The room rustled expectantly. There is always a chance that the reason for a bride's regrets may be of interest.
"Nothing serious, I hope," said Mrs. West insinuatingly.
Mrs. Leveridge's sigh was provocative of further questions.
"Well, no, and then again, yes. It isn't anything like a death in the family. But you don't have to live long to find out that death ain't the worst thing."
"My goodness, Minerva," exclaimed Susan Fitzgerald, aghast. "What's happened?"
Mrs. Leveridge's deliberative gaze swept the silently expectant company.
"Of course, I wouldn't repeat it everywhere. But I'm sure anything I say won't go a step further."
Twenty voices replied, "Of course not," with a unanimity which gave it the effect of a congregational response in the litany.
Mrs. Leveridge, having made terms with her conscience, from all appearances rather enjoyed the responsibility of enlightening her audience, "It's her husband."
"Her husband!" cried Susan Fitzgerald protestingly; "why, she hasn't been married six months."
Mrs. Leveridge's smile showed more than a tinge of patronage.
"If you'd ever been married yourself, Susan, you'd know that six months was enough, quite enough. If he's that kind of a man, six weeks is about as long as he can keep on his good behavior."
"He hasn't been beating her, has he?" asked Mrs. Hornblower, her voice dropping to a thrilled whisper.
"No, I'd call it worse than that, myself. You see when I stopped for Mis' Thompson, on my way here, I found her crying and taking on something terrible. She had a letter in her hand, and of course I s'posed it had brought some bad news that was working her up, and I begged her to tell me about it so's to ease her mind, you understand.
"Well, she kept on moaning and crying, and at last it all came out. It seems that when she went to the closet to get down her jacket, a coat of her husband's fell off the hanger. The pockets was stuffed with letters, the shiftless way men-folks have, and they went sprawling all over the floor. She picked up this among the rest. It was addressed to W. Thompson, at some hotel in Cleveland, and it had been forwarded to the city office of his firm. And seeing it was a dashing sort of writing that stretched clear across the envelope, and didn't look a mite like business, she was curious to know what it was about."
"Now, don't tell me there was anything bad in that letter," imploredMrs. West. "I always thought young Mr. Thompson had such a nice face."
"Well, if handsome is that handsome does, he hasn't any more looks to boast of than a striped snake. It was a letter from a girl, a regular love-letter from start to finish. It opened up with 'Tommy Darling.'"
"But young Mr. Thompson's name is Wilbur," somebody objected.
"I guess the Tommy was pet for Thompson. The envelope was directed to W. Thompson and you can't squeeze a Tommy out of a W. no matter how hard you try. The girl, whoever she is, has gone into it with her eyes open. Two or three times she dropped little hints about his wife. Didn't saywiferight out, you know. It was kind of veiled, but you couldn't help understanding."
"Was there any name signed?" asked Annabel Sinclair, opening her lips for the first time that afternoon. She herself had long before realized the unadvisability of signing one's name to one's epistolary efforts.
"'Twas just signed 'Enid.' There was a monogram on the paper, but I couldn't make it out. Seems as if you could find 'most any letter in a monogram. The paper was nice and heavy and all scented up. Poor Mis' Thompson!"
"She ought to leave him," exploded Susan Fitzgerald. "And I shouldn't blame her a mite if she poisoned his coffee first. If women could vote, they'd send a man like that to the gallows."
Mrs. West championed the absent sex. "In a case of that sort, Susan, you can't put all the blame off on to the man. There's a woman in it, too, every time, and the one's as deep in the mud as the other is in the mire. And like as not," continued Mrs. West, a tell-tale tension in her voice, "he was a nice, clean-minded young man when she came along, making eyes at him, like a snake charming a sparrow. I'm not crazy about voting, but if I had the ballot, I'd vote for locking up those kind of women and keeping every last one of 'em at hard labor for the term of their natural lives."
The moment was electric, and Mrs. Warren hastily proffered her services as a lightning-rod. "Is she going to leave him, do you think?"
"Well, I guess she's got a crazy notion in her head that maybe he can explain. I tried to talk her out of that idea. As I said to her, a man capable of anything of that sort won't stop at lying out of it. And I should judge," concluded Mrs. Leveridge, "that that young Mr. Thompson would be capable of a real convincing lie. He don't look wicked, but he does look smart."
The outer door opened and closed with an impetus just short of a slam, irresistibly suggestive in some obscure fashion, of the entrance of ardent youth. "I didn't think 'twas worth while to ring," explained Persis Dale, nodding to the right and left as she advanced to greet her hostess. "Sorry to be so late. I guess you've got everything pretty nearly settled by now." She bowed rather stiffly to Annabel Sinclair, sitting silent in her corner, and acknowledged with reluctant admiration that the woman certainly was a credit to her dressmaker.
A guilty constraint settled upon the gathering so fluent a moment before, and psychologically considered, there was food for reflection in the sudden embarrassed silence. These good women were far from being vulgar gossips with one or two possible exceptions. They were shocked at this unanticipated revelation of human perfidy. The young wife, humiliated and heart-broken before the morning glow of romance had faded from her marriage, had their profoundest sympathy. Yet when the curtain rises on a human drama, however tragic its development, the little thrill that runs over the audience is not altogether unpleasant. Regrettable as it is that Othello should smother his wife, there seems a certain gratification in making ourselves familiar with the details of the operation. It was the consciousness of this unacknowledged satisfaction which rendered Mrs. Warren's guests abashed at Persis' advent, like children discovered in some forbidden pastime. They avoided one another's eyes, assuming an expression of grave absorption, whose obvious implication was that the uplifting of the community was the matter most in their thought.
With all her interest in other people's affairs, the personality of Persis Dale was as a killing frost to many a flourishing scandal. She had a readiness to believe the best, a reluctance to condemn her fellow men on anything short of convincing proof, fatal to calumny. Although perhaps justified in thinking the worst of young Mr. Thompson, no one present felt disposed to enlighten Persis as to the character of the discussion which had engrossed a gathering convened for the high moral purposes outlined on Mrs. Warren's post-card.
"I—we—well, we have not reached any conclusion as yet," explained the chairman of the meeting, with a notable accession of color. "Several suggestions have been made, however, and we hope you will have something to add."
Persis would not have been Persis had she failed to have something to suggest. Whether her businesslike methods aided in bringing matters to a focus, or whether the change was due to a conscience-stricken reaction on the part of the representative women of Clematis, it is certain that the deliberations of the body were not again side-tracked by the intrusion of personal matters. The business of the afternoon was transacted with a rapidity putting to shame some more pretentious conventions, the women wisely refusing to be hampered or restricted by the tangles of parliamentary law, in which, as every one knows, much really important legislation is strangled.
When the meeting adjourned at quarter of six, an hour which sent prudent housewives scurrying homeward, Mrs. Sophia Warren was the duly elected president of the Clematis Woman's Club, while Susan Fitzgerald had accepted the duties of secretary of the organization. The members had voted to meet weekly, taking up the study of English literature, and current events, the two subjects to divide the program equally. The club was to hold itself in readiness to grapple with questions of civic improvement, and already a committee had been appointed to arrange for a Harvest Home Festival at the county almshouse for the edification of the inmates. It really began to look as if the horizon of a number of people would be enlarged and the community as a whole uplifted, with or without its consent.
Now that Annabel Sinclair had no immediate use for Persis' services, Diantha's wardrobe could receive attention. The girl presented herself at the dressmaker's late one afternoon, her smooth forehead disfigured by an irritated frown, her mouth resolutely unsmiling. Under one arm she carried a roll of cheap white lawn. Annabel frequently commented on the uselessness of buying expensive materials for a girl who grew as rapidly as Diantha, though the reasonableness of this contention was slightly discounted by her recognized ability to demonstrate that the cream of things was invariably her portion, while an all-wise Providence had obviously designed the skimmed milk for the rest of the world.
Her eyes upon the girl's averted face, Persis measured off the coarse stuff, using her arm as a yard-stick. "Hm! Even with skirts as skimpy as they are now, this won't be enough by a yard and a half. Better call it two yards. It's high time your skirts were coming down where they belong. You can't stay a little girl forever."
Some magic had erased the fretful pucker between Diantha's brows. The grim ungirlish compression of her lips softened into angelic mildness. As she turned upon Persis, she looked an older sister of the Sistine cherubs.
"How long—about how long do you think it had better be, Miss Persis?"
"I should say"—Persis looked her over with an impersonal air, lending weight to the resulting judgment—"I should say about to your shoe-tops."
Had she guessed the consequences of such an expression of opinion, she might have modified her verdict or at least held it in reserve. A tempest swept the room. Persis was seized, whirled this way and then that, hugged, kissed, forced to join in a delirious two-step. With scarcely breath to protest, powerless in the grip of the storm she had herself evoked, she finally came to anchor between the secretary and the armchair, Diantha still holding her fast.
"Shoe-tops! Youdidsay shoe-tops, didn't you, darling Miss Persis?"
"Yes, I said shoe-tops, and I'm glad I didn't say a train. A real long dress would have been the death of me, it's more'n likely. For all you're as tall as Jack's bean-stalk, Diantha Sinclair, you're not grown up yet."
Persis freed herself, smiling ruefully as she arranged her disordered hair. The delicious girlishness of the outburst in which she had involuntarily participated had the effect of challenging her own obstinate sense of being on the threshold of things, and making her wonder if perhaps she were not growing old. That the passing shadow on her face failed to attract Diantha's attention was due less to lack of insight than to youth's cheerfully selfish absorption in its own problems. "May I pick out the style from the grown-up part of the fashion books?" was the girl's breathless question.
"It's got to be simple," Persis warned her sternly. Then softening:"But good land! Grandmothers nowadays are wearing simple littlegirlish things with ribbon bows in the back. Pick out what you want.Everything in this month's book is just about right for sixteen."
As Diantha gave herself to rapturous study of the fashion-plates, Persis studied her. "She's in a fair way to make a beauty. Annabel at her best never held a candle to what this girl is likely to turn out. Annabel's looks are skin deep. Diantha's have top-roots running to her brain and her heart, too. Only she ought to be happier. 'Most any girl face is pretty to look at if it's happy enough, same as 'most any flower is pretty if it grows in the sun."
A harassing reflection troubled Diantha's bliss. "Miss Persis, I haven't got a petticoat that comes below my knees."
"I'll make you a petticoat the same length as the dress. That's always the best way. A skirt that's too long looks as if you wanted to show the lace, and one's that too short looks as if you were trying to save on cotton cloth, and I don't know which is worse." To herself Persis added: "If she went home and asked her mother for a long petticoat, the fat would all be in the fire."
For a woman at least as conscientious as the average of her sex, Persis was singularly unmindful of the enormity of encouraging a daughter to act in defiance of her mother's wishes. Had she been called upon to defend herself, she might have explained that she had small respect for the authority of a motherhood which had never progressed beyond the physical relationship. Annabel, a reluctant mother in the beginning, had been consistently selfish ever since, and Persis gave scant recognition to parental rights that were not the out-growth of parental love. Moreover, the project she had in mind was of too complex importance for her to allow it to be side-tracked by petty scruples.
"Like enough she'll refuse to pay my bill," thought Persis, with a grim smile, as she watched Diantha turning the gaily colored plates like a butterfly fluttering from blossom to blossom. "I guess she won't go as far as that though, as long as there ain't another dressmaker in Clematis she'd trust to make her a kimono. If she says anything, that'll pave the way for me to give her a good plain talking to, and even if I never get a cent for the dress, I might as well give my missionary money that way as any other."
The rush of the season—Clematis is sufficiently sophisticated to know in what months propriety demands overworking one's dressmaker and milliner—was already over, and the little frock made rapid progress. Cheap and plain and simple as it was, its effect upon the wearer, even in its stages of incompleteness, was so striking that Persis sometimes forgot her official duty in the satisfaction of a long admiring stare. And probably in her sixteen years of existence, Diantha had never so nearly approximated all the cardinal virtues as in that idyllic week. She besieged Persis with offers of assistance, pleading for permission to pull basting threads or overcast seams. At home she was gentle, yielding, subdued. Her father, having learned through bitter experience how open to the attack of a million miseries love makes the heart, had resolved that fate should not again trick him. He had steeled himself against the appeal of Diantha's babyhood and had watched unmoved her precocious development. The mocking politeness which characterized his manner toward his wife was replaced in the case of the daughter by a distant formality. Yet now as Diantha went about the house with dreamy eyes and a half smile on her lips, there were times when the father looked at her almost wistfully and wondered of what she were thinking. With all due respect to the human will, we must acknowledge ourselves creatures of circumstance in no little degree, when two yards of lawn, retailing at twelve and a half cents, can prove so potent a factor in character and destiny.
Diantha's mother might have prescribed quinine had she noted anything unusual in the girl's demeanor. But Annabel had reached a crucial stage in her flirtation with Thad West. The boy was developing a gratifying jealousy of the tenor singer in the Unitarian church choir and must be treated with a nice commingling of indulgence and severity to prevent his asserting himself in the crude masculine fashion, and either terminating the intimacy or else permanently getting the upper hand. Annabel was enjoying the crisis of the game and found it impossible to spare from her own absorbing interests a thought for such a minor consideration as Diantha's moods.
Diantha anticipated the time when she was to call for her finished frock by more than an hour. "I know you're not ready yet," she apologized, as Persis looked at the clock. "But I thought I'd like to watch you work, if you don't mind."
"Of course I don't mind, child. Just put those fashion books on the table and take the easy chair." Persis bent over the finishings of the little frock with a vague satisfaction in the nearness of the motionless figure. She was growing fond of Diantha, a not unnatural result of the adoring attention Diantha had lavished upon her for a week past. But because Persis was a woman with a living to make, and Diantha was a girl with a dream to be dreamed, scarcely a word was spoken till the last stitch was taken.
"There!" Persis removed a basting thread with a jerk, making an unsuccessful pretense that the finishing of this dress was like the completion of any other piece of work. "There! It's done at last. I suppose you'll want to try it on."
"Yes," said Diantha, "I'll try it on." And as the faded blue serge slipped from her shoulders to be replaced by the white lawn, the Diantha who had been, took her departure to that remote country from which the children never come back.
Persis was almost appalled by the result for which she was principally responsible. The tall Diantha in a dress to her shoe-tops was disconcertingly unlike the little girl she had known. She looked older than her years, stately, self-contained and beautiful. It was not till Persis had fortified herself by the reflection that she might as well be hung for an old sheep as for a lamb, that she ventured another revolutionary suggestion.
"Diantha, I s'pose you'll make some change in the way you do your hair?"
"Yes, indeed." Diantha, scrutinizing herself in the mirror, frowned at the drooping curls with an air of restrained disgust. "This way is only suitable for children."
Persis' negligent gesture called attention to the open door of the bedroom. "There's a box of hairpins on the dresser. If you like, you can fix yourself up and surprise your mother."
Diantha vanished swiftly. She had no illusions regarding the nature of the coming surprise. Her mother would be very angry, but the sooner that storm had spent itself, the better. Relentlessly the golden curls were sacrificed to the impressive coiffure of the woman of fashion. For a novice Diantha was remarkably deft, her skill suggesting periods of anticipatory practise with her door locked and no eyes but her own to admire the effect.
During the progress of this rite, Persis in the adjoining room, looked at the clock, glanced at the window and then paced the floor, for once in her well-disciplined life too nervous to utilize the flying moments. Persis was in the dilemma of a stage manager whose curtain is ready to go up, and whoseprima donnais about to appear, while the audience has failed to materialize. To such mischances does one subject one's self in assuming the responsibilities of a deputy-providence.
Then her brow cleared, even while her heart jumped into her throat. The gate clicked, and a lithe figure swung up the path. Persis took her time in answering the peremptory knock.
"Good afternoon, Miss Persis. Mother said that you—"
"Walk in, Thad. Yes, I've a little package to send your mother. Sit down while I look for it."
Would the girl never come! The curtain was rung up, the audience waiting. But the stage was empty. How long a time in Heaven's name did Diantha expect to spend in combing her hair. "I should think she was waiting for it to grow," thought the harassed Persis. Very deliberately she opened and closed every drawer in the old-fashioned secretary, though she knew the upper contained only old letters and the second, garden seeds.
Thad was fidgeting. "If you can't put your hand on it, Miss Persis, don't bother to hunt. I'll drop in again in a day or two."
"Just a minute, Thad. It must be right around here. It can't—ah!"Persis forgot the ending of the unnecessary sentence. For now ThadWest was at liberty to leave whenever he pleased.
A tall slender figure advanced into the room. Diantha's grace had always made her an anomaly among tall children. Her hair was parted and drawn back simply, after the fashion doubtless designed by earth's beauties, since it is the despair of plain women. The yellow curls, sacrificing their individual distinction, had magnanimously contributed to the perfection of the exquisite golden coil at the back of her shapely head. No one would have looked twice at the plain little lawn, but it proved superior to some more pretentious gowns in that it set off the charms of the wearer, instead of distracting attention from them. The unlooked-for apparition brought Thad West to his feet, and so Youth and Beauty met as if hitherto they had been strangers.
For a long half minute they stood without speaking. "Oh, good afternoon," Diantha said at last, and veiled her eyes from his fascinated stare. Formerly she had treated him with the free-and-easy pertness of a precocious child. Now the exquisite shyness of maidenhood enveloped her. Instinct drew her back from the man's inevitable advance. "I didn't know it was so late," she said to Persis, oblivious to Thad's gasping greeting. "I must hurry."
Thad's sense of confusion was like a physical dizziness. This regal young beauty was the daughter of the woman whose hand he had held surreptitiously the previous evening. With an effort he steadied himself, only to make the discovery that in that hazy moment the world had undergone a process of readjustment. He knew as well as he was ever to know it, that Annabel Sinclair belonged to another generation from his own.
"I suppose you want to take this along." Persis' gesture indicated the package containing the discarded serge which Diantha would have been glad to contribute to the wardrobe of the youthful Trotters. But with all her daring, her courage was hardly equal to such a step. She put out her hand for the package, but Thad had already pounced upon it.
"I—I'm going your way," he said, a trace of his recent disorder in his stammering speech. "I'll carry it for you."
Silently Diantha accepted the offer. She kissed Persis good-by in a fashion which the critical might have pronounced needlessly provocative, though her dreamy eyes protested that nothing was further from her maiden thoughts than the presence of Thad West. Persis, who was intensely alive to every phase of the dramatic situation, had caught a glimpse of the young fellow's face during the affectionate leave-taking and was abundantly satisfied.
"Thad's no fool, though he's acted like the twin brother to an idiot. He can't help seeing that the mother of a grown-up girl like Diantha hadn't ought to be flirting with a boy like him. If he doesn't see it now he will before he gets her home, or I miss my guess."
Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Sinclair were seated side by side on their front porch, presenting an agreeable picture of domesticity. The reason for Annabel's presence was that the tenor singer of the Unitarian choir was accustomed to pass the house at that hour. Sinclair stayed on simply because he suspected that his wife wished him indoors. He read aloud inane items of village news from the weekly paper, and only the veiled mockery of his eyes betrayed the fact that he was not the most devoted and the most complacent of husbands.
As the two young people came into view, Annabel's air of indifferent listlessness changed to rigid attention. She recognized the gallant figure of the young man considerably before she knew his graceful companion. Her husband's eyes were quicker. His paper dropped from his hand, and his emotions found vent in an explosive and needlessly profane monosyllable.
The two culprits came up the walk, Thad with a fine color, Diantha extraordinarily self-possessed. The girl's eyes rested on her mother's face, then went in swift appeal to her father's. Their consternation was too obvious to be ignored.
"I wore my new dress home," she remarked casually. Then with sudden recklessness: "Do you like it?"
"It's—it's absurd," pronounced Annabel almost with a snarl. So a mother tigress might have corrected her offspring. Never had she seemed less prepossessing to her youthful adorer than at that moment. Anger aged her indescribably. The young man looked at her and dropped his eyes ashamed.
"It's no longer than other girls of sixteen are wearing," said Diantha, and turned to Thad. "Thank you for carrying my bundle." She took the package and vanished. Nothing in her outward composure indicated that her heart was thumping, and girlhood's ready tears burning under her drooping lids.
Persis' device had been eminently successful, entailing consequences, indeed, she was far from anticipating. For Stanley Sinclair had waked to the fact that he was the father of a beautiful girl on the verge of womanhood, and his sense of parental responsibility, long before drugged, manacled and locked into a dark cell, had roused at last and was clamoring to be free from its prison. Annabel, his wife, had recognized a possible rival in her own household. And lastly, Thad West was the prey of an uneasy suspicion that perhaps, after all, the mother of Diantha Sinclair had been making a fool of him.
Mindful of her promise to Mrs. Trotter, Persis had looked through her piece-bag apparently with excellent results. For the little garments symbolic of humanity's tenderest hopes, the garments that are to clothe the unborn child, were growing rapidly under her skilful fingers.
The first slip had been severely plain, and then Persis, yielding to a temptation most women will understand, began to fashion scraps of embroidery and odds and ends of lace and insertion into tiny yokes and bands. After many a long day's work she sat by the shaded lamp finishing the diminutive garments with stitches worthy of a bridal outfit.
"Who is it that's expecting?" Joel demanded one evening, his sex not proving an impregnable armor against the assaults of curiosity.
The brevity of Persis' answer indicated reluctance to import the desired information. "Mis' Trotter."
"Bartholomew Trotter's wife? And of course she's going to pay you for all this fiddling and folderol."
Persis accepted the implied rebuke meekly. "I guess I'm paying myself in the satisfaction I get out of it. I started in to stitch up some slips on the machine, but I just couldn't stand it. Machine sewing's all right for grown folks, but it does seem that when a little child's getting ready to come into the world, there'd ought to be a needle weaving back and forth, and tender thoughts and hopes weaving along with it. And specially if a baby's going to be born into a home like the Trotters', you can't grudge it a little bit of beauty to start out with."
"Well, I must say it's lucky that so far you women have been kept where you belong. Weaving hopes, indeed! As if 'twould make any difference to that young one of Trotter's whether it was rigged out like a millionaire baby or wrapped up in a horse blanket."
Persis sewed on unmoved. "I don't say the baby'd know the difference.It's just my way of showing respect for the human race."
Her industry was not premature. One Saturday night she carried to the Trotters' squalid home a daintily fashioned, freshly laundered outfit which took Mrs. Trotter's restrained and self-respecting gratitude quite by storm. Forgetting for once the public obligation to provide for the needs of her family present and to come, she accepted the gift in a silence vastly more eloquent than her usual volubility. Then the muscles of her scrawny throat twitched, and a tear splashed down on the soft cambric. Nor did she, during the interview, recover her usual poise sufficiently to refer to the obligation under which Bartholomew and herself were placing the community; and Persis returned home in a mood of even more than her customary tolerance.
That was Saturday night. Early Monday morning little Benny brought word that his mother was sick and wanted Miss Persis to come right away. Joel had not risen, and Persis scrawled a hasty note explaining her abrupt departure and set out for the Trotter establishment, stopping on the way to ask a favor of Susan Fitzgerald.
Susan was finishing her early breakfast, her hair still wound about her crimping pins, the painfully strained and denuded effect which resulted being a necessary preliminary to the rippling luxuriance of the afternoon. Persis stated her errand tersely.
"Susan, they've sent for me from Trotters', and there's no telling when I'll be home. I wish you'd go up to the house, if you've nothing particular on hand and look after Joel. He's the helplessest man ever born when it comes to doing for himself."
In her complex excitement, Susan fluttered like an impaled butterfly. "Oh, dear me! I mean of course I will, Persis. But what do you want me to do?"
"Oh, just get his meals and amuse him till I get back. You can keepJoel pretty cheerful if you'll let him unload all his notions on you.Joel generally finds a good listener good comp'ny."
"And so poor Lizzie Trotter's going through that again," exclaimed Susan, momentarily forgetting her own prospective ordeal, in sympathy for the other woman's severer trial. "I don't want to accuse Divine Providence, but I must say it hardly seems fair to put all the responsibility for getting the children into the world off on women. If 'twas turn and turn about, now, I wouldn't say a word."
"I guess if that was the way of it, there'd never be more'n three in a family, and it took a sight of people to fill up the world, starting with the garden of Eden. Well, I must hurry, Susan. I won't be gone a mite longer'n I can help."
As Susan removed her crimping pins, her agitation grew. The favor Persis had asked so lightly, and she had granted so readily, took on a new aspect as she considered it. Susan shared the respect of Clematis for Joel Dale's intellectuality and stood rather in awe of his foibles. Her hands trembled as she arranged her undulating locks in the fashion ordinarily reserved for afternoons. Her cooking might not suit him. Her efforts to be entertaining might not measure up to his lofty standards. She quaked, picturing his possible displeasure. For this courageous champion of the rights of womankind who did not hesitate to call the Creator Himself to account for seeming injustice, became the meekest of the meek when confronted with the sex from which oppressors are made.
Susan's apprehensions were not so groundless as might be fancied. Joel Dale was in a very bad humor after he had finished reading his sister's note. Joel held the not unpopular theory that the supreme duty of woman is to make some man comfortable. Religion and philanthropy were legitimate diversions if not allowed to interfere with the higher claim. Even the exercise of talent might be tendered a patronizing approval, if this, too, knew its place. Joel was willing that Persis should utilize her gifts in earning his living provided she did not forget the complex ministrations involved in making him "comfortable." He was ready to allow her to help her poorer neighbors, so that she was never absent when he wanted her. But if that jealous divinity, his Comfort, were denied its due, the indulgent brother was lost in the affronted tyrant.
Poor Susan Fitzgerald found her tremors doubled by the sight of his lowering face. "Mr. Dale, I've come up to keep house for you to-day, seeing—seeing Persis has been called away." She blushed, realizing that Joel was undoubtedly in the secret of that errand. After forty years in a world where birth is the one inevitable human experience, aside from death, she had never been able to rid herself of the impression that it was essentially immodest.
Though the cloud of Jovian displeasure did not remove immediately from Joel's brow, his mood underwent an instant change. His sister had not been guilty of leaving him to shift for himself. The opportune appearance of Susan Fitzgerald indicated a proper regard for the masculine helplessness, which is also, by some obscure process of reasoning, the badge of masculine superiority. Moreover Susan's presence furnished the opportunity of setting forth in detail sundry theories which to Persis were an old story. To a gentleman of Joel's temperament, a new audience is at times a necessity.
"You won't have much trouble getting my meals," he assured her, his cold dignity thawing rapidly. "Just set on the dish of apples and nuts."
Susan's near-sighted eyes narrowed as she gazed at him. "You mean for dessert?"
"Dessert! When Adam and Eve started housekeeping do you s'pose they sat down to soup to begin with and wound up with pie? The Lord put 'em in a garden instead of a butcher's shop, because He wanted 'em to eat vegetable food and not poison themselves with dead animals." Joel's voice had grown almost cheerful. His ardor in the dissemination of his dietetic theories waxed and waned, but when there was a new observer to be impressed, he always found the crucifixion of his appetites well worth while. He seated himself at the table with a gesture which seemed to wave into some remote background the temptation of sausages and buckwheat cakes.
"No trouble for me. Just set on the nuts and apples, same as our ancestors ate before they got wiser'n their Creator and learned to cook their victuals. We're the only animals that ain't satisfied with raw food. And we're the only ones that are everlastingly kicking about indigestion."
"I declare!" exclaimed Susan Fitzgerald, carried away by this masterly logic. "You certainly have your own way of looking at subjects, Mr. Dale."
"Well, I'll admit that I'm not much at taking up with second-hand opinions. Now, here's another idea of mine." He held up a walnut between his thumb and finger. "There's a tree in that, ain't there?"
"Why, yes." Susan's ready admission gave every indication of a willingness to be impressed.
"Well, what's enough to give a start to a tree that may grow seventy feet or over, ought to start a man off to his day's work pretty well. That's my way of reasoning."
"But don't you feel an awful goneness after a breakfast like that?"
"Goneness!" Magnificently Joel waved away the suggestion. "With an apple and five or six good nuts inside me, I feel like I could run through a troop, as the psalmist says, and leap over a wall."
Susan's admiring murmur indicated that the sustaining effect of the diet Joel recommended was due less to its intrinsic virtue than to some unusual and dominating quality of Joel's personality. And Joel, struggling with a peculiarly tough Brazil nut, reflected that Susan Fitzgerald was an intelligent woman as well as an agreeable one.
The morning passed pleasantly for both. Susan possessed the gift which men have ever highly esteemed in the sex, the faculty of continued silence, combined with close attention. Some of Joel's theories impressed her as startling, but like many very proper people, Susan rather enjoyed being shocked, if the sensation was not overdone. Whether she murmured approval or blushed in decorous protest, it was plain that she found Joel's monologues immensely interesting. She could hardly believe her ears when the clock struck twelve.
Susan brought the nuts and apples out again after their brief period of retirement, and seated herself at the table, to share the Eden-like repast. "You'd be an awful easy man to cook for, Mr. Dale," she said, with a glance which in another woman would have been coquettish.
But the arrow glanced harmless. Joel's mood was abstracted. Not for some time had he put into practise his theories regarding uncooked food, and his rebellious appetite craved more stimulating fare. He munched his nuts with distracting memories of yesterday's pot roast. He found himself resenting Susan's eager compliance. She should have insisted on preparing him a good meal—good from her standpoint—and as a gentleman he could have done no less than show his appreciation by eating it.
For once Joel had lost interest in his own eloquence. Inward voices were protesting against this return to the fare which had satisfied Father Adam. When he retired to the armchair, after dinner, and relapsed into a sulky silence, Susan remembered that the obligation to amuse him was also nominated in the bond. Luckily his tastes were literary, which rendered her task a simple one.
Susan stepped into the tightly-closed, partially darkened parlor which never in the sultriest weather seemed wholly to lose the chill of its unwarmed winter days. The center of the room was occupied by a square table, on each corner of which lay a book, the four arranged with geometrical nicety. Susan was too familiar with Clematis traditions not to know that the books on the center-table were seldom of a sort one would care to open, but as she lifted the nearest volume and saw that it was a collections of poems, she felt a comforting certainty that luck was with her.
"You're a great admirer of po'try, ain't you, Mr. Dale? I've always understood so."
With an effort Joel roused himself.
"Another has expressed my sentiments, Miss Fitzgerald.
"Verse sweetens toil, however rude the sound.'"
"Then if you'd like, I'll read you a little so's to help pass the time." Susan seated herself near the window, cleared her throat and opening the volume at random, began in the self-conscious and unnatural voice characterizing ninety-nine people out of every hundred who attempt the reading of verse.
"'O there's a heart for every oneIf every one could find it.Then up and seek, ere youth is gone,Whate'er the task, ne'er mind it.For if you chance to meet at lastWith that one heart intended—'"
Susan's voice had grown husky. She cleared her throat again. "I'm afraid I made a poor selection," she apologized. "You see I'm not as familiar with po'try as you are, Mr. Dale." She turned the leaves in a confusion that increased as her groping vision stumbled continually on lines startlingly sentimental.
"'Let thy love in kisses rainOn my cheeks and eye-lids pale.'"
Susan opened ten pages ahead and tried again.
"'When stars are in the quiet skies,Then most I pine for thee.Bend on me, then, thy tender eyes,As stars look on the sea.'"
Joel's change of position was subtly suggestive of weariness. Susan whirled the leaves and took a desperate plunge.
"'Ask if I love thee? O, smiles can not tellPlainer what tears are now showing too well.Had I not loved thee my sky had been clear;Had I not loved thee, I had not been here.'"
It was plainly impossible for a self-respecting single woman to continue. "Why, they're all silly," she exclaimed, with a little nervous giggle. Her face flamed. What was she to say next, not only to carry out Persis Dale's injunction, but to occupy the blank silence which contradictorily seemed echoing with that fateful refrain, "Had I not loved thee I had not been here."
When in doubt, play trumps. Susan Fitzgerald's chief interest in life was the question of woman's suffrage. And the confusion which had swept her mind bare of small talk, had not jostled her substantial ideas on the familiar theme. She determined to broach the subject delicately and with caution. If Joel cared for discussion, this would occupy a good portion of the afternoon, and be a sufficient antidote for her unfortunate poetical selections. It was even possible that a strong forceful presentation of the case might result in making a convert. Susan thrilled, realizing what such an accession would mean to the cause.
"Mr. Dale," she began, feeling her way to a tactful introduction. "I am sure you must have a pretty good opinion of women. A man with such a sister as you've got couldn't help it."
Her opening was unfortunate. No man is so reluctant to recognize feminine superiority as the one who profits most by the gifts of some woman. Joel's brow clouded, and his answer showed a cautious resolve not to be trapped into any compromising admission.
"Oh, I haven't anything against women folks. I've always thought the poet went too far when he said:
"'Mankind from Adam has been woman's fools.Women from Eve have been the Devil's tools.'"
Despite the negative nature of this encouragement, Susan continued.
"I'm sure a fair-minded man like you are, Mr. Dale, wouldn't want to keep any woman out of what rightfully belonged to her. You'd want her to have a chance to fill her place in the world, wouldn't you?"
"Why, yes, I'd be in favor of that." Joel's voice was less positive than his words, owing to an inward uncertainty as to the trend of these observations.
"Well, Mr. Dale, there's lots of us that are ready to take up our share of the duties the Creator designed for us. We are standing waiting like the people in the parable that nobody had hired. The trouble is you won't let us, you men won't. We've got to wait for you to give us our rights. All our willingness doesn't amount to anything till you are ready."
A sudden harassing suspicion assailed the target of Susan's eloquence, and no sooner had it entered his mind than a dozen details instantly corroborated it. Joel remembered the look which had accompanied Susan's declaration that he would be an easy man to cook for. The love poems had in themselves been equivalent to an avowal of passion even without her tell-tale blushes. And now at last he grasped the underlying meaning of her vague hints and obscure figures of speech. For though she talked of rights and duties and the designs of the Creator, there could be no doubt that she meant a husband.
Joel rose to his feet and his mute tempestuous indignation was not without interest as throwing light on the workings of the masculine mind. In such a design as he attributed to Susan, it would seem that the lady had much to lose and little to gain. She was vigorous, well-preserved, possessed of a competence, while Joel was doubly bankrupt. Yet his mood was far removed from humble gratitude. He was furious at her presumption, alert to defend his threatened prerogatives, angry at Persis for exposing him to such an attack under his own roof where ignominious retreat was his only safety.
"I've just thought of a little matter I've got to look after this afternoon," he said, his manner nicely calculated to repel any tender advances. "I'll have to hurry along, and there won't be any occasion for you to linger. Please hang the key on the nail so Persis can let herself in when she comes."
His sudden hauteur was not lost on Susan. She sighed as he withdrew.
"Funny how real liberal-minded men won't listen to argument when it comes to some questions. But maybe he'll think over what I said and it'll have an influence sooner or later. Anyway, we've got to be prepared to sow beside all waters."
The leather-covered book, whose failure to serve her purpose was indirectly responsible for the broaching of so delicate a question, caught her wandering attention. She picked it up, reading the title aloud.
"Love Songs of Many Lands. No wonder I couldn't find one that was sensible. Well, I declare!"
The book had opened at the fly-leaf. "Persis from Justin," Susan read, bringing her near-sighted eyes close to the faded ink. She pursed her lips and shook her head in disapproving surprise.
"Persis Dale must have known some man pretty well to let him give her anything so pointed. I should have thought she'd have felt awfully embarrassed if she ever read the poems. Justin! Justin! There was a Justin Ware, but I never heard there was anything between them."
She returned the book to the chilly front room, adjusting it to the proper angle on the center-table, as if it had been a part of a geometrical diagram, And finally, after locking the door and hanging the key where Persis, or any other arrival, would immediately notice it, she turned her downcast face toward home.
"I'm afraid I hurt Mr. Dale's feelings. It beats all how sensitive some natures are. It's lucky I didn't get as far as what you would call the real telling arguments."
If Susan Fitzgerald's mood was despondent, as she reviewed the activities of the day, such was not the case with Persis Dale. In the Trotters' shabby cottage, exaltation reigned. Young Doctor Ballard, lean and boyish, looked ready to be congratulated on a good piece of work, though perfectly aware ha could never in this world, at least, collect his fee for medical attendance. Bartholomew's complacent self-importance almost straightened his bowed shoulders and redeemed the weakness of his sagging lips and feeble chin. Lizzie, his wife, spent and pallid, her gaunt temples hollowed and her face chiseled by suffering, smiled contentedly as she lay against her pillow, a creature lifted for the moment above the petty weaknesses, pitiable fruit of life-long and grinding poverty, by the gracious dignity of motherhood. As for Persis, as she carried the new arrival down-stairs to make the acquaintance of his brothers and sisters, her comely face was radiant. Weariness was forgotten. The hours of uncertainty, the long hours when Life and Death matched forces in that old duel renewed with each new existence, had all been forgotten. For a man was born.
The little Trotters gathered around in an ecstasy of pleasure and surprise. In a household where food was scanty, and every new pair of shoes was a serious economic problem, there was no lack of welcome for the newcomer. Chirpy little voices commented on the new brother's surprising pinkness, his diminutive proportions and his belligerent fashion of clenching his fists.
"He's got on the nice clean dress the angels made him," said Winnie, the observant. "See the lace in the sleeves."
"I wish the angels had made him some hair instead," suggested Wilbur, plainly aggrieved. "'Cause he could have worn some of our old clothes, but he can't wear our hair."
"He can have my jack-knife when he gets big enough," declared Benny, the oldest of the flock. He drew the cherished possession from his pocket as if ready to surrender it on the instant. And that offer was a signal for a general outburst of generosity.
"He can have my tooth brush."
"I'll give him my rubber boot. Maybe when he's big enough to wear it, somebody will give him one for the other leg."
"You're going to let the new baby have your high chair, ain't you, Essie?" Thus Winnie prompted the sister now compelled to relinquish the honors and dignities attaching to the post of baby of the family. And Essie, nodding her little tow head, laid a rose-leaf cheek against the crumpled carnation of the newcomer. "Nice litty brudder," she cooed. "Essie loves 'oo."
"My gracious me!" thought Persis Dale, as she tucked the baby into the battered cradle, never long without an occupant, "It's queer that we ain't shaking our heads and groaning over this. The Trotters can't afford a new baby any more than I can afford a steam yacht. There ain't enough of anything to go around, and yet we're all holding up our heads and acting as if this was the best day's work we ever had a hand in. It's no use talking. Down in our hearts we know that life's a good thing, even when we've got to take poverty and hardships along with it. And that's why we start in singing Psalms in spite of ourselves when a new baby comes."
"I believe," said young Mr. Thompson, "that I've been owing you a little bill for some weeks, Miss Dale. It had completely slipped my mind."
He looked old and worn, Persis thought, more like the man who must settle for the spring finery of a family of grown daughters, than a complacent young husband paying for his wife's first new gown since the wedding. There was a flatness in his voice that matched the weariness in his eyes, and forthwith a dozen questions raced through her alert brain.
"Well, Mr. Thompson, I hope you like the dress. I always tell my customers that I'm as anxious to please their husbands as I am to please them. 'Tain't fair, from my point of view, to ask a man to pay out good money for clothes he just despises."
Evasion is an art possessed in its perfection by few of the sterner sex.
"Mrs. Thompson hasn't worn the dress yet," explained Mrs. Thompson's husband. "I dare say it's very pretty." He had taken a little roll of bills from his pocket, but his absent air showed conclusively that he was thinking neither of them nor of his answer.
Persis lowered her voice confidentially.
"If I was you, Mr. Thompson, I wouldn't encourage her in that way of doing. Maybe it seems like prejudiced advice, coming from a dressmaker, so, but I never could see there was any saving in hanging a dress away in the closet and not getting any wear out of it, till it was clear out of style. You know how it is with young wives. They've got their hearts so set on having their husbands praise 'em for being saving that they make those little mistakes. You just tell her that you'd rather spend a little more money, if it came to that, and see her look her prettiest."
"Mrs. Thompson is not—" began the young husband and broke off uncertainly. His troubled eyes went to the kind resolute face opposite, and the little roll of greenbacks dropped to the floor unheeded. "Fact is," said the young fellow, carried away by that impulse toward confidence which the sight of Persis was likely to inspire in the least communicative, "fact is we're having the deuce of a time."
Persis nodded understandingly. "That ain't strange the first year or so. After the honeymoon's over, then comes the getting acquainted. I don't care how well folks have known each other beforehand, they've got to start all over again after they're married. But don't worry; it don't take long as a rule."
"You don't quite get my idea." Young Mr. Thompson scowled at the floor. "It's worse than you think. I'm in a fix, a devil of a fix. Part of it I'm to blame for. I'm one of those guys with a sense of humor, you know. I'm the regular George Cohan kind, and between my practical jokes and some interfering old maids—I—I beg your pardon."
"I'm not partial to 'em myself," smiled Persis reassuringly.
There was an instant of understanding silence. "Well, anyway," groaned the young man, "with a little outside help, I've queered myself for good. And that's tough on a chap not a year married, believe me."
He stared at the floor gloomily and when he lifted his eyes, she saw the whole story on its way. "You wouldn't call Thompson an unusual name, would you?"
"One of the commonest, I should say."
"And there's nothing so strange about 'W. Thompson' that you'd strain your neck getting another look at it on a sign. Half the men you meet are named William, to say nothing of the Walters and the Warrens, and the new crop of Woodrow Wilsons."
Persis' murmur of agreement was admirably calculated to encourage the flow of confidence, not to check it.
"Look at that." Young Mr. Thompson pulled a letter from his pocket and slammed it down on the table. "There's the proof that I'm a hound and a blackguard and that hanging would be too good for me. At least that's what all the women tell my wife. And take it from me, they know."
Persis picked up the envelope and studied the superscription. It had originally been addressed to Mr. W. Thompson, Hollenden Hotel, Cleveland, Ohio, and later redirected in another hand to the firm by which Mr. Thompson was employed. The unhappy husband explained:
"Our men generally stop at the Hollenden when they are in Cleveland. I never was there in my life. But Hudson, one of our fellows, blew in one night and noticing a letter directed to W. Thompson, he knew, of course, it must be for me. That's just the sort of 'buttinski' that Hudson is. If he'd run across a tombstone with W. Thompson on it, he'd have expressed it to me before he'd eaten his dinner. So he told the clerk he knew me and sent the letter on to the main office. Now, perhaps you'll appreciate the rest of my story better, if you'll read the letter."
Gratified by the permission, for young Mr. Thompson had succeeded in piquing her curiosity, Persis drew the enclosure from the envelope and for an instant studied the monogram at the head of the sheet. When her gaze dropped to the address, her eyebrows lifted.
"Yes, I know," murmured young Mr. Thompson. "'Tommy darling.' Tommy is short for Thompson, I suppose. Tommy-rot, I call it. You might read it aloud if you don't mind. It'll help me to have a realization of what I'm up against."
Persis complied.
"Tommy darling:
"Here I am writing you again for all I promised myself that I wouldn't—not ever. It makes me feel so dishonorable when I think of Her. And then, dear, I think of you and everything else is forgotten for a little while.
"That lovely, sad, happy, heart-breaking afternoon together! I've lived on the memory of it ever since. I thought when we said good-by that it was for the last time. I really meant it, dear. But now the thought of never seeing you again is like a great black wall shutting out everything bright and beautiful. I'm not brave enough to bear it.
"Tell me when and where we can see each other, Tommy. I'm not going to think of Her, but only of you and me and the joy of loving and being loved.
"Enid."
"She seems," observed Persis Dale, folding the letter carefully, "to be of a real affectionate disposition." Young Mr. Thompson passed the comment over without remark.
"They gave me the letter at the office. It was pretty near a month after it was written and I judged the two of them had seen each other before that, and one lost letter wouldn't matter. And then it occurred to me that I'd have a little fun with Molly. Get me?"
Persis' look indicated understanding rather than approval.
"You can't think worse than I've said to myself a thousand times. I put the letter in my pocket, and I had it all figured out how she'd find it and ask me about it, and then read it and be angry for about half a minute. And I took it for granted that I was going to be right there to explain and that I'd have the laugh on her before she had the chance to get to feeling real bad. It looked awful funny to me. It's a great thing to have a man-size sense of humor."
Persis was too interested to smile.
"Then the weather got warm and I changed to another suit and forgot to change the letter. I'd laid several little plots to help her to find it, like sending her to my pocket for postage stamps, but she didn't fall to 'em, and finally the letter got to be an old story. I pretty nearly forgot all about it. When she did find it, I was off on a trip and she'd talked the thing over with all the old women in the neighborhood before I got back." He ran his fingers through his hair. "Explain! Well, she thinks it's a mighty slim story, and the deuce of it is that she's right. Any dam fool could make up a better one."
"I b'lieve you could have done better yourself," Persis suggested smoothly, "if you'd been in the story business."
The young fellow looked at her, and a quick flush swept to the roots of his hair.
"That sounds," he began breathlessly, "that sounds as if you took stock in me in spite of the way things look."
"I've lived long enough to know that looks are deceiving whether you're talking about women or just things." Persis studied the address again and compressed her lips. "See that this letter don't get lost, strayed or stolen," she directed, with that instinctive assumption of authority which is the badge of the competent. "We might find it useful in clearing things up."
The young man's ruddy color rose again. "Then you think—" he faltered and broke off.
"I think that when folks act fair and square, their lives ain't going to be ruined by a little mistake. Of course it's going to be cleared up. Careful, Mr. Thompson. You seem to be stepping on a lot of money. And it must belong to you, because I can't afford to carpet my room with greenbacks."
His answering laugh showed the contagion of her optimism. Young Mr. Thompson picked up his money and paid his bill, "I'm going home and coax Molly into putting on that new dress," he declared boyishly. "It's the first dress I ever bought for her, and I'm crazy to see how she looks in it."
Persis approved the suggestion. "But don't be discouraged if she needs a lot of coaxing. It's as natural for women to primp and fuss and fix their hair up pretty ways when they're feeling happy as 'tis for plants to put out leaves in the spring. But heavy hearts are like winter weather. If you want any blossoms in December, you've got to work for 'em." She wrote "received payment" beneath Mr. Thompson's bill and went to the secretary for the change. Young Mr. Thompson pocketed his forty-five cents and detained the hand that tendered it.
"Look here, Miss Dale," he said, "you've braced me up wonderfully. I feel more like a man and less like a feather-bolster than I did when I came in. I wonder if you couldn't—" He hesitated and pressed her fingers persuasively. "Couldn't you manage to drop a hint to Molly about appearances being deceptive, you know."
"I'll say more than that before I'm done with her," Persis promised briskly. And they shook hands over again, and young Mr. Thompson departed with an alert step that argued a corresponding lightness of heart. And because Persis Dale was a woman of action, she sat down at the secretary and penned a letter to a total stranger, to Mr. W. Thompson, care of the Hollenden Hotel, Cleveland. The letter itself was brief and to the point.
"Dear Sir:
"I should like to know if you are expecting word from a young woman named Enid. In case you are, kindly communicate with the undersigned.
"Yours truly,
"Persis Dale."
Brief as the letter was its composition took some little time. The deftness which characterized Persis in most of her work, did not extend to her epistolary efforts. She was still puckering her forehead over the page when Thomas Hardin knocked. The door was ajar and glancing over her shoulder, she called to him to enter.
"You'll excuse me for not getting up, Thomas. When once I sit down to an ink bottle, I stick to it till I finish. I'm in a hurry to get this letter off to-night." She wrote the address and dried the ink by moving the paper gently back and forth.
Thomas' face showed relief. He had come prepared to make a painful disclosure and the brief period of waiting was as welcome as similar postponement to the possessor of an aching tooth who calls at the dentist's office and finds the practitioner busy. But as Persis immediately proceeded to fold the letter and seal the envelope, his respite was brief.
"Persis, did you know there was insanity in my family?"
Persis, applying a crumpled stamp to the tip of her tongue, started violently. "Good gracious, Thomas, no! I never heard it mentioned."
"I thought maybe 'twas my duty to speak to you about it. It was my great-uncle, Captain Silas Hardin. He was my father's uncle, and he—"
"Why, I know all about him, Thomas. How he was shipwrecked off in the Indian Ocean somewhere and floated around on a raft, and the different ones got crazy with the heat and thirst and all and jumped overboard. And it was an English ship that found the old captain, and he was just raving when they took him aboard. I can remember him when I was a little girl. There was a blue anchor tattooed on his hand, and I thought it was the most wonderful thing in the world. But then he was as sensible as anybody."
"Yes, he was all right in his later days, but when he first came home from England, he had lots of queer ways about him, I've heard my mother say. And as long as he lived, he'd stand off and stare at the corner of the room where there wasn't nothing with his eyes kind of fixed, and it was enough to make your hair rise up to look at him."
"I don't wonder, poor soul. I guess if we'd seen what he had, there'd be times when it would all come back to us. By the way, Thomas, seeing as you go right past the post-office, I'll ask you to mail this letter. I want it to be sure to get off the first mail."
Thomas tacitly accepted the commission by holding out his hand for the letter. Then he read the superscription. "W. Thompson! Why, there's a W. Thompson in Clematis."
"This," replied Persis, and the confidence of her tone would have warmed the heart of young Mr. Thompson, "this is a different one."
Thomas waited to hear more, but no further particulars were vouchsafed.He felt mildly aggrieved. "Didn't know you had acquaintances inCleveland," he suggested by way of a stimulus to confidence.
"I haven't many." Persis compressed her lips, and Thomas looked again at the envelope. The sense of elation due to the discovery that Persis was disposed to regard the insanity of Captain Silas Hardin lightly, was eclipsed by a new anxiety. Persis had friends of whose existence he was unaware. She corresponded with men in distant cities. These apparently trivial facts took on greater import as he mused. His own chances to win her, dishearteningly small at the best of times in view of his checkered record, suddenly sank below the level of insignificance and ceased to exist.
He looked across at Persis on the other side of the table. She had picked up a piece of sewing, but her look of absorption showed that her trained fingers were doing their work without the supervision of the brain. Nor could he flatter himself that her thoughts were of him. He was a modest man, but for the moment he resented with bitterness the self-evident fact that she was temporarily oblivious to his presence.
He got to his feet, pushing back his chair noisily. "Maybe I'd better be going, so's your letter will be dead sure to get to the post-office on time," he said, his voice harsh with disappointment.
Persis stooped to bite a thread. "Thank you, Thomas," she answered placidly. "I'll be easier in my mind when I know it's mailed."