A Fair Compensation

A CITY clerk engaged to be married, having, between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-four, mastered three foreign languages to enable him to be of value to his firm, and having therefore been transferred from the outer office, where it was light and sunny, to the parlors, where all was rich and gloomy, and having toiled at general correspondence and general management ten hours out of every twenty-four for five years longer, finally yielded to nature, and became ill.

The junior partner, who commonly illustrated the humane instincts of the firm, said, “ Perhaps you would do well to take a day. A run up Harlem Lane, now, or a stroll in the Park, would build you up wonderfully.” Phosphorus was not to be had so easily, and Eades returned to his work with a sensation of great roominess in the upper part of his head.

It was Friday, and it was necessary that the foreign mail should be written for the Saturday steamers. The faithful slave, with dull eyes and trembling hands, worked until twelve P. M., and then fell in a dead faint into the arms of the post-messenger and the copy-clerk. But not until he had directed his last letter.

On the next day he was told by a physician that he must give up business for eighteen months or two years. He whispered, “Impossible,” and sent for another adviser. This gentleman mended matters by saying, “ Three years and a total change of scene and climate.”

At the end of the week, the girl of his heart was finally permitted to go to his bedside. She entered the room with the tread of a hare but with the spirit of a volcano. She paused beside him, filled with sorrow and amazement. She sank upon her knees and buried her face in the palms of his hands and hers. After an hour she found coherent use of her tongue, and suggested immediate marriage.

“ Never! ” cried he, with the flush of a man of pride.

“ Forever,” cried she, with the smile of an angel. Then they fell into argument. It lasted, with intervals, for three days.

He claimed, of course, that it would be cruel to entail upon her the aggravated anxieties which she would feel were she made a wife; also that, as a matter of pure justice, it was wrong to start upon a copartnership with a tangible disability upon one side; again, as a matter of hygiene, that it would be clearly dangerous for a susceptible yet entirely healthy mental organization to be under the debilitating influence of one vitiated by exhaustion. There would be a drain without a counter-drain, and so it would end in the illness of both; then, again, viewing sentiment as a living element in all human complications, how hard it would be to relinquish forever the delicate joys of final courtship and the sweet fervor of the honeymoon, and to experience in their places the solicitudes of the sick-chamber! How sad it would be hereafter to associate their early married life, not with ardent hopes and the sunshine of unburdened hearts, but with invalidism and apprehensions!

To this the reply was general, and was like the bursting of sunlight upon a candle-lighted chamber. The feeble rays of Eades’s persuasion turned pale and then went out.

“ How unworthily you speak! How is it that in this moment of distress you dare to pretend that love, the supreme method of God, is nothing but a human passion! The law permits us to be nearer to one another, but what shall determine at what time we may or may not bear one another’s ills? Does not the love of this tender office come with the need of it, and without a spur? Does not the grace of a loving heart fall like a dew, without a commotion, without a cloud? Let us begin our lives by correcting an evil; it is far better than waiting for a chance to perpetuate what is only happy.” And so on, by snatches and runs, now faltering and now eloquent, but always illogical. Still, the argument, aided as it was by many tears and by the most beautiful face in the world, did its work.

They called in their families and four sworn friends, and were married with all due rites. Three hours later the wife appeared in a gray traveling-suit, which became her well. Eades asked her where she was going. (He was still in bed.)

“ To South Carolina,” she replied. “ I learn that there is a township there the climate of which is delightful at this season of the year. I am going to see for myself. If I am satisfied, then we shall go there at once to live until you recover. ”

It amused him to see her pretend to pull her gloves on; for five minutes she tried to fit the left in place of the right. He said, “ You are going to walk there, I fancy.” Then she broke down like a bubble, and ran and threw her arms about his neck.

“ Oh, my poor husband, how hard it seems to leave you, even to the care of Heaven! All my prayers that I might be brave at this moment have failed me; and see, I am crying like a child! Even you, with your sunken cheeks and hollow eyes, seem stronger than I. I cannot pretend that I am bold any longer; I have prayed that God may guide our footsteps and lead us where we shall be secure.”

In this humble mood she went away.

Just as her carriage departed, another arrived. It contained an aged man, a friend of her husband. He was shown to the invalid’s chamber without delay. He was slow of speech, and his voice was subdued. “ I learn that you are going away, Eades.”

“ Yes, to the South somewhere. My wife has gone to search for a good climate. ”

It was the first time that the words “ my wife ” had passed his lips. The utterance apparently confounded both the speaker and the listener. The face of one grew slowly radiant, while the face of the other became immeasurably grave.

“ Yes, we are going to the South somewhere,” repeated the young man. “ Your home was there once, was it not, sir? ”

“ Yes, for fifty years. My wife is there now. We were estranged by the war. ”

“ Man and wife estranged by the war ! ” Eades sat up for the first time. This seemed to him to be an intolerable sarcasm. “ I should have believed just as easily that your own body and soul had taken sides against each other on account of the war. ”

“ Yes, no doubt,” replied the visitor, after a pause.

“ And do I understand that this estrangement still exists? ”

“ We have not heard of each other for five years.”

“ Of each other?”

“ Yes.”

“ Implying, of course, that you have not heard from each other during that period? ”

“ No, nor for the fourteen years that have elapsed since 1861.”

“Merciful Heaven!”

Eades sank down again and considered these statements. So long as he could hold them in his head he could discover nothing in them but evil, but his weakened brain began to give up its hold after a few minutes, and his face, not his tongue, expressed his opinions. His eyes searched the face of his friend with languor, yet with a steadfastness that finally drew this from the unwilling lips:

“ You are just married. I cannot presume to give advice to you, for you are as well adjusted to your circumstances as I was to mine, or as I am to those that surround me now. I have tried hard to keep up the dignity of living, but I have failed. I have endeavored to console myself, but I have failed in that. I have to confess that the discipline which my spirit has undergone has produced no good, that all the philosophy that I knew how to use has not soothed a single regret. I thought that I was right at the outset, and I think so now. The reasons that led me to decide what my course should be in that fatal crisis have lost none of their force, and I have nothing to retract. I was unable to influence my wife, and she remained steadfast to her principles. She was not passive. She was active in giving aid and encouragement where I would have given warning and reproof. Fortified by the spirit of the neighborhood and the hour, she came to believe it heroic to stand aloof from me, and those were days when cooled love changed to frenzied hate. May the Almighty Father never again visit such upon his humble people !

“ Separated as I am from that one human being whose whereabouts I know not, I am as lonely as if I were solitary in the middle of the sea. Nothing enters my bosom. The sympathy of no one reaches me. Knowing the character of her spirit, I believe that I can never enter into her heart again.

Eades had nothing to say. He gazed, perhaps with but dim comprehension, at the old mourner, and felt for him, beside astonishment at his lack of vigor, a profound compassion.

Ten days later a message came from the wife, and Eades, in obedience to it, prepared to leave the city at once, and in the care of a physician who was engaged to accompany him on the journey.

Everything that the wife had done thus far had had a peculiarly metallic ring about it, and if the relator were put upon the rack he would admit that Eades began to feel a little uneasiness. It was plain that if she proposed to go on in this manner, there must soon occur a little fault in the melody; but this was only the fear of the ex-business-manager in propria persona, and it was wholly groundless.

The invalid arrived at his destination in the night-time. His tyrant, with a little lantern shaped like a pepper-box hanging by a ring and a chain from her fore-finger, was standing in the doorway of the station, with her features balanced for a smile or an agony of tears. When Eades got out she flew at him and threw herself upon his neck like a child. The physician left some directions for form’s sake, and then went discreetly to a hotel.

This is the principal meaning of the chat on the wife’s part, as she led her husband toward their sanitarium, over an easy country path that wound through a grove of enormous trees: —

“ Our house is a cottage with three verandas; hence, three faces and one back. It has a garden of white sand, and out of the sand grow twenty varieties of roses, which bloom always, nearly. To the west is a heavenly view of a pine valley and a limitless sky. We shall spend many happy hours on that side. To the east is a well ninety feet deep, with a lattice and a Swiss roof above it. There is also a whitewashed cabin where one of my maids and her uncle and four nephews live. I pay the maid only; however, she voluntarily considers the support of her relatives a just perquisite. We have many hens; but we purchase eggs, as I am told in the kitchen that this is an off-year with fowl of our sort.

“We have neighbors in cottages just like ours in all directions. They are all Southerners, and are silent, kind, and generally very thin. They know all that has passed in the world up to seven days ago, the common time for book parcels from New York, and they will be glad to speak with you on political matters, especially those of the State. Their welcome to Northern people is real; I have broken bread in nearly every house that I could reach by walking half an hour.

“ There are no great scenes here. The land is elevated and the air is dry. You can do nothing at first but breathe the piny air, calm your spirit in the calm of the place, and bring your soul down to the small things.

“ We shall be able, I think, to learn many lessons in fortitude and endurance, and we shall hear some of the strangest theories of political and social economy that ever came out of the brain of man.

I predict that our sympathies with the suffering will be drained very dry, and yet that we shall wonder how it became possible that sympathies could be demanded when all — we and they — are so ready to love each other and to hate war.”

Eades, feeble and languid to the last degree, did the best that his strength and sense permitted. At first he was able only to sit in a broad chair upon the piazza, with bared head and folded hands, and to gaze down the valley with the vacancy of a child. He slept but little. Every petty noise in the dead of night rang in his ears like a clap of thunder. In a fortnight he mended so much that his wife took him for short walks in the woods, he leaning upon her arm, and she shielding him from all stray sunshine with her umbrella. Little was said upon these occasions, yet they conversed without cessation. It was not necessary that they should speak, to understand each other’s happiness. To press the same pine carpet with their feet, to behold the same grandeur in the trees, to listen together to the murmur of the wind, to pause as one to breathe the fragrant air, was communion enough, and the simple touch of their hands was a privilege immeasurably sweet. Every moment passed thus was an aid to the crippled man. With a thankfulness that his stammering words at nightfall could but illy formulate, he noted, on this day perhaps that he was able to walk a little farther without exhaustion; on this, that he craved another ounce of food; on this, that he slept a few moments in the afternoon ; on another, that his color was better, or that the palm of his hand was firmer, or that he was able to laugh a little more heartily.

Gratitude, the purest and deepest, flowed out at these trifling events. Clasped in one another’s arms, the husband and wife recognized the direct interposition of favoring Providence. The wife’s cup was too full, and one day she cried, —

ܜ Oh that a little of my joy might fall into the sad hearts that are so many in this strange land! ”

On a day that had promised to be fair, a storm came up with great speed and overtook a number of strollers in the woods. Among these were Eades and his wife. She urged him to hasten, having more fear of the rain than of the exhaustion that might ensue from a rapid walk. They were in a valley. The nearest house was an old villa upon the brow of a red hill. The tall pines about it began to sway in the wind, and the clouds came floating up from the west with that wild hurry with which smoke rushes into the zenith from conflagrations.

“ Let us climb up this road and go to Mistress Gardette’s,” cried the anxious nurse.

“ Do you know her? ”

“ Yes. She beckoned to me one day, and told me that she liked my way of stepping.”

Eades smiled, and hurried on with compressed lips, swaying from side to side, now and then casting furtive looks at his wife, endeavoring to see by her face how he himself was standing the strain. They reached the white paling just as the storm broke and deluged the old mansion and its sombre panes. The rose-bushes bowed with a rushing sound, and the dogs howled in their kennels.

Mistress Gardette came herself to the door. In a moment the refugees were sheltered. The parlor was furnished with that half - comfort, that curious blending of the homely and the tasteful, that characterizes most Southern interiors. There was a fine French lamp upon a bare table. The walls were covered with old engravings and imitations of new pictures in high colors. Over the mantel hung a rough cut of Stonewall Jackson and his men at prayer. Beside this was a print of a Confederate flag soaring upward toward a sunlit ether from a world of turbid smoke. On the north wall was Lee’s Farewell Address, together with a portrait of the beloved soldier.

Mistress Gardette was fifty years of age, slender, erect, positive, and yet silent. Her face was dark, her eyes could brighten upon occasion, and her lips so touched each other that one decided that they were kept closed by an ever-present “ Let me think of this.” She surveyed the two people before her with calm curiosity. Presently she asked a few questions in a sweet and tardy undertone: —

“ Do you not walk together a great deal — walk in the woods? ”

“ Oh, yes,” returned Mistress Eades, after a pause and a long interrogative look, “ we walk together.”

“ I see; he is ill, and he needs some one beside him.”

“ But I should walk with him all the same if he were well.”’

“ That would not be very interesting, would it? ” said the other with a smile. A good strong blush came up over the young wife’s face and neck, and her eyes sparkled. She waited until she could answer in a few words, and then she said, simply enough, —

“ It has always been so, thus far, Mistress Gardette.”

“ And you walk in the woods,” added the other. “ Youth and Nature, and senility and Nature, are always good company.”

“ Yes, we go every day. It is warm there, and there is plenty of shade. We love the woods.”

“ And you love each other? ”

“ Y-yes,” replied Mistress Eades, with astonishment.

A moment was occupied by the hostess in (apparently) considering this answer. She then asked in a louder and a little lighter tone, “ And you fear that you will be separated? ”

“ No,” whispered Eades, with a last effort for a voice. His eyes were closed and his head was inclined a little upon his breast. His wife leaped to her feet, and cried for water, at the same time placing her arm about his body. His over-exertion had made him faint. Mistress Gardette, still seated, called, “ Marcia! Marcia!” But Mistress Eades seized some flowers from a vase, and, plunging her hand in as far as the wrist, drew it out cool and dripping, and dashed the face of the sick man with a grateful shower. Marcia came. Her mistress shook her head. “Yes,” interposed the wife, promptly, “ a little cool water, please, and a napkin.”

A furious outburst of the storm happened at this instant, and it grew much darker. Mistress Gardette calmly turned and gazed toward the rattling windows. The prospect was clouded as if by a fog, for the fierce wind had shattered the rain-drops and produced a horrible tempestuous spray that rolled in billows against the house, which the storm shook to its foundations. Vivid flashes of lightning followed one another in rapid succession, and the accompanying thunder seemed to roll lower and lower toward the very roof.

Eades had awakened, and from an impulse to protect had placed his feeble arms about his wife. She, remembering his weakness, yet trembling with terror, preserved her old attitude. The hostess regarded the two pale faces with a cold and protracted gaze, conceding neither a shudder at the force of the storm nor a sign of sympathy at so much suffering. The half-divine interchange of support that she beheld seemed to touch nothing within her breast. That she was debarred from this or a similar companionship, that she sat aloof, that there was no one of her kind to interpose between her and evil, drew no sign to her placid face. She preserved her immobility to the end. In the course of a few moments the fury of the tempest expended itself.

“Mistress Gardette,” said the wife in a low voice, turning her face toward her hostess, “I fear that it would be wrong for us to venture out again tonight, for” —

The other raised her hand. “ Stay here with me. You shall have all the comforts that I can give you.”

Tears sprang to the eyes of the wife. This prompt welcome filled her with gratitude. She arose hastily from her chair and ran, like a girl, and throwing her arms about the neck of the stern lady kissed her repeatedly. The other made no response. When she was released from the embrace she exhibited no trace of emotion.

At an early hour on the next morning Mistress Gardette was awakened, being a light sleeper, by a slight noise. She arose and encountered her guest passing through the hall - way with a handful of phials. “Ah, you are up betimes, to-day.”

“ Y-yes. That is, I have not been in bed. I have just come from our cottage with these medicines. I needed them, for my husband is not well, — no, not at all well.” A quick, full look accompanied this repetition.

“ And so you have not slept? ”

“I? No, — no, I have not slept.” She immediately went on into the chamber.

At noon the temperature was high and the air was quiet. All the windows were thrown open, begging a little draught, but getting none. The sky was very blue, the sunlight was very yellow, and the pine forests were very cool. The whole region was tranquil. There were no sounds. Everything invited to repose. To close the eyes was involuntary. Everything said, “ Sleep! sleep!”

Mistress Gardette, from her curious parlor, looked across the hall-way and saw that the door of the chamber was open. She laid aside her play (not her work) and went to speak to her guest.

Eades was lying upon the bed. He was very pale, and his eyes, wide open, stared upward with a blank gaze. His hands lay upon the counterpane, with their fingers extended and separated. Seated close beside him was his wife, plying a fan above his face, showing a few signs of physical exhaustion but none whatever of a lack of spirit.

She caught sight of Mistress Gardette. She gave her a quick smile, a smile that dissipated the natural gloom of the sick-chamber in a flash.

Mistress Gardette returned to her parlor without a sign. In the afternoon she put a black straw hat upon her head, a thin shawl about her shoulders, and taking a small parasol with a long fringe at its edges, walked over to the Pine Run plantation to ask what they thought over there about putting cotton-seed into the earth at that date.

On her way back through the pinewoods, she discerned a figure moving briskly toward the village. It was Mistress Eades. She was in great haste. As she came up, Mistress Gardette saw that her eyes were sunken and that there were hollows in her cheeks. Yet she moved with elasticity and even with a certain gayety.

“ Are you going for a physician? ”

“ Oh no, I am the physician. I know exactly what will help him and what will hurt him. Indeed, I look upon physicians as desperate remedies. I know when the time has arrived for change in diet.” She caught the stray hand of the other with a laugh, and cried, “ The time has come when he should have some Florida oranges; I tell by the manner in which he tastes the ice-water.”

“ But has he not asked? ”

“ Asked? oh, he would n’t have asked for the world! ܝ

“ Well, and where will you find the oranges? They are rare in town.”

“ Mistress Farley will give me some.”

“Mistress Farley! She lives three miles off! ”

“ Yes—or two miles.”

“ And it is so hot! ”

“ Hot? ” Mistress Eades put up her white hand, with its fair palm to the north. “ Well, at least one may walk fast, — that will make a breeze, you know.”

Mistress Gardette fixed her eyes upon her, and the fire that lay latent within them began to burn. The lids parted a little wider, and her nostrils quivered for a bare instant. Then all became calm again. It seemed as if she were afraid to accept these evidences as proofs of what they appeared to prove. She seemed to fortify herself against encroachments upon a rigid disbelief. She permitted the other to go on her way without further questioning. Twice or thrice before she quitted the warm and fragrant copse, she turned her head and looked back to catch one more glimpse of the hastening woman.

Night came on again. It was a repetition of the previous one; neither the invalid nor the watcher could close their eyes. Mistress Gardette learned of this with a raising of her hands and an involuntary agitation in her throat.

“I pray that he may sleep; that is all I want,” whispered Mistress Eades.

“ But you — you?” queried the other. “ I ? Oh, I can rest any time; but think of the weary hours he spends. And I dare not give him opiates, for the after effects are evil. I will wait until tomorrow.”

“ To-morrow! Will you pass another day and another night without rest ? Are you made of brass and iron ? ” (Mistress Eades opened her eyes at the tone of this question.) “You expose yourself to the sun and rain; you watch, you sing songs, you smile, you walk long distances, you invent shades for the light and strange dishes to eat, and you seem happy and full of hope. Yet you never rest. You seem tireless. Why do you not fall down as you walk? Why do you not feel disheartened ? Why” —

“ Mistress Gardette, tell me, where are your children? ”

“ I have none, Mistress Eades. God forbade the blessing.” In a flash she felt a finger laid upon her lips.

“ Well, your father, your mother? ”

“ Remember, I am old.”

“ Forgive me. Then your sister, your brother? ”

“ I have none.”

“ Then your husband? ”

The questions had been pushed so rapidly that Mistress Gardette had had little time to devise an answer to this last query, which she expected in its course. She retreated a step, made a gesture of deprecation, and remained silent. The other, carried away by an internal fire of commiseration and by the very fullness of her own heart, hastened on.

“ You have a husband, He is not here. You look half sad and half angry when I speak of him. Perhaps he has done you some injury; perhaps his nature is so different from yours that you are always in conflict, and so how wrong may it be for me to say a word to you — you whose child I might be! But oh, mother, has not the time come when you are beginning to lean a little, when your hand needs a support, when your heart aches with loneliness? In this sweet land where it is so warm and fruitful, how hard it must be to say to yourself, My life is the only thing that is unlike ! Are your wrongs now anything more than cobwebs? Tell me, can you not sweep them away very easily? And when they have disappeared will not there remain a high spirit that love might enter again? Oh, I am sure of it! I know it! It is not too late to sweep and garnish the chambers of your heart! You have watched me! You have followed me incessantly with your eyes and thoughts, and the sight of my poor devotion has aroused your own, though your face seems to be as stern as ever. You cannot deceive me! You would not! You have begun to look with terror on every day that you pass alone; and oh, dear friend — mother — I implore you — hark! ”

A confused noise came from the sickchamber. It seemed to be a stifled call and a sound as if some one were in the midst of a struggle. Mistress Eades flew back and threw open the door.

Her husband, whose nervous system had received a fresh strain from lack of repose, had become weakly alarmed at her absence and had risen from his bed, insane to reach her. He had staggered to a closed door near by, and was now beating wildly upon it with his open palms, uttering at the same time a number of incomprehensible words.

His appearance was sufficiently alarming to have caused even the strongest to feel a little terror; but the wife approached him without hesitation. He did not recognize her, and he repulsed her with a gesture of surprise and anger. Mistress Gardette, anticipating a scene of violence, fled in dismay, calling upon her guest to follow her. But Mistress Eades, conceiving what was required, with ready precision, stood her ground, inviting the confidence of the sick man by gently extending her hand for him to take, and by composing her features and her figure, not as a commander or an aggressor, but as a suppliant, or rather as a friend.

By slow degrees the frenzy faded from the husband’s face, his features became placid, and his eyes regained a little of their native expression. He turned his gaze aside and in a moment submitted to be led to his resting - place. He sank into it with a long and painful sigh, an utterance that was half sane and half mad, and that more nearly brought down the pitying tears of the wife than any other incident that had happened during her recent ministrations.

Now that all was secure, her quick and graceful hand restored calm and beauty to the room, as it had restored peace to the disturbed man. The light was lowered, flowers were brought, a gentle breeze was let in, and order reigned once more.

The wife said to herself, “ If I can only make you close your eyes, dear boy, then I shall be happy; rest, and you will recover quickly.”

Quarter of an hour later, Mistress Gardette, hearing no further noise, approached the door. She beheld the invalid lying upon his side, with one slender hand beneath his head and the other extended, as was his custom, over the coverlid. The pale wife, nearly as wan as her husband, sat plying her fan above his face, extending her arm, and keeping even the skirt of her dress with great care from contact with the bed. She knew that the smallest touch could produce a great disturbance at such a critical moment.

Mistress Gardette perceived once more in the weary face of her guest that ineradicable glow that had already so often startled her. She now contemplated it with profound attention. She saw that the eyes and the lips, though set in the midst of features so dragged and discolored by labor and anxiety that they resembled those of death, were brilliant and mobile with an inward life. She recognized afresh the presence of an indomitable something that had preserved its entirety in spite of all, and she dwelt upon it with humility. In a few moments she turned about and went somewhat rapidly into the garden, passing into a small lattice-house that was covered by a screen of roses called the Cloth of Gold.

She spent an hour in tears and meditation, saying at intervals, in a low voice, “ I must believe it; it is true; there can be no deception; she deceives neither herself nor me. I am living with her, not in advance of her; yesterday I was older than she, but now I am as young. She smiles, and I weep; but it is all alike, all the same. The vision of my husband now fills a million eyes that have been opened in my breast. He shall return, if the good God wills.”

When she returned to the house, she passed through the main hall-way. The doors at either end were open, and a fresh breeze laden with the perfume of a thousand flowers came in from the sun-lit gardens. She paused and reflected upon the closed doors, the silence, and the sad loneliness of the ancient house. She caught sight of her own sombre figure in a tarnished mirror that hung upon the wall. Could it be possible that joy might yet come to gladden her and her surroundings? It seemed impossible. The place appeared to be the very home of sadness.

At this instant the door of the sickchamber opened, and Mistress Eades came forth. Her step was light and noiseless, her face was aglow, and she looked like an angel. She was filled with that gratitude that made her spirit spring up with a divine joy. Her weariness was dissipated. Her eyes were brilliant, her lips trembled. She was tender, lofty, radiant. She whispered, with her finger before her lips, —

“ He is sleeping ! ”

Unparalleled concession of nature! Tremendous event, fit to mark an epoch in any life! After so many days of torture, relief had at last come to the wearied man; he had fallen into oblivion.

Mistress Gardette looked long at the glowing face before her. Then she exclaimed, “ Ay, I say once more, it is true, it is real. I believe! ”

A little while after, Eades summoned the venerable castaway from the North, and as the invalid quitted the house to return once more to his cottage, the husband entered the door.

“ It seems to me, my convalescent,” said Mistress Eades, “that our prayer that a little of our joy might fall upon this strange land has been granted, and twice over.”

“ Yes, so it seems to me, — or at least it may have been the prayer; and yet a little human worth may have had something to do with it; but we won’t go into that.”

‘‘ No, please. ” Mistress Eades shook her head.

Albert F. Webster.