Chambers Robert William
Ailsa Paige
He was walking to and fro, silent and white under his self-control. She, seated, gazed at him as though stunned, but every pulse was riotously unsteady.
"I suppose you think me crazy," he said hoarsely, "but I've not known a moment's peace of mind since that night—not one! I couldn't keep away any longer. I can't even hold my tongue now, though I suppose it's ruining me every time I move it. It's a crazy thing to come here and say what I'm saying."
He went over and sat down again, and bent his dark gaze on the floor. Then:
"Can you forgive what I have done to you?"
She tried to answer, and only made a sign of faint assent. She no longer comprehended herself or the emotions menacing her. A curious tranquillity quieted her at moments—intervals in which she seemed to sit apart watching the development of another woman, listening to her own speech, patient with her own silences. There was a droop to her shoulders now; his own were sagging as he leaned slightly forward in his chair, arms resting on his knees, while around them the magic ebbed, eddied, ebbed; and lassitude succeeded tension; and she stirred, looked up at him with eyes that seemed dazed at first, then widened slowly into waking; and he saw in them the first clear dawn of alarm. Suddenly she flushed and sprang to her feet, the bright colour surging to her hair.
"Don't!" he said. "Don't reason! There will be nothing left of me if you do—or of, these moments. You will hate them—and me, if you reason. Don't think—until we see each other again!"
She dropped her eyes slowly, and slowly shook her head.
"You ask too much," she said. "You should not have said that." All the glamour was fading. Her senses were seeking their balance after the incredible storm that had whirled them into chaos.
Fear stirred sharply, then consternation—flashes of panic pierced her with darts of shame, as though she had been in physical contact with this man.
All her outraged soul leaped to arms, quivering now under the reaction; the man's mere presence was becoming unendurable; the room stifled her. She turned, scarce knowing what she was doing; and at the same moment her sister-in-law entered.
Berkley, already on his feet, turned short: and when she offered him a hand as slim and white as Ailsa's, he glanced inquiringly at the latter, not at all certain who this charming woman might be.
"Mrs. Craig," said Ailsa.
"I don't believe it," he said. "You haven't grown-up children!"
"Don't you really believe it, Mr. Berkley? Or is it just the flattering Irish in you that natters us poor women to our destruction?"
He had sense and wit enough to pay her a quick and really graceful compliment; to which she responded, still laughing:
"Oh, it is the Ormond in you! I am truly ve'y glad you came. You are Constance Berkley's son—Connie Berkley! The sweetest girl that ever lived."
There was a silence. Then Mrs. Craig said gently:
"I was her maid of honour, Mr. Berkley."
Ailsa raised her eyes to his altered face, startled at the change in it. He looked at her absently, then his gaze reverted to Ailsa Paige.
"I loved her dearly," said Mrs. Craig, dropping a light, impulsive hand on his. "I want her son to know it."
Her eyes were soft and compassionate; her hand still lingered lightly on his, and she let it rest so.
"Mrs. Craig," he said, "you are the most real person I have known in many years among the phantoms. I thought your sister-in-law was. But you are still more real."
"Am I?" she laid her other hand over his, considering him earnestly. Ailsa looking on, astonished, noticed a singular radiance on his face—the pale transfiguration from some quick inward illumination.
Then Celia Craig's voice sounded almost caressingly:
"I think you should have come to see us long ago." A pause. "You are as welcome in this house as your mother would be if she were living. I love and honour her memory."
"I have honoured little else in the world," he said. They looked at one another for a moment; then her quick smile broke out. "I have an album. There are some Paiges, Ormonds, and Berkleys in it–"
Ailsa came forward slowly.
"Shall I look for it, Celia?"
"No, Honey-bell." She turned lightly and went into the back parlour, smiling mysteriously to herself, her vast, pale-blue crinoline rustling against the furniture.
"My sister-in-law," said Ailsa, after an interval of silent constraint, "is very Southern. Any sort of kinship means a great deal to her. I, of course, am Northern, and regard such matters as unimportant."
"It is very gracious of Mrs. Craig to remember it," he said. "I know nothing finer than confidence in one's own kin."
She flushed angrily. "I have not that confidence—in kinsman."
For a moment their eyes met. Hers were hard as purple steel.
"Is that final?"
"Yes."
The muscles in his cheeks grew tense, then into his eyes came that reckless glimmer which in the beginning she had distrusted—a gay, irresponsible radiance which seemed to mock at all things worthy.
He said: "No, it is not final. I shall come back to you."
She answered him in an even, passionless voice:
"A moment ago I was uncertain; now I know you. You are what they say you are. I never wish to see you again."
Celia Craig came back with the album. Berkley sprang to relieve her of the big book and a box full of silhouettes, miniatures, and daguerreotypes. They placed the family depository upon the table and then bent over it together.
Ailsa remained standing by the window, looking steadily at nothing, a burning sensation in both cheeks.
At intervals, through the intensity of her silence, she heard Celia's fresh, sweet laughter, and Berkley's humorous and engaging voice. She glanced sideways at the back of his dark curly head where it bent beside Celia's over the album. What an insolently reckless head it was! She thought that she had never before seen the back of any man's head so significant of character—or the want of it. And the same quality—or the lack of it—now seemed to her to pervade his supple body, his well-set shoulders, his voice, every movement, every feature—something everywhere about him that warned and troubled.
Suddenly the blood burnt her cheeks with a perfectly incomprehensible desire to see his face again. She heard her sister-in-law saying:
"We Paiges and Berkleys are kin to the Ormonds and the Earls of Ossory. The Estcourts, the Paiges, the Craigs, the Lents, the Berkleys, intermarried a hundred years ago. . . . My grandmother knew yours, but the North is very strange in such matters. . . . Why did you never before come?"
He said: "It's one of those things a man is always expecting to do, and is always astonished that he hasn't done. Am I unpardonable?"
"I did not mean it in that way."
He turned his dark, comely head and looked at her as they bent together above the album.
"I know you didn't. My answer was not frank. The reason I never came to you before was that—I did not know I would be welcomed."
Their voices dropped. Ailsa standing by the window, watching the orioles in the maple, could no longer distinguish what they were saying.
He said: "You were bridesmaid to my mother. You are the Celia Paige of her letters."
"She is always Connie Berkley to me. I loved no woman better. I love her still."
"I found that out yesterday. That is why I dared come. I found, among the English letters, one from you to her, written—after."
"I wrote her again and again. She never replied. Thank God, she knew I loved her to the last."
He rested on the tabletop and stood leaning over and looking down.
"Dear Mr. Berkley," she murmured gently.
He straightened himself, passed a hesitating hand across his forehead, ruffling the short curly hair. Then his preoccupied gaze wandered. Ailsa turned toward him at the same moment, and instantly a flicker of malice transformed the nobility of his set features:
"It seems," he said, "that you and I are irrevocably related in all kinds of delightful ways, Mrs. Paige. Your sister-in-law very charmingly admits it, graciously overlooks and pardons my many delinquencies, and has asked me to come again. Will you ask me, too?"
Ailsa merely looked at him.
Mrs. Craig said, laughing: "I knew you were all Ormond and entirely Irish as soon as I came in the do'—befo' I became aware of your racial fluency. I speak fo' my husband and myse'f when I say, please remember that our do' is ve'y wide open to our own kin—and that you are of them–"
"Oh, I'm all sorts of things beside—" He paused for a second—"Cousin Celia," he added so lightly that the grace with which he said it covered the impudence, and she laughed in semi-critical approval and turned to Ailsa, whose smile in response was chilly—chillier still when Berkley did what few men have done convincingly since powdered hair and knee-breeches became unfashionable—bent to salute Celia Craig's fingertips. Then he turned to her and took his leave of her in a conventional manner entirely worthy of the name his mother bore,—and her mother before her, and many a handsome man and many a beautiful woman back to times when a great duke stood unjustly attainted, and the Ormonds served their king with steel sword and golden ewer; and served him faithfully and well.
Camilla Lent called a little later. Ailsa was in the backyard garden, a trowel in her hand, industriously loosening the earth around the prairie roses.
"Camilla," she said, looking up from where she was kneeling among the shrubs, "what was it you said this morning about Mr. Berkley being some unpleasant kind of man?"
"How funny," laughed Camilla. "You asked me that twice before."
"Did I? I forgot," said Mrs. Paige with a shrug; and, bending over again, became exceedingly busy with her trowel until the fire in her cheeks had cooled.
"Every woman that ever saw him becomes infatuated with Phil Berkley," said Camilla cheerfully. "I was. You will be. And the worst of it is he's simply not worth it."
"I—thought not."
"Why did you think not?"
"I don't know why."
"He can be fascinating," said Camilla reflectively, "but he doesn't always trouble himself to be."
"Doesn't he?" said Ailsa with a strange sense of relief.
Camilla hesitated, lowered her voice.
"They say he is fast," she whispered. Ailsa, on her knees, turned and looked up.
"Whatever that means," added Camilla, shuddering. "But all the same, every girl who sees him begins to adore him immediately until her parents make her stop."
"How silly," said Ailsa in a leisurely level voice. But her heart was beating furiously, and she turned to her roses with a blind energy that threatened them root and runner.
"How did you happen to think of him at all?" continued Camilla mischievously.
"He called on—Mrs. Craig this afternoon."
"I didn't know she knew him."
"They are related—distantly—I believe–"
"Oh," exclaimed Camilla. "I'm terribly sorry I spoke that way about him, dear–"
"I don't care what you say about him," returned Ailsa Paige fiercely, emptying some grains of sand out of one of her gloves; resolutely emptying her mind, too, of Philip Berkley.
"Dear," she added gaily to Camilla, "come in and we'll have tea and gossip, English fashion. And I'll tell you about my new duties at the Home for Destitute Children—every morning from ten to twelve, my dear, in their horrid old infirmary—the poor little darlings!—and I would be there all day if I wasn't a selfish, indolent, pleasure-loving creature without an ounce of womanly feeling—Yes I am! I must be, to go about to galleries and dances and Philharmonics when there are motherless children in that infirmary, as sick for lack of love as for the hundred and one ailments distressing their tender little bodies."
But over their tea and marmalade and toast she became less communicative; and once or twice the conversation betrayed an unexpected tendency to drift toward Berkley.
"I haven't the slightest curiosity concerning him, dear," said Ailsa, attempting corroboration in a yawn—which indiscretion she was unable to accomplish.
"Well," remarked Camilla, "the chances are that you've seen the last of him if you showed it too plainly. Men don't come back when a girl doesn't wish them to. Do they?"
After Camilla had gone, Ailsa roamed about the parlours, apparently renewing her acquaintance with the familiar decorations. Sometimes she stood at windows, looking thoughtfully into the empty street; sometimes she sat in corners, critically surveying empty space.
Yes, the chances were that he would scarcely care to come back. A man of that kind did not belong in her sister-in-law's house, anyway, nor in her own—a man who could appeal to a woman for a favourable opinion of himself, asking her to suspend her reason, stifle logic, stultify her own intelligence, and trust to a sentimental impulse that he deserved the toleration and consideration which he asked for. . . . It was certainly well for her that he should not return. . . . It would be better for her to lay the entire matter before her sister-in-law—that was what she would do immediately!
She sprang to her feet and ran lightly up-stairs; but, fast as she fled, thought outran her slender flying feet, and she came at last very leisurely into Celia's room, a subdued, demure opportunist, apparently with nothing on her mind and conscience,
"If I may have the carriage at ten, Celia, I'll begin on the Destitute Children to-morrow. . . . Poor babies! . . . If they only had once a week as wholesome food as is wasted in this city every day by Irish servants . . . which reminds me—I suppose you will have to invite your new kinsman to dine with you."
"There is loads of time for that, Honey-bud," said her sister-in-law, glancing up absently from the note she was writing.
"I was merely wondering whether it was necessary at all," observed Ailsa Paige, without interest.
But Celia had begun to write again. "I'll ask him," she said in her softly preoccupied voice, "Saturday, I think."
"Oh, but I'm invited to the Cortlandt's," began Ailsa, and caught her under lip in her teeth. Then she turned and walked noiselessly into her bedroom, and sat down on the bed and looked at the wall.
CHAPTER IV
It was almost mid-April; and still the silvery-green tassels on the wistaria showed no hint of the blue petals folded within; but the maples' leafless symmetry was already veined with fire. Faint perfume from Long Island woodlands, wandering puffs of wind from salt meadows freshened the city streets; St. Felix Street boasted a lilac bush in leaf; Oxford Street was gay with hyacinths and a winter-battered butterfly; and in Fort Greene Place the grassy door-yards were exquisite with crocus bloom. Peace, good-will, and spring on earth; but in men's souls a silence as of winter.
To Northland folk the unclosing buds of April brought no awakening; lethargy fettered all, arresting vigour, sapping desire. An immense inertia chained progress in its tracks, while overhead the gray storm-wrack fled away,—misty, monstrous, gale-driven before the coming hurricane.
Still, for the Northland, there remained now little of the keener suspense since those first fiery outbursts in the South; but all through the winter the dull pain throbbed in silence as star after star dropped from the old galaxy and fell flashing into the new.
And it was a time of apathy, acquiescence, stupefied incredulity; a time of dull faith in destiny, duller resignation.
The printed news was read day after day by a people who understood nothing, neither the cautious arming nor the bold disarming, nor the silent fall of fortified places, nor the swift dismantling of tall ships—nor did they comprehend the ceaseless tremors of a land slowly crumbling under the subtle pressure—nor that at last the vast disintegration of the matrix would disclose the forming crystal of another nation cradled there, glittering, naming under the splendour of the Southern skies.
A palsied Old Year had gone out. The mindless old man—he who had been President—went with it. A New Year had come in, and on its infant heels shambled a tall, gaunt shape that seated itself by the White House windows and looked out into the murk of things with eyes that no man understood.
And now the soft sun of April spun a spell upon the Northland folk; for they had eyes but they saw not; ears had they, but they heard not; neither spoke they through the mouth.
To them only one figure seemed real, looming above the vast and motionless mirage where a continent stood watching the parapets of a sea-girt fort off Charleston.
But the nation looked too long; the mirage closed in; fort, sea, the flag itself, became unreal; the lone figure on the parapet turned to a phantom. God's will was doing. Who dared doubt?
"There seems to be no doubt in the South," observed Ailsa Paige to her brother-in-law one fragrant evening after dinner where, in the dusk, the family had gathered on the stoop after the custom of a simpler era.
Along the dim street long lines of front stoops blossomed with the light spring gowns of women and young girls, pale, dainty clusters in the dusk set with darker figures, where sparks from cigars glowed and waned in the darkness.
Windows were open, here and there a gas jet in a globe flickered inside a room, but the street was dusky and tranquil as a country lane, and unilluminated save where at far intervals lamp-posts stood in a circle of pale light, around which a few moths hovered.
"The rebels," repeated Ailsa, "appear to have no doubts, honest or otherwise. They've sent seven thousand troops to the Charleston fortifications—the paper says."
Stephen Craig heard his cousin speak but made no response. He was smoking openly and in sight of his entire family the cigar which had, heretofore, been consumed surreptitiously. His mother sat close to his shoulder, rallying him like a tormenting schoolgirl, and, at intervals, turning to look back at her husband who stood on the steps beside her, a little amused, a little proud, a little inclined to be critical of this tall son of his who yesterday had been a boy.
The younger daughters of the house, Paige and Marye, strolled past, bareheaded, arms linked, in company with Camilla and Jimmy Lent.
"O dad!" called out Paige softly, "Jim says that Major Anderson is to be reinforced at once. There was a bulletin this evening."
"I am very glad to hear it, sweetheart," said her father, smiling through his eye-glasses.
Stephen bent forward across his mother's shoulder. "Is that true, father?"
"Camilla's brother has probably been reading the Tribune's evening bulletin. The Herald bulletin says that the Cabinet has ordered the evacuation of Fort Sumter; the Times says Major Anderson is to be reinforced; the World says that he abandoned the fort last night; and they all say he has been summoned to surrender. Take your choice, Steve," he added wearily. "There is only one wire working from the South, and the rebels control that."
"Are you tired, Curt?" asked his wife, looking around and up at him.
He seated himself and readjusted his eye-glasses.
"No, dear—only of this nightmare we are living in"—he stopped abruptly. Politics had been avoided between them. There was a short silence; he felt his wife's hand touch his in the darkness—sign of a tender respect for his perplexity, but not for his political views.
"Forgive me, dear, for using the word 'rebel,'" he said, smiling and straightening his shoulders. "Where have you and Ailsa been to-day? Did you go to New York?"
"Yes. We saw the Academy, and, oh, Curt! there are some very striking landscapes—two by Gifford; and the cutest portrait of a girl by Wiyam Hunt. And your friend Bierstadt has a Western scene—all fireworks! and, dear, Eastman Johnson was there—and Kensett sent such a cunning little landscape. We lunched at Taylor's." She lowered her voice to a whisper. "Ailsa did look too cute fo' words. I declare she is the most engaging little minx. Eve'y man sta'ed at her. I wish she would marry again and be happy. She doesn't know what a happy love affair can be—poor baby."
"Do you?" asked her husband.
"Are you beginning to co't me again, Curt?"
"Have I ever ceased?—you little Rebel!"
"No," she said under her breath.
"By the way, Celia," he said smiling, "that young man—cousin of yours—Berkley, turned up promptly to-day. I gave him a room in the office."
"That was certainly ve'y frien'ly of you, Curt!" she responded warmly. "You will be patient with him, won't you?"
"I've had to be already. I gave him a commission to collect some rents and he came back fifty dollars short, calmly explaining that one of our lodgers looked poor and he hated to ask for the rent."
"O Curt—the boy is ve'y sweet and wa'm-hearted. Were you cross with him?"
"Not very. I imparted a few plain truths—very pleasantly, Celia. He knew better; there's a sort of an impish streak in him—also an inclination for the pleasant by-ways of life. . . . He had better let drink alone, too, if he expects to remain in my office. I told him that."
"Does he—the foolish baby!"
"Oh, probably not very much. I don't know; he's likable, but—he hasn't inspired me with any overwhelming respect and confidence. His record is not exactly savoury. But he's your protege, and I'll stand him as long as you can."
"Thank you, Curt. We must be gentle to him. I shall ask him to dinner and we can give a May dance perhaps—something informal and pretty—What is the matter, Curt?"
"Nothing, dear. . . . Only I wouldn't plan anything just yet—I mean for the present—not for a few days, anyway–"
He shrugged, removed his glasses, polished them on his handkerchief, and sat holding them, his short-sighted eyes lost in reverie.
His wife endured it to the limit of patience:
"Curt," she began in a lower voice, "you and I gen'ally avoid certain matters, dear—but—ev'ything is sure to come right in the end—isn't it? The No'th is going to be sensible."
"In the—end," he admitted quietly. And between them the ocean sprang into view again.
"I wonder—" She stopped, and an inexplicable uneasiness stirred in her breast. She looked around at her son, her left hand fell protectingly upon his shoulder, her right, groping, touched her husband's sleeve.
"I am—well cared for—in the world," she sighed happily to herself. "It shall not come nigh me."
Stephen was saying to Ailsa:
"There's a piece of up-town property that came into the office to-day which seems to me significant of the future. It would be a good investment for you, Cousin Ailsa. Some day Fifth Avenue will be built up solidly with brown-stone mansions as far as the Central Park. It is all going to be wonderfully attractive when they finish it."
Ailsa mused for a moment. Then:
"I walked down this street to Fort Greene this afternoon," she began, "and the little rocky park was so sweet and fragrant with dogwood and Forsythia and new buds everywhere. And I looked out over the rivers and the bay and over the two cities and, Steve, somehow—I don't know why—I found my eyes filling with tears. I don't know why, Steve–"
"Feminine sentiment," observed her cousin, smoking.
Mrs. Craig's fingers became restless on her husband's sleeve; she spoke at moments in soft, wistful tones, watching her younger daughters and their friends grouped under the trees in the dusk. And all the time, whatever it was that had brought a new unease into her breast was still there, latent. She had no name to give it, no reason, no excuse; it was too shadowy to bear analysis, too impalpable to be defined, yet it remained there; she was perfectly conscious of it, as she held her husband's sleeve the tighter.
"Curt, is business so plaguey poor because of all these politics?"
"My business is not very flourishing. Many men feel the uncertainty; not everybody, dear."
"When this—matter—is settled, everything will be easier for you, won't it? You look so white and tired, dear."
Stephen overheard her.
"The matter, as you call it, won't be settled without a row, mother—if you mean the rebellion."
"Such a wise boy with his new cigar," she smiled through a sudden resurgence of uneasiness.
The boy said calmly: "Mother, you don't understand; and all the rest of the South is like you."
"Does anybody understand, Steve?" asked his father, slightly ironical.
"Some people understand there's going to be a big fight," said the boy.
"Oh. Do you?"
"Yes," he said, with the conviction of youth. "And I'm wondering who's going to be in it."
"The militia, of course," observed Ailsa scornfully. "Camilla is forever sewing buttons on Jimmy's dress uniform. He wears them off dancing."
Mr. Craig said, unsmiling: "We are not a military nation, Steve; we are not only non-military but we are unmilitary—if you know what that means."
"We once managed to catch Cornwallis," suggested his son, still proudly smoking.
"I wonder how we did it?" mused his father.
"They were another race—those catchers of Cornwallis—those fellows in, blue-and-buff and powdered hair."
"You and Celia are their grandchildren," observed Ailsa, "and you are a West Point graduate."
Her brother-in-law looked at her with a strange sort of humour in his handsome, near-sighted eyes:
"Yes, too blind to serve the country that educated me. And now it's too late; the desire is gone; I have no inclination to fight, Ailsa. Drums always annoyed me. I don't particularly like a gun. I don't care for a fuss. I don't wish to be a soldier."
Ailsa said: "I rather like the noise of drums. I think I'd like—war."
"Molly Pitcher! Molly Pitcher! Of what are you babbling," whispered Celia, laughing down the flashes of pain that ran through her heart. "Wars are ended in our Western World. Didn't you know it, grandchild of Vikings? There are to be no more Lake Champlains, only debates—n'est ce pas, Curt?—very grand debates between gentlemen of the South and gentlemen of the North in Congress assembled–"
"Two congresses assembled," said Ailsa calmly, "and the debates will be at long range–"
"By magnetic telegraph if you wish, Honey-bell," conceded Celia hastily. "Oh, we must not begin disputin' about matters that nobody can possibly he'p. It will all come right; you know it will, don't you, Curt?"
"Yes, I know it, somehow."
Silence, fragrance, and darkness, through which rang the distant laugh of a young girl. And, very, very far away sounds arose in the city, dull, indistinct, lost for moments at a time, then audible again, and always the same sounds, the same monotony, and distant persistence.
"I do believe they're calling an extra," said Ailsa, lifting her head to listen.
Celia listened, too.
"Children shouting at play," she said.
"They are calling an extra, Celia!"
"No, little Cassandra, it's only boys skylarking."
For a while they remained listening and silent. The voices still persisted, but they sounded so distant that the light laughter from their neighbour's stoop drowned the echoes.
Later, Jimmy Lent drifted into the family circle.
"They say that there's an extra out about Fort Sumter," he said.
"Do you think he's given up, Mr. Craig?"
"If there's an extra out the fort is probably safe enough, Jim," said the elder man carelessly. He rose and went toward the group of girls and youths under the trees.
"Come, children," he said to his two daughters; and was patient amid indignant protests which preceded the youthful interchange of reluctant good-nights.
When he returned to the stoop Ailsa had gone indoors with her cousin. His wife rose to greet him as though he had been away on a long journey, and then, passing her arms around her schoolgirl daughters, and nodding a mischievous dismissal to Jimmy Lent, walked slowly into the house. Bolts were shot, keys turned; from the lighted front parlour came the notes of the sweet-toned square piano, and Ailsa's voice:
—"Dear are her charms to me,
Dearest her constancy,
Aileen aroon—"
"Never mind any more of that silly song!" exclaimed Celia, imprisoning Ailsa's arms from behind.
"Youth must with time decay,
Aileen aroon,
Beauty must fade away,
Aileen aroon—"
"Don't, dear! please–"
But Ailsa sang on obstinately:
"Castles are sacked in war,
Chieftains are scattered far,
Truth is a fixed star,
Aileen aroon."
And, glancing back over her shoulder, caught her breath quickly.
"Celia! What is the matter, dear?"
"Nothing. I don't like such songs—just now–"
"What songs?"
"I don't know, Ailsa; songs about war and castles. Little things plague me. . . . There's been altogether too much talk about war—it gets into ev'ything, somehow. I can't seem to he'p it, somehow–"
"Why, Celia! You are not worrying?"
"Not fo' myse'f, Honey-bud. Somehow, to-night—I don't know—and Curt seemed a little anxious."
She laughed with an effort; her natural gaiety returned to buoy her above this indefinable undercurrent of unrest.
Paige and Marye came in from the glass extension where their father was pacing to and fro, smoking his bedtime cigar, and their mother began her invariable running comment concerning the day's events, rallying her children, tenderly tormenting them with their shortcomings—undarned stockings, lessons imperfectly learned, little household tasks neglected—she was always aware of and ready at bedtime to point out every sin of omission.
"As fo' you, Paige, you are certainly a ve'y rare kind of Honey-bird, and I reckon Mr. Ba'num will sho'ly catch you some day fo' his museum. Who ever heard of a shif'less Yankee girl except you and Marye?"
"O mother, how can we mend everything we tear? It's heartless to ask us!"
"You don't have to try to mend _ev'y_thing. Fo' example, there's Jimmy Lent's heart–"
A quick outbreak of laughter swept them—all except Paige, who flushed furiously over her first school-girl affair.
"That poor Jimmy child came to me about it," continued their mother, "and asked me if I would let you be engaiged to him; and I said, 'Certainly, if Paige wants to be, Jimmy. I was engaiged myse'f fo' times befo' I was fo'teen–'"
Another gale of laughter drowned her words, and she sat there dimpled, mischievous, naively looking around, yet in her careful soul shrewdly pursuing her wise policy of airing all sentimental matters in the family circle—letting in fresh air and sunshine on what so often takes root and flourishes rather morbidly at sixteen.
