unfortunately, I have no principles on that point. I suppose it’s a thing to be regretted.”

“ Oh, yes indeed,” said Mrs. Farrell, earnestly. “ I think one ought always to be one thing or the other. I find nothing so wretched as this sort of betwixt - and - betweenity that most people live in nowadays; and I envy Rachel Woodward her fixed habits of religious observance. I wish she could have gone with us this afternoon; but the Woodwards never do. You must get acquainted with her, Mr. Easton. She’s a splendid girl; she has a great deal of talent and a great deal of character; more than all of us lady boarders put together, — except Mrs. Gilbert, of course. ”

Copyright, H. O. HOUGHTON & Co. 1875.

It vaguely troubled Easton, he did not know why, to have her talk of Rachel Woodward: at that moment it vexed him that there should be any other woman in the world than herself. But he contrived to say that Mrs. Gilbert had mentioned Miss Woodward’s talent for drawing.

“ Is n’t she nice, —Mrs. Gilbert? ” asked Mrs. Farrell, looking into Easton’s face, and no doubt seeing there a consciousness of his having heard from Mrs. Gilbert something not to her advantage. “ She’s the only one of our boarders that one cares to talk with: she ’s such a humorous old thing that I like to hear her even when I know she ’s looking me through and through. She’s a very keen observer, and such a wonderful judge of character! Don’t you think so? ”

“ I hardly know; I’m scarcely acquainted with her or the people she talks about.”

“ To be sure. But then, I think you can often see whether a person understands people, even if you don’t know any of them. ”

“ Oh yes, — yes,” answered Easton.

They had crossed the road from the farm-house, and, traversing some sloping meadows, were at the border of the wood in which the tall brakes grew, with delicate shapes of fern slowly waving and swaying in the breeze. He was offering her his hand to help her over the wall into the wood, and she was throwing half her elastic weight upon his happy arm. Gilbert and the young girls were far ahead among the brakes, which their movement tossed about them with a continual, gracious rise and fall of the stately plumes, the bright colors of the girls’ dresses deepening their tint as they glimmered through the undulant greenery.

“ How lovely! ” cried Mrs. Farrell. She chose to sit still a moment on the wall. “And is n’t your friend superb in his white flannel and his planterishlooking hat? When I was a little girl I was traveling with my father on the Mississippi, and one night a New Orleans boat landed alongside of us. The most that I can remember is those iron baskets of burning pine-knots they stick into the shore, and the slim, dark young Southerners, in white linen from head to foot, as they came on and off the boat in the red light. I felt then that I never could marry anybody but a young Southerner in white linen. Your friend reminds me of them. But he is n’t Southern? ”

“No; he was South before the war, a while, and he tried a cotton plantation after the war; but he’s a New Yorker.”

“How picturesque be is!” sighed Mrs. Farrell. “ Was he a soldier? ”

“Yes. He’s Major Gilbert, if you like.”

“ Was that where you met him, in the army ? ”

“ Yes.”

“ And were you a major, too? ”

“ I went in as a private,” said Easton.

“But you did n’t come out a private ? ”

“ Our regiment suffered a great deal, and the promotions were pretty rapid.”

“ And so you came out a captain? ”

“ Not exactly.”

“ A major — a colonel? ”

“ I could n’t very well help it.”

“ Oh, I dare say you ’re not to blame! ” cried Mrs. Farrell. “You and Mr.— Major Gilbert, were you in the same regiment? ”

“ Yes. I owed my first commission to his interest. He was my captain, before I got my company.”

“ Well, how was it, then, that you came out a colonel and he only came out a major? ” asked Mrs. Farrell, innocently.

Easton turned about and looked after the others, whose voices, in talk and laughter, came over the bracken with a light, hollow sound that voices have in the woods.

“ Oh, don’t snub me,” implored Mrs. Farrell; “I didn’t mean to ask anything wrong. You soldiers are always so queer about the war; one would think you were ashamed of it.”

“ It was full of unjust chances,” answered Easton, almost fiercely. “All that I did Gilbert would have done better, and if he had done it he would have got the promotion that I got. I ought to have refused it; it’s my lasting shame and sorrow that I didn’t.” A look of strange dismay and of self - contempt came into Easton’s face with the last words, which sounded like the expression of an old remorse.

“ Oh, excuse me!” said Mrs. Farrell with a quick sympathy of tone. “ I’ve made you talk of something — I did n’t think — your men’s friendships are so much more tenderly brought up than women’s, that a woman can scarcely understand,” she added, a little mockingly; but she made obvious haste to get away from the subject that annoyed him.

“ Here are tall enough brakes,” she said, “ if it’s tallness we ’re after; but I think we’d better get ferns. I want to show you a place down hero in the hollow where I found some maiden-hair the other day. Don’t you think that’s the prettiest of the ferns ? Did you ever find it in any part of the South where you were stationed? I should fancy it might be in the Everglades — or some other damp place.”

“ I don’t know what it is,” said Easton, absently.

“ Not know maiden-hair? Then I’ve the chance to show you something novel, as well as very pretty. Come!” She sprang lightly from the wall, and swept through the bowing brakes and down the slope of the hollow to a spot where clustering maples, flinging their shadows one upon another, made a cool gloom beneath their boughs, and the delicate maiden-hair balanced its crest upon its slender purple stems and trembled in the silent air. “ Here, here! ” called Mrs. Farrell. “ Did you ever see anything lovelier? But does n’t it seem a pity to pull it? Well, it must die for women, as humming-birds and pheasants do: we can’t look pretty without them, poor things! I’m going to sit down here, Mr. Easton, and you ’re going to gather maiden-hair for me and show your taste; you haven’t experience in it, but you are to have instinct.”

She sat down on the broad flat top of a rock, and though her seat was in a spot where the slighter texture of the shade let the sunlight flicker through upon her, she gave a slight tremor, and shrugged her shoulders. “ You must let me have my shawl, Mr. Easton — my poor health, you know; there’s rheumatism and typhoid fever in every breath of this delicious air.”

He went to lay the shawl upon her shoulders reverently, but she dragged it down and adjusted it about her waist in a very much prettier effect. “ There, now, give me your hat. One of the penalties that a gentleman pays for the pleasure of going braking with a lady is to have his hat trimmed with ferns and to be made to look silly. You may have your revenge in trimming my hat.” She began to undo the elastic from her hair; but there were hair-pins upon which it was entangled, and she dropped her arms from the attempt, and with a quick “ Ah! ” she tried to unloose her glove. It was fastened by one of those little clasps which are so hard to undo, and after many attempts she was obliged to look up at Easton in despair.

“ May I try to help you? ” he dared to ask.

“ Why, if you will be so very kind,” she answered, and she held out her beautiful wrist, from which her hand drooped like a flower from its stem. It was a task of some moments, and the young man wrought at it in silence; when it was done, she did not instantly withdraw her hand, but “ Oh, is it really finished? ” she asked, and then took it from him and pulled off the glove. She put it up to her hair again, and began to feel about with those women-fingers that seem to have all the five senses in their tips; but now they were wise in vain. “ I’m afraid,Mr. Easton,” she appealed with a well-embarrassed little laugh, “ that I must tax your kindness once more. Would you be so very good as to look what can be the matter? ” and she turned the wonder of her neck toward him and bent down her head. “ Is it caught, anywhere? ”

“It’s caught,” he answered gravely, “on a hair-pin.”

“ Oh dear! ” sighed Mrs. Farrell.

“ May I”—asked Easton, after a pause.

“ Why—yes — please,”she answered faintly.

He knelt down on the rock beside her and with trembling hands touched the warm, fragrant, silken mass, and lightly disengaged the string. When he handed her the hat she thanked him for it very sweetly, and with an air of simple gratitude laid it in her lap, and drew out its long, hanging ribbons through her fingers. She did this looking with a downcast, absent gaze at her hat. When she lifted her eyes again they were full of a gentle sadness. “ I hope you won’t think I spoke too lightly of the war and of soldiers, just now.”

“I can’t think you spoke amiss,” he answered fervently.

“ I am sure I meant nothing amiss,” said Mrs. Farrell humbly. “ But everything one does or says in this world,” she continued, “ is so liable to misconstruction, that if one values — if one cares for the opinion of others, one feels like doing almost anything to prevent it.”

Her eyes fell again, and she twisted the ribbons of her hat into long curls. “ I ’m glad that at least you understood me, and I do thank you — yes, more than you can know. How still and beautiful it is here! Do you know, I sometimes think that the boundary, the invisible wall between the two worlds is nowhere so thin as in the deep woods like this?” Mrs. Farrell looked up at Easton with the eyes of a nun. “It seems as if one could draw nearer to better influences here than anywhere else. Not, of course, but what one can be good anywhere if one wants to be, but it is n’t everywhere that one does want to be good. Don’t laugh at my moralizing, please,” she besought him. “ There, take your hat. I won’t make a victim of you. I know you'd hate to wear ferns.”

Easton protested that though he had never worn ferns he did not believe he should hate to wear them.

“No matter,” said Mrs. Farrell, “ the mood is past, now; but you’d better pull a few of them, because one must n’t come for ferns without getting them. ”

She put together in pretty clusters the ferns with which he heaped her lap, holding them up from time to time and viewing them critically to get the effect, and talked as she worked, while he reclined on a sloping rock near by. “Is n’t that rather nice? ” she asked, displaying the finest group, and letting the tips of the ferns drip through her fingers as she softly caressed their spray. “ I suppose you ’ll laugh if I tell you what my great passion in life would be, if I could indulge a great passion: millinery! Bonnets, caps,hats, ribbons, feathers!” Nothing so enraptures a man as to hear the woman of his untold love belittle herself; it intoxicates him that this adorable preciousness can hold itself cheap — as Mrs. Farrell possibly knew. " You know,” she went on, “ I think I have some little artistic talent — not really enough for painting, but quite enough for clothes. I might set up a studio, and everybody would smile on my efforts, but if I set up a shop, uohodv would associate with me. You would n’t, yourself! Don’t pretend to be so much better than other people,” cried Mrs. Farrell, with nothing of the convent left in her look.

“ I don’t know about being better,” said Easton. “ But I ’ve lived too little in the world to be quite of it, I suppose. I’m afraid I am not shocked at the notion of anybody’s being a milliner that likes.”

“ Oh yes, I know. Cheap ideas of equality. But you would n’t marry a milliner, if she was ever such a genius in her art.”

“If I were in love with her, and she were in love with me and would have me, I would marry her. But why do you make marrying the test of a man’s respect for a woman? ”

“ Is n’t it ? ”

Easton pondered a while. “ Well, yes, it does seem to be,” he said, a little sadly. “ But it narrows the destiny of half the world.”

“Are you woman’s rights?” asked Mrs. Farrell, trailing a plume of fern through the air.

“ Oh, I’m woman’s anything,” said Easton; “anything that women really want; but rights are a subject that they don’t seem very certain of, themselves.”

“ Yes,” sighed Mrs. Farrell, “ that’s the trouble with women ; from day to day, and from dress to dress, they don’t really know what they want. There’s Rachel Woodward; she has this decided talent, but she don’t seem to want decidedly to use it, as a man would. I’m not even sure that if all the world were propitious I should open a milliner shop. But I think I should. If I ever do, Mr. Easton, and you marry one of my ’prentices, I want you to promise that you ’ll let her buy her bonnets of me. That is n’t asking a great deal, is it?” She was scrutinizing a crest of maiden-hair, and making it tilt on its stem, as if in doubt just where to put it in the cluster, and she began softly and as if unconsciously to whistle in a low, delicious note. Then she suddenly stopped, made a little prim mouth, threw up her eyebrows, and said, “ Why, excuse me, excuse me! What awful behavior in company! ”

Easton gave himself to the joy of being played upon by her charming insolence, with a glad laugh, full of a sort of happy wonder; but she seemed not to notice, while she went on gravely adding spray to spray.

“What are you malting all those for?” he asked, when he was willing to change the delight of her silence for the delight of her speech.

“ I don’t know —for Mrs. Gilbert, I think. She’s so much of an invalid that she can’t come after things that she does n’t want, as the rest of us can, and so we ’re always carrying them to her.

I often wonder how she gets rid of them. You never see them next day. Is n’t it strange?” asked Mrs. Farrell, with a serious face; and abruptly: “What makes you come to the country if you don’t know anything about it? ”

“ Well, I take an ignorant pleasure in it. On this occasion I came because I thought Gilbert would like it.”

“ Ah, Damon and Pythias! Do New York gentlemen commonly desert their business at the beck of their men friends in that way? We have six Boston husbands belonging to the wives of Woodward farm, and they can’t leave their business one work-day in the week.”

“But I ’m not a business man. I’m no more useless here than in New York.”

Mrs. Farrell looked interested, and Easton went on. “I went into the army too young to have a profession, and came out of it too old — or something — to study one. So I live upon a little money left me by a better man.”

“ And you don’t actually do anything? ”

“ I can’t quite say that. I try not to keep other people from working; that’s something: and I have my little pursuits.”

“But you have no business-occupation? ”

“ No.”

“ Really! And your friend, Pythias, — is he a gentleman of elegant leisure, too? ”

“ He’s a lawyer, if you mean Gilbert.”

“ Yes, I mean Gilbert,” said Mrs. Farrell, abstractedly. “He did n’t go in too young, then? ”

“ He’s a little older than I.”

“ ‘ I said an older soldier, not a better,’ ” quoted Mrs. Farrell. “Is he — why, excuse me! I seem to be actually pumping you. ”

“ I hope you ’ll believe that I’m not in the habit of exploiting myself and my affairs,” said Easton.

But Mrs. Farrell did not seem to heed what he said. She looked him steadily in the face with her bewildering eyes, and asked, “ Why does n’t he live on some better man’s money, too? ” and Laughed to see his shame painted in his face.

“ I have been so silly as to talk of my own business, and you ’ve punished me as I deserved; but I don’t think I ’ll enter into my friend’s concerns, even for the honor of making you laugh,” he answered, hotly.

“ Then you don’t like being laughed at? ” she gravely questioned. Easton rose to his feet. “ What ! Are you actually going away from me? I beg you to forgive me, — I do indeed! I really meant nothing. You have n’t said a word that I don’t respect you for. I thought you would n’t mind it. Tell me how I shall treat you. It’s only for a week; I should be so sorry to be enemies with you while you stay. What shall I do to make peace ? What shall I say ? ”

She rose quickly, and stretched her hand appealingly toward him. A mastering impulse of tenderness filled his heart at her words of regret. Before he knew, he had pressed her hand in a quick kiss against his lips, and then stood holding it fast, awe-struck at what he had done.

“ Oh! What are you doing? ” cried Mrs. Farrell, starting away from him in a panic. “Don't; you must n’t! Mr. Easton! Oh dear, there ’ll be somebody coming in a moment! ” She wrung her hand loose, and, casting one look of fear, wonder, and reproach upon him, turned and walked sadly away. He followed her as silently, and without a word they mounted the slope of the hollow, and passed through the brakes and over the walls, which she mounted now without his help. When they came to the last, which divided the wood from the open meadow, she turned her aggrieved face upon him again, and said meekly, “ I shall have to beg you to go back and get me those ferns we left there in the hollow. It won’t do to go home without anything. I ’ll wait here; ” and she sat down upon the low broken wall, and averted her face from him again. He went back as he was bidden, and with a little search found the place, the sight of which somehow sent a shiver through him as if it were haunted, and gathering up the clusters of ferns returned with them to her. He tried to say something, but could not. She took some of them, and began to talk in a curiously animated way, looking at them and comparing them; and then, not far off, he saw Gilbert and the young girls approaching. Mrs. Farrell sprang down from the wall, and hurried to meet them. They were covered with brakes and ferns, and a gay laughing and talking broke forth among the women. Mrs. Farrell attached Gilbert to her for the walk home; and it fell to Easton to accompany the two young girls. When he left them they said he was very nicelooking, but he was very hard to get along with, much harder than Mr. Gilbert, who always kept saying something to make you laugh. They did not know whether Mr. Easton was really stupid or not; he did not look stupid, and it was quite delightful to have a man so bashful.

In the mean time he had parted in a blank, opaque sort of way from Mrs. Farrell, with whom he left Gilbert, and was walking moodily homeward over that road where he had met her in the morning. He found the hotel intolerable, and after a cup of its Japan tea, and a glance at its hot biscuit, its cold slices of corned beef, its little blocks and wedges of cheese, its small satellite dishes of prunes and preserves, and its twenty-five Sunday evening toilettes, he went out again, and walked far and long in a direction that he knew nothing of except that it was away from where he had spent the day. His heart was still thickly beating in his ears when he got back and found Gilbert alone on the piazza.

“Hello!” said Gilbert. “Developing into a pedestrian? Why did you go away so soon? I think the lovely Farrell missed you. She was quite pensive and distraite at first; though I must own she cheered up and collected herself after a while. She looked extremely attractive in her melancholy.”

Easton sat down in the next chair without answering, and drawing a match along the bottom of the seat lighted his cigar. After a few whiffs, he took it from his lips and held it till it went out.

Gilbert went on with a quick laugh. “ She ’s a most amusing creature ! ”

“ I don’t understand what you mean by that,” said Easton, turning his face half-way toward his friend, in a fashion he had.

“ Well, it’s hard to say. I suppose because she ’s so deep and so transparent. She does everything for an effect, and she is n’t at peace with herself for a moment.”

“ I suppose we all do that,” commented Easton.

“ Yes, but not with her motive.”

“ What is her motive? ”

“ That’s not so easy to explain. It’s a pity you haven’t the data for comprehending her, Easton, and enjoying her character; you don’t know other women, and you can’t see how sublimely perfect Mrs. Farrell is in her way. She ’s one of the most beautiful women I ever saw; one of the brightest, the most amiable. But I should be sorry to marry her; I should n’t want my wife so amiable— to everybody. She isn’t meant for the domesticities. There’s no harm in her; she simply wants excitement, luxury, applause, all in one, all the time. By Jove, the man that gets her will wish she was his widow, and so will she, as soon as she has him. She ’s an inspired, flirt; and I don’t mean that she’s like young girls who can’t help their innocent coquetries with a man or two; but her flirtatiousness is vast enough for the whole world, and enduring enough for all time. As long as she lives she ’ll be wanting to try her power upon some one; and there can’t he any game so high or so low that she won’t fly at it. What a life that would be for her husband! ”

Easton sat still while Gilbert spoke, and he remained silent when he ceased. But the words had given him a supreme satisfaction; they had lifted a load from his heart; they had made the way clear and straight. He was infinitely far from resenting what left her, as concerned Gilbert at least, so solely to his love and worship. With his passion their reason or unreason had not a feather’s weight.

“ Shall you stay any longer than the end of the fortnight? ” he asked at last.

“ No,” said Gilbert, who was used to Easton’s way of suddenly turning from the matter of their talk, and coming as suddenly back to it some other time; “ I don’t think I could stand it longer.”

Easton made a motion to replace his cigar in his lips, then looked at it with sudden disgust and flung it over the rail. His mind ran off in wild reverie upon the kiss, which he now feigned again and again upon her hand. His eccentric life and his peculiar temperament had kept him so unlike other young men that he had no trouble for the violated conventionality; it could only be a question of right or wrong with him; he believed that he had taken an unfair advantage of her attempt at reparation, but the fire that burned in his heart seemed to purge it of whatever wrong there was in his violence. He was reclining there near her on the rock under the hovering shade, with the bracken in light undulation all around above their heads, and the summer at its sweetest in the air and earth; then he despaired to think that the night must pass before he could see her again, that life itself might pass and no such moment come again. His reverie broke in a long, deep sigh.

Gilbert gave a sudden laugh. “Why, I believe, Easton, you are hit. You had forgotten I was here,” he continued, as Easton looked round in a stupefied way. “Well, I’ll leave you to your raptures.”

“ I ’m going to bed, too,” said Easton. “I’m tired to death;” and he rose from his chair with a leaden sense of fatigue in every fibre.

Their rooms opened into each other, and Easton was abed, when Gilbert rapped on the dividing door. “ Come in,” he called.

Gilbert came into the room, which the bright moon would have made uncomfortable for any but a lover. “ Look here, old fellow,” he said, bending over his friend, with one arm stretched along the head-board, “you didn’t think today, from anything my sister-in-law said, that I’d been making light of you, did you? ”

“ What did she say?”

“ Oh, about Rogers, you know.”

“ Certainly not.”

“Then it isn’t necessary to say I had n’t? ”

“ Oh no,” said Easton, turning his head impatiently. “ I never thought of it again.” Gilbert’s anxious loyalty annoyed him, for since they had bidden each other good night, the consciousness that he had, however against his will, suffered something to he extorted from him that might be construed as derogation of his friend had troubled him, but he had rather arrogantly dismissed the thought as unworthy of their friendship. Besides, without placing himself in a false light he could not speak of it, and it was vexatious to be reminded of it by Gilbert’s scruples.

“Then it’s all right?” asked Gilbert.

“ Why, certainly! ” said Easton, impatiently.

Gilbert slowly withdrew his arm from where it lay, and stood a moment in hesitation; then he said “ Good night,” and went into his own room.

Easton felt the vague disappointment in his manner, but was helpless to make the reparation to which his heart urged him. He could not expose Mrs. Farrell’s part in what had been said to his friend’s interpretation; the wrong done was one of those things which must be lived down.

VI.

It was much later than his wonted hour when Easton woke next morning, and found a scrap of paper stuck between the mirror and its frame, on which Gilbert had written, “ Off for the troutbrooks. See you at dinner.” This gave him a moment’s pause, and then he went on dressing. He had a lover’s single purpose of seeing her he loved, and a lover’s insensibility to questions of ways and means; and after breakfast he walked away toward the farm, thinking what he should say and do when he met Mrs. Farrell.

At Woodward farm there was no organization for the reception of callers upon the guests. There was no bell, and there would have been no one to answer it if there was a bell. But in a house where there was so much leisure and so much curiosity, this was ordinarily a small deprivation. Some of the ladies were always looking out, and if they saw any of their friends coming they ran forth to meet them with a great deal of pleasant twitter, having shouted a voluble welcome to them from the time they came in sight. If it was some one whom the lookers-out recognized as the friend of another lady, they went to alarm her in ample season, and by the time the visitor ascended the piazza-steps the lady was at the door. Besides, some one or other was always sitting about out-doors, and if unknown visitors approached, it was a grateful little excitement to ask them, when they had vainly inspected the door-frame for a bell, if one could call her whom they wished to see.

But when Mr. Easton was descried approaching, people were quite undecided what to do, and he was on the piazza before he had himself perceived that he had something to do besides walking up to Mrs. Farrell and telling her that he loved her. It appeared to him impossible that she should not be there to receive him ; he had been so rapt in his meditation upon her that he had not believed but he must meet her as soon as he reached the door; and now she was not there! Several heads were decently taken in from the upper windows, and the broad piazza was empty but for the two young ladies whom he had walked home with yesterday; they sat half in the sunlight at the corner, and one was looking down upon the work in her hand and the other looking down upon the book she was reading aloud, and he fancied himself unperceived by them. A mighty disappointment fell upon him; he had stormed the fortress, to find it empty and equipped with Quaker guns. As he stood there helpless, the young girl who was reading discreetly chanced to look round, and to her evident great surprise discovered him. She gave him a friendly little nod, and as he came towards her she rose with a pretty air and offered her hand, and the other did the same. They talked excitedly for a minute or two, and then the conversation began to flag, and Easton uneasily shifted his attitude. No doubt they would have liked to keep him with them for a little while, but perhaps they did not know how, or thought they ought to give him a chance to get away if he wanted; or perhaps she who spoke was quite sincere in asking, with a bright smile, “Did you want to see Mrs.” — his heart began to beat in his ears — “ Gilbert? ”

“ Yes,” said Easton stupidly.

“ I will go and tell her,” said the young girl, laying her book down open, and lightly turning away.

“ Thanks — I ’m very sorry to trouble you,” said Easton; and neither he nor she with whom he was left contrived to speak one word more while the other was gone. When she came back, she said with some trepidation, “Mrs. Gilbert is very, very sorry. She has one of her bad headaches, and she can’t see any one. She’s so sorry to miss your call.”

“ Oh, no matter — no matter,” answered Easton; “I’m sorry she’s not well; please give her my — please say I was sorry. Good morning! ” he added abruptly, and cast a wistful, despairing look at the front of the house, and could not go. “Is — is Mrs. Farrell at home? ” he asked, desperately.

The young girl cruelly smiled, and her companion cruelly cast down her eyes, and then they both blushed.

“No,” said the first, “ she isn’t at home. She said she was going with Miss Rachel to help pick pease.”

“Oh!” was all that Easton could say; and as he turned away the girls said it was a perfect shame, and they were rude girls, too flat for anything.

Easton forgot them both, and walked back toward his hotel. On the way down the slope from the house he looked in the direction of the vegetable garden, and faltered. Mrs. Farrell’s voice floated over to him in a gay laugh from the ranks of the pea-vines, and an insane longing to behold her filled him to the throat. But he could not go and tell her he loved her, there among the peapods; even he felt that. He twisted his mustache into the corner of his mouth, beat the ground with his stick, and hurried away, hurt, tormented, but not at all daunted or moved from his mind to have speech with her as soon as ever he could.

When she had finished her part of the work, which was to gather pease with fitful intensity and then to talk for long intervals to Rachel’s taciturn perseverance, she emptied her small harvest into the basket that one of the Woodward boys carried, and walked picturesquely back to the house under her broad hat, which dropped its shade just across her lips like a grace-veil, and left her dark eyes to glow, star-like, from its depths. In this becoming effect she sat down on the kitchen threshold with the wide doors open round her, and took some of the pease into her lap and shelled them with a lazy ease, moving her arms from the elbows resting on her knees, and managing chiefly with her flexile wrists, and went on talking with Rachel of a picnic excursion to the mountain, which she wished to plan. “ We shall not want any one along but the youngest Miss Jewett and Jenny Alden and Ben, and we can have a splendid time. It’s just the right season, now. Come, Mrs. Woodward, ” she called into the kitchen, “ are you going to let me go? ”

“ You mostly do what you like, Mrs. Farrell,” answered Mrs. Woodward’s voice, “ and the only way I get any obedience out of you is to forbid you to do what you don’t like. Yes, go. All I ask is that you don’t take me.”

“Now, then, Miss Prim,” said Mrs. Farrell to Rachel, “ you see you ’re commanded to go. What had we better wear ? ”

“ Oh, wear all your worst things,” said Mrs. Woodward.

“Yes, but I’m one of those poor people who can’t afford to have any but best things. I’m going to get you to lend me some of your worst, Mrs. Woodward, and I’m going to borrow Ben’s hat. Will you lend it to me, Ben? ” she tenderly asked of the grave young fellow who stood near, and who had to shift himself from one foot to the other and turn his face away before he could assent. She laughed at his trepidation, as if she knew the reason of it. But by the time he could confront Mrs. Farrell again, she apparently did not care for his answer. Her eyes were fixed upon the figure of Gilbert, as he came up the road toward the house. He came in sight suddenly, as if he had climbed the wall from one of the birch-bordered meadows. He was better worth looking at than Ben Woodward, being very brave in his high boots and his straw hat, with his bundled rod and his troutbasket, a strong, sinewy shape, and a face very handsome in its fashion. As he drew nearer, he turned aside and slanted his course towards the door where Mrs. Farrell sat. Before he came up to her place Rachel had silently vanished within, and Mrs. Farrell sat there alone.

“ Good morning,” he called out, taking off his hat.

“ Good morning,” returned Mrs. Farrell, without changing her posture. “ Don’t you want to stop and help shell pease ? ”

Either their acquaintance had prospered rapidly after Easton had left them together the afternoon before, or else this was Mrs. Farrell’s indifference to social preliminaries.

“No, thanks,” said Gilbert tranquilly, wiping his forehead with his handkerchief. “ My domestic gifts are small. But I was thinking, as I came along, that I would give you people my trout.”

“ Really ? How very handsome of you!”

“Yes, there’s nothing mean about me. They sometimes object to cooking them at the hotel, and I don’t quite like to throw them away.”

“ Why, this is true charity! If I'm to accept them in the name of the farm,

I must see them first.”

Gilbert took off his basket and laid it at her feet; she opened it and cried out, " What beauties! Like flowers! But ” — she gave ever so little a pretty grimace — “not exactly the same perfume ! ”

“ No,” said he, “ they can't very well help that. But they improve with frying.”

“That’s true,” said Mrs. Farrell.

“ Well, we 'll take them. And you must get Mrs. Gilbert to ask you to supper. I can’t do it.”

“ No,” answered Gilbert, “my generosity shall be unblemished. I never eat the trout I've taken, any more. Easton’s religion has had that much effect upon me. ”

“ Easton’s religion? ”

“ Yes; he thinks it ’s atrocious to kill anything for the pleasure of it.”

“ How very droll! And you ’re able to behave so nobly with your fish because you could n’t get them cooked, and would n’t cat them if you could! ” Gilbert had been standing beside the pile of maple firewood, which flanked the kitchen door and sent up a pleasant odor in the sun; Mrs. Farrell said, “ Sit down,” and he sat down on a broad block used for splitting kindling. “ I wonder what Mr. Easton would have had to say to some of the apostles on the subject of fishing. ”

“ That’s what I asked him once; but he says they did n’t fish for fun.”

“He distinguishes! Well, but what about the clergymen who make it their diversion, and then boast about their prowess in books ? ”

“ Ask Easton for his opinion. I can assure you it’s worth hearing — if you like contempt red-hot.”

“I don’t believe I do! I’d rather ask you. Is that his whole creed, antitrouting? ”

“ No; hardly. He has a kindness for most of the human race as well as the lower animals. The only creature he really hates is the horse,” said Gilbert, with a laugh as of recollected mirth; and in fact Easton had been known in his army days for his antipathy to his chargers. He always got full service out of them by sheer force of will; but he never liked them, and never professed to understand them; the horse, he contended, was unfitted for a gentleman’s society by the blackguard company he habitually kept. “ But I don’t think he’d do even a horse a wanton injury,” concluded Gilbert.

“Yes?” said Mrs. Farrell. “And the rest of his opinions? ”

“ Why, there are very few things that Easton has n’t an opinion upon. It’s rather odd, don’t you think, to find a man in our age and country really caring enough for matters in general to make up his mind about them? ”

“ Very,” said Mrs. Farrell, twisting her slim shape round to take a handful of pease out of the basket behind her, and putting them into her lap. “ Go on.”

“ That was all I had to say,” returned Gilbert, with a mocking light in his eyes.

“ Oh, how can you be so cruel? — when I bad just got ready to Listen! Do go on! ”

“ Why, I was thinking ” — began Gilbert.

“Yes, yes!” eagerly prompted Mrs. Farrell, “thinking (really thinking ! Of course you can’t have been doing it long!) — thinking ” —

“ That it was a very inconvenient practice to inquire into the right and wrong of many things,” proceeded Gilbert in solid indifference to her light impertinences; whereupon she seemed to suffer some evanescent confusion. “It gives you no sort of moral leeway. Suppose you want to do something — anything — out of the ordinary line of things that you do or don’t do; well, if you have n’t considered too impertinently of right and wrong in general, you do it without once thinking whether you ought or ought n’t, and there you are on the safe side, any way.”

“ Oh, what a beautiful philosophy! ” moaned Mrs. Farrell, clasping her hands together without moving her elbows from their careless pose. She rested her cheek a moment on her folded hands; then she asked with a voice full of mock emotion, “ Do you think it would do for Woman, Mr. Gilbert? It seems just made for her! ”

“I hadn’t thought about Woman,” said Gilbert; “that’s a matter still to be considered. You must give me time. ”

“ Oh yes, we will he patient—patient! ” and Mrs. Farrell began to shell the pease with an air of tragical endurance. “ Take any length of time you wish. But in the mean while, can’t you state the Eastonian principle more fully?”

“ Only by saying that it’s the opposite of the system you admire and covet. Easton is n’t a man to formulate his ideas very freely. You ’re astounded every now and then by some extraordinary piece of apparently quite uncalled for uprightness, and then you find that he had long contemplated some such exigency, and had his conscience in perfect training.”

“How very droll!” said Mrs. Farrell. Then she said, looking at him through her eyelashes, “ It ’s quite touching to see such attached friends.”

Gilbert stirred uneasily on his block, and answered, “ It’s a great honor to form part of a spectacle affecting to you, Mrs. Farrell—if you mean Easton and me.”

“ Yes, I do. Don’t scoff at my weak impressibility. You must see that it ’s a thing calculated to rouse a woman’s curiosity. You seem so very different! ”

“ Men and women are very different, in some respects,” calmly responded Gilbert, “ but there have been quite strong attachments between them.”

“True,” rejoined Mrs. Farrell with burlesque thoughtfulness. “ But in this case, they ’re both men.”

“ Nothing escapes you, Mrs. Farrell,” said Gilbert, bowing his head.

“ You praise me more than I deserve. I did n't take all your meaning. One of you is so mightily, so heroically manly, that the other necessarily womanizes in comparison. Is n’t that it? But which is which ? ”

“Modesty forbids me to claim either transcendent distinction. ”

“Oh, I know! Mr. Easton is your ideal man. But I should want my ideal man to do something in the world, to devote himself to some one great object. That’s what I should do, if I were a man. ”

“ Of course. How do you know Easton does n’t? ”

“ I merely have his word for it.”

Gilbert looked surprised and perplexed. At length he said, rather dryly, " I congratulate you on getting Easton to talk about himself. Not many people have succeeded.”

“ Oh, is he so reticent? ” asked Mrs. Farrell. “I did n’t find him so. He was quite free in mentioning his little pursuits, as he called it.”

“ His book!” cried Gilbert. “Did he talk to you about that, already? ”

“ Why, it seems that you don’t know your friend very well, after all! ” mocked Mrs. Farrell with a laugh of triumph. “ Why should n’t he talk to me about his book? He knew I would be interested in the subject; any woman would.”

“ Upon my word, I don’t see what should particularly interest you in a history of heroism.”

Mrs. Farrell celebrated her fresh advantage with another laugh. “ Why not? ” she asked, taking some of the pease up in her hand and letting them drop through her fingers. “ We ’re all heroes till we’ve been tried, and I have n’t been tried. He’s going to put me into it. Do tell me his plan in writing it,” she entreated.

“ Look here, Mrs. Farrell,” said Gilbert, bending forward and looking keenly at her, “ do you mean to tell me that Easton has actually been talking to you about his book, which I now perceive I mentioned first? ”

“Look here, Mr. Gilbert,” said she, with an audaciously charming caricature of his attitude and manner, “ do you mean to tell me that you doubt my word? ”

“ Well,” said Gilbert, with a laugh, “ I own myself beaten. Did you ever hear of Miss Lillian — I forget her name — the St. Louis lawyeress ? Why don’t you study our profession? At a cross-examination no witness could resist you, if I may judge from my own experience in helplessly blabbing what you never would have known otherwise. Come, Mrs. Farrell, you have triumphed so magnificently that you can afford to be frank; own, now, that all you know of Easton’s book is what I’ve told.”

He rose and stood looking down admiringly upon her uplifted face.

“No,” she answered, “ I shall not do that, Colonel — I beg your pardon; I mean Major— Gilbert. Mr. Easton’s the colonel,” she added parenthetically. “ What was the reason,” she continued with well-studied innocence, “that he came out a colonel and you came out only a major, when you had so much the advantage of him at first? ”

Gilbert’s face had hardened in the lines of a smile, and it kept the shape of a smile while all mirth died out of it, and he stared into the eyes of Mrs. Farrell, from which a sudden panie looked. “Oh, dear me!” she said, naturally. “ Don’t—don’t mind. I did n’t mean to do anything. What have I done? Oh, I wish — don’t answer, please!” she implored.

But Gilbert gravely responded, “Because he was a better soldier. I am sorry if I alarm you by the statement of the fact. Did you experience any fright when Mr. Easton told you? ”

“ Oh, he never told me that he was braver than yon. I don’t think he meant to talk of the matter at all.”

“ I can believe that,” replied Gilbert; “ neither do I.”

Mrs. Farrell made no comment, but, taking a fresh handful of the pease, shelled them, with such downcast eyes that it was impossible to say whether she was looking at Gilbert through her lashes or not. Nor could one tell with just what feeling the corners of her mouth trembled, but his sternness seemed to have frightened and silenced her. Gilbert breathed quickly as he regarded her, but after waiting awhile, irresolute, he gave a short, sardonic laugh, and rose. " Good morning,” he said.

“ Good morning,” returned Mrs. Farrell, woundedly, and meekly added, “ Thank you for the fish,” to which he bowed his reply, and then walked round the house.

He knocked at Mrs. Gilbert’s door, and received from her own lips the same answer which had already turned Easton away, and so went quickly down the road in the direction of the hotel. In the mean time Easton had not been able to turn his steps far from the farm; whichever way he went they tended indirectly thither, and at last he started boldly back. At the moment he mounted the front piazza steps, Mrs. Farrell, having finished or relinquished her domestic task, came round the gallery from the side of the house and met him.

“ Good morning, Mr. Easton,” she said pensively. “ Did you want to see Mrs. Gilbert? I believe she has a very bad headache to-day.”

“ No, I did n’t want to see Mrs. Gilbert. I came to see you.”

“ Oh! Then will you sit down here? ” she asked, and took her place where the two young girls, who were now away in the fields, had been sitting.

“ I came here some time ago,” said Easton, “and not finding you, I tried to find that place where we got the ferns, yesterday.”

Mrs. Farrell’s broad hat-brim thrust uncomfortably against the house where she sat on the settle beside the wall, and she took her hat off; a mass of her dark hair tumbled in a rich disorder on her back. She laid her hat in her lap and waited.

“ I went there, " pursued Easton, “because I had a stupid hope that the place might inspire me with some faint shadow of reason, of excuse, for ” —

“ Yes,” said Mrs. Farrell, interpreting his hesitation with candid reproachfulness; “ it was not fair, and considering all things, Mr. Easton, I don’t think it was quite kind.”

“ Kind? Kind! ” cried Easton with an inexpressible pang. Then after a moment’s thought he added, “No, it was not kind; it was base, tyrannical, brutal! It was worthy of a savage! ”

Mrs, Farrell turned her face slightly away, and if she had been acting wounded innocence she could hardly have known it.

“ There was no excuse for such a thing but the one thing in the world which it is least like. That is its excuse to me; it seems an insolent affront to suppose that it can atone for it to you.”

“ I suppose,” said Mrs. Farrell demurely, “ that women’s actions are often misconstrued. Indeed, I ought to know it from bitter experience in my own case. I ought to remember that men seem even eager to misinterpret any confidence put in them; but yesterday — I — I could n’t! ”

There was a sort of passionate reproach, a tacit confession that she had singularly trusted him to her hurt, in the close of this speech, which went to Easton’s heart. “ No, there is nothing for me to say in extenuation. Even if I tell you ” —

“ ’Sh! ” cried Mrs. Farrell, putting her hand down at her side and electrically touching that wrist of his next to her; “ I thought somebody was coming. Yes, I know. Even if you tell me that you meant no harm,—and I don’t believe you did, — still, don’t you know — Oh!” she broke off, “why is it that there is n’t some common ground for men and women to meet on, and be helpful to each other? Must they always be either lovers or enemies? Yes, enemies; it’s really a state of almost warfare; there can’t be any kindness, any freedom, any sincerity. And yet there are times in every woman’s life when she does long so for the intelligence as well as the sympathy of some good man; and she can’t have it unless she’s married or engaged. She often wants to see how some action of her own looks through a man’s eyes, and the wisest woman can’t tell her! Every new disappointment that she meets with is harder to bear. I did n’t mind your kissing my hand; that’s nothing; it might even be something that a woman would be proud of ; but by the way you did it you shocked and frightened me; I saw that you had misunderstood me, and I—I was afraid you did n’t—respect me.”

Mrs. Farrell’s grieving mood was so admirably represented in the outline of her cheek, the downward curve of the corner of her mouth, the low sweep of her long eyelash, and at the same time it was so discreetly felt, so far from overcharged or exaggerated, that even an indifferent spectator must have been affected with reverent sympathy. Easton’s heart was wrung with unspeakable tenderness and regret and shame. He could not break the silence that followed her words for some moments. At last he said, “I see how it must have appeared to you; but it was not so. I have as little hope as I deserve to have when I say " —

“ There! Don’t speak of it any more,” Mrs. Farrell interrupted, with signs of returning cheerfulness, but with beams not too speedily tricked. “ Let’s not think of it. I know there must have been something to blame in me. I have a way,” she continued regretfully, “ which I’m sure no one feels the disadvantage of more than I do, —a sort of perverse impulse; I don’t know what else to call it, —that leads me to try people’s patience, and see how far I can go with them; and I’m afraid I must have abused your good-nature yesterday in speaking as I did of your friend.”

“ You said nothing against him that I remember.”

“ I ought to be very grateful, then.

I thought I was wrong in asking you about your military rank and his, when I saw that you were avoiding the subject. I could n’t help it, and yet I meant no harm.”

“I know you meant none. I won’t deny that I was trying to avoid the subject. It was placing me in the uglylight of seeming to boast at the expense of my friend.”

“Yes, yes; I knew that; and I suppose it was just that which made me keep on; I liked to see your modesty put to the blush. It was wrong; but you don’t think I had any very bad motive in it? ”

“ No, none!” said Easton, quickly.

“I am so glad. I know Mr. Gilbert is n’t so generous!” Easton looked at her inquiringly, and “ Oh Mr. Easton,” she broke out, “what have I been doing? It must really look very black to you. Mr. Gilbert has just been here, and I have been talking to him about it — I don’t know why I did; and he went away very angry. It seems just as if I had been trying to make a quarrel between you! ” She hid her face in her hands, while Easton remained gravely silent. “ Why don’t you speak to me? ” she implored him, without taking away her hands. “ It will kill me if you don’t. Say something, anything; blame me, scold me! You know you think I’ve behaved very wickedly. You do! ”

“ No, I don't think so,” replied Easton seriously. He looked at her hopeless face, from which she had now withdrawn her hands, and he seemed to be losing his fast hold upon things, upon truth and right and wrong. Two days ago he had not seen this face or known that it was in the world ; now it was so heavenly dear to him that it seemed to describe all knowledge and being. It was not a question whether she had a right to violate the secrecy to which Gilbert’s silence and his own had consigned the fact she had so recklessly played with; rightly or wrongly she had done this, and he had now to ask himself whether he could forgive her error to her penitence. Yet he did not ask himself that; she had done it; and he loved her; and there was an end. How could he believe ill of her? What oblique motive could he attribute to her that his heart’s tenderness would suffer ?

“Ah,” she broke out again, “you can never forgive me — and I can never forgive myself. Why did you come here to make me so unhappy!”

“ Don’t— don’t say that!” the young man implored. “ There is no harm done. I was to blame for ever talking with you about the matter. How could I expect you to treat it with seriousness or secrecy? You couldn’t know that it had ever been a sore affair with us. Don’t he troubled. Gilbert’s friendship is n’t built upon such a slight basis that it can’t bear”— A stifling recollection of the delicacy, passing the love of women, with which they had always treated each other smote upon him: what could Gilbert think of his delicacy now? “ I can make it all right with him,” he continued, as soon as he could get breath.

“ With him ?” murmured Mrs. Farrell. " Then you forgive me ? ”

“ I had nothing to forgive,” said Easton, with all his love in his face ; so that she looked away and blushed. “ Don’t think of it any more; it’s nothing.”

“ How generous you are! Oh, women could n’t be like that! How shall I thank you? I’ll never forgive myself in the world — that’s how,” she said, a faint smile dawning on her contrite face.

“ That would be a poor way. I want you to be friends with those I — like.”

“Do you mean Mr. Gilbert? ”

“ No, I don’t mean Gilbert.”

Mrs. Farrell cast down her eyes. Then she bravely lifted them. “ I will do whatever you say,” she breathed, and a radiant light Came from her face, as she rose and stood fronting him. “ After what I’ve done you have a right to command me. But now you must let me go. I have some things to do. You ’ve made me so happy! ”

“ And you me! ” he said, and he took her hand, which he dropped after a moment, and walked away, giddy with his insensate joy. All his soul was flattered by the far-hinting sweetness with which she had used him, and he was contented in every pulse. When he despaired he had felt that he must tell her he loved her, and let any effect follow that would, but now he was patient with the hope which he hoped she had given him; for his confidence did not go beyond this. He loved too much to believe himself loved or to perceive, that he was encouraged. To the supreme modesty of his passion her kindness was but leave to live; and he was abjectly grateful for it. He lifted his thoughts to her with worshiping reverence; it was heaven to dwell in the beauty of her looks, her attitudes, her movements; the sense of her self-reproachful meekness possessed him with the tenderest rapture. How could he expose this to the harsh misconception of his friend? How could he explain her blamelessness as be felt it? He knew the sort of sarcastic quiet that Gilbert would keep when he should set about making him understand that he, Easton, was alone guilty in any wrong done him; that he, Easton, had given her the clew which she had afterwards followed up, from an ignorant caprice, in her talk with Gilbert; that she had bitterly upbraided herself for her error, and had dreaded its effects with a terror that he had hardly known how to appease. When he thought of Gilbert’s incredulity, his heart beat fiercely; and he felt that he could not suffer it. Yet the thing could not go without some effort on his part to assure his friend that he had not been disloyal, and how to give him this assurance he did not see. No, he could not speak of it; and yet, he must. A veritable groan burst from his lips as he mounted a little hillock in the road and took off his hat to wipe away the drops of sweat from his forehead. Whither had all his bliss vanished ? A thrush sat in the elm-tree over him and sang long and sweet, and his heart ached in time with the pulses of that happy music. A little way off, under the shadow of this tree, Gilbert lay upon the grass, with his face up to the sky; and it was to Easton, when directly he caught sight of him, as if he had laid him there dead. He fearfully made a little noise, and Gilbert opened his eyes, and, looking at him, sat up. “ I was waiting for you,” he said, gravely and not unkindly. “I supposed you had gone over to the farm, for I did not find you at the hotel. Easton,” he continued, “ I saw Mrs. Farrell a little while ago. Perhaps you’ve just come from seeing her? ”

“ Yes,” answered Easton.

“ Perhaps you don’t know what we talked of? ”

“ Yes, I do.”

“ I suppose it was her use of what you told her that annoyed me; but I can’t understand how you came to mention the matter to her at all; much leas to go into particulars, as you seem to have done.”

Easton colored, but did not speak.

“ Have you anything to say to me, Easton? I can’t bear to have the slightest thing between us.”

“ Not — not now.”

They were both silent; and Easton doggedly cast down his eyes.

“ Very well, Easton,” said Gilbert, rising and going towards him, " if you intend to say something by and by, and can justify yourself to yourself in making me wait, it’s all right; I can wait.”

He held out his hand, and Easton yearned to grasp it as it was offered, but his cold clasp relaxed upon it, and the severed friends trudged silently on through the dust toward the hotel.

VII.

That evening Gilbert found his sisterin-law well of her headache, and disposed to celebrate the charm of a headache that always went off with the going down of the sun. He responded at random, and then she began to talk to him of Easton, and he listened with a restlessness which she could not help noticing. " You don’t seem to care to sing the praises of your idol, this evening,” she said.

“ One can’t always be singing the praises of one’s idols,” he answered, " if you like to call them so. One wants a little variety. You know how the Neapolitans give themselves up to comfortable cursing in the case of saints who don’t indicate the winning lottery numbers.”

“I don't exactly see the application, William, but I’m always ready to curse anybody; and we will devote Mr. Easton to a little malediction. Have you had a tiff? ”

“ I thought you were going to curse, and you commence questioning.”

“ That ’s true; my curiosity is uppermost. Do tell me about it. I suppose Mrs. Farrell is somehow at the bottom of it. I would n’t have such a friendship as yours and Easton’s on any account. It has cost too much. I wonder you have n’t assassinated each other long ago.”

“ I ’m glad your headache ’s gone,” said Gilbert.

“ Yes, that’s gone, — thanks to the sunset or the headache pill. But I ’m getting what no pill has yet been patented for; I mean a heartache, and for you, my poor boy. Oh, you open book! Don't you suppose I can read where that woman has written Finis in her highshouldered English hand against the chapter of your friendship with Easton ? ”

“ You are taking it seriously, Susan.”

“Well, well. See if I’m not right.

I thought you told me your friend was afraid of ladies. Mrs. Farrell seems to have persuaded him that they ’re not so dangerous. He’s been here all afternoon. Oh, one can know such a thing as that even with the headache in a darkened room. No, not the whole afternoon; they were gone a long while on a walk. He follows her all about with his eyes when she won’t let him follow on foot; he ’s making a perfect trophy of himself. That’s the report.”

“ Very likely,” said Gilbert. " Easton never does things by halves.”

“ He’d better, then, — some things.”

“ Why, I don’t know. Why should n’t he marry her if he wants? ”

“ I don’t believe she wants. He can’t take her fancy long, though very likely now she thinks he can. That was very pretty of you to give her your trout, this morning,” said Mrs. Gilbert, with a sharp look at her brother-in-law. “She had them for supper, and ate a great many —for your sake, I suppose. It’s you that she wants, William! ”

“ Does she? ” asked Gilbert with a bitterish accent. " She has an odd way of going about to get me.”

“ What has she done? ” demanded Mrs. Gilbert, making an instant rush for the breach. Gilbert covered it with a quizzical smile. “Oh!” she continued, plainly enjoying her own discomfiture, “when will men learn that the boomerang is the natural weapon of woman? We 're all cross-eyed when it comes to love-glances; you can’t tell where we ’re looking. You think she ’s aiming at Easton! Poor fellow! ”

“If I stay here talking,” said Gilbert, rising, “ I shall bring on your headache again. Good night. ”

“ Oh, William,” Mrs. Gilbert appealed, “ something sad has happened between you and Easton; and I’m very, very sorry. I liked him, too; and I’m grieved to have your old friendship touched. But I know you are not to blame, — and don’t you be! I shall hate him if he breaks with you. Good night, my dear. Don’t tell me anything you don’t want to.”

“ I won’t,” said Gilbert, kissing his hand to her at the door.

She could not help laughing, but when he was gone she turned to the glass with an anxious air, and after a while began to let down the loose, hastily ordered folds of her hair. She stood there a long time, thoughtfully brushing it out, taking hold of it near her head with the left hand, and bending sidewise as she smoothed it down. In the light of the kerosene lamps which she had set on either side of the mirror, her reflected face looked up from the lucid depths with an invalid’s wanness, which the whimsicality of her mouth and eyes made the more pathetic. Suddenly she glanced round at the door with an unchanging face, and said, “ Come in,” in answer to a light rap; and Rachel Woodward entered with a shy, cold hesitation.

“ Oh!— Why, Miss Rachel! Do come in! ” repeated Mrs. Gilbert, contriving in the last words to subdue the surprise of her first tones. “ You won’t mind my brushing my hair? There’s so very little of it! Sit down.”

She went on to give the last touches, with friendly looks at the girl in the glass, and with various little arts of inattention trying to make it easy for her visitor to disembarrass herself. Then she sat down in her rocking-chair facing Rachel, who had received her kindliness not unkindly, but now came promptly to her business.

“ I ought n’t to disturb you to-night, Mrs. Gilbert,” she said, “and I should have come Saturday night, but I knew you had company; and last night was Sabbath. I wanted to thank you for buying that picture of mine. I never thought of any one’s buying it; and I ’m afraid you gave more than you ought. I could n’t bear you should do that. I’ve been talking about it with mother, and she thinks I ought to offer you part of the money back.”

Mrs. Gilbert listened without interruption of any sort, and the girl, doubtless knowing better how to deal with this impassiveness than with that second-growth impulse which in city New Englanders has sprung up on surfaces shorn so bare by Puritanism, went on tranquilly.

“ We think it is like this : it is n’t probable, even if this picture is worth all of what you paid, that I can do any more as good, and if you’ve bought it to encourage me, I might disappoint you in the end. Besides, we should not be willing to be beholden to anybody.”

Having said her say, Rachel waited for Mrs. Gilbert’s response, who answered quietly, “ I know that you and your mother are perfectly sincere, and I am glad you came to say this to me. How much should you think I ought to take back? ”

Rachel thought a moment and said, soberly, “The paper cost twenty-five cents; then I used some of a preparation of Mrs. Farrell’s to keep the charcoal from rubbing, but that did n’t come to anything. If my picture took the first premium at the county fair, —we did think some of sending it there at first,—it would be three dollars, but we should have had to pay seventy-five cents for entering it. If you really want the picture, Mrs. Gilbert, and are not buying it for any other reason, you can have it for two and a quarter.”

“ Very well,” said Mrs. Gilbert gravely, “ have you brought me the change? Then please hand it to me, as I’m an old lady, and very much settled in my rocking-chair.” The girl obeyed, and approached her with some bank-notes in her hand. The elder woman leaned forward and caught her by either wrist, and held her, while she exclaimed, “ Rachel, you ’re the manliest girl, and your mother ’s the manliest woman, I know of — and I can’t say anything better! But don’t think you can take advantage of my sex, for all that. You shall not give me back a mill—if there is such a thing outside of the arithmetic. Two dollars and a quarter! Upon my word I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at you! I did n’t know there was so much uncorruption left in the world. What do you suppose Mrs. Stevenson will be asking by and by for her cat-tails, when she’s learned to paint them for door-panels? Why — no, I won’t blot your innocence with a knowledge of that swindling. Your Blossom is worth all I paid for her. Don’t be afraid that I bought her to encourage you. No, my dear, that is n’t my line. I’m the great American discourager. I suppose Mrs. Farrell has been babbling to you about the admiration your picture excited. She’s a foolish woman. It was admired, and I think you might be a painter. But oh, dear me! why should any one encourage you on that account? Talent is a trouble and a vexation even to men, who are strong enough to fight against it; but for women it’s nothing but misery. The only hope for you that I can see is that you’ve got something of a man’s honesty and modesty to help you through. Draw up your chair, and sit down by me, Rachel. I want to talk to you, I want to catechise you. Oh, you need n’t be afraid of me! I’m not going to do you any favor; and you shall keep me at a proper distance in everything you say! ”

She smiled quizzically at the girl’s constraint, and added, “ But I’m older than you, and I’ve seen more of the world, and maybe I ’ll be able to tell you some things it would be useful for you to know. You shall pay me what you think is right, if I do. Why don’t you want to be beholden to any one? Why should n’t I give you more for your picture than it’s worth, if I like? ”

“I don’t know,” answered Rachel, shyly puzzled. “ it’s a kind of feeling. The laborer is worthy of his hire; but he isn’t if he takes any more.”

“ Good! first-rate! And you should n’t think it pleasant to have things given to you? ”

“Oh, no!” cried the girl quickly, with a kind of shiver; “ we had enough of that when father was preaching, and we used to have to take everything we ate or wore as a sort of gracious gift. We children did n’t feel it as my mother did, of course. When we came here” — but at this word she stopped and set her lips firmly.

“ Go on,” said Mrs. Gilbert. “ When you came here, your mother said you should starve and go in rags, before you took a shred or a morsel from anybody.”

“ How did you know? ” inquired Rachel, lifting her eyes in a calm, grave surprise.

“I knew it because I respect your mother. When I order a great ideal picture of America from you, you shall paint me your mother’s portrait. Only in these days they ’ll say it is n’t in the least like America. No matter: it’s like what she has been and has n’t forgotten how to be again.”

“ Yes,” said Rachel, simply, “ we all tell mother there ’s not many like her nowadays, and folks won’t understand her way with them, and will lay it to pride.”

“Oh, let them lay it to what they like!” cried Mrs. Gilbert, with enthusiasm. “ If she can keep the black burden of gratitude off your souls, it’s no matter. It hardens the heart worse than prosperity.”

Rachel looked sober at the expression of these cynical ideas, and edged ever so little away from Mrs. Gilbert, who burst into a laugh. “ Don’t mind my harum-scarum paradoxes, Rachel! I’ve had a great many kind things said and done to me, and there are several of my benefactors whom I don’t hate at all. But how is it,” she asked, being perhaps unable to deny herself the pleasure of looking further into this sincere nature, even if she used an unfair pressure in her questions, “how is it that you have let Mrs. Farrell give you lessons in drawing for nothing? ”

Rachel colored and was silent some moments before she answered with dignity, “We can take it off her board, when we find out what it ought to be. I don’t know as they could rightly be called lessons. I never copied anything of hers.”

“ I can very well imagine it,” said Mrs. Gilbert dryly. “ Do you admire her pictures? ”

Rachel paused again before answering. “No, I can’t say I do. But she has told me a great many useful things, and she has corrected what I was doing. I wish you had n’t asked me that, Mrs. Gilbert; I don’t think ” —

“ It was quite generous? No, it was n’t; but I could n’t help it. I’ve never seen any of Mrs. Farrell’s work, and if she’s been of use to you, I never want to. Don’t be troubled. You have n’t been disloyal to your friend. Dear me, you should hear how I talk about my friends! Don’t go yet, my dear,” coaxed Mrs. Gilbert, “it’ll be a real charity to stay with me a little while, to-night. I’m fretted. Do you like to draw? Did you enjoy doing Blossom’s portrait? ”

“ I hardly know about enjoying it. I did n’t think of my own feelings. But — yes, I was glad when I seemed to be getting it right.”

“ I don’t quite know what to think of you,” said Mrs. Gilbert gravely, and the calm-faced young girl returned her absent look with one that claimed a mutual uncertainty. Mrs. Gilbert resumed suddenly with “ Rachel! has anybody ever been so silly as to talk to you about genius? ”

Rachel smiled a little, and said evasively that she did not mind such talk.

“ That’s right! ” said Mrs. Gilbert. “ Don’t get that into your head; it’s worse poison than gratitude. I’m always twaddling about it; it ’s my besetting sin; but I hope I see the folly and wickedness of it. If you are going to be an artist, think of pictures as hard work; don’t get to supposing that all your little efforts are inspirations. God has got something else to do. Don’t be alarmed at my way of putting things; it does n’t sound like religion, but it is. If he’s given you a decided talent in this way, — and it’s altogether too soon yet for you to be certain, — it’s probably because he finds you able to ' endure hardness,’ as Paul says, to work and to be consoled and occupied by working. After all, my dear, it’s like every other thing here below; it’s only a kind of toy; and you must n’t let it be your whole life; don’t he selfishly devoted to it. Sometimes it seems to me that the Lord must smile to see how seriously and rapaciously we take things. I can look back and see how balls and parties were once my toys, and my engagement was only a precious plaything! When I got married, what a toy that was! A new husband — just think of it! What an amusement for a young girl! And my first house, how I played with it, and petted it, and made it pretty, and adored it! When my health gave way, it all changed, but I had my toys still. I have had doctors of every age and sex for dolls. I’ve played with every school of medicine; just now I' ve a headache pill that I idolize; not that it keeps me from having the headache. The main thing, as I said, is not to be selfish with your toys. I would share my pills with my worst enemy.”

Mrs. Gilbert seemed to enjoy the gravity with which the girl listened, and to he as well satisfied as if she had taken her lightness lightly. Rachel answered what had been said, so far as it related to herself, by saying that she had scarcely thought of painting as a profession, and that she did not see how she could afford to study it. But she presumed that if it were meant she should, a way would be found for her to help herself.

“ But have you no ambition to distinguish yourself ? ” asked Mrs. Gilbert, in some surprise at her coldness.

“ I do not know as I have,” answered the girl. “If I was sure I could make a living by painting, I should like it better than anything else; but unless I took portraits, I don’t suppose I could make it pay, and I don’t think I could paint likenesses of people.”

“ Well, I’m glad you have been thinking it over so soberly, for your own sake, Rachel. I suppose you did n’t get these ideas from Mrs. Farrell?” asked Mrs. Gilbert.

“Oh no! she’s very hopeful, and thinks I should succeed at once.”

“ Humph! ” commented Mrs. Gilbert. “ When is your school out? ”

“ It ended on Friday.”

“ Oh, indeed! And are you going to help your mother, now? ”

“ Yes. She’s not so well as common, this summer, and we can’t get hired help — any that’s worth having.”

“ Shall you wait on table? ” asked Mrs. Gilbert, with a keen look.

“ No — not just at first,” said Rachel, with a little hesitation. Mrs. Gilbert lifted her eyebrows, and the girl blushed and added, “I wanted to, but mother thought it was n’t best till the boarders had forgotten about — about the — the picture. ”

“ Your mother is right. They ’ll forget it sooner than you think,” answered Mrs. Gilbert, looking to see if this arrow hit. But it seemed to fall blunted from Rachel’s armor; she rose and said she must bid Mrs. Gilbert good night. Mrs. Gilbert followed her to the door. “ Don’t think, my dear,” she said, “ that I meant to wound your feelings by saying that they' d soon forget your picture. Perhaps it’s true. But I wanted merely to see if you’d any false pride about you. I know how to strike it, for I’m full of it myself. Good night, Rachel; I wish you 'd come again. Do let me be of use to you, if I can; and tell your mother that I could n’t consent to give less than I did for Blossom. I bought it at the lowest price conscience would let me. You don’t blame me for having my way about it, do you? ” Rachel dropped her eyes as Mrs. Gilbert took her passive hand.

She turned, as Rachel closed the door, to her bureau, near which the girl had paused; some loose bills lay on it: a five, a two, three quarters. Mrs. Gilbert’s talk had ended as it began, and she had paid two dollars and a quarter for Rachel’s picture, after all, as Rachel had steadfastly meant from the first. She gave a sharp “Ah!” and flung the money on the bureau again in disgust. “ The girl’s granite! ”

W. D. Howells.