Mrs. Dixon's Culture Course

Miss RUTH HUTTON, editor of The Woman’s Friend, surveyed the card with the strong disfavor which an untimely interruption awakens in an exceedingly busy person. Wholly unawed by this atmosphere of disapproval, Tim, her small office-boy, stood awaiting her decision, gazing noncommittally into space the while.

“Go ’n ter see ’er?” he finally inquired, when the silence and inaction seemed to call for a dispassionate jog. “She says ’t ain’t business; it ’s only personal. I’d see ’er,” he added helpfully. “ I would! ”

Advice from Tim was unusual, but Miss Hutton was too absorbed to notice this surprising departure from his wonted professional indifference. She looked sadly at the pile of manuscripts on her desk, then through the windows at the heavy rain which had held out such false promise of a long day of uninterrupted reading, glanced at the card once more, and let her gaze return to her newly constituted advisory counsel.

“I suppose I ’ll have to,” she conceded, reluctantly, “ since she has come in this downpour. Tell her I ’m very busy, but that I can give her a few minutes.”

He was gone before she had finished, and Miss Hutton returned to her manuscripts with the grim determination to make use of every odd moment the fates accorded. She had hardly come to the end of a paragraph, however, before the boy was back, and close behind him was a little figure, so quaint, so unexpected, and withal so appealing, that Miss Hutton’s eyes brightened as she rose to greet it. Even Tim showed an appreciation of the unusual quality of the caller, to which he testified by offering her a chair — a courtesy which no amount of training had made habitual with him. Then he lingeringly departed, with several backward glances.

That the visitor was shy, badly dressed, and awkward in her carriage, were the editor’s first impressions. But her face was so striking, so exquisite, that it won the other’s interest before a word had been spoken. She was clad in black, so recently donned that she might have put it on for the first time just before entering. The black veil she pushed back from her forehead was covered with large, round, shiny spots. Her black gloves were new, and the unfilled kid tips drooped accusingly at the ends of her fingers. Her black gown testified too eloquently to the provincial hands that had made it. As its wearer deprecatingly seated herself, after a hesitating little bow, Miss Hutton observed that her narrow shoulders were bent forward, as if many burdens, borne for years, had rounded them. Her thin, soft hair was almost white.

As she took in these details with the quick appraisal natural to her profession, Miss Hutton’s glance rested again with interested wonder on her caller’s face. It was too worn, too old, too deeply-lined to be beautiful, as it had evidently once been. But its expression and withered charm largely redeemed the bad taste of the woman’s garments, the lack of grace in her carriage, even the gaucherie of her address.

“ You are the editor, ain’t you ? ” The voice of the caller was the voice of the far West, branded, as it were, with that section’s rolling r’s. “ I got to be sure before I say another word, for my business is private.”

She looked into Miss Hutton’s eyes as she spoke, with a wistful, childlike appeal that, clashing as it did with her evident force of character and usual independence, touched the editor oddly. She herself was but thirty; her visitor seemed fifty, at least. Yet the younger woman was dimly conscious of a flattering trust and dependence in the other’s attitude toward her, offered not through personal humility, but as a tribute to her work, her experience, and her standing in her profession. The caller’s next words confirmed this impression.

“Iam one of them ‘ constant readers ’ your magazine talks about,” she continued, ingratiatingly. “I’m Mrs. Joel Dixon. I’ve read your stories, too — lots of ’em, an’ ” (this last with uncompromising directness) “ I like some of ’em! I seen in your magazine how many women write to you for advice, and what good advice you give ’em; so when my turn come an’ I had to have advice, I come straight to you. I said to

myself, ‘ She knows, ’n’ she ’ll help me. I’d ruther go to her than to anybody else.’ So here I am.”

Miss Hutton was touched.

“Thank you. I hope I can help,” she said, gently. “You may be sure I will try.”

The black-gloved hand of her visitor dropped on her own for a moment in quick recognition of the promise, and was then withdrawn shyly, in sudden, acute self-consciousness.

“I knew you would,” she said quietly, but with a sort of proud delight. “ An’ I knew you’d look jest like you do, from your stories. I come three thousand miles to talk to you, an’ it’s goin’ to be worth while.”

Miss Hutton experienced a sudden disheartening sense of responsibility.

“Dear me!” she exclaimed, trying to pass the matter off lightly; “ that sounds rather serious. I hope I ’ll be up to it. But if I’m not, I can at least tell you who is, I think.”

The other woman nodded.

“That’s it,” she corroborated. “I don’t want nothing from you except advice. I want you to tell me who to go to an’ what to do, an’ that’s all. I’m a woman that don’t know a thing. I got to know everything, an’ I got to know it quick. How ’ll I begin? ”

Miss Hutton’s sense of responsibility deepened, while her interest increased. Moreover, though it seemed heresy to doubt those eyes, that maternal face, she was not yet wholly certain of her caller’s sincerity. She leaned back in her chair and regarded the speaker searchingly and in silence, while the latter looked at her eagerly, expectantly, like a hopeful child waiting to enter a pleasant garden whose key was in the hand of a kindly custodian. It was a full minute before Miss Hutton spoke. Then she said sympathetically, —

“Do you mind telling me a little more — going somewhat into detail ? I ’m afraid I don’t grasp the situation fully, and I can’t advise you until I do.”

The visitor’s vivid eyes brightened. She leaned forward eagerly, brushing aside the manuscripts on the desk to make place for her thin elbows, and resting her chin on her hands. Then she began to speak rapidly, looking straight before her into space. It was as if she was saying something she had rehearsed many times. Possibly she was.

“ That’s just what I want t’ do,” she cried urgently — “ tell you everything. That’s what I come for. I could n’t write it all in letters. It’s just this way. We was poor, me an’ my husband, an’ now we ’re rich. That don’t count for much, I know. Riches makes their own excuses for mistakes; ’nd then we’ve lived in little places, too, so nothin’ mattered. But my husband went into politics, an’ now we ’re comin’ to Washington in November to live there. That’s different. There’s style there. I got to make myself all over, an’ I ain’t got but seven months to do it in. I can’t afford to lose a minute. What must I do ? ’Nd how do I begin ?”

Miss Hutton smiled with some amused relief. After all, it was not a tragedy, as she had feared, but a not uncommon American condition, which many American women have faced with varying degrees of victory. When she spoke her voice showed her alleviated mood. It had something of the cajoling quality one uses to quiet an impatient child.

“You must n’t hope to do it all at once, of course,” she said, with a little shake of the head. “It can be done, but it’s not an affair of weeks, or months. You can make a good start —”

But Mrs. Joel Dixon had dropped her arms on the desk and had thrust forward a face transfigured by excitement.

“I tell you, I got to,” she cried, hoarsely. “Now. In seven months. That’s what I come to you for. Don’t I know I could read an’ study an’ work if I had years to do it in? It’s got to be done before November. Everything depends on it.” She stopped, gulped, and ended desperately, throwing her cards on the table, as it were. “ My home depends on it. My — my husband depends on it. He’s gettin’ ashamed of me. I got to keep up with him. I got to have culture! ”

Miss Hutton sat up and stared at her.

“ You mean — ” She hesitated.

The other woman nodded. Then suddenly, uncontrollably, she began to cry. She was too proud to hide her face. For a moment the big drops rolled down her cheeks, as she fumbled vaguely in her pocket for her handkerchief.

“ I’m ashamed of myself,” she sobbed at last. “ I don’t often make a fool of myself like this. But he thinks I don’t know nothing. He thinks I ain’t educated. An’ I ain’t — that’s the truth. And he says I ain’t got manners for society — an’ that’s true, too. He’s read about women that makes mistakes an’ gets laughed at, an’ hurts their husbands. He says men get along somehow, but women makes the trouble. He thinks I ought ’a stay home. But I can’t. We ain’t got no children an’ I’d — I’d die away from Joe. Besides, — well — there’s a woman in Washington he knows — ”

She had found her handkerchief, and now sobbed into it. Miss Hutton felt sick at heart. It was a tragedy, after all, and something in the nature of a miracle must be worked to save the happiness of this woman. It was not necessary to ask any more questions. She had the whole story, told and untold, and she looked with a grotesque awe into the heart that held just Joel Dixon. No other thing, or person, in all this wide, selfish world. She thought with great concentration.

“How much money have you?” she asked abruptly. “ I mean, how much of your own, to spend on this experiment ? ”

Mrs. Joel Dixon gave her eyes a conclusive dab with her handkerchief.

“ He give me five thousand dollars when I come,” she replied, “ an’ said to get clo’s, an’ send for more if I wanted it. He says I can go to Yurrup if I want to.”

“ He does n’t know what you are after ? what you wish to get in other directions ? ”

“ No, he don’t. I ’ll get what I want first. Then I ’ll tell him.”

“ Can you stay in New York all the time, from now until November? And work every minute ? ”

Mrs. Dixon’s wet eyes began to shine again.

“ I can,” she remarked with quiet fierceness. “ I expect to.”

Miss Hutton sat up and drew her papers together with an air of swift decision.

“ Then you shall begin,” she said. “ I ’ll turn you over to a corps of dressmakers, beauty specialists, masseurs, educators, and etiquette authorities that would make Mr. Dixon’s head swim if he knew of them. I won’t promise that all worldly wisdom will have been taken up by you at the end of seven months, but I give you my word that you will be so transformed in dress, manner, carriage, and general information, that Mr. Dixon will never get by that to anything else. Tim, bring me the telephone book.”

Mrs. Joel Dixon drew a deep breath.

“ I knew you would,” she cried, elatedly. “ I knew you could do anything! ”

Miss Hutton laughed.

“ I ’m not going to do it,” she said cheerfully. “ You are. And you’ll find it’s not so easy. You will get discouraged very often, but you must stand to your guns. You ’ve two things to keep you at it. Your husband and that Washington woman. You must n’t give up.”

Mrs. Dixon’s lips set in a straight line.

“ I ’ll keep at it, fast enough,” she remarked poignantly. “ But I dunno what I can ever do to pay you back,” she added.

Miss Hutton turned in her office-chair and regarded her.

“ You can never do anything to pay me back,” she said, coolly and crisply. “ That must be distinctly understood. This is not a financial arrangement. I ’ll do my best because I’m interested and want to see you win; and because, as you say, you are one of our ‘ constant readers.’ All I have to do is to put you into the hands of the right people, and make bargains which will prevent them from robbing you. For the rest,” — she smiled as a sudden thought struck her, — “ if you want to do something for me you may ask me to dinner the first evening Mr. Dixon spends with you here in New York. I would like to see him trying to live up to you! ”

The following weeks were weeks of such feverish activity in the life of Mrs. Joel Dixon that she confided to Miss Hutton, at moments, as she made her way through the complicated maze of society ways and manners, her conviction that she and her mundane aspirations would soon find rest in an uncritical grave in her native state.

On the whole, however, she remained fairly cheerful and undaunted, — a condition which testified eloquently to the strength of her nervous system and the intrepidity of her soul. She was in the hands of six specialists, each unaware of her identity, each believing that only a social bee was buzzing in her plain little bonnet, and each pleasantly convinced that in her own individual efforts lay eventual success or failure. She was comfortably but unostentatiously established in an apartment in a small uptown family hotel; and here Miss Hutton, whose interest in her deepened as time passed, dropped in once or twice a week, to put her through her paces, and to offer congratulations, sympathy, or support, as her action and form demanded. To this first friend, still her only disinterested one, Mrs. Dixon clung with a devotion and dependence that contrasted oddly with the grim determination with which she met all the other interests of her temporarily complicated life, To Miss Hutton, too, she still brought all her problems, and it amused and touched that astute young person to discover that her lightest word on any subject carried more weight with her protégée than the combined decisions of all her teachers. “ Teachers,” Mrs. Dixon called them indiscriminately, whether their instruction had to do with the elemental rules of English grammar, as in the case of Miss Virginia Jefferson, or the correct placing of a new puff on a head which was rapidly becoming a model example of the coiffeur’s art. Sometimes her questions, like those of a child, were not easy to answer. Once, when Miss Hutton had come upon her unexpectedly in a Fifth Avenue manicure establishment, she broached one of these.

“ I went to Sherry’s yesterday for afternoon tea,” she confided, as she lent her hands to the manicure’s efforts and her ears to Miss Jefferson’s possible pounce upon a malapropism. Miss Jefferson was a nice girl, whose task was to be with Mrs. Dixon night and day, listening to her grammar with the interested attention of one whose livelihood depended upon detecting and correcting its lapses. It may be added that Miss Jefferson’s occupation was somewhat strenuous.

“ Mrs. Dean took me,” continued the victim, “ and I seen — ”

“ Saw! ” said Miss Jefferson, who seemed prepared for this lapse.

“ Saw,” repeated Mrs. Dixon thoughtfully. “ I saw lots of the women put their elbows on the tables. Why were they doin’ that ? Mrs. Dean won’t let me do it, and I ain’t — ”

“ Have n’t,” from Miss Jefferson.

“ Have n’t had ’em on for weeks. But if it was wrong like she says — ”

“ As she said.”

“ As she said” (a trifle emphatically), “ why was — ”

“ Were, were.”

“ Were, were they doin’ it ? ”

Miss Hutton explained feebly that possibly the assemblage represented those unfortunates not favored with knowledge of Mrs. Dean’s high standards, but here she was promptly set right. Through frequent attendance at concerts, theatres, and tea-rooms, in the care of Miss Jefferson or the indefatigable Mrs. Dean, who had her social graces under cultivation, their victim had learned to know by sight many of society’s prominent belles and matrons.

“ Mrs. Mayo talked so loud at the theatre last night,” Mrs. Dixon resumed, “ that the folks in her box could n’t hear the play. The folks in the next box was just as bad. Now, Mrs. Dean don’t let me say a word except between the acts. An’ mighty few then — she’s so busy talking herself. Miss Eva Twombly had her knees crossed all through the Symphony Concert last Saturday, an’ she swung her foot the hull time, for I watched. If I crossed my knees and swung my feet in public any more, I guess Mrs. Dean would drop dead. What do you s’pose she’d say ? ”

Miss Hutton endeavored to rise to the occasion, though without enthusiasm.

“ I suppose she’d say,” she hazarded frankly, “ that you had n’t yet reached the point where you can do anything you please, and that those other women have.”

Miss Jefferson, who was hovering about her victim with an interest almost painfully acute, came to Miss Hutton’s assistance.

“ It really does n’t do to use one’s manners all at once,” she contributed. “ Why,” she went on reflectively, “ when I graduated at the convent I had the most perfect manners of any girl in my set, but I had to drop most of them the first year. They embarrassed people too much.”

Mrs. Joel Dixon looked dazed, as well she might.

“ Wh — why did they?” she stammered.

Miss Jefferson explained.

“ Nobody else had any, you see,” she observed affably, “ anti the contrast worried them. They felt that they had to live up to me, and I could see it was a strain. So I came down to them, and we were all more comfortable.”

She strolled away to pay the bill after this oracular utterance, leaving Mrs. Dixon in a mental fog which Miss Hutton did not attempt to dissipate. She did her best, however, to respond to the look of grieved inquiry in her protégée’s eyes.

“ Why do I have to learn things, then, if no one does ’em ? ” Mrs. Dixon inquired trenchantly, and with considerable point.

“ Do exactly as Mrs. Dean tells you,” Miss Hutton advised, sympathetically. “ Then you will be prepared for any occasion and — er — later, you can use your own judgment as to whether you will use your manners every day, or put them away in camphor balls occasionally, like the rest.”

She was glad to be interrupted here by the cheerful shrieks of two young buds, who, seated at opposite ends of the room, were carrying on a private conversation regardless of this handicap. She observed, however, that though Mrs. Dixon lent herself politely to a change of topic, the thoughtful expression did not materially lift from her brow.

As the weeks passed, it became plain that, however confused her mental processes might be, Mrs. Dixon was making astonishing progress. Her new dressmaker had done all that was expected of her, and the physical-culture instructor had so ably supplemented her efforts that Mrs. Dixon not only had beautiful clothes, but had learned how to wear them. Miss Hutton hardly recognized in the slender, exquisitely gowned and coiffured woman who called at her office one day in May, the pathetic little pilgrim of two months before. As usual, Mrs. Dixon had her problem. One whose destiny lies temporarily in the hands of specialists is frequently pained by marked differences of opinion among these ultimate arbiters. In Mrs. Dixon’s case these differences concerned many things.

“ You see,” she explained to Miss Hutton after greetings had been exchanged, “ Mrs. Dean an’ Mrs. Harwood are mixin’ me all up. Mrs. Dean told me I mus’ read Alice-for-Short this week, so ’s I could converse about it, an’ Mrs. Harwood said I must read The Care of the Teeth, so I ’d learn how to take better care of what I got left, I ain’t got time for both, so I ’m readin’ The Teeth because that’s really important, as Mrs. Harwood says; an’ Mrs. Dean was so hurt I thought she was goin’ to leave. Now, which was the one to read ? ”

Miss Hutton hesitated, then effected a masterly compromise.

“ I’d read some of each, if I were you,” she advised, “ and finish them next week. For purposes of conversation it’s really better to be half through a novel. That gives the person you are talking to a glorious chance to tell you all the rest and spoil the plot.”

Mrs. Dixon brooded darkly over this.

“ An’ how’m I goin’ to know,” she demanded gloomily, “ when you folks are serious and when you ain’t ? Of course,” she added quickly, “ I can tell when you laff; but when you say things that sound queer and don’t laff, how can I tell ? ”

Miss Hutton dodged this esoteric problem.

“ What else are you doing ? ” she asked with interest. “ How do you divide your days to get into them all you have to do ? ”

Her protégée reflected. Seated in her high-backed chair and holding herself with dignity and erectness, her bent shoulders straightened, her head well up, her complexion clear, her wrinkles disappearing, her gown the work of the clever hands of Fifth Avenue’s most audacious filcher of Parisian ideas for her “ confections,” her lavender hat breathing of the Rue de la Paix, she was transformed and she knew it. The consciousness gave her a new dignity and self-possession, quaint but pleasing.

“ Mrs. Dean has me read a leadin’ New York newspaper every morning,” she began thoughtfully, “ so I do that in bed after my bath, an’ while I’m havin’ breakfast. Then Mrs. Dean comes an’ we talk over the news an’ happenens. She certainly does tell me th’ most enterestin’ things about society an’ whut ’s goin’ on. It’s a noo world. Then the massoose comes an’ the manicure, an’ the hairdresser, an’ when they ’re gone it’s dinner-time — I mean luncheon. After lunch I take a nap to gain flesh. Mrs. Harwood says I got to gain fifteen pounds to make my figger right. Then we go for a drive in the Park an’ look at the other women. Of course Miss Jefferson is with me the hull time, an’ whenever I open my mouth she just about jumps down it, correctin’ my mistakes.”

Mrs. Dixon paused and sighed heavily. It was plain that in Miss Jefferson and her efforts were combined the severest ordeal and the slowest progress of the experience. Miss Hutton’s silence was sympathetic.

“ That’s very important, you know,” she remarked at last.

Mrs. Dixon’s bright eyes flashed.

“ Well, I guess I know it,” she corroborated. “ You don’t think I’d stand it a minute if’t wan’t important. But I do stand it. I got to.” Her voice fell into silence, and her eyes took on a far-away look. “ I got to have culture,” she then said, with bitter doggedness.

Miss Hutton hastened to divert her mind from a too trying sense of responsibility.

“ When do you read ? ” she asked.

With another sigh Mrs. Joel Dixon took up the chronicle of the daily routine of a strenuous life.

“ When we get back from our drive,” she resumed dully, “I read till five o’clock with Mrs. Dean. She comes again then, an’ she stays till after dinner. She gives me my lessons then, on the Elements.”

Miss Hutton looked puzzled.

“ The Elements? ” she queried, knitting her brows.

“ The Elements, yes — the Elements of Knowledge, Mrs. Dean calls ’em. Who are our best authors, an’ what have they written, an’ bridge, an’ our fav’rite composers, an’ Wagner, an’ the modern drama, an’ does it mean anything. We talk about them all through supper — dinner I mean, when she ain’t telling me which fork an’ how to keep my shoulders up, an’ not to forget my napkin, an’ to eat slow as if I was n’t hungry. Then at night we go to see a play, or hear a concert or something. I certainly would enjoy that if the woman would leave me alone to listen to the music an’ — an’ — think of home.”

The cheery voice faltered a little, and Mrs. Dixon’s eyes dropped under the other’s quick look of inquiry. Then she rushed on rapidly. “ But she don’t. It’s ' Strauss wrote ’ this, and ' Wagner wrote ’ that, an’ ‘ pronounce Debussey again,’ till I’m just about sick.”

Miss Hutton regarded her with reproachful eyes.

“ I believe you ’re weakening,” she cried, subtly. “ I believe you ’re getting ready to throw it all up. Is that what you came to say ? ”

With a supreme effort, the little woman pulled herself together.

“No, it ain’t,” she said, bringing her teeth together with a decisive click. “ It ain’t nothin’ of the sort. I just come to have the satisfaction of speakin’ right out plain to some one for once, without getting stopped an’ corrected. I just want to say that I’m so sick of that parcel of women up to my rooms that I have horrid dreams about ’em at night. I feel better now since I’ve said it. But I ain’t goin’ to give up, now nor never. I’m agoin’ to do what I started to do, if it kills me.”

Miss Hutton applauded this Spartan standpoint. “ And really you like some of it; you know you do,” she reminded her caller, with vivacious sympathy. “ The drives, the theatres, the music, the new life, the excitement — it’s all worth while. And think of how you are improving. For you are.”

Mrs. Joel Dixon leaned forward and looked searchingly into the eyes which sustained this arraignment without a flicker.

“ Am I ? ” she asked, almost under her breath, as if afraid to pronounce the words. “ Honest, now? That’s what I really come to ask. Am I ? I know you’d tell me the truth. I know I know more, but does it show ? That’s what I want to know. Have I got any culture ? Do I act as if I had ? ”

Miss Hutton gave her back a look as straight as her own.

“ Mrs. Dixon,” she said steadily, “ I have just told you that you have improved tremendously. In looks, in dress, in carriage, you are a very different woman, and it has all been done in less than three months. The other things, — the reading, the general knowledge, take more time. People spend their lives acquiring culture. You must not be too impatient. I told you that in the beginning.”

Mrs. Dixon rose, droopingly, and then, in quick remembrance, straightened her slender shoulders and lifted her head high. Until she spoke she had quite the air of a well-set-up woman of the world.

“ Well,” she said lingeringly, “ I guess I ’ll go home now an’ take my physical culture exercises. I forgot ’em this morning. And it’s real good of you to take so much int’rest.”

Then, with a sudden complete change of manner and tone, she raised her hand in languid farewell greeting. “Good-by,” she drawled. “ Thanks so much. Such a nice chat; ” and with a swish of silk petticoats she was gone, leaving Miss Hutton gasping. The thing was a trifle exaggerated, and the twinkle in Mrs. Dixon’s brilliant bird-like eyes, which she could not quite control, showed that she knew it was. But it was Mrs. Dean to the life, the superior and elegant Mrs. Dean, as all her friends knew her.

Another month brought another crisis in Mrs. Dixon’s life. Mrs. Dean was to take her to a dinner — a small but elegant affair, given by a family lingering late in town and sufficiently devoted to Mrs. Dean to give her “ pupil ” an evening, a meal, and an object lesson. In high excitement Mrs. Dixon sought Miss Hutton on the eve of this festivity. As to clothes and conduct she had been sufficiently, almost exhaustively, coached by

Mrs. Dean, who was also, of course, to grace the festive board. It was a more difficult problem she had for Miss Hutton’s solution. Her speech, in the interval, had acquired that improvement which is indicated by instantaneous correction of errors.

“ When I meet ’em — them,” she asked pathetically, “ shall I act as if I knew everything and then let ’em — them find out I don’t, or shall I tell ’em — them I don’t, and let ’em — them get over it ? ”

“ Don’t say a word that you don’t have to say,” cautioned Miss Hutton candidly. “ Act your best, listen intelligently, talk very little, and don’t speak at all unless you are sure of what you say. Fill in the pauses with smiles. Your smile is charming.”

Mrs. Dixon walked over to the office mirror, grinned into it, and regarded the result with unlifted gloom.

“ Mrs. Dean knows the men I’m going to set — sit between,” she remarked drearily, when she returned to her friend after this grotesque moment of self-communion. “ One of ’em — them is western. We can talk about home. He’s a mining man, an’ I guess I ain’t — have not listened to Joe Dixon talking mines at every meal I ’ve et — eaten for twentyfive years without learning something about mines, too. Him an’ me — he and I will get on all right. But the other man is a nauthor, an’ why they put him next to me,” ended Mrs. Dixon with a wail, “I’m sure I dunno — I can’t guess.”

It was plain that she was in a panic over the prospect of her first formal dinner “ in society,” but Miss Hutton finally succeeded in soothing her agitation.

“ They ’s — there’s to be music right after dinner,” she remarked at last, cheering perceptibly at the thought, “ so we won’t have to talk none — any then.”

Miss Hutton sailed for Europe ten days later, not, however, without having learned that the little dinner was a success and that already there was talk of another, at which Mrs. Dixon herself was to preside as hostess. Such rapid and dashing plunges into the social maelstrom seemed hardly wise, but she realized that time was limited, and that Mrs. Dixon was undoubtedly pressing matters forward with characteristic impatience. She was gone three months, and when she returned, her first caller, quite appropriately, was Mrs. Joel Dixon. She was superbly gowned, and she swept into the office with an easy grace and an assurance which made Miss Hutton open her eyes. Then she looked at her caller’s face and they widened still more, for it was radiant, glowing, blushing, ecstatic, lovelit — the face of a girl-bride. Close behind her slender figure, with eyes in which astonished admiration was still the principal element, loomed a huge, ungainly masculine bulk, with a certain rugged strength in the massive head and square jaw, but loose-jointed, rather awkward, and wholly ill at ease. With a little delighted gurgle and flutter Mrs. Dixon ushered this half-Caliban into the office.

Oh, Miss Hutton,” she exclaimed, “ this is my husband. This is Joel — Mr. Dixon. I want you to meet him, and there ’s only to-day, because we ’re going back West to-night. And oh, Miss Hutton,” — this last in a rapt staccato of rapture, of gratitude, — “ we’ve lost all our money. We ’re poor again. We don’t have to live in Washington. We don’t have to go into society. We ’re going back home ! ”

So might those last four words be spoken by the exile from Italy after a lifetime in the desert; nay, even so by the Christian seeing the peace of the Eternal City before him at the end of life’s long wait. Unexpected, unbidden, the tears rushed to Miss Hutton’s eyes. Still full, they turned toward Mr. Dixon. Slowly he nodded as he shook hands, and then, as if feeling that the situation demanded something more from him, he said quietly, —

“ We got to begin all over. Takes it well, don’t she? That’s pluck.”

Miss Hutton shook her head.

“ I should call it by a bigger name,” she answered softly.

Mr. Dixon regarded his wife, the look of dazed wonder and admiration deepening in his eyes. It was plain that he found it difficult to keep them off her.

“ It’s pretty tough,” he said slowly, “ after her developing this way, to have to take it all out home and bury it. Tough, I call it,” he repeated, with much firmness. “ She ought to shine in society.”

His wife, who had been regarding him adoringly, spoke up at this.

“ Joel Dixon,” she said crisply, “ any shining I ’d have done anywhere would have been for you. I guess it won’t be lost on you, if it’s all done now in our own home; will it? That,” she added shyly, “ is the way I’d rather have it.”

Her look and her bearing as she spoke were things she had not learned from Mrs Dean — but that lady might have been proud to claim them.