II

AmenStuck in my throat.—Macbeth.

TheSkeptic and his wife, Hepatica, being happily established in a beautifully spacious flat in town, measuring thirty feet by forty over all, invited me to visit them. As both had spent considerable time at my country home in summer, they insisted that it was only just for me to allow them, that second winter after their marriage, to return my hospitality. This argument alone would hardly have sufficed, for winter in the country—connected by trolley with the town—is hardly less delightful to me than summer itself. But there were other and convincing arguments, and they ended by bringing me to the city for a month's visit in the heart of the season.

On the first morning at breakfast—I hadarrived late the night before—there was much to talk about.

"It's a curious fact," said the Skeptic, stirring a cup of yellow-brown coffee with which his wife had just presented him, "as Hepatica and I discovered only the other day, that three of those girls who visited you that summer four years ago, when she and I were avoiding each other——"

"You—avoiding!" I interpolated.

"Well—I was trying to avoid being avoided by her," he explained. "Three of those girls are married and living in town."

"Yes, I know," said I. "At least I know Camellia and Althea are. Who else? Azalea lives across the river, doesn't she?"

"Yes. You haven't heard of the latest matrimonial alliance, then?" The Skeptic chuckled. Hepatica looked at him, and he looked at her, and then they both looked at me. "Dahlia was married yesterday," the Skeptic announced with relish, "in a manse study, with two witnesses."

I was astounded. I had just come from home, and Dahlia was my next neighbour. She had been away more or less all winter, butthere had been no announcement of any engagement—nor sign of one.

The Skeptic, enjoying my stupefaction, proceeded to give what he considered an explanation. "I don't see why you should be so surprised," he said. "You knew Dahlia's methods. Her net was always spread, and though a certain wise man declares it in vain to spread it in the sight of any bird, humans are not always so wary. A man who chanced to be walking along with his head in the clouds might get his feet entangled in a cunningly laid net. And so it happened to the Professor."

"The Professor!" I ejaculated. "Not—our Professor?"

The Skeptic nodded solemnly.

"He was our Professor," he amended. "He's hers now. And day before yesterday he was free!"

He glanced at his watch, folded his napkin in haste, seized his coat and hat, kissed his wife, patted her shoulder, nodded at me, and was gone. A minute later we heard the whirr and slide of his car, and Hepatica, at the window, was returning his wave.

"He's looking extremely well," I observed."He must be twenty pounds heavier than he was that summer. Avoiding being avoided was probably rather thinning."

"He does seem to enjoy his food," admitted Hepatica, regarding the Skeptic's empty plate with satisfaction.

"Not much doubt of that," I agreed, remembering the delicately hearty breakfast we had just consumed.

"It's really quite dreadful about Dahlia and the poor Professor, isn't it?" said Hepatica presently. "And it's just as Don says: he was literally caught in her net. I presume he couldn't tell to-day precisely how it happened."

"I've no doubt she could," said I ungenerously. "I shall be anxious to see them."

"Oh, you'll see them. It's in the middle of term—he couldn't take her away. And his old quarters are just two blocks below us. She knew you were coming. You'll probably see them within forty-eight hours."

We did, though not where we could do more than take observations upon them. The Philosopher came in that evening—he had known of my coming from the moment that Hepatica had planned to ask me. Hewas looking rather less well-fed than the Skeptic, but quite as philosophical, and altogether as friendly as ever. He looked hard at me, and wrung my hand, and immediately began to lay out a programme for my visit. As a beginning he had procured tickets for the Philharmonic Society concert to be given on the following evening.

We told him about Dahlia. He had not heard. He looked quickly and dumbfoundedly at the Skeptic, and the Skeptic grinned back at him. "You feel for him, don't you, Philo?" he queried.

The Philosopher shook his head, and seemed, for a time, much depressed; upon which the Skeptic rallied him. "You ought to be jubilant to think it's not yourself," he urged his friend. "You know, there was one time when you feared even to go home with her, though you were to be within call from the porch all the way."

But the Philosopher cheered up presently in the pleasure of talking over old times at the Farm. He had spent the past summer tramping through Germany, and he and I had not met for many months.

We went to the concert next evening, we four, in a jovial mood. There was considerable sly joking, on the Skeptic's part, concerning the change of conditions which now made Hepatica my chaperon, instead of, as in former days, my being alert to protect her from visiting philosophers and skeptics. The Philosopher and I took it quite in good part, for nothing could be more settled than the unimpassioned character of our old friendship—as there could be nothing more satisfactory.

We had not more than taken our seats when the Skeptic leaned past Hepatica to call my attention to two people who had come down the aisle and were finding their places just across it and in the row ahead of us. I turned to the Philosopher.

"There they are," I whispered. So our four pairs of eyes gazed interestedly that way.

As she settled into place, Dahlia, whose pretty, flushed face had been turned in every direction over the house as she got out of her evening coat, caught sight of us. She bowed and smiled with great cordiality, and immediately called her companion's attention to us. The Professor—eighteen years Dahlia's senior,but one of the best men who ever walked the earth, as we had long since discovered—turned and scanned us over his spectacles. Then he also responded to our smiling recognitions with a somewhat subdued but pleased acknowledgment. Dahlia continued to whisper to him, still glancing back at us from time to time with looks of good-fellowship, and he appeared to lend an attentive ear, though he did not again turn toward us.

As for us, in the interest of our observation of the bridal pair, we fell rather silent. I was conscious that the Philosopher, regarding them somewhat steadily, drew a deep breath which sounded like a sigh of dissatisfaction. Noting how thin the Professor's ash-coloured hair seemed to be, over the crown of his head, in comparison with Dahlia's luxuriant and elaborately dressed chestnut locks, I felt depressedly that the disparity in age was more marked than is often seen. This, in itself, of course, was nothing; but taken in connection with——

The Skeptic leaned forward again.

"What'll you wager I couldn't get up aflirtation with her to-night, if I happened to sit next her?" he challenged in a whisper.

"Don!" murmured Hepatica; but she smiled.

"I'm not anywhere near his age," continued the Skeptic. "My auburn tresses are thick upon my head, my evening clothes were made a decade later than his. If I were only sitting next her!"

At this moment some more people came down the aisle and were shown to the seats immediately beyond our friends. As the Professor and Dahlia stood up to let them through, we saw that though the newcomers passed the Professor without recognition, the young man exchanged greetings with Dahlia. As they took their seats the man, a floridly handsome person, was at Dahlia's elbow.

For the third time the Skeptic leaned forward. "It's just as well, perhaps," he whispered, "that my observations are to be made upon a proxy. What do you think the new chap's chances are for fun on both sides of him?"

I did not condescend to answer. And without further delay the famous conductor of afamous orchestra came commandingly to the front of the stage, welcomed by an outburst of applause, and with the rest of the audience we became silent.

But amidst all the delights of the ear which were ours that evening, the eyes of all of us would wander, from time to time, across the aisle. The Professor sat, with arms folded and head bent, drinking in the beauties of sound which beat against his welcoming ears. Next him, Dahlia, the bride of three days, was vindicating the Skeptic's opinion of her undiminished accomplishments. The young man upon her right proved an able second. The girl on his other side, by the time the concert was half over, was holding her head high, or bending it to study a programme which I am sure she did not see, while her companion played Dahlia's old game with a trained hand.

"Can the Ethiopian change his skin?" breathed the Philosopher in my ear, during an intermission.

"I'm afraid not," I assented dubiously. "But, of course, she may make a devoted wife, nevertheless. That sort of thing doesn'tmean anything to her, you know. She merely does it as a matter of habit."

"It can't be precisely an endearing habit to a husband," protested the Philosopher. "If she would address a remark now and then to the poor man at her left one might excuse her. And if she could carry on a conversation with the other one in an ordinarily well-bred, friendly way—and confine it to the intervals between numbers—one might be able to forget her, which would be a relief. But all those silly tricks of hers—those smiles, those archings of the neck—those lengthy looks up into the eyes of that fool——"

"Don't look at them," I advised.

"I can't help looking at them. Everybody else is looking at them—including yourself."

It was quite true—everybody was, even people considerably out of range. If Dahlia herself was conscious of this—and I'm sure she must have been—she probably ascribed it to the charm of her appearance. She is even prettier than she used to be. But, as we were wont to say of her when we had owned to all her attractiveness—"if only!"

"After all," urged Hepatica, on the homeward way, "we've no right to judge by seeing them under those conditions. Wait till we've had them alone with us. Dahlia told me on the way out that they were planning to come and see us very soon.—I suggested to-morrow night, so they will come then."

"I'll be there," accepted the Philosopher—quite before he was asked.

So on the following evening we saw them, alone with ourselves. The dear Professor seemed to us, more than before, the pitiable victim of a woman in every way unsuited to him. Yet he looked at Dahlia as if he cared for her very much, and was only a trifle bewildered by her manner with other men.

"What dear times we used to have on the river!" said Dahlia to the Philosopher, at a moment when nobody else happened to be speaking. She accompanied this observation by a glance. It was Dahlia's glances which gave life to her remarks.

"I haven't fished in that river for three summers," replied the Philosopher, in his most unsentimental tone.

"You used to have better luck when youwent alone," said Dahlia. "Do you remember how we could never stop talking long enough to lure any fish our way?"

"Nevertheless, there has been considerable fishing done on that river, first and last," asserted the Skeptic, with a twinkle at the Philosopher, who looked uncomfortable. The Professor's gentle gaze was fixed upon each speaker in turn, and as he now waited upon the Philosopher's reply I saw the latter person frown slightly.

"I never considered the fishing on that river very good," said he.

"Oh, it didn't need to be," cried Dahlia. "I can shut my eyes now and see the water rippling in the moonlight! Can't you?" She appealed to the Skeptic.

"I can't," said the Skeptic. "I never noticed how it rippled in the moonlight. The big porch is my favourite haunt at the Farm. The smoking is good there—keeps away the midges."

"Midges!" Dahlia gave a little shriek. "There aren't any midges in that part of the country."

"There are some kinds of little, annoying insects that come around in the evening, then,"persisted the Skeptic, "just when people want to settle down and have themselves to themselves. The Philosopher was always more annoyed by them than I. He has a sensitive skin."

Once started on this sort of allusive nonsense it was difficult for us to head off the Skeptic. But presently, noting the Professor's kindly face assuming a puzzled expression as he watched his wife's kittenish demeanour, the Skeptic desisted. It did not seem necessary for him to demonstrate to us that, quite as of old, he could attract Dahlia to his side and keep her there. Before the evening was over he found himself occupied—also quite as of old—with keeping out of her way. Altogether, it was certainly not Dahlia's fault if the Professor did not gain the impression that both the Skeptic and the Philosopher were rejected suitors of her own.

When they had gone, and the door had closed upon the last of the bride's backward looks at our two men, the Skeptic dropped into a chair.

"Hepatica, will you kindly mix a few drops of soothing syrup for me?" he requested.

But the Philosopher fell to marching up and down, his hands in his pockets, and a deeper gloom on his brow than we had ever seen there. Although a decade the Philosopher's elder, the Professor had long shared bachelor quarters with him in past days; it had been only within a year or two that the necessities of their occupations had caused them to separate.

"Why did I ever let him go off by himself?" the Philosopher muttered remorsefully. "Why didn't I keep an eye on him?"

"It would have made no difference," the Skeptic offered dismally as consolation. "'Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad!' You couldn't have prevented his madness."

"I could have seen to it that such deadly instruments as marriage licences and irresponsible clergymen were kept out of his way," groaned the Philosopher.

"Come, cheer up!" cried Hepatica, making haste to light the spirit-lamp under her tea-kettle. "I'm going to brew you all a cup of comfort with lemons and sugar and things."

"Look at her!" commanded the Skeptic, rallying, "and tell me if marriage is a failure."

The Philosopher paused. "You know well enough what I think of your marriage," he owned.

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I am ashamed that women are so simpleTo offer war when they should kneel for peace.—Taming of the Shrew.

"Weare invited to spend the week-end with Camellia," announced my hostess at the breakfast-table one morning, glancing up from a note which the hall-boy had just brought to the door.

The Skeptic jumped in his chair. "Those same old sensations come over me," he announced, digging away vengefully at his grapefruit. "What have I to wear? My only consolation now is that Camellia married a man who cares about as much what he wears as I do."

"It's not Camellia's clothes that bother me now," said Hepatica thoughtfully, "so much as the formality of her style of entertaining. My dear, she has a butler."

"How horrible!" I agreed. "Can I hope to please the eye of the butler?"

"Camellia's husband is a downright good fellow," said the Skeptic warmly. "The fuss and feathers of his wife's hospitality can't prevent his giving you the real thing. Even Philo likes to go there—particularly when Camellia is away. I presume Philo's invited now?"

"So she says," assented Hepatica, studying her note again, with a care not to look at me which made me quite as self-conscious as if she had. Why the dear people will all persist in thinking things which do not exist! Of course I was glad the Philosopher was to be there. What enjoyment is not the keener for his friendly sharing of it? But what of that? Has it not been so for many years?—and will be so, I trust, for all to come.

Hepatica and I packed with care, selecting the most expensive things we owned. Hepatica scrutinized the Skeptic's linen critically before she put it in. When we departed we were as correctly attired as time and thought could make us. When we arrived we weredoubly glad that this was so, for the sight of the butler, admitting us, gave us much the same feeling of being badly dressed that Camellia's own presence had been wont to do.

Camellia herself was as exquisitely arrayed as ever, but she looked considerably older than I had expected. I wondered if constant engagements with her tailor and dressmaker, to say nothing of incessant interviews with those who see to the mechanism of formal entertaining, had not begun to wear upon her. But she was very cordial with us, and her husband, the Judge, was equally so. He was considerably her senior—quite as much so, I decided, as the Professor was Dahlia's—but on account of Camellia's woman-of-the-world air the contrast was not so pronounced.

We sat through an elaborate dinner, during which I suffered more or less strain of anxiety concerning my forks. But the Judge, at whose right hand I sat, diverted me so successfully by means of his own most interesting personality and delightful powers of conversation, that in time I forgot both forks and butler, and was only conscious of the length of the dinner by the sense, toward its close, of having had more to eat than I wanted.

"Camellia herself was as exquisitelyarrayed as ever"

"They have this sort of thing every night of their unfortunate lives, to a greater or less degree," murmured the Skeptic in my ear, as the men came into the impressively decorated room where Camellia and Hepatica and I were talking over common memories. "The gladdest man to get into his summer camp in Maine is the Judge, and the life of absolute abandon to freedom he lives there ought to teach his wife a thing or two—if she were wise enough to heed it. Why two people—but I've just eaten their salt," he acknowledged in reply to what I suppose must have been my accusing look, and forbore to say more.

"I think I'll give a little dinner for you to-morrow night," said Camellia reflectively, as we sat about. "A very informal one, of course—just some of our neighbours."

I felt my spirits drop. I saw those of Hepatica and the Skeptic and the Philosopher drop, although they made haste to prop their countenances up again.

But the Judge protested. "Why give anything, my dear?" he questioned. "I doubtif our friends would prefer meeting our neighbours, whom they don't know, to visiting with ourselves, whom they do—however egotistic that may sound."

"I want to make things gay for you," explained Camellia; "and the Latimers and the Elliots are very gay."—The Judge only lifted his handsome eyebrows.—"And the Liscombes are lovely," went on Camellia. "Mrs. Liscombe sings."

The Judge ran his hand through the thick, slightly graying locks above his broad forehead. He did not need to tell us that he did not enjoy hearing Mrs. Liscombe sing, and doubted if we should.

"Harry Hodgson recites—we always have him when we want to make things go. Oh, he's not a professional, of course. He only gives readings among his special friends. I believe I'll run and telephone him now. He's so likely to have engagements." Camellia hastened away.

We could hardly tell the Judge we fully agreed with his feeling about to-morrow's proposed festivities, neither could we discusshis wife's tastes with him. He and we talked of other things until Camellia came back, having made her engagement with Mr. Harry Hodgson, and so having sealed our fate for the succeeding evening.

The Skeptic and the Philosopher spent much of the following day—it was a legal holiday—with the Judge in his private den up on the third floor. This, as Camellia showed us once when the men were away, was a big, bare room—this was her characterization—principally fireplace, easy-chairs, books and windows. I liked it better than any other place in the house, for it was unencumbered with useless furniture of any sort, and the view from its windows was much finer than that from below stairs.

"But we're not invited up here, you observe," was Camellia's comment. "I don't come into it once a month. The Judge spends his evenings here—when I don't actually force him to go out with me—and I spend mine down in the pleasanter quarters. I have the Liscombes and the Latimers in very often, but he never comes down if he can avoid it. They understand he's eccentric, and we let it go at that."

She spoke with the air of being a most kindly and forbearing wife. I followed her downstairs, pondering over points of view. Eccentric—because he preferred wide fires and elbow-room and outlook to Camellia's crowded and over-decorated rooms below, and his books to Mrs. Liscombe's music and Mr. Harry Hodgson's "readings." I felt that I knew Mrs. Liscombe and Mr. Hodgson and the rest quite without having seen them.

I found, the next evening, that my imagination had not gone far astray. Camellia's friends were certainly quite as "gay" as she had pictured them, and gorgeously dressed. I felt, as I attempted to maintain my part among them, like a country mouse suddenly precipitated into the society of a company of town-bred squirrels.

Mrs. Liscombe sang for us. I could not make out what it was she sang, being unfamiliar with the music and unable to understand the words. She possessed a voice of some beauty, but was evidently determined to be classed among the sopranos who are able to soar highest, and when she took certain notesI experienced a peculiar and most disagreeable sensation in the back of my neck.

"I wonder if we couldn't bring in a stepladder for her," murmured the Skeptic in my ear. "It gives me a pang to see a woman, alone and unassisted, attempt to reach something several feet above her head!"

Mr. Hodgson recited for us with great fervour. He fought a battle on the drawing-room floor, fought and bled and died, all in a harrowing tenor voice. He was slender and pale, and it seemed a pity that he should have to suffer so much with so many stalwart men at hand. From the first moment, when he drew his sword and leaped into the fray, our sympathies were with him, although he personified a doughty man of battles, and led ten thousand lusty followers. There were moments when one could not quite forget the swinging coat-tails of his evening attire, but on the whole he was an interesting study, and I was much diverted.

"Dear little fellow!"—it was the Skeptic again. "How came they to let him go to war—and he so young and tender?"

I exchanged observations with Mr. Hodgsonafter his final reading; I can hardly say that I conversed with him, for our patchwork interview could not deserve that name. At the same time I noted with interest the Philosopher's expression as he and Mrs. Liscombe turned over a pile of music. If I had not known him so well I should have been deceived by that grave and interested air of his—a slight frown of concentrated attention between his well-marked eyebrows—into thinking him deeply impressed by the lady's dicta and by her somewhat dashing manner as she delivered them. But, familiar of old with the quizzical expression which at times could be discovered to underlie the exterior of charmed absorption, I understood that the Philosopher was quietly and skilfully classifying a new, if not a rare, specimen.

When the guests had lingeringly departed I saw, as I went to my room, three male forms leaping up the second flight of stairs toward the Judge's den.

"Don't you envy them the chance to soothe their nerves with a pipe beside the fire up there?" I asked Hepatica as, with hair down and trailing, loose garments, she came intomy room through the door which we had discovered could be opened between our quarters.

"Indeed I do. They went up those stairs like three dogs loosed from the leash, didn't they? Can one blame them?"

"One cannot."

Hepatica gazed at me. I stared back. But we were under our host's roof.

"Mrs. Liscombe really has quite a voice," said Hepatica, examining the details of the tiny travelling workbag I always carry with me.

"So she has."

"It was a wonderful dinner, wasn't it?"

"It was, indeed. Would you mind having quite specially simple things to eat for a day or two after we go back?"

"I've been planning them," admitted Hepatica.

"Mr. Hodgson's readings were—entirely new to me; were they to you? I had never heard of the authors."

"Few people can have heard of them, I think. Several were original."

"Indeed!"

"Would you mind taking off your society manner?" requested Hepatica, a trifle fractiously. "I'm a little tired of seeing you wear it so incessantly."

"I shall be delighted," I agreed.

I sprang up and she met me half-way, and seizing me about the neck buried her face in my shoulder. I felt her shaking with smothered laughter, and had great difficulty in keeping my own emotions under control.

We went home on Sunday afternoon, the Skeptic pleading the necessity of his being up at an early hour next morning. By unanimous consent we went to the evening service of a church where one goes to hear that which is worth hearing, and invariably hears it. The music there is also worth a long journey, though it is not at all of an elaborate sort.

"There, I feel better after that," declared the Skeptic heartily, as we came out. "It seems to take the taste of last evening out of my mouth."

Nobody said anything directly about our late visit until we had reached home. Then the Skeptic fired up his diminutive gas grate—which is much better than none at all—andturned off the electrics. We sat before the cheery little glow, luxuriating in a sense of relaxation.

"It seems ungracious, somehow to discuss people, when one has just left their hospitality," suggested Hepatica, as the Skeptic showed signs of letting loose the dogs of war.

"Not between ourselves, dear," affirmed the Skeptic. "We four constitute a private Court of Inquiry into the Condition of Our Friends. When I think of the Judge——"

"He has his own way, after all, when it comes to refusing to join in the sort of thing that pleases Camellia," said I.

"Of course he does. He's too much of a man not to have it. But living upstairs while my wife lives downstairs isn't precisely my ideal of married happiness."

The Philosopher shoved his hands far down into his pockets and laid his head back, gazing up at the ceiling. "What puzzles me," he mused, "is the attraction such a woman has, at the start, for such a man."

"Camellia was a most attractive girl," said I.

"You mean her clothes were most attractive," amended the Skeptic. "They evenbefuddled me for a few brief hours, as I remember—till I discovered that not all is gold that——"

"You didn't discover that yourself," the Philosopher reminded him. "We had to do it for you. You don't mind our recalling his temporary paralysis of intellect?" he questioned Hepatica suddenly. "It was all your fault, anyhow, for retiring to the background and allowing the fireworks to have full play."

Hepatica smiled. The Skeptic put out his hand and got hold of hers and drew it over to his knee, where he retained it. "She knows I never swerved a point off my allegiance to her," he declared with confidence.

"Do you suppose," suggested Hepatica, "if the Judge and Camellia were to lose all their money and had to come down to living in a little home like this, it would help things any?"

The Skeptic shook his head. The Philosopher shook his, thoughtfully. "It's too late," said the latter. "Her ideals are a fixed quantity now, to be reckoned with. So are his. Under any conditions there would be absolute diversity of tastes."

"I don't think there's any ideal more hopelessly fixed than the fine clothes ideal." The Skeptic looked at his wife.

"I like nice clothes," said she, smiling at him.

"So you do," he rejoined; "thank heaven! A woman who doesn't is abnormal. But when we walk down certain streets together you can see something besides the shop-windows."

"I look away so I won't want the things," confessed Hepatica.

The Skeptic laughed, and the Philosopher and I joined him.

"I passed Mrs. Hepatica the other day when she didn't see me," said the Philosopher to me. "She was staring fixedly in at a shop-window. I stole up behind her to see what held such an attraction for her.—It often lets a great light in on a friend's character, if you can see the particular object in a shop-window which fixes his longing attention. When I had discovered what she was looking at I stole away again, chuckling to myself."

"What was it?" I asked.

"I'll wager half I own that the wife of our friend the Judge wouldn't have given that window a second glance," pursued the Philosopher.

"It was probably a bargain sale of paper patterns," guessed the Skeptic. But we knew he didn't think it.

"A bargain sale of groceries, more likely," said Hepatica herself.

"It was no bargain sale of anything," denied the Philosopher. "It was a most expensive edition of the works of Charles Dickens."

"Good for you, Patty!" cried the Skeptic.

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A mother is a mother still,The holiest thing alive.—S. T. Coleridge.

"I amto spend the day with Azalea to-morrow," I announced, as I said good night, one evening, "and I shall not come back until so late that you mustn't sit up for me. Azalea couldn't ask me to stay all night, on account of using the guest-room for a nursery during the winter, but she's very anxious to have me there in the evening, for it's the only chance I shall have to see her husband."

"Remain late enough to see her husband, by all means," urged the Skeptic. "I want to hear what sort of man had the courage to marry a musical genius who could wipe only one teaspoon at a time."

"Azalea was a lovely girl," said Hepatica warmly. "It couldn't take much courage to marry her."

"All right—we'll hear about it when our guest comes back. And I'll be over to bring you home, if you'll telephone about an hour before you'll be ready to start."

"Thank you—it really won't be necessary for you to come," I replied.

The Skeptic eyed me narrowly. Then he glanced at Hepatica and grinned. "Good night," said I, again, and walked away to my room.

"Good night," the Skeptic called after me. "But don't hesitate to call me if anything should detain Philo."

I arrived at Azalea's home early next morning, having been earnestly asked to come in time to see the babies take their bath. There is nothing I like better than to see a baby take a bath, and to see two at once was a bribe indeed.

Azalea met me at the door of her suburban home, the larger of her two children—the two-year-old—on her arm. He was evidently just ready for his bath, for he was wrapped in a blanket, and one pink foot stuck temptingly out from its folds. Azalea greeted me with enthusiasm, pushing back the loose,curling locks from her forehead as she did so, explaining that Bud had just pulled them down. She did not look in the least like the girl who had sung for us, but it occurred to me that, enveloped in the big flannel bath-apron, she was even more engaging than she had been upon the porch at the Farm.

I don't know when I have enjoyed anything so much as I enjoyed seeing Azalea give that bath. The little baby was asleep in her crib when we went into the nursery—which had been the guest-room before the second baby came—so Azalea gave Bud his splash all by himself. He was plump and dimpled and jolly, and he cried only once—when his mother inadvertently rubbed soap in his eyes while talking with me. When he smiled again he was a cherub of cherubs, but he had waked his small sister, and Azalea gave me permission to take her up while she finished with Bud. She was six months old, and she was afraid of me only for a minute or two, and I held her and cuddled her and wanted to take her away with me so fiercely that I had all I could do to give her over toAzalea for her bath. Boy babies are delightful, but girl babies are heavenly!

We had a busy day—made up of babies, with more or less talk between, which didn't matter in the least. Late in the afternoon Azalea put everything straight in the rooms, more or less upset by Bud during the day; and dressed herself for the evening. She dressed both children, also, making them fresh as rosebuds. I saw her putting flowers on the table in the dining-room, lighting a special reading-lamp at a table in the corner of the living-room, and pulling an easy chair to stand close beside it. There was a small grand piano in the room. It had been closed all day, for Bud's fingers could just reach the keyboard. Azalea opened it.

"You haven't had time to-day," said I, "but I'm looking forward to hearing you sing this evening."

"It's my husband you are to hear sing," said Azalea contentedly. "He has a splendid voice."

"I shall be delighted," I agreed; "but surely you will sing too."

"My voice seems to wake up the children," said she, "Arthur's never does. It's odd, for his voice is much heavier, of course. But I can never take really high notes without hearing a wail from either Bud or Dot. And that's not worth while."

"Won't you sing now, then," I begged, "while they are awake? I really can't go away without hearing you. And you know when the Philosopher comes he will be so anxious to have you sing."

"The babies will go to bed before dinner," she insisted, "so I can't very well sing for the Philosopher. But I'll sing for you now, of course."

She laid little Dot in my lap, but Dot was already sleepy and protested. So Azalea went to the piano with Dot on her arm. Bud, seeing her go, followed and stood by her knee—on her trailing skirts. I don't know how she managed to play her own accompaniment, but she did—at least subdued chords enough to carry the harmony of the song. There were no notes before her on the rack, and she looked down into one or the other of the two small faces as she sang.And, of course, it was a lullaby which fell like notes of pearl and silver from her lips.

When she finished, I could only smile at her through an obscuring mist. Never, in all the times I had heard her sing, had she reached my heart like this. But, somehow, the picture of her, sitting in the half light at the grand piano, with the babies in her arms and at her knee, singing lullabies and leaving the fine music for her husband to sing by and by, was quite irresistible. Somehow, as I listened, I was troubled by no doubts lest she had not learned deftly to wipe ten teaspoons at once.

Her husband came home presently; a tall, thin, young bank cashier, with a face I liked at once. He was plainly weary, but his eyes lit up with satisfaction at sight of the three who met him at the door, and the welcome his young son gave him showed that Bud recognized a play-fellow. I heard the pair romping upstairs as the Cashier made dressing for dinner a game in which the little child could join.

"The picture of her, sitting in the half light at the grand piano, with the babiesin her arms and at her knee ... was quite irresistible"

But before we sat down to dinner both babies had been put to bed. The Cashierremained with me while Azalea was busy at this task, but he excused himself toward the last, and went tiptoeing upstairs, where I think he must have offered his services in getting the children tucked away. While he was gone the Philosopher arrived.

I let him in myself, motioning the maid away. It was a small house, and I knew she was needed in the kitchen. "Don't make a bit of noise," I cautioned him, as he came smiling into the little hall. "The babies are going to bed."

"Babies!" whispered the Philosopher, in an awestruck way. "I didn't know there were any babies."

"Of course you knew it," I whispered back, leading him into the room. "If you would only store away really important facts in that capacious mind of yours, instead of limiting it to——"

"Tell me how many babies, and of what sex—quick!" commanded the Philosopher, "or I shall say the wrong thing. And how on earth do they come to know enough to put their babies to bed before they ask a bachelor to dine, anyhow?"

I hastily set him straight upon these points, adding that Azalea had developed wonderfully.

"You mean she can soar to high Q now, I suppose?" interpreted the Philosopher.

"Not at all. I mean that she's——"

But they were coming downstairs together. The Cashier's arm was about his wife's shoulders; he removed it only just in time to save his dignity as he entered.

"I'm disappointed not to see the boy and girl," declared the Philosopher genially. The Cashier took him by the shoulders and turned him toward the light, laughing. "That was bravely said," he answered. "How did you know but we might go and wake them up for you to see?"

The dinner was quite unpretentious, but very good. Evidently Azalea had a capable servant. We talked gaily, the Cashier proving an adept at keeping the ball in the air, and keenly appreciative of others' attempts to meet him at the sport.

By and by, when we were back in the room where the grand piano stood, and conversation had reached a momentary halt, Azalea went to the piano. "Come, Arthur,"she said, sitting down at it and patting a pile of music, "I want our friends to hear 'The Toreador.'"

The Cashier looked up protestingly. "You are the one they want to hear, dear," he declared.

She shook her head. "They've heard me often, but never you, I think. Besides, it wakes the babies, you know, for me to sing."

"You don't need to sing high notes, Azalea," I urged. "I'd like nothing so well as the lullaby you sang to the babies."

But she shook her head again. "That's their song," she said. "You were specially privileged to hear it at all. But I can't do it for company. Come, Arthur—please."

So the Cashier sang. The Philosopher and I found it necessary to avoid each other's eyes as he did it. The Cashier could roar 'The Toreador,' no doubt of that. The voice of the bull of Bashan would have been as the summer wind in the trees beside it. Where so much volume came from we could not tell, as we looked at the thin frame of the performer. Why the babies did not wake up will ever remain a mystery. Why Azaleadid not desert her accompaniment to press her hands over bursting ear drums I cannot imagine, for it was with difficulty that I surrendered my own to the shock. But Azalea played on to the end, and looked up into the Cashier's flushed face at the last note with a smile of proprietary triumph. Then she turned about to us.

"That fairly takes me off my feet!" cried the Philosopher. I groped hurriedly for a compliment which would match the equivocal fervour of this, but I could not equal it.

"How much you must enjoy singing together," I said, "when the babies are awake,"—and felt annoyed that I could have said it, for I could really not imagine the two voices together.

Azalea glowed. The Cashier grinned. He is as quick-witted as he is good-humoured. "You're a clever pair," he chuckled.

"I've trained him myself," said Azalea. "When I knew him first he'd never thought of singing. I only discovered his voice by accident. It needs much more work with it, of course, but it's powerful, and it has a quality that will improve with cultivation."

The Cashier patted her shoulders. "Now you sing some soft little thing for them, my girl," he commanded—and looking up at him again, Azalea obeyed. She chose an old ballad, one with no chance in it to show the range of her voice. She sang it exquisitely, and the Cashier stood by and turned her music as if he considered it a high privilege. Yet, half-way through, the little Dot woke up. Azalea broke off in the middle of a bar, and fled up the stairs.

"The truth is, I'm afraid," said the Cashier, looking after her with an expression on his face which indicated that he wanted to flee, too, "nothing really counts in this house but the babies."

"They—and something else," suggested the Philosopher gently.

The Cashier looked at him. He nodded. "Yes—and something else," he agreed with his bright smile.

We came away rather late. The Philosopher looked up at the house as the door closed upon the warm farewells which had sent us out into the night. "It's a little bit of a house, isn't it?" he commented.

I looked up, too—at the nursery windows where the faintest of night-lights showed. "Yes, it's very small," I agreed. "Yet quite big enough, although it holds so much."

"One would hardly have said, four years ago, that anything smaller than the biggest musical auditorium in the city would have been big enough to hold Azalea's voice," he mused.

"If you could have heard her sing her lullaby to those babies," I replied, as we walked slowly on, "you would have said her voice would be wasted on a concert audience."

"It seems a pleasant home."

"Itisone."

"Somehow, one distrusts the ability of musical prodigies to make pleasant homes."

"I wonder why. Shouldn't the knowledge of any art make one appreciative of other arts?"

"It took some time for a certain exhibition of the domestic art to strike in, at your home, that summer," said the Philosopher. "But I believe Azalea came to envy our Hepatica at the last, didn't she?"

"Indeed she did. And she's never got over envying her her accomplishments. She asked me ever so many questions to-day about Hepatica's housekeeping. I wish I had had a chance before I went to tell her that I was sure her will to succeed would make her home as dear a one as even Hepatica's could be."

"One thing is sure—as long as she lets the Cashier do the singing in the limelight, while she looks after the babies, there'll be no occasion for their friends to demand more music of an evening than is good for her pride of spirit," chuckled the Philosopher. "What—are we at our station already? I say—let's not make a quick trip by train—let's make a slow one, by cab."

"By cab! It would take two hours! No, no—here comes our train."

"This is the first time we've gone anywhere since you've been here without two alert chaperons—younger than myself," grumbled the Philosopher.

"The more reason, then, that we should give them no anxiety on my account."

"I'd like to walk the whole way," said he.

I laughed as I obeyed the signal of an impatient guard and rushed upon the train. "Now, talk to me," said I, as we took our seats.

"My lungs weren't built for the Toreador song," he objected.

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