Marm Lisa

V.

HOW THE NEW PLANT GREW.

“ Now, Rhoda dear,” said Mistress Mary one day, when Lisa had become somewhat wonted to her new surroundings, “ you are to fold your hands respectfully in your lap, and I will teach you things, — things which you in your youth and inexperience have not thought about as yet. The other girls may listen, too, and catch the drippings of my wisdom. I really know little about the education of defective children, but, thank Heaven, I can put two and two together, as Susan Nipper said. The general plan will be to train Lisa’s hands and speak to her senses in every possible way, since her organs of sense are within your reach, and those of thought are out of it. The hardest lesson for such a child to learn is the subordination of its erratic will to our normal ones. Lisa’s affection is the most hopeful thing about her, and encourages me more than anything else. It is n’t as if there were no mental processes existing; they are there, but in a very enfeebled state. Of course she should have been under skilled teaching the last six years, but, late as it is, we could not think of giving up a child who can talk, use her right hand, dress herself, go upon errands, recognize colors, wash dishes; who is apparently neither vicious nor cunning, but who, on the contrary, has lived four years under the same roof with Mrs. S. Cora Grubb without rebellion or violence or treachery ! Why, girls, such a task, if it did not appeal to one on the moral, certainly would on the intellectual side. Marm Lisa will teach us more in a year than we shall teach her. Let us keep a record of our experiments ; drop all materials that seem neither to give her sensations nor wake her discriminative power, and choose others that speak to her more clearly. Let us watch her closely, both to penetrate the secret of her condition and to protect the other children. What a joy, what a triumph, to say to her some dear day, a few years hence, ’ You poor, motherless bairn, we have swept away the cobwebs of your dreams, given you back your will, put a clue to things in your hand : now go on and learn to live and be mistress of your own life under God ! ’ ”

It was at such a moment, when Mary’s voice trembled and her eyes shone through a mist of tears like two victorious stars, that a hush fell upon the little group, and the spirit of the eternal child descended like a dove, its pure wings stirring the silence of each woman’s heart. At such a moment, their daily work, with its round of harsh, unlovely, beautiful, discouraging, hopeful, helpful, heavenly duties, was transfigured, and so were they. The servant was transformed by the service, and the service by the servant. They were alone together, each heart knit to all the others by the close bond of a common vocation ; and though a heretofore unknown experience, it seemed a natural one when Mistress Mary suddenly bent her head and said softly : —

“ Father in heaven, it is by the vision of thy relation to us that we can apprehend our relation to these little ones. As we have accepted that high trust, so make us loyal to it. When our feet grow weary and our faith grows dim, help us to follow close after the ever perfect One who taught even as we are trying to teach. He it was whom the common people heard gladly. He it was who disdained not the use of objects and symbols, remembering it was the childhood of the race. He it was who spake in parables and stories, laying bare soul of man and heart of nature, and revealing each by divine analogy. He it was who took the little ones in his arms and blessed them; who set the child in the midst, saying, ‘ Except ye become as one of these.’ May the afterglow of that inspired teaching ever shine upon the path we are treading. May we bathe our tired spirits in its warmth and glory, and kindle our torches at the splendor of its light. We remember that he told us to feed his lambs. Dear Lord, help all the faithful shepherds who care for the ninety-and-nine that lie in the safe cover of the fold ; help us, too, for we are the wandering shepherds whose part it is to go out over the bleak hills, up the mountain sides and rocky places, and gather in out of the storm and stress of things all the poor, unshepherded, wee bit lambs that have either wandered forlornly away from shelter, or have been born in the wilderness and know no other home. Such an one has just strayed into the fold from the dreary hill-country. It needs a wiser shepherd than any one of us. Grant that by gentleness, patience, and insight we may atone somewhat for our lack of wisdom and skill. We read among thy mysteries that the divine Child was born of a virgin. May he be born again and born daily in our hearts, already touched by that remembrance and consecrated by its meaning. And this we ask for love’s sake. Amen.”

Then there was a space of silence, — one of those silences in which we seem to be caught up into the heart of things, when hidden meanings are revealed, when the soul stretches itself and grows a little.

It was a few minutes later when Rhoda said : “ I am fired with zeal. I confess it. Henceforth my single aim shall be to bring Marm Lisa into her lost kingdom and inheritance. But meanwhile, how, oh how shall I master the hateful preliminaries ? How shall I teach her to lace her shoes and keep them laced, unless I invent a game for it? How shall I keep her hair from dangling in her eyes, how keep her aprons neat ? — though in those respects she is no worse than Pacific Simonson. I promised her a doll yesterday, and she was remarkably good. Do you object, Mistress Mary ? ”

“ I don’t know how much rewards are used in these cases,” answered Mary, “ but why do you begin with them when the problem presents no insuperable difficulties as yet ? Whenever she conquers herself, her awkward hands, her weak will, her inattention, her restlessness, give her some task she likes, some pleasure or occupation for which she has shown decided preference, and thus make happiness follow close upon the heels of effort. We who see more clearly the meaning of life know that this will not always happen, and we can be content to do right for right’s sake. I don’t object to your putting hosts of slumbering incentives in Lisa’s mind, but a slumbering incentive is not vulgar and debasing, like a bribe.”

A plant might be a feeble and common thing, yet it might grow in beauty and strength in a garden like Mistress Mary’s. Such soil in the way of surroundings, such patient cultivation of roots and stems, such strengthening of tendrils on all sorts of lovely props, such sunshine of love, such dew of sympathy, such showers of kindness, such favoring breezes of opportunity, such pleasure for a new leaf, joy for a bud, gratitude for a bloom ! What an atmosphere in which to grow towards knowledge and goodness ! Was it any wonder that the little people “ all in a row ” responded to the genius of Mistress Mary’s influence ? They used to sing a song called The Light Bird, in which some one, all unknown to the children, would slip into the playground with a bit of broken lookingglass, and suddenly a radiant fluttering disk of light would appear on the wall, and dance up and down, above and below, hither and yon, like a winged sunbeam. The children held out longing arms and sang to it coaxingly. Sometimes it quivered over Mistress Mary’s head, and fired every delicate point of her steel tiara with such splendor that the little Irish babies almost felt like crossing themselves. At such times, those deux petits cæurs secs, Atlantic and Pacific, and all the other full-fledged and half-fledged scapegraces, forgot to be naughty, and the millennium was foreshadowed. The neophytes declared Mistress Mary a bit of a magician. Somehow or other, the little evil imps in the children shrank away, abashed by the soft surprise of a glance that seemed to hope something better, and the little good angels came out of their banishment, unfolded their wings, and sunned themselves in the warmth of her approving smile. Her spiritual antennæ were so fine, so fine, that they discerned the good in everything ; they were feeling now after the soft spot in the rocky heart of Atlantic Simonson ; they had n’t found it yet, but they would, —oh, they would in time; for if hope is the lover’s staff, it is no less that of the idealist.

Marm Lisa looked upon the miracles that happened under Mistress Mary’s roof with a sort of dazed wonder, but her intelligence grew a little day by day ; and though she sadly taxed everybody’s patience, she infused a new spirit into all the neophytes.

Had not improvement been rapid, their untrained zeal might perhaps have flagged. Had the mental symptoms, by their obscurity, baffled them or defied them on every side, their lack of systematic, scientific training for such a task might have made them discouraged ; but delicate and exacting as the work was, their love and enthusiasm, their insight and patience, their cleverness and ingenuity, triumphed over all obstacles; and luckily for their youth and comparative inexperience, they were rewarded in marvelous measure.

Not that every day was bright and hopeful. The carefully kept record was black enough on occasions, beginning with the morning when Helen, sitting in the circle, felt a rough hand on her head, and Marm Lisa, without the slightest warning of her intention, snatched Mary’s steel band forcibly from her hair, and taking it across the room, put it in its accustomed place on its owner’s head. Everybody was startled, but Mary rose from her chair quietly, and taking the ornament in one hand and Marm Lisa by the other, she came to Helen’s side.

“ I like to have my shining crown in Miss Helen’s hair,” she said : “ it is such pretty curly hair, — stroke it softly, Lisa ; she must wear it this morning to please me, and then I will take it again for my own. Dear Miss Helen, who is so sweet and good to the children, I love her,” and she kissed her fondly on each cheek.

Marm Lisa did not attempt to rebel, but she was sullen, and refused her work when it was offered her later.

Such occurrences were rare, however, for her obliquity always seemed mental rather than moral.

Straws and bright papers, beads and pretty forms to thread on stout laces, were given her to wean her from her favorite but aimless string-play. There were days of restlessness, when she wandered up and down stairs, and could not be kept in her chair nor persuaded to stand in her place in the circle. There were days, too, when she tore the bright cardboards and glossy weaving-mats that ordinarily gave her such keen pleasure, but this carelessness grew more and more infrequent until it ceased altogether ; so that it had probably come more from her inability to hold and move the materials and needles properly than from a wanton instinct of destruction, for they would often see the tears drop from her eyes upon her clumsy fingers as she strove to make them obey her feeble behests. At such a moment there was always some one to fling herself with passionate ardor and sympathy into this latest difficulty. A stouter weaving-needle was invented, and a mat of pretty colored morocco substituted for the fragile paper ; while the poor inert hands were held and coaxed and strengthened every day by finger gymnastics.

As Lisa grew in power Rhoda grew in ingenuity, and failure in any one particular only stimulated her genius of invention. Did Marm Lisa spill paste, mucilage, water, on her gingham aprons, and wipe anything and everything on them that came in her way, Rhoda dressed her in daintier ones of white cambric, with a ruffle at the neck and sleeves ; the child’s pleasure knew no bounds, and she kept the aprons clean. With Mrs. Grubb’s permission her hair was cut shorter, and brushed back under a round comb. No regiment of soldiers could have kept the comb in place. It was taken away, and a blue ribbon substituted. She took off the ribbon every five minutes for two days, when Mary circumvented her by sewing a blue ribbon on each sleeve. This seemed to divert her attention from the head-band, and after a week or two she allowed it to remain without interference. Mary gave her low shoes, hoping that the lessened trouble of lacing them would make the task a possibility. There was no improvement. If she laced them, it was only under supervision, and they were always untied within the hour, the dangling laces tripping her awkward feet. Slippers or old - fashioned boots with elastic at the side would have been an easy way out of the difficulty, but to Rhoda’s mind that would have been a humiliating confession of failure. As a last resort she bought brown shoes and brown laces.

“ If these do not succeed,” she said, “ I will have red ones made, paint the tips blue, and give her yellow laces ; but I will fix her mind on her shoes and arouse her pride in them, or die in the attempt.”

This extreme, fortunately, proved unnecessary, since for some unknown reason the brown shoes and laces appealed to Marm Lisa, and she kept them tied. The salient peculiarity and encouraging feature of the child’s development was that, save in rare cases, she did not slip back into her old habits when the novelty of the remedy wore off ; with her, almost every point gained was a point kept. It was indeed a high Hill Difficulty that she was climbing, — so high that had she realized it she would never have taken the first step of her own unaided will ; but now the impelling force behind her was so great, and the visions forever leading her on were so beautiful, that she ran nor grew weary, she walked yet did not faint.

The other children, even the youngest of them, were more or less interested in the novel enterprise, too, though they little knew the nature of it or how much was at stake. That a human mind was tottering to its fall, and that Mistress Mary was engaged in preventing it, was beyond their ken. They could see certain details, however, for they were all one great family of little people, and it was no unaccustomed thing for them to watch a moral conquest, though they had no conception of an intellectual one.

Accordingly, there was a shout of triumph from a corner of the room one morning, — such a shout that seventy or eighty youngsters held their breath to see what was happening.

After weeks upon weeks of torn cards, broken threads, soiled patterns, wrong stitches, weak hand held in place by strong hand, Marm Lisa had sewed without help, and in one lesson, the outline of a huge red apple ; and there she stood offering her finished work to Mistress Mary ! The angels in heaven never rejoiced more greatly over the one repentant sinner than the tired little shepherdesses over their one poor ewe lamb as she stood there with quivering hands and wet eyes, the first sense of conscious victory written on her inscrutable brow, and within the turbid, clouded brain the memory of a long struggle, and a hint, at least, of the glory she had achieved.

Rhoda took the square of neat cardboard with the precious red circle that meant so much, and ran into the playground with it, hugging it to her heart, and crying and laughing over it like a child.

When she came back, Mistress Mary put her arm round Lisa’s waist and said to the whole great family: “ Children, after trying hard for ever so long, Lisa has sewed this lovely apple all by herself. There is not a wrong stitch, and one side is as neat as the other. What shall we say ? ”

“ Three cheers! The Chinese must go !” shouted Pat Higgins, a patriotic person of five years whose father was an organizer of sand-lot meetings.

All the grown-ups laughed at this unexpected suggestion, but the cheers were given with a good will, and Marm Lisa, her mind stirred to its depths by the unwonted emotion, puzzled out the meaning of them and hid it in her heart.

VI.

FROM GRUBB TO BUTTERFLY.

The children were all nearly a year older when Mrs. Grubb one day climbed the flight of wooden steps leading to Marm Lisa’s Paradise, and met, as she did so, a procession of Mistress Mary’s neophytes who were wending their way homeward.

The spectacle of a number of persons of either sex, or of both sexes, proceeding in line or grouped as an audience, acted on Mrs. Grubb precisely as the taste of fresh blood is supposed to act on a tiger in captivity. At such a moment she had but one impulse, and that was to address the meeting. The particular subject was not vital, since it was never the subject, but her own desire to talk, that furnished the necessary inspiration. While she was beginning, “ Ladies and gentlemen,” in her clear, pleasant voice, her convictions, opinions, views, prejudices, feelings, experiences, all flew from the different corners of what she was pleased to call her brain, and focused themselves on the point in question.

If the discussion was in a field in which she had made no excursions whatever, that trifling detail did not impose silence upon her. She simply rose and said : “ Ladies and gentlemen, though a stranger in your midst, I feel I must say a word of sympathy to you, and a word of encouragement for your cause. It is a good and worthy movement, and I honor you for upholding it. Often and often have I said to my classes, it matters not what face of truth is revealed to you so long as you get a vision that will help you to bless your fellow men. To bless your fellow men is the great task before each and every one of us, and I feel to urge this specially upon occasions like this, when I see a large and influential audience before me. Says Rudyard Kipling, ‘ I saw a hundred men on the road to Delhi, and they were all my brothers.’ Yes, all our brothers ! The brotherhood of man and the sisterhood of woman, those are the subjects that include all others. I am glad to have met with you and to have heard the eloquent words of your speakers. If any of you would like to know more of my work, I will gladly meet you in room A at the close of this meeting.”

She then sat down amid applause. Never did Mrs. S. Cora Grubb cease speaking without at least a ripple of approval that sometimes grew into a positive ovation. What wonder, then, that she mistook herself for an inspired person ? It was easy to understand her popularity with her fellow men. Her eyes were as soft and clear as those of a child, her hair waved prettily off her low serene brow, her figure was plump and womanly, and when her voice trembled with emotion (which in her was a shallow well very near the surface) the charmingest pink color came and went in her cheeks. On such occasions more than one member of the various brotherhoods thought what a cosy wife she would make, if removed from the public arena to the “ sweet safe corner of the household fire.” To be sure she had not much logic, but plenty of sentiment ; rather too great a fondness for humanity, perhaps, but that was because she had no husband and family of her own to absorb her superfluous sympathy and energy. Mrs. Grubb was not so easily classified as these “brothers” imagined, however, and fortunately for them she had no leanings towards any man’s fireside. Mr. Grubb had died in the endeavor to understand her, and it is doubtful whether, had he been offered a second life and another opportunity, he would have thought the end justified the means.

This criticism, however, applies only to the family circle, for Mrs. Grubb in a hall was ever winning, delightful, and persuasive. If she was illogical, none of her sister women realized it, for they were pretty much of the same chaotic order of mind, though with this difference : that a certain proportion of them were everywhere seeking reasons for their weariness, their unhappiness, their poverty, their lack of faith and courage, their unsatisfactory husbands and their disappointing children. These ladies were apt to be a little bitter, and much more interested in Equal Suffrage, Temperance, Cremation, and Edenic Diet than in subjects like Palmistry, Telepathy, and Hypnotism, which generally attracted the vague, speculative, featherheaded ones.

These discontented persons were always the most frenzied workers and the most eloquent speakers, and those who were determined to get more rights were mild compared with those who were determined to avenge their wrongs. There was, of course, no unanimity of belief running through all these Clubs, Classes, Circles, Societies, Orders, Leagues, Chapters, and Unions ; but there was one bond of aversion, and that was housework. That no woman could develop or soar properly, and cook, scrub, sweep, dust, wash dishes, mend, or take care of babies at the same time, — to defend this proposition they would cheerfully have gone to the stake. They were willing to concede all these sordid tasks as an honorable department of woman’s work, but each wanted them to be done by some other woman.

Mrs. Grubb really belonged to neither of these classes. She was not very keen about more rights, nor very bloodthirsty about her wrongs. She inhabited a kind of serene twilight, the sort that follows an especially pink sunset. She was not wholly clear in her mind about anything, but she was entirely hopeful about the world and its disposition to grow and move in ever ascending spirals. She hated housework as much as any of her followers, although she was seldom allowed to do anything for herself. “ I ’ll step in and make your beds, Mrs. Grubb ; I know you ’re tired.” “ I ’ll sweep the front room, Mrs. Grubb ; you give yourself out so, I know you need rest.” “ Let me cook your supper while you get up strength for your lecture ; there are plenty of people to cook, but there’s only one Mrs. Grubb!” These were the tender solicitations she was ever receiving.

As for theories, she had little choice. She had looked into almost every device for increasing the sum of human knowledge and hastening the millennium, and she thought them all more or less valuable. Her memory, mercifully, was not a retentive one, therefore she remembered little of the beliefs she had outgrown ; they never left even a deposit in the stretch of wet sand in which they had written themselves.

She had investigated, and of course taught, Delsarte, Physical Culture, DressReform, the Blue Glass Cure, Scientific Physiognomy, Phrenology, Cheiromancy, Astrology, Vegetarianism, Edenic Diet, Single Tax, Evolution, Mental Healing, Christian Science, Spiritualism, Theosophy, and Hypnotism. All these metamorphoses of thought had Mrs. S. Cora Grubb passed through, and was not yet a finished butterfly. Some of the ideas she had left far behind, but she still believed in them as fragments of truth suitable for feeble growing souls that could not bear the full light of revelation in one burst. She held honorary memberships in most of the outgrown societies, attended annual meetings of others, and kept in touch with all the rest by being present at their social reunions.

One of her present enthusiasms was her “ Kipling Brothers,” the boys’ band enlisted under the motto, “ I saw a hundred men on the road to Delhi, and they were all my brothers.” She believed that there was no salvation for a boy outside of a band. Banded somehow he must be, then badged. beribboned, bannered, and by-lawed. From the moment a boy’s mother had left off her bye-lows, Mrs. Grubb wanted him put under bylaws. She often visited Mistress Mary with the idea that some time she could interest her in one of her thousand schemes ; but this special call was to see if the older children, whose neat handiwork she had seen and admired, could embroider mottoes on cardboard to adorn the Kipling room at an approaching festival. She particularly wanted “ Look not upon the Wine” done in blood-red upon black, and “ Shun the Filthy Weed ” in smokecolor on bright green. She had in her hand a card with the points for her annual address noted upon it, for this sort of work she ordinarily did in the horsecars. These ran : —

1st. Value of individuality. “I saw.”

2d. Value of observation. “ I saw.”

3d. Value of numbers. “ I saw a hundred men.”

4th. Importance of belonging to the male sex. It was men who were seen on the road.

5th. What and where is Delhi ?

6th. Description of the road thither.

7th. Every boy has his Delhi.

8th. Are you “ on the road ” ?

9th. The brotherhood of man.

10th. The Kipling Brothers’ Call to Arms.

She intended to run through the heads of this impassioned oration to Mistress Mary, whom she rather liked ; and, in truth, Mary had difficulty in disliking her, though she thoroughly disapproved of her. She was so amiable, and apparently so susceptible to teaching, that Mary always fancied her on the verge of something better. Her vagaries, her neglects, and what to Mary’s mind were positive inhumanities seemed in a way unconscious. “ If I can only get into sufficiently friendly relations,” thought Mary, “ so that I can convince her that her first and highest duty lies in the direction of the three children, I believe she will have the heroism to do it ! ” But in this Mistress Mary’s instinct was at fault. Mrs. Grubb took indeed no real cognizance of her immediate surroundings, but she would not have wished to see near duties any more clearly. Neither had she any sane and healthy interest in good works of any kind ; she simply had a sort of philanthropic hysteria, and her most successful speeches were so many spasms.

VII.

THE COMET AND THE FIXED STAR.

“ I don’t feel that I can part with Lisa now, just as she’s beginning to be a help to me,” argued Mrs. Grubb, shortly after she had been welcomed and ensconced in a rocking-chair. “As Madame Goldmarker says, nobody else in the world would have given her a home these four years, and a good many would n’t have had her round the house.”

“ That is true,” replied Mary, “ and your husband must have been a very good man, from all you tell me, Mrs. Grubb.”

“ Good enough, but totally uninteresting,” said that lady laconically.

“ Well, putting aside the question as to whether goodness ought to be totally uninteresting, you say that Lisa’s mother left Mr. Grubb three hundred dollars for her food and clothing, and that she has been ever since a willing servant, absolutely devoted to your interests.”

“ We never put a cent of the three hundred dollars into our own pockets,” explained Mrs. Grubb. “ Mr. Grubb was dreadfully opposed to my doing it, but every penny of it went to freeing our religious society from debt. It was a case of the greatest good of the greatest number, and I did n’t flinch. I thought it was a good deal more important that the Army of Present Perfection should have a roof over its head than that Lisa Bennett should be fed and clothed ; that is, if both could not be done.”

“ I don’t know the creed of the Army, but it seems to me your Presently Perfect soldiers would have been rather uncomfortable under their roof, if Lisa Bennett had been naked and starving outside.”

“ Oh, it would never have come to that,” responded Mrs. Grubb easily. “ There is plenty of money in the world, and it belongs equally to the whole human race. I don’t recognize anybody’s right to have a dollar more than I have ; but Mr. Grubb could never accept any belief that had been held less than a thousand years, and before he died he gave some money to a friend of his, and told him to pay me ten dollars every month towards Lisa’s board. Untold gold could never pay for what my pride has suffered in having her, and if she had n’t been so useful I could n’t have done it, — I don’t pretend that I could. She ’s an offense to the eye.”

“ Not any longer,” said Mary proudly.

“ Well, she was, up to a few months ago ; but she would always do anything for the twins, and though they are continually getting into mischief, she never lets any harm come to them, not so much as a scratch. If I ’d taken a brighter child, she would have been forever playing on her own account and thinking of her own pleasure ; but if you once get an idea into Lisa’s head of what you expect her to do, she will go on doing it to the end of the world, and wild horses could n’t keep her from it.”

“ It’s a pity more of us had n’t that virtue of obedience to a higher law.”

“ Well, perhaps it is, and perhaps it is n’t; it’s a sign of a very weak mind.”

“ Or a very strong one,” retorted Mary.

“ There are natural leaders and natural followers,” remarked Mrs. Grubb smilingly, as she swayed to and fro in Mary’s rocking-chair. Her smile, like a ballet dancer’s, had no connection with, nor relation to, the matter of her speech or her state of feeling ; it was what a watchmaker would call a detached movement. “I can’t see,” said she, “ that it is my duty to send Lisa away to be taught, just when I need her most. My development is a good deal more important than hers.”

“ Why ? ”

“ Why ? Because I have a vocation and a mission ; because, if I should falter or faint by the wayside, hundreds of women who depend on me for inspiration would fall back into error and suffer permanent loss and injury.”

“ Do you suppose they really would ? ” asked Mary rather maliciously, anxious if possible to ruffle the surface of Mrs. Grubb’s exasperating placidity. “ Or would they, of course after a long period of grief - stricken apathy, attach themselves to somebody else’s classes ? ”

“ They might,” allowed Mrs. Grubb, in a tone of hurt self-respect, “ though you must know, little as you ’ve seen of the world, that no one woman has just the same revelation as any other, and that there are some who are born to interpret truth to the multitude. I can say in all humility that it has been so with me from a child. I’ve always had a burning desire to explore the secret chambers of Thought, always yearned to understand and explain the universe.”

“ I have never tried to explain it,” sighed Mary a little wearily ; “ one is so busy trying to keep one’s little corner clean and sweet and pleasant, a helpful place where sad and tired souls can sit down and rest.”

“ Who wants to sit down and rest? Not I! ” exclaimed Mrs. Grubb. “ But then, I ’m no criterion, I have such an active mind.”

“ There are just a few passive virtues,” said Mary teasingly. “ We must remember that activity does n’t always make tor good ; sometimes it is unrest, disintegration ; not growth, Mrs. Grubb, but fermentation.”

Mrs. Grubb took out a small blankbook and made a note, for she had an ear for any sentence that might be used in a speech.

“ That is true. ‘ Distrust the activity which is not growth, but fermentation : ’ that will just hit some ladies in my classes, and it comes right in with something I am going to say this evening. We have a Diet Congress here this week, and there ’s a good deal of feeling and dispute between the various branches. I have two delegates stopping with me, and they have n’t spoken to each other since yesterday morning, nor sat down to eat at the same table. I shall do all I can, as the presiding officer, to keep things pleasant at the meetings, but it will be difficult. You’ve never been in public life and can’t understand it, but you see there are women among the delegates who’ve suffered the tyranny of man so long that they will cook anything their husbands demand ; women who believe in eating any kind of food, and hold that the principal trouble lies in bad cooking; women who will give up meat, but still indulge in all sorts of cakes, pastries, and kickshaws ; and women who are strong on temperance in drink, but who see no need of temperance in food. The whole question of diet reform is in an awful state, and a Congress is the only way to settle it.”

“ How do men stand on the diet question ? ” asked Mary, with a twinkle in her eye.

“ They don’t stand at all,” answered Mrs. Grubb promptly. “ They sit right still, and some of them lie down flat, you might say, whenever it’s mentioned. They ’ll do even more for temperance than they will for reformed diet, though goodness knows they ’re fond enough of drinking. The Edenites number about sixty-seven in this city, and nine is the largest number of gentlemen that we’ve been able to interest. Those nine are the husbands and sons of the lady members, and at the next meeting two of them are going to be expelled for backsliding. I declare, if I was a man, I ’d be ashamed to confess that I was all stomach; but that’s what most of them are. Not that it’s easy work to be an Edenite; it’s impossible to any but a highly spiritual nature. I have been on the diet for three months, and nothing but my position as vice-president of the society, and my desire to crush the body and release the spirit, could have kept me faithful. I don’t pretend to like it, but that does n’t make me disloyal. There’s nothing I enjoy better than a good cut of underdone beef, with plenty of dish gravy ; I love nice tender porterhouse steaks with mushrooms; I love thick mutton-chops broiled over a hot fire : but I can’t believe in them, and my conscience won’t allow me to eat them. Do you believe in meat ? ”

“ Certainly.”

“ I don’t see why you say ‘ certainly.’ You would be a good deal better off without it. You are filling yourself full of carnal, brutal, murderous passions every time you eat it. The people who eat meat are not half so elevated nor half so teachable as the Edenites.”

“ The Edenites are possibly too weak and hungry to resist instruction,” said Mary.

“ They are neither weak nor hungry,” replied their vice-president, with dignity.

“ They eat milk, and stewed fruit, and all the edible grains nicely boiled. It stands to reason that if you can subdue your earthly, devilish, sensual instincts on anything, you can do it on a diet like that. You can’t fancy an angel or a Mahatma devouring underdone beef.”

“ No,” agreed Mistress Mary; “ but for that matter, the spectacle of an angel eating dried-apple sauce does n’t appeal to my imagination.”

“ It’s no joking matter,” said Mrs. Grubb, with real tears in her eyes. “ It was my interest in Theosophy that brought me to the Edenic diet. I have good and sufficient motives for denying my appetite, for I ’ve got a certain goal to reach, and I ’m in earnest.”

“ Then here’s my hand, and I respect you for it. Oh, how I should like a hot mutton-chop at this moment! — Do forgive me.”

“ I forgive you, because I can see you act up to all the light that has been revealed to you. I don’t know as I ought to be proud because I see so much truth. My classes tell me I get these marvelous revelations because I ’m so open-minded. Now Mr. Grubb would n’t and could n’t bear discussion of any sort. His soul never grew, for he would n’t open a chink where a new idea might creep in. He’d always accompany me to all my meetings (such advantages as that man had and missed !), and sometimes he ’d take the admission tickets ; but when the speaking began, he ’d shut the door and stay out in the entry by himself till it was time to wait upon me home. — Do you believe in vaccination ? ”

“ Certainly.”

“ Well, it passes my comprehension how you can be so sure of your beliefs. You ’d better come and hear some of the arguments on the opposite side. I am the secretary of the Anti Vaccination League.” (Mrs. Grubb was especially happy in her anti - societies ; negatives seemed to give her more scope lor argument.) “ I say to my classes, ‘ You must not blame those to whom higher truths do not appeal, for refusing to believe in that which they cannot understand ; but you may reprove them for decrying or ridiculing those laws or facts of nature which they have never investigated with an unprejudiced mind.’ Well, I must be going. I ’ve sat longer than I meant to, this room is so peaceful and comfortable.”

“ But what about Lisa’s future ? We have n’t settled that, although we’ve had a most interesting and illuminating conversation.”

“ Why, I ’ve told you how I feel about her, and you must respect my feeling. The world can only grow when each person allows his fellow man complete liberty of thought and action, I’ve kept the child four years, and now when my good care and feeding, together with the regular work and early hours I’ve always prescribed, have begun to show their fruits in her improved condition, you want she should be put in some institution. Why is n’t she doing well enough as she is ? I’m sure you ’ve had a wonderful influence over her.”

“ Nothing could induce me to lose sight of her entirely,” said Mistress Mary, “ but we feel now that she is ready to take the next step. She needs a skilled physician who is master both of body and mind, as well as a teacher who is capable of following out his principles. I will see to all that, if you will only give me the privilege.”

Mrs. Grubb sank down in the rockingchair in despair. “ Don’t I need some consideration as well as that little imbecile ? Am I, with my ambitions and aspirations, to be forever hampered by these three nightmares of children ? Oh, if I could once get an astral body, I would stay in it, you may be sure ! ”

“ You do not absolutely need Lisa yourself,” argued Mary. “ It is the twins to whom she has been indispensable. Provide for them in some way, and she is freed from a responsibility for which she is not and never was fit. It is a miracle that some tragedy has not come out of this daily companionship of three such passionate, irresponsible creatures.”

“ Some tragedy will come out of it yet,” said Mrs. Grubb gloomily, “if I am not freed from the shackles that keep me in daily slavery. The twins are as likely to go to the gallows as anywhere ; and as for Lisa, she would be a good deal better off dead than alive, as Mrs. Sylvester says.”

“ That is n’t for us to decide,” said Mistress Mary soberly. “ I might have been careless and impertinent enough to say it a year ago, but not now. Lisa has all along been the victim of cruel circumstances. Wherever she has been sinned against through ignorance, it is possible, barely possible, that the fault may be atoned for; but any neglect of duty now would be a criminal offense. It does not behoove us to be too scornful when we remember that the taint (fortunately a slight one) transmitted to poor little Lisa existed in greater or less degree in Handel and Molière, Julius Cæsar, Napoleon, Petrarch, and Mohammed. The world is a good deal richer for them, certainly.”

Mrs. Grubb elevated her head, the light of interest dawned in her eye, and she whipped her notebook out of her pocket.

“ Is that a fact? ” she asked excitedly.

“ It is a fact.”

“ Is it generally known ? ”

“ It must be known by all who have any interest in the education of defective persons, since it touches one of the bugbears which they have to fight.”

“ Is there any society in this city devoted to the study of such problems ? ”

“ There is a society which is just on the point of opening an institution for the training of defective children.”

Mrs. Grubb’s face fell, and her hand relaxed its grasp upon the pencil. (If there was anything she enjoyed, it was the sensation of being a pioneer in any movement.) Presently she brightened again.

“ If it is just starting,” she said, “ then it must need more members, and speakers to stir up the community. Now I am calculated, by constant association with a child of this character, to be of signal service to this cause. Not many persons have had my chance to observe phenomena. Just give me a letter to the president, — have they elected officers yet ? — where do they meet ? — and tell him I ’ll call on him and throw all the weight of my influence on his side. It ’s wonderful ! Handel, Moliére, Buddha,—was it Buddha? — Cæsar, Petrarch, and Wellington, — no, not Wellington. Never mind, I ’ll get a list from you to-morrow and look it all up, — it’s perfectly marvelous ! And I have one of this great, unhappy, suffering class in my own family, one who may yet be transformed into an Elizabeth Browning or a Joan of Arc ! ”

Mistress Mary sighed in her heart. She learned more of Mrs. Grubb with every interview, and she knew that her enthusiasms were as discouraging as her apathies.

“ How unlucky that I mentioned Napoleon, Cæsar, and Mohammed ! ” she thought. “ I shall be haunted now by the fear that she will go on a lecturingtour through the country, and exhibit poor Lisa as an interesting example. Mrs. Grubb’s mind is like nothing so much as a crazy-quilt.”

VIII.

THE YOUNG MINISTER’S PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS.

Mrs. Grubb’s interest in the education of the defective classes was as shortlived as it was ardent. One interview with the president of the society convinced her that he was not a person to be “ helped ” according to her understanding of the term. She thought him a self-sufficient gentleman, inflexible in demeanor, and inhospitable to anybody’s ideas or anybody’s hobbies but his own. She resented his praise of Mistress Mary and Rhoda, and regarded it fulsome flattery when he alluded to their experiment with Marm Lisa as one of the most interesting and valuable in his whole experience ; saying that he hardly knew which to admire and venerate the more, the genius of the teachers, or the devotion, courage, and docility of the pupil.

In the summer months Lisa had gone to the country with Mistress Mary and Edith, who were determined never to lose sight of her until the end they sought was actually attained. There, in the verdant freshness of that new world, Lisa experienced a strange exaltation of the senses. Every wooded path unfolded treasures of leaf, bud, blossom, and brier, and of beautiful winged things that crept and rustled among the grasses. There was the ever new surprise of the first wild flowers, the abounding mystery of the bird’s song and the brook’s song, the daily greeting of bees and butterflies, frogs and fishes, field mice and squirrels ; so that the universe, which in the dead past had been dreary and without meaning, suddenly became warm and friendly, and she, the alien, felt a sense of kinship with all created things.

Helen had crossed the continent to imbibe the wisdom of the East, and had brought back stores of knowledge to spend in Lisa’s service ; but Rhoda’s sacrifice was perhaps the most complete, for Mrs. Grubb having at first absolutely refused to part with Lisa, Rhoda had flung herself into the breach and taken the twins to her mother’s cottage in the mountains.

She came up the broad steps, on a certain appointed day in August, leading her charges into Mistress Mary’s presence. They wei’e clean, well dressed, and somewhat calm in demeanor.

“ You may go into the playground,” she said, after the greetings were over; “ and remember that there are sharp spikes on the high fence by the peppertree.”

“ Mary,” she went on impressively, closing the doors and glancing about the room to sec if there were any listeners, “ Mary, those children have been with me eight weeks, and 1 do — not — like — them. What are you going to do with me ? Wait, I have n’t told you the whole truth, — I dislike them actively. As for my mother, she is not committed to any theory about the essential integrity of infancy, and she positively abhors them.”

“ Then they are no more likable in the bosom of the family than they have been here ? ” asked Mary, in a tone of disappointment.

“ More likable ? They are less so ! Do you see any change in me, — a sort of spiritual effulgence, a saintly radiance, such as comes after a long spell of persistent virtue ? Because there ought to he, if my summer has served its purpose.”

“ Poor dear rosy little martyr ! Sit down and tell me all about it.”

“ Well, we have kept a log, but ” —

“ ‘ We’ ? What, Rhoda, did you drag your poor mother into the experiment ? ”

“ Mother ? No, she generally locked herself in her room when the twins were indoors, but — well, of course I had help of one sort and another with them. I have held to your plan of discipline pretty well; at any rate, I have n’t administered corporal punishment, though if I had whipped them whenever they actually needed it, I should have worn outall the young minister’s slippers.”

Mary groaned. “ Then there was another young minister ? It does n’t make any difference, Rhoda, whether you spend your summers in the woods or by the sea, in the valleys or on the mountains, there is always a young minister. Have all the old ones perished off the face of the earth, pray? And what do the young ones see in you, you dear unregenerate, that they persist in following you about, threatening my peace of mind and your future career ? Well, go on ! ”

“ Debarred from the use of the persuasive but obsolete slipper,” Rhoda continued evasively, “ I tried milder means of discipline, — solitary confinement for one ; not very much, you know, — only seventeen times in eight weeks. I hope you don’t object to that? Of course it was in a pleasant room with southern exposure, good view and good ventilation, a thermometer, picture - books, and all that. It would have worked better if the twins hadn’t always taken the furniture to pieces, and mother is so fussy about anything of that sort. She finally suggested the winter bedroom for Atlantic’s incarceration, as it has nothing in it but a huge coal-stove enveloped in a somewhat awe-inspiring cotton sheet. I put in a comfortable low chair, a checkerboard, and some books, fixing the time limit at half an hour. By the way, Mary, that’s such a pretty idea of yours to leave the door unlocked, and tell the children to come out of their own accord whenever they feel at peace with the community. I tried it, — oh, I always try your pretty ideas first; but I had scarcely closed the door before Pacific was out of it again, a regenerated human being according to her own account. But to return to Atlantic. I went to him when the clock struck, only to discover that he had broken in the circles of isinglass round the body of the coal-stove, removed the ashes with a book, got the dampers out of order, and taken the doors off the hinges ! I am sure Mrs. Grubb is right to keep them on bread and milk and apple sauce ; a steady diet of beef and mutton would give them a simply unconquerable energy. Oh, laugh as you may, I could never have lived through the ordeal if it had n’t been for the young minister ! ”

“ Do you mean that he became interested in the twins ? ”

“ Oh yes ! — very deeply interested. Why, you have heard me speak of him: it was Mr. Fielding.”

“ Why, Rhoda, he was the last summer’s minister, the one who preached at the seashore.”

“ Certainly ; but he was only supplying a pulpit there ; now he has his own parish. He is taking up a course of child-study, and asked me if he was at liberty to use the twins for psychological observations. I assented most gratefully, thinking, you know, that he could n’t study them unless he kept them with him a good deal; but he counted without his host, as you can imagine. He lives at the hotel until his cottage is finished, and the first thing I knew he had hired a stout nursemaid as his contribution to the service of humanity. I think he was really sorry for me, for I was so confined I could scarcely ever ride, or drive, or play tennis ; and besides, he simply had to have somebody to hold the children while he observed them. We succeeded better after the nurse came, and we all had delightful walks and conversations together, just a nice little family party! The hotel people called Atlantic the Cyclone and Pacific the Warrior. Sometimes strangers took us for the children’s parents, and that was embarrassing; not that I mind being mistaken for a parent, but I decline being credited, or discredited, with the maternity of those imps ! ”

“ They are altogether new in my experience,” confessed Mary.

“ That is just what the young minister said.”

“ Will he keep up his psychological investigation during the autumn?” Mary inquired.

“ He really has no material there.”

“ What will he do then, —— carry it on by correspondence ? ”

“ No, that is always unsatisfactory. I fancy he will come here occasionally: it’s the most natural place, and he is especially eager to meet you.”

“ Of course ! ” said Mistress Mary, reciting provokingly: —

How delightful,” she added, “ how inspiring it is to see a young man so devoted to science, particularly to this neglected science! I shall be charmed to know more of his psychology and observe his observations.”

“ He is extremely clever.”

“ I have no doubt of it from what you tell me, both clever and ingenious.”

“ And his cottage is lovely ; it will be finished and furnished by next summer, — Queen Anne, you know.”

Now this was so purely irrelevant that there was a wicked hint of intention about it, and though Mistress Mary was smiling (and quaking) in the very depths of her heart, she cruelly led back the conversation into safe educational channels. “ Is n’t it curious,” she said, “ that we should have thought Lisa the impossible problem ? Yet, as I have written you, her solution is something to which we can look forward with reasonable confidence ? It is scarcely eighteen months, but the work accomplished is almost incredible, even to me, and I have watched and counted every step.”

“ The only explanation must be this,” said Rhoda, “that her condition was largely the fruit of neglect and utter lack of comprehension. The state of mind and body in which she came to us was out of all proportion to the moving cause, when we discovered it. Her mother thought she would be an imbecile, the Grubbs treated her as one, and nobody cared to find out what she really was or could be.”

“ Her brain had been writ upon by the ‘ moving finger,’ ” quoted Mary, “though the writing was not graved so deep but that love and science could erase it. You remember the four lines in Omar Khayyám ?

“ Edith says I will hardly know her,” said Rhoda.

“ It is true. The new physician is a genius, and physically and outwardly she has changed more in the last three months than in the preceding year. She dresses herself neatly now, braids her own hair and ties her ribbons prettily. Edith has kept up her gymnastics, and even taught her to row and play ninepins. For the first time in my life, Rhoda, I can fully understand a mother’s passion for a crippled, or a blind, or a defective child. I suppose it was only Lisa’s desperate need that drew us to her at first. We all loved and pitied her, even at the very height of her affliction ; but now she fascinates me. I know no greater pleasure than the daily miracle of her growth. She is to me the sister I never had, the child I never shall have. When we think of our success with this experiment, we must try to keep our faith in human nature, even under the trying ordeal of the twins.”

“ My faith in human nature is absolutely intact,” answered Rhoda; “ the trouble is that the Warrior and the Cyclone are not altogether human. Atlantic is the coldest creature I ever knew, — so cold that he could stand the ShadrachMeshach-and-Abednego test with impunity; Pacific is hot, — so hot-tempered that one can hardly touch her without being scorched. If I had money enough to conduct an expensive experiment, I would separate them, and educate Pacific at the North Pole and Atlantic in the tropics.”

“ If they are not distinctly human, we must allow them a few human virtues at least,” said Mary ; “ for example, their loyalty to each other. Pacific, always at war with the community, seldom hurts her brother ; Atlantic, selfish and grasping with all the world, shares generously with his sister. We must remember, too, that Lisa’s care has been worse than nothing for them, notwithstanding its absolute fidelity, and their dependence has been a positive injury to her. There ! she has just come into the playground with Edith. Will wonders never cease ? Pacific is embracing her knees, and Atlantic allows himself to be hugged ! ”

Marm Lisa was indeed beside herself with joy at the meeting. She clung to the little rebels, stroked their hair, admired their aprons, their clean hands, their new boots ; and. on being smartly slapped by Atlantic for putting the elastic of his hat behind his ears, kissed his hand as if it had offered a caress. “ He’s so little,” she said apologetically, looking up with wet eyes to Edith, who stood near.

IX.

HARM LISA’S QUEST.

It was not long after this conversation that the twins awoke one morning with a very frenzy of adventure upon them. It was accompanied by a violent reaction against all the laws of God and man, and a desire to devour the tree of knowledge, fruit, limbs, and trunk, no matter at what cost.

We have no means of knowing whether there was an excess of electricity in the atmosphere, whether their infant livers were disordered, or whether the Evil One was personally conducting the day’s exercises; judged by the light of subsequent events, all of these suppositions might easily have been true. During the morning they so demeaned themselves that all Mistress Mary’s younger neophytes became apostates to the true faith, and went over in a body to the theory of the total depravity of unbaptized infants.

In the afternoon they did not appear, nor did Marm Lisa. This was something that had never occurred before, save when Pacific had a certain memorable attack of mumps that would have carried off any child who was fitted for a better world, or one who was especially beloved.

“ Do you suppose anything is wrong ? ” asked Mary nervously.

“ Of course not,” said Edith. “I remember seeing Lisa in the playground at one o’clock, but my impression is that she was alone, and stayed only a moment. At any rate, I was very busy and did not speak to her. Mrs. Grubb has probably taken the twins to have their hair cut, or something of that sort.

“ What a ridiculous suggestion !” exclaimed Rhoda. “ You know perfectly well that Mrs. Grubb would never think of cutting their hair, if it swept the earth! She may possibly have taken them to join a band ; they must be getting to a proper age for membership. At any rate, I will call there and inquire, on my way home, although I can never talk to Mrs. Grubb two minutes without wanting to shake her.”

Rhoda made her promised visit, but the house was closed, and the neighbors knew nothing of the whereabouts of the children beyond the fact that Mrs. Grubb was seen talking to them as she went into the yard, a little after twelve o’clock. Rhoda naturally concluded, therefore, that Edith’s supposition must be correct, and that Mrs. Grubb had for once indulged in a family excursion.

Such was not the case, however. After luncheon, Marm Lisa had washed the twins’ hands and faces in the back yard as usual, and left them for an instant to get a towel from the kitchen. When she returned, she looked blankly about, for there was no sign of the two dripping faces and the uplifted streaming hands. They had a playful habit of hiding from her, knowing that in no other way could they make her so unhappy ; so she stood still for some moments, calling them, at first sharply, then piteously, but with no result. She ran to the front gate : it was closed; the rope - fastening was out of reach, and plainly too complicated even for their preternatural powers. She hurried back to the house, and searched every room in a bewildered sort of fashion, finding nothing. As she came out again, her eye caught sight of a kitchen chair in the corner of the yard. They had climbed the picket fence, then. Yes; Atlantic, while availing himself of its unassuming aid, had left a clue in a fragment of his trousers. She opened the gate, and ran breathlessly along the streets to that Garden of Eden where joy had always hitherto awaited her. Some instinct of fear or secrecy led her to go quietly through all the rooms and search the playground, without telling any one of her trouble. That accomplished fruitlessly, she fled home again, in the vain hope of finding the children in some accustomed haunt overlooked in her first search. She began to be thoroughly alarmed now, and thoroughly confused. With twitching hands and nervous shaking of the head, she hurried through the vacant rooms, growing more and more aimless in her quest. She climbed on a tall bureau and looked in a tiny medicine cupboard ; then under the benches and behind the charts in the parlor ; even under the kitchen sink, among the pots and pans, and in the stove, where she poked tremulously in the ashes. Her new-found wit seemed temporarily to have deserted her, and she was a pitiable thing as she wandered about, her breath coming in long-drawn sighs, with now and then a half-stifled sob.

Suddenly she darted into the street again. Perhaps they had followed their aunt Cora. Distance had no place in her terror-stricken heart. She traversed block after block, street after street, until she reached Pocahontas Hall, a building and locality she knew well. She crept softly up the main stairs, and from the landing into the little gallery above. Mrs. Grubb sat in the centre of the stage, with a glass of water, a bouquet of roses, and a bundle of papers and tracts on the table by her side. In the audience were twenty or thirty women and a dozen men, their laps filled, and their pockets bulging, with propaganda. They stood at intervals to ask superfluous or unanswerable questions, upon which Mrs. Grubb would rise and reply, with cheeks growing pink and pinker, with pleasant smile and gracious manner, and a voice fairly surcharged with conviction. Most of the ladies took notes, and a girl with a receding chin was seated at a small table in front of the platform, making a stenographic report.

All this Marm Lisa saw, but her eyes rested on nothing she longed to see. Mrs. Grubb’s lecture-voice rose and fell melodiously, floating up to her balcony heights in a kind of echo that held the tone, but not the words. The voice made her drowsy, for she was already worn out with emotion, but she roused herself with an effort, and stole down the stairs to wander into the street again. Ah, there was an idea ! The coat - shop ! Why had she not thought of it before ? The coat - shop was a sort of clothing manufactory on a small scale, a tall, narrow building four stories high, where she had often gone with Atlantic and Pacific. There were sewing-machines on the ground floor, the cutters and pressers worked in the middle stories, and at the top were the finishers. It was neither an extensive nor an exciting establishment, and its only fascination lay in the fact that the Workwomen screamed with laughter at the twins’ conversation, and after leading them to their utmost length, teasing and goading them into a towering passion, would stuff them with nuts or dates or cheap sweetmeats. The coat-shop was two or three miles from the hall, and it was closing-time and quite dark when Lisa arrived. She came out of the door after having looked vainly in every room, and sat down dejectedly in the entrance, with her weary head leaning against the wall. There was but a moment’s respite for her, for the manager came out of his office, and stumbling over her in the dusk, took her by the shoulders and pushed her into the street with an oath.

“ Go and sit on your own doorstep, can’t you,” he muttered, “ and not make me break my legs over you ! ”

She was too spent to run any farther. She dragged her heavy feet along slowly, almost unconsciously, neither knowing nor caring whither they led her. Home she could not, dared not go, bearing that heavy burden of remorse! Mrs. Grubb would ask for Atlantic anti Pacific, and then what would become of her ? Mr. Grubb would want to give Pacific her milk. No, Mr. Grubb was dead. There ! she had n’t looked in the perambulator. No, there was n’t any perambulator. That was dead, too, and gone away with Mr. Grubb. There used to be babies, two babies, in the perambulator. What had become of them ? Were they lost, too ? And the umbrella that she used to hold until her arm ached, and the poor pale weeping mother always lying on a bed, — were they all gone together ? Her head buzzed with worrying, unrelated thoughts, so that she put up her hands and held it in place on her shoulders as she shuffled wearily along. A heavy dripping mist began to gather and fall, and she shivered in the dampness, huddling herself together and leaning against the houses for a shelter. She sat down on the curbstone and tried to think, staring haggardly at the sign on the corner fruit-shop. In that moment she suddenly forgot the reason of her search. She had lost — what ? She could not go home to Eden Place, but why not ? Oh yes! it came to her now : there was something about a perambulator, but it all seemed vague to her. Suddenly a lamplighter put his ladder against a post in front of her, and climbing up nimbly lighted the gas - jet inside of the glass frame. It shone full on a flight of broad steps, a picture so much a part of her life-dream that she would go up to the very gate of heaven with its lines burned into her heart and brain.

She crept up and turned the knob of the outer door. It was unlocked, and she stole into the inner room, the Paradise, place of joy and sweet content, heart’s rest, soul’s heaven, love’s own abode. The very atmosphere soothed her. She heard the janitress clatter through the halls, lock the door, and descend the stairs to her own rooms in the basement. The light from the street lamps shone in at the two end windows, so that the room was not in utter darkness. She would lie down here and die with Mr. Grubb and the babies and the umbrella. Atlantic and Pacific would be sure to come back; nobody could live without this place that had ever known it. Miss Mary would find them. She would make everything right. The mere thought of Mistress Mary brought a strange peace into poor Lisa’s overwrought, distraught mind.

She opened the closet door. It was as dainty and neat as Mistress Mary herself, and the mere sight of it bred order in Lisa’s thoughts. On the top of a pile of envelopes lay the sewing-picture that Atlantic had spoiled that day. It had been a black morning, and the bit of cardboard was torn and soiled and bent. Lisa looked at it with a maternal and a prophetic eye. She could see the firm line of Rhoda’s lip as she bore down upon the destructive little urchin. She could almost hear the bright challenging tone as Rhoda would say : “ Now, Atlantic, let us see what we can do! Cut off the chewed edges with these scissors, paste these thin pieces of paper over the tears, and rub the card with this crust of bread. A new one ? Certainly not !”

Lisa took the poor little object in her hand, and seeing Mistress Mary’s white apron, pressed her cheek against it in a transport of tenderness and hung it over her arm. Just then she caught sight of the clay bird’s-nest that Pacific had modeled, — such a lovely bird’s-nest that it had been kept for the cabinet. She carried her treasures over to the old-fashioned lounge where the babies took their occasional nap, put them carefully in a little red chair close beside it, and then, stretching her weary length on the cushions, she kissed the smooth folds of the apron and clasped it in her arms.

Mistress Mary would come soon. She would come in her cloud of white, and her steel fillet would gleam and shine when the sunshine fell upon it, and make star - rays and moonbeams and lightning-flashes ; and the little points would twinkle and wink and laugh and blink whenever she turned her head. She would smile, and everything would suddenly be clear ; she would speak, and the weary buzzing of windmills in the brain would be hushed. Under her touch the darkness and heaviness would vanish, and there would be no more night there, — no more night.

As these healing visions stole upon Marm Lisa, the torture and the anguish, the long hours of bewilderment, faded little by little, little by little, till at length a blessed sleep crept over her eyelids, blotting into a merciful nothingness the terror and the misery of the day.

X.

THE TWINS JOIN THE CELESTIALS.

Meanwhile, Atlantic and Pacific had been enjoying themselves even unto the verge of delirium. In the course of their wanderings they had come upon a Chinaman bearing aloft a huge red silken banner crowned by a badger’s tail. Everything young that had two legs was following him, and they joined the noble army of followers. As they went on, other Chinamen with other banners came from the side-alleys, and all at once the small procession thus formed turned a corner and came upon the parent body, a sight that fairly stunned them by its Oriental magnificence. It was the four thousandth anniversary of the birth of Yeong Wo, had the children realized it (and that may have been the reason that they awoke in a fever of excitement), — Yeong Wo, statesman, philanthropist, philosopher, and poet; and the great day had been chosen to dedicate the new temple and install in it a new joss, and to exhibit a monster dragon just arrived from China. The joss had been sitting in solemn state in his sanctum sanctorum for a week, while the priests appeased him hourly with plenteous libations of rice brandy, sacrifices of snow-white pigeons, and offerings of varnished pork. Clouds of incense had regaled his expensive mahogany nostrils, while his ears of ivory inlaid with gold and bronze had been stimulated with the ceaseless clashing of gongs and wailings of Chinese fiddles. Such homage and such worship would have touched a heart of stone, and that of the joss was penetrable sandalwood; so as the days of preparation wore away, the smile on the teakwood lips of the idol certainly became more propitious. This was greatly to the satisfaction of the augurs and the high priest; for a mighty joss is not always in a sunny humor on feast-days, and to parade a sulky god through the streets is a very depressing ceremony, foretelling to the initiated a season of dire misfortune. So his godship smiled and shook his plume of peacock feathers benignantly on Yeong Wo’s birthday, and therefore the pageant in which Atlantic and Pacific bore a part was more gorgeous than anything that ever took place out of the Flowery Kingdom itself.

Fortune smiled upon the naughty creatures at the very outset, for Pacific picked up a stick of candy in the street, and gave half of it to a pretty little Chinese maiden whose name in English would have been Spring Blossom, and who looked, in any language, like a tropical flower, in her gown of blue - andgold - embroidered satin and the sheaf of tiny fans in her glossy black hair. Spring Blossom accepted the gift with enthusiasm, since a sweet tooth is not a matter of nationality, and ran immediately to tell her mother, a childish instinct also of universal distribution. She climbed, as nimbly as her queer little shoes would permit, a flight of narrow steps leading to a balcony ; while the twins followed close at her heels, and wedged their way through a forest of Mongolian legs till they reached the front, where they peeped through the spaces of the railings with Spring Blossom, Fairy Foot, Dewy Rose, and other Celestial babies, quite overlooked in the crowd and excitement and jollity. Such a very riot of confusion there was, it seemed as if Confucius might have originally spelled his name with an s in the middle ; for every window was black with pigtailed highbinders, cobblers, pork butchers, and pawnbrokers. The narrow streets and alleys became one seething mass of Asiatic humanity, while the painted belles came out on their balconies like butterflies, sitting among a wealth of gaudy paper flowers that looked pale in comparison with the daubs of vermilion on their cheeks and the rainbow colors of their silken tunics.

At last the pageant had gathered itself together, and came into full view in all its magnificence. There were pagodas in teakwood inlaid with gold and resting on ebony poles, and behind them, on a very tame Rosinante decked with leopard skins and gold bullion fringes, a Chinese maiden dressed to represent a queen of Celestial mythology. Then came more pagodas, and companies of standard-bearers in lavender tunics, red sashes, green and orange leggings and slippers ; more and more splendid banners, painted with dragons sprawling in distressed attitudes ; litters containing minor gods and the paraphernalia they were accustomed to need on a journey like this; more litters bearing Chinese orchestras, gongs going at full blast, fiddles squeaking, drums rumbling, trumpets shrieking, cymbals clashing, — just the sort of Babel that the twins adored.

And now came the chariot and throne of the great joss himself, and just behind him a riderless bay horse, intended for his imperial convenience should he tire of being swayed about on the shoulders of his twelve bearers, and elect to change his method of conveyance. Behind this honored steed came a mammoth rock-cod in a pagoda of his own, and then, heralded by a fusillade of firecrackers, the new dragon itself, stretching and wriggling its monster length through one entire block. A swarm of men cleared the way for it, gesticulating like madmen in their zeal to get swimming-room for the sacred monster. Never before in her brief existence had Pacific Simonson been afraid of anything, but if she had been in the street, and had so much as caught the wink of the dragon’s eye or a wave of its consecrated fin, she would have dropped senseless to the earth ; as it was, she turned her back to the procession, and, embracing with terror-stricken fervor the legs of the Chinaman standing behind her, made up her mind to be a better girl in the future. The monster was borne by seventy-four coolies, who furnished legs for each of the seventy-four joints of its body, while another concealed in its head tossed it wildly about. Little pigtailed boys shrieked as they looked at its gaping mouth that would have shamed a man-eating shark, at the huge locomotive headlights that served for its various sets of eyes, at the horns made of barber poles, and the mustache of twisted hogshead hoops. Behind this baleful creature came other smaller ones, and more flags, and litters with sacrificial offerings, and more musicians, till all disappeared in the distance, and the crowd surged in the direction of the new temple.

There was no such good fortune for the twins as an entrance into this holy of holies, for it held comparatively few beside the dignitaries, aristocrats, and wealthy merchants of the colony; but there was still ample material for entertainment, and they paid no heed to the going down of the sun. Why should they, indeed, when there were fascinating opium dens standing hospitably open, where they could have the excitement of entrance even if it were followed by immediate ejectment ? As it grew darker, the scene grew more weird and fairylike, for the scarlet, orange, and blue lanterns began to gleam one by one in the narrow doorways, and from the shadowy corners of the rooms behind them. In every shop were tables laden with Chinese delicacies, — fish, flesh, fowl, tea, rice, whiskey, lichee nuts, preserved limes, ginger, and other sweetmeats ; all of which, when not proffered, could be easily purloined, for there was no spirit of parsimony or hostility afloat in the air. In cubby-holes back of the counters, behind the stoves, wherever they could find room for a table, groups of moon-eyed men began to congregate for their nightly game of fan-tan, some of the players and onlookers smoking, while others chewed lengths of peeled sugar-cane.

In the midst of festivities like these the twins would have gone on from bliss to bliss without consciousness of time or place, had not hunger suddenly descended upon them and sleep begun to tug at their eyelids, changing in a trice their joy into sorrow, and their mirth into mourning. Not that they were troubled with any doubts, fears, or perplexities. True, they had wandered away from Eden Place, and had not the slightest idea of their whereabouts. If they had been a couple of babes in a wood, or any two respectable lost children of romance, memories of lullabies and prayers at mother’s knee would have precipitated them at this juncture into floods of tears ; but home to them was simply supper and bed. The situation did not seem complex to their minds ; the only plan was of course to howl, and to do it thoroughly, — stand in a corner of the market-place, and howl in such a manner that there could be no mistake as to the significance of the proceeding ; when the crowd collected, — for naturally a crowd would collect, — simply demand supper and bed, no matter what supper nor which bed ; eat the first, lie down in the second, and there you are! If the twins had been older and more experienced, they would have known that people occasionally do demand the necessities of life without receiving them ; but in that case they would also have known that such a misfortune would never fall upon a couple of lost children who confide their woes to the public. There was no preconcerted plan between them, no system. They acted without invention, premonition, or reflection. It was their habit to scream, while holding the breath as long as possible, whenever the universe was unfriendly, and particularly when Nature asserted herself in any way ; it was a curious fact that they resented the intervention of Nature and Providence with just as much energy as they did the discipline of their care-takers. They screamed now, the moment that the entertainment palled and they could not keep their eyes open without effort, and never had they been more successful in holding their breath and growing black in the face.

A crowd did gather, inevitably, for the twins’ lungs were capable of a body of tone more piercing than that of a Chinese orchestra, and the wonder is that poor Lisa did not hear them as she sat shivering on the curbstone, miles away ; for it was her name with which they conjured.

The populace amused itself a little, watching the fine but misdirected zeal of the performance, and supposing that the parents of the chanting cherubs were within easy reach. It became unpleasant after a while, however, and a policeman, inquiring into the matter, marched the two dirty, weary little protestants off to a station near by, — a march nearly as difficult and bloody as Sherman’s memorable “ march to the sea ; ” for the children associated nothing so pleasant as supper and bed with a blue-coated, brassbuttoned person, and resisted his wellmeant advances with might and main, and tooth and nail.

The policeman was at last obliged to confine himself to Atlantic, and called a brother-in-arms to take charge of Pacific. He was a man who had achieved distinction in putting down railroad riots, so he was well calculated for the task, although he was somewhat embarrassed by the laughter of the bystanders when his comrade called out to him, “ Take your club, Mike, but don’t use firearms unless your life ’s in danger ! ”

The station reached, the usual examination took place. Atlantic never could tell the name of the street in which he lived, nor the number of the house. Pacific could, perhaps, but she would n’t; and it must be said, in apology for her abnormal defiance, that her mental operations were somewhat confused, owing to copious indulgence in strong tea, ginger, sugar-cane, and dried fish. She had not been wisely approached in the first place, and she was in her sulkiest and most combative humor; in fact, when too urgently pressed for information as to her age, ancestry, and abiding-place, she told the worthy police officer to go to a locality for which he felt utterly unsuited, after a life spent in the exaltation of virtue and the suppression of vice. (The vocabulary of the twins was somewhat poverty-stricken in respect to the polite phrases of society, but in profanity it would have been rich for a parrot or a pirate.) The waifs were presently given into the care of the police matron, and her advice, sought a little later, was to the effect that the children had better be fed and put to bed, and as little trouble expended upon them as was consistent with a Christian city government.

“ It is possible their parents may call for them in the morning,” she said acidly, “ but I think it is more than likely that they have been deserted. I know if they belonged to me they ’d be lost forever before I tried to find them ! ” and she rubbed a black-and-blue spot on her person, which, if exposed, would have betrayed the shape, size, and general ground-plan of Pacific’s boot.

Kate Douglas Wiggin.