CHAPTER XIX.THE FERRIS WHEEL.It was half past nine when the wagonette bringing Clover and Jack stopped before the house. They were received with a chorus of questions, in which Mildred was too clever not to join. She was glad that Van Tassel must see Gorham seated near her, apart from the others, confidentially discoursing in the moonlight, even though Jack did not seem to observe it. He seated himself on the step near Mrs. Page, and leaned against a railing."We have had a fine time!" he exclaimed with what Mildred's practiced ear recognized as unmistakable sincerity."Oh, the German village by moonlight, Milly!" added Clover, taking a place near her sister. "You really ought to see it.""We ought to have been there, Mr. Page," said Mildred regretfully."I doubt if I could have had a pleasanter evening anywhere," he returned; and if Miss Bryant had had power to decorate him she would have done so on the spot for that timely speech. She trusted Jack had heard it."We sat there at table, you know," went on the latter, "and saw the moon come up over those quaint old gables. Oh, it was fine. I declare, we didn't know where we were. Did we, Clover?""I thought you were quite certain by the alleged German you entertained me with.""Alleged German! Well, if this isn't sad! There I wasted Heine's poems by the yard on you. Ungrateful girl! You will never know all the sweet things that were said to you to-night.""I know you drank a lot of beer and smoked too many cigars.""Of course, being in Rome I complimented the inhabitants by imitation.""Mr. Jack," spoke Miss Berry reproachfully, "I remember well that you said once you only smoked on holidays and birthdays.""Certainly, Aunt Love, that is my rule still. I never break it.""Whose birthday is this?" demanded Miss Berry, somewhat taken back."How should I know? Somebody's, surely." Jack looked up innocently. "I never show favoritism.""Oh!" groaned Gorham, rising. "I can't stay here. Discipline him, Aunt Love. I am going to my uncontaminated roof-tree.""Let us all take Gorham home," suggested Jack, also rising. "I'm afraid to be left here with Aunt Love's righteous wrath. Come, all of you. Nobody is too tired to walk to that music."For the band on the hotel piazza was playing the Washington Post March, which by midsummer was running neck and neck with "After the Ball.""Come, Robert," said Hilda, shaking the somnolent form in the hammock."Hey? What? Don't disturb me. I can die here as well as anywhere. What! Walk home with Gorham? Do you take me for an idiot? Music and moonlight!" with deep scorn. "Oh, go to! Woman, stand aside, or I shall do you an injury. Don't tempt a desperate man.""Dear Robert doesn't seem to care to come with us," laughed Mildredsotto voceto Jack. She was determined that none other than he should walk by her side to the hotel, and of course she had her way.An hour later she came into Clover's bedroom, brushing her long hair. Her white wrapper fell open at the neck, disclosing her handsome throat, and she looked particularly beautiful to her partial sister."Where else did you and Jack go to-night beside the German village?" she asked."Nowhere.""You took supper there and stayed all the evening?""Yes. We really couldn't tear ourselves away. It was like being in some romantic old story."Mildred smiled and hummed her favorite bit from Iolanthe."No indeed," answered Clover. "I am not his mother. He doesn't pretend that I am, and he doesn't wish me to be: so your little song doesn't fit the case at all."She did not look at her sister, but went on with her effort to braid her rebellious hair. Mildred ceased humming."I wish my hair was curly," she said at last."We all have our gifts," replied Clover. Mildred thought her tone sounded unusually complacent. It was a novel experience to feel aught but compassion, or tenderness, or reverent admiration for Clover, but now she suddenly found herself regarding her for the first time as another girl like herself, and observing her attractions with new eyes."What a pretty foot you have, Clover," she said, looking at her sister's slippered feet."Not a bit better shaped than yours, my dear. Let us have a select little mutual admiration society.""But mine are large," returned Mildred, sitting down and thrusting forth her slippers for inspection."So are you," suggested Clover."But isn't it strange that people never consider that, in speaking of a woman's foot? She must have small feet irrespective of her size, or else they had better never be seen or mentioned. In old novels a man sometimes keeps his beloved's slipper under a glass case. What a formidable piece of furniture my lover will have when he gets a glass case for mine.""Foolish child! You are proportioned just right.""Perhaps; but what I say is that the consensus of opinion decides that I ought not to be. Shoe men fall in with that idea. Dainty shoes are small shoes. I tell you fame and wealth awaits the shoe-dealer who becomes inspired with the idea that large women want pretty shoes too.""You seem to have made Mr. Page have a delightful evening," remarked Clover."Yes; he didn't ask for one of my slippers, though. Fancy sterling cousin Page ordering a glass case!"Clover smiled in answer to Mildred's laugh."What did you talk about?""Oh, weights and measures, as usual. I wasn't in the mood to be good, and I tried conscientiously to make a fool of our friend.""Mildred!""No harm done; I didn't succeed. He made one of me instead. This has been what you might term an off day for your little sister.""What do you mean? How did he make a fool of you?" Clover turned with so much curiosity in her gaze that Mildred rose quickly."I'll never tell you,—or hardly ever. Perhaps when we are both married."Clover turned back to the glass, and Mildred was a little dismayed. The words had slipped out unthinkingly. Until this evening she had agreed in her sister's acceptance of the fact that her life could not be like that of other girls."Good-night," she said, standing back of Clover and meeting her eyes in the mirror."Good-night," returned the other.Mildred kissed her cheek. "Do you like me?" she asked softly."Pretty well," Mrs. Van Tassel smiled. "Lots better than you deserve."The younger sister went to her room satisfied. Arrogant and autocratic she might be to her slaves, but Clover's approval was the necessary sunshine in which her life blossomed.Van Tassel had to put a guard upon his lips in the next days. He was trying to follow Clover's advice not to ask Mildred again to go to the Fair with him. It made the case harder, inasmuch as he could not help feeling that now she expected it. He noticed that she did not make outside engagements as much as before; but was oftener at home, either sitting about the piazzas in gowns which Jack thought the most becoming that ever girl wore, or else romping with Blitzen and paying exasperating attention to Electra, who was fast developing into the most self-assured and exacting chicken of the Columbian year.The following sort of scene was sometimes endured in anguish by the lover who was disciplining his lady to order.Jack was one morning reading the newspaper on the piazza, Mildred sitting in the hammock, and Clover and Hilda training the morning-glories."Why don't I go to the Fair?" Mildred said, addressing the lake, resplendent with miles of diamonds.Jack's hand closed on his paper in his longing to accept the challenge; not being at all certain that he would not receive a negative if he did, but still yearning to try his luck."Is it a conundrum?" asked Clover. "I can give a guess, if you like.""Thank you; you're always so kind, dear. Come, and go up in the Ferris Wheel with me, Clover. If you will, that will decide me.""I couldn't, really. I'm glad I have been. One must go, of course; but twice, no, I couldn't." Clover passed near Jack, who threw an imploring glance at her behind his paper. "I can feel my hair whitening!" he murmured; but Mrs. Van Tassel frowned warningly upon him."What a pity you didn't say something about it before Robert went," said Hilda. "I think he means to go in the wheel to-day, as that is one of the things I can't bring my mind to do.""But you will have a hundred chances, Milly dear. Some of our friends are always going," added Clover comfortingly."Oh, don't trouble yourself," remarked Mildred with nonchalance. "I assure you I can go when I like," and she rose and sauntered into the house, followed by Hilda.Clover laughed softly into the pink lips of a morning glory which she held in her hand."This may be very good fun for you," said Van Tassel, his unread paper dropped, "but let me tell you it is making an old man of me.""Do your own way then, Jack, and live to repent of it.""But I don't want to have to repent.""Then behave as though you had some backbone. Remember Petruchio.""Oh, that will do to say! Petruchio was married.""All right. I wash my hands of you.""No, no, don't, Clover."Clover took pity on the clouded face."I'll give you a little bit of comfort, Jack," she said, gazing down at him knowingly."Angel!""Oh, it is only a wee, wee bit; but Mildred is uncomfortable.""I should think that was wee," returned Van Tassel, his face falling."I don't know. It is the first time any man ever affected her that much.""A very poor recommendation, I should think," remarked Van Tassel."Oh, Jack," Clover laughed, "I can see you would have had an awful time without me.""I am having an awful time with you, Clover.""Then gang your ain gait any time"—"And may God have mercy on my soul, I suppose you mean," added Jack ruefully.It was his habit to have flowers sent to the house almost daily, and Clover often wore his roses; Mildred never. Van Tassel asked her once if she never wore flowers, and she answered indifferently that she often did."I have never happened to see you with any on," he said."Indeed?" she returned with one of her characteristic smiles. "Then that must be because you never sent me any. Now don't look like that. Jack. If you should send me flowers, now, do you know what I should do with them?""Pitch them out the window, probably.""No; for that would disfigure the lawn, and Clover is very particular about the lawn. I should present them to Aunt Love."So Jack only gave one impotent look into her starry eyes, and continued to send his lavish floral gifts impersonally to the house.But one morning Mildred came down with some sprays of heliotrope fastened in her dress. Van Tassel was delighted; but acting with blind faith in Clover, he did not appear to notice the concession. He had won several words of commendation from his mentor for the manner in which of late he had been playing his role. He had even called upon Mildred's friend, Miss Eames, in response to the latter's invitation, and had gone with her one day to the Art Gallery, and after coming home praised her discriminating and intelligent taste. It seemed to him an eternity since he had asked Mildred to go anywhere with him.On this morning she waited for some remark upon her decoration, but none came. Matters had become serious if such condescension was not going to be gratefully received. The family usually sauntered out upon the piazza after breakfast, and Van Tassel took his paper with him to-day as usual. He was alive in every nerve to the fact that Mildred had on a street dress, which meant the Fair. He wondered profoundly, as he always did, what her plans were and whom she was going with, but he gazed unseeingly into his paper, and was dumb.All of a sudden, a sort of electric shock seemed to pervade the air about him. Mildred was standing at his side."Did you notice how perfect this heliotrope is?" she asked, looking down, not at him, but at the blossoms on the lapel of her jacket."It is pretty," he answered, wondering how soon his evil star would lure him on to say the wrong thing.His apparently indifferent manner piqued her still further. "If you feel very good, and are sure you are going to be good all day, I will give you a piece," she said, separating one spray from its fellows.Van Tassel sprang to his feet, and in a second Mildred's fingers were upon his coat."The round world is just a rattle to her, and you are one of the bells on it that jingle when she moves you."Clover's words were sounding warningly in his ears. He could not help it. He only prayed to jingle in tune, for moved he was to the depths of his being."You like heliotrope very much?" he asked, not daring to look below her cool, fair forehead."Yes. Sometimes, I think, best of all; but," with a sigh, "it goes quickly." And she dropped her hands and moved back."Like all the happiest moments of life," said Jack, and something leaped from his brown eyes that actually surprised Mildred, coming out of the long train of indifferent days."Oh, if Jack is like that," she thought, and a new respect grew in her for the man who ruled himself, and refused to submit to her caprice."It is a clear day, Mildred. Let us go up in the Wheel," he said. "Have you made the trip yet?""No, but I have a new idea about it. I'm sure it will make me dizzy. It did Clover; and I think I shall be afraid, too.""Don't give up going. I'm sure you will not be afraid. It is an absolutely steady, safe motion, and the changing view is unique.""No, indeed; I wouldn't give up going, only I think I would rather go alone. I don't want any one to behold my weakness.""Oh, very well." Van Tassel made a gesture of indifferent assent, sat down, and returned to his paper. The little incident of the heliotrope had done more to convince him of Clover's wisdom than all her sage words. Its perfume stole up to him as he sat reading the same line over twelve times.Mildred moved away, outwardly calm, inwardly vexed with Jack for his ready acquiescence.She went into the house and met Clover. "Going to the Fair?" asked the latter."Yes, I think so.""Wait half an hour or so, and go with us.""I don't believe you will take my way, for I am going in the Wheel.""With Jack?""No, alone.""Mr. Page wants to go again. Let me ask him. He is upstairs writing a letter.""Don't speak to him for anything.""But I don't want you to go to the Midway alone, Milly. Hilda and both Mr. Pages and I are going to the Anthropological Building together. Do put off the Wheel, and come with us.""No, I thank you. Our friend Gorham will be in his element, getting your mental and physical strength tested up there in the gallery. I wouldn't be in that revel for anything," and Mildred ran upstairs.Clover passed out upon the piazza."Is Mildred going to the Fair?" asked Van Tassel, looking up quickly."Yes. I do wish for once, Jack, you had asked to go with her, for she is bound for the Ferris Wheel.""I did.""And she refused?" exclaimed Clover in surprise and exasperation. "Was there ever such an incomprehensible"—"But she gave me this." Van Tassel exhibited his flower.Clover looked interested. "Well, then, we are getting on," she said, much pleased. "Go on being an icicle, Jack. It is the only way. Don't for the world urge her to let you accompany her, even though I don't like her to go alone. In the first place she would only retreat as you advanced, and in the second it would probably be salutary for her to stick among the clouds of heaven for a few hours, so I won't worry about the Wheel."Jack took his hat, lying on the chair beside him. "I think I will go on down," he said. "There is a bare possibility, you know, that I may meet Mildred. If she should be later than you expect in coming home, you would better think of me as being the trap than of the Wheel.""You won't meet," sighed Clover. "What a foolish girl she is!"To tell the truth, Mildred could not resist a certain suspicion of her own foolishness, as she emerged upon the piazza a few seconds later, ready to start. She was conscious of disappointment that Jack was not in sight. It was a warm day, and starting off alone was not inspiriting. It required all her pride to pursue her intention."You won't have a good time," prophesied Clover, and that strengthened her waning determination; so with a light response she set forth.The Midway was a seething mass of humanity when she reached it, and she had hardly entered the street when she met her friend, Helen Eames. The latter greeted her eagerly, and began to talk about an entertainment Mildred had attended recently with Jack at her house.Helen was voluble, and Mildred resented the tone in which she spoke of Jack, so she parted with her friend as soon as civility permitted, and passed on.She began to feel that she was doing an absurd thing, to be forlornly and doggedly pursuing her way among the motley crowd, to the monotonous, rhythmic beat of drum, and the sing-song of strange voices.Above their village the South Sea Islanders were pounding out their measures from a hollow log, and across the road the daintier Javanese rang muffled music from gongs and tinkling bells. Scenes and sounds had grown familiar to Mildred, but to-day she found neither truth nor poetry in them. Indian, Turk, and Bedouin passed her by, but she kept eyes ahead on the mammoth wheel, circling with ponderous deliberation. All she wished was to keep her word, take the skyward trip, and return home."All the girls are delighted with Mr. Van Tassel," Helen Eames had said."Silly thing! Does she suppose I will tell him?" thought Mildred, too absorbed in her own cogitations to note the "vera gooda, vera nice, vera sheep," of the jewelry venders, the stentorian exhortations to enter the dance houses and theatres, or the incessant "hot! hot! hot!" of those that offered the thin waffle-like Zelabiah.Mildred did not like to find in her own heart the wish that Van Tassel had been with her, that Helen Eames might see him in his proper place this morning. She must indeed have fallen from her high estate if she could wish to display an admirer to another girl. All men were her admirers. It had been a foregone conclusion so long that she had never been obliged to harbor a thought of jealousy or rivalry, and she instantly challenged and condemned this novel weakness.The Midway Plaisance was a strange place for introspection, yet Mildred's thoughts were sufficiently absorbing. People were always apt to turn and look a second time at her exceptionally vigorous young beauty, but she passed on to-day, totally unconscious of the glances bent upon her.Might it be true that she had finally alienated Jack by her persistently capricious treatment? "All the girls admired him!" He did not fancy any of them, she was sure. If he cared for any woman, it was Clover; and then the girl coolly and impartially compared her gentle, sympathetic, tender sister with herself. Mildred possessed a clear head, and as she dwelt upon her own and Clover's characteristics, a sermon seemed preached to her amid that crowded babel, in a small voice which the noisy tongues could not drown."How would it be possible for a man in his senses to prefer me?" she thought, raising her eyes to a delicate, bell-hung minaret that pierced the cloudless sky. This novel humility impressed her with gravity.But she had reached her destination. She moved up with the line to the ticket office that lay directly in her path, and bought her bit of pasteboard mechanically. In a moment more the movement of her fellow-passengers had brought her to the base of the wheel. Those who have stood in that position know the effect of looking straight up. Mildred, already feeling small, experienced a painful physical sense of being overwhelmed. The monster had paused for its cars to be filled, and she shrank from the prospect before her with unprecedented sensations. If she allowed herself to be shut up in that glass cab, it meant that two flights of two hundred and fifty feet skyward must be taken ere she could regain her liberty."I believe I am trying to be nervous," she said to herself coldly. "I did not know I was speaking truth to Jack this morning."Oh, if only she were not the vainest and most obstinate of girls, this trip would be a pleasure instead of a pain!The faint, steady color in her cheeks faded, but she walked into the car determinedly, and taking one of its swinging chairs looked steadily through the glass front. The seats filled, the door was closed, and the scarcely perceptible motion began.The roof of the next car began to swing into view. The inexorableness of the journey began to impress itself upon Mildred's mind. She was trying to turn away from the thought, when a well-known voice set her beating heart to throbbing faster."Why, this is fortunate," it said, with studied carelessness.She started and lifted her eager eyes. There was Jack Van Tassel looking down upon her, triumphant, but as usual uncertain of his reception.It has been said before that Mr. Van Tassel was a good-looking young man; but the radiance which seemed to Mildred now to invest every feature of his face, and each dark hair of his head, was certainly the figment of an excited imagination."Why, Jack," she gasped, and clasped her hands tightly in her lap for fear they might tell too much."You are pale," he said, and stooped with tender concern."Why—the sun was pretty warm, didn't you think?" she returned.Jack did think so. He had had considerable time in which to test it, dodging from one side of the Plaisance to the other in that crowd, where every one knows that his best friend had a faculty of dissolving from view even when he was supposed to be safely at one's side."Our poor heliotrope!" he said, glancing down at their decorations.Mildred followed his gaze. The sprays on her jacket looked, she thought, much as she felt five minutes ago. "Let us throw them away," she answered, starting to withdraw the pin."Never," said Jack promptly, and the girl hesitated, then dropped her hand."Turn this way," he added. "See the University buildings,—a fine massive gray city that is going to be! Doesn't it seem strange to think that college will ever be venerable and have traditions?"From this time their attention was fully occupied with the panoramic view. The crowd of sightseers in the Plaisance became a congregation of umbrellas and parasols, ever lessening in size, and whitened in patches where a number of faces were upturned at once to behold the gyration of the wheel. The strange colors and shapes in architecture brought from many lands stood in startling conjunction on either hand. Beyond stretched the Fair city with its winding waterways, held safe in the great azure crescent of Lake Michigan's embrace.Mildred's eyes sparkled with interest and pleasure. The color had returned to her face, and her spirits to their natural level. When their car again neared earth she was glad, not sorry, that another circuit was in prospect to help her to a more satisfactory view of what had seemed but a tantalizing glimpse."The deed is done," said Jack, as at last the exit door of the car was opened, and the passengers passed from under the gigantic steel web and set foot on solid earth once more. "What is next on your programme?""I was going home," answered Mildred, rather hesitatingly."World's Fair finished?" asked Jack with a smile."I have seen almost everything in the Plaisance that I care for.""But I haven't.""What do you mean? Are you hinting?"The girl smiled too, and somehow her expression was not so exasperating as at other times."Yes, I am hinting.""Out with it, then. Speak up like a little man.""Sometimes when I have spoken up like a little man you have made me feel like a little donkey.""I don't see how you can like me at all, Jack," returned Mildred naïvely. "I made up my mind this morning that I was going to try to be more like Clover.""Capital scheme!" exclaimed Van Tassel, with so much enthusiasm that Mildred felt disconcerted."I don't suppose the leopard can change his spots, though," she returned, rather stiffly."Let us go to Hagenbeck's and see," suggested Jack."It is rather far from here if we are going to do the shows with any system.""Do you wish to, Mildred? Don't let me bore you.""It only bores me to have you want me to be like somebody else."Jack's lips drew together in an inaudible whistle, and it needed all Clover's warnings to aid him in holding the rein over himself. They were aimlessly walking east."But I honestly don't blame you," she added. "I have done nothing to make it pleasant for you here. In your own home it didn't seem necessary to treat you like a guest.""You are right. There was no necessity in the matter; there isn't now. Perhaps you really wish to go home.""Clover wouldn't go if she did wish it," Mildred smiled at him with a sidelong glance, "and so I will stay.""Not with me," said Jack, lifting his hat and looking very firm as he paused in the road."Then you take it back that you wish me to be like little sister?" Mildred also paused, still smiling at him with her chin lifted."I want you to be honest.""I am honest. I want to stay, you uncivil man."CHAPTER XX.THE MIDWAY PLAISANCE.The magic carpet in the Arabian Nights which transported its owner from one country to another, remote, in the space of a few seconds, was the property of all visitors to the Midway Plaisance. Mildred and Jack spent a little time amid the Swiss Alps, the former amusing herself by picking out for Jack's benefit localities where she and Clover had traveled. Then they looked in at the Bedouin Encampment and saw an old woman making bread. She whirled the dough on one hand until it spread into a very thin sheet. This she flapped over a cushion and from thence transferred it to the top of an inverted iron basin, where it baked above burning sticks. It looked when cooked like a delicate cracker, as it was broken up and passed around to the spectators.A gigantic black, clothed entirely in red from his high leather boots to the rope-like twists of cloth about his head, lay stretched on a divan beside another fire smoking a narghileh."The bread is coming this way," remarked Mildred apprehensively. "Let us go into that door and see what is there."Jack followed her. "This room, Miss Bryant, is taken from a Damascus palace," he said. "I am surprised that you didn't recognize it at once. Observe these pieces of silver set into the walls, and the lavish number of mirrors. I believe a periodical lecturer appears in here.""How much nicer to have it to ourselves, and guess about it. I have been standing so long, I can guess very closely what these gold-embroidered velvet divans are for," and Mildred stepped up on the dais at the end of the room and seated herself.The ceiling was lofty, and in the centre of the room a fountain played. Beyond it was another dais surrounded by divans. The floors were covered with rugs. Outside, two Bedouins fenced with curious swords, the handles wrapped with twine, waving their small brass shields meanwhile with ostentatious gestures as they deliberately stepped about. Increasing in concentration and swift fury to the climax of the play, they paused unexpectedly, and seating themselves on the ground, fell to rolling cigarettes and making coffee over the small fire beside which lay the immobile black.Shrill and dull arose the rhythm of the flageolets and the tambours. The click of castanets told that the dark-eyed women were dancing.While Mildred and Jack still rested, an Arab in loose robes came in, and going to the fountain bathed his face and hands and dried them on a purple silk towel striped with yellow."How nice of him," said Mildred, acknowledging this touch added to the picture.As they were passing out, one of the Bedouins, the cloth from his twisted turban hanging about his shoulders, paused near them with a baby in his arms, a curly-headed tot of a year old, around whose big brown eyes were drawn lines of artificial black. Mildred looked gently upon the child, and the father, smiling with pride and pleasure, glanced from one to the other; so she patted the baby."She is very pretty," she said, and he understood. His large gaze grew soft, and he nodded. Mildred looked at the dancing women with more interest. One of them, her chin tattooed with blue, was pointed out to her as the baby's mother.A realization of the probable hardships and homesickness endured by these people in all the changes of scene and weather they had undergone assailed her; but it did not do to dwell too long on that side of life in the Plaisance. She only turned her sweetest smile once more on father and child, patted the baby's cheek, and followed Jack out.To him it mattered little where they went. Each scene gained a glamour which, could the managers of the various enterprises have purchased it as a permanent adjunct to their attractions, would have ensured their fortunes. Passing from Arabia to the electric-lighted palms of the Moorish Palace, Van Tassel was prepared to admire everything. The labyrinth of mirrors which might in some moods have impressed him as a tiresome device, now triumphantly vindicated their right to be, by presenting him a hundred Mildreds so like the original as to be an embarrassment of riches. Even the wax figures above stairs were interesting. The rise and fall of the Sleeping Beauty's gentle breast was a marvel.From the various tricks and optical illusions of the Moorish Palace they betook themselves to Hawaii, and stood together in darkness on the borders of a lava lake from whose centre shot living flames from the volcano's heart toward the lurid sky.A priest, a shadowy figure, came forth among the gray rocks, and chanted a prayer to the dreadful goddess of fire. In the remote distance gleamed the peaceful blue waters of the Pacific. Jack would have been willing to stand for hours here by Mildred, in the weird dusky silence broken only by the monotonous chant, for the longer one lingered the more perfect grew the illusion; but she took him away presently, and in a trice the island of Hawaii had vanished and Egypt was gained via the western entrance to Cairo Street.They passed in before the Temple of Luxor, in front of which a brazen-lunged American showman was reeling off a highly-colored description of the attractions within."Mummy of Rameses about the fifth on your right!" repeated Jack, laughing. "Let us postpone Rameses until he can be located a little more definitely.""Yes, I want you to see the Soudanese pickaninny," said Mildred, and they went over to the tent where the jolly little black baby hopped about among her elders, shaking the girdle of feathers and shells about her hips and dimpling with delight in the applause and laughter she called forth. More interesting than the Soudanese were the Nubians, who came in from the dark huts adjoining, and danced in the same tent. One of these in particular attracted Jack's eye."What a splendid woman, Mildred!" he exclaimed. "What an artist's model she would make."The object of his admiration was tall, straight as an arrow, dressed in a long robe of white, and wore large hoop earrings. She had symmetrical features of haughty mould, and was very dark, with thick crinkled black locks free from the feathers, shells and twine, braided among the Soudanese tresses. She was an impressive figure standing immovable upon the stage among the dancers."Like a splendid bronze!" said Jack, gazing at the delicate proud face with all his eyes. The Nubian smiled, disclosing the most perfect teeth imaginable, and Van Tassel regarded her with growing admiration."I tell you, Mildred," he said enthusiastically, "if that woman could have been brought up in a different environment she would have been superb. Fancy having her well-trained for a servant? How would you like her to pass you your coffee at breakfast?"Mildred laughed. "What a pity that I am not a reporter," she said as they left the tent. "You could be worked into a taking newspaper article, Jack. A young scion of one of Chicago's well-known families is maturing a plan to abduct the chief of the tribe of Nubians in Cairo Street. It is feared there will be an uprising, and so forth, and so forth.""A feminine chief? I don't blame them.""No, sir. Your superb bronze woman, your artist's model, is Mohammed Ali, the chief of the Nubians."Jack looked incredulous. "You expect me to believe that?""Not if you wish to go back and inquire. It is true, though. Mohammed is a friend of mine. He was good enough, when Clover and I looked into his hut, to show us how he polishes those perfect teeth of his with a little stick. Did you ever see anything so shining? You can buy his photograph, if you like, at one of these booths, and keep it as a memento of Mr. Van Tassel's"—"Look ou-at. Look ou-at for Mary Anderson," called a donkey boy in a blue gown."You wouldn't run over me, would you, Toby?" asked Mildred.The boy trudging by through the crowd, showed his ivories in a smile of recognition, and urged his little white donkey onward in the narrow, crooked, brick-paved street.Such a throng, such a noise, only the memories of the experienced can witness to. Camels swung along between the irregular houses, the warning cries of their drivers mingling with the monotonous sing-song of the venders in the closely packed booths.Egyptian flower girls, veiled to the eyes, plied their trade. A conjurer pushed his way amid the gazers, a hen's egg sticking in his eye and another clinging behind his jaw. The rhythm of the Midway sounded from two drums slung at either side of a gaudily caparisoned camel, and was sung monotonously from the booth of the much-vaunted Oriental sweetmeat:—"Alla gooda bum-bum,Vera nice candy,Beautifula bum-bum,Vera good candy,"repeatedad libitumby the swarthy Arab presiding.Mildred and Jack glanced into the showcases as they passed onward, the former restraining her companion from purchasing specimens of brasswork, filigree silver, ornaments, and embroidery. But once Mildred exclaimed with pleasure over a small hanging-lamp of dull silver."I will take it," said Jack to the instantly voluble salesman."Not for me; no don't," protested his companion."You must have a souvenir," returned Van Tassel, smiling over the word which had grown hateful by iteration to all Fair-goers."Please don't get it," said the girl; but the very tassel on their Oriental's fez was active in his zeal to wrap up the parcel for this gentleman who did not bargain.The foreign fashion of changing a price by the beating-down process was one with which many Americans amused themselves when they found it was expected; but Jack was in that state of mind when an article which had the rare fortune to please Mildred was above rubies.She dissembled her satisfaction, however. "If I had let you buy everything you have started to since we came into the street, we should have had to charter a donkey," she began."Look ou-at—look ou-at for Yanka Doodoo," bawled Achmet, the donkey boy, directly upon them."I don't like to feel that I mustn't admire anything," finished the girl as Jack stepped between her and the little quadruped who carried a much-excited and curled maiden of five."I like this lamp so much, I don't know that I shall let you have it," responded Van Tassel serenely, as he took the package. "Look up, Mildred. What a deep blue the sky gets between those irregular roofs.""Only one of us can look up at a time, while the other keeps watch of the menagerie.""There appears to be an extra crowd yonder," remarked Jack."Oh, that is the camel-stand. Hear the people laughing. How can anybody be willing to furnish so much amusement to the public as to mount one of those beasts? There is always just such a crowd there.""Well, are we through here?" asked Van Tassel."What? Are you weary of Cairo Street?""Not if you are not; but it is rather warm, and there is a good deal of a mob, and I have inhaled enough attar of roses to last until my next incarnation. I thought perhaps you might be tired, standing.""I am.""There isn't a place to sit down, either," said Jack, looking around."That is just what almost every one thinks. I don't know how soon people will find out my enchanted palace, but they hadn't done so last week.""Well, now, an enchanted palace is exactly what I am looking for," returned Van Tassel hopefully. "How did you learn the open sesame?""The open sesame is"—Mildred paused apologetically. "I am sorry to have to say it, but it is the only prosaic feature,—the open sesame is fifteen cents."They moved along toward the crowd by the camel stand, and here in the noisiest, busiest portion of the winding street, Mildred led her companion into an open door which revealed a long, blank corridor. The dragon guarding it was a most commonplace American. Most people whose curiosity led them to look into the uninviting hallway were quickly frightened off by the placard stating the fifteen-cent admission fee. There was so much to see, and time and money were so limited, little wonder that the obvious attractions of the street decided them not to explore this side-show.Mildred and Jack, leaving the din and bustle behind, pass the easily placated dragon, and at the end of the low, empty corridor found themselves in and open, floored court, out of which led a flight of stairs. A large earthen jar filled with water stood at one side over a smaller vessel into which the water filtered in crystal drops through the porous clay. Palms and lilies stood about, and edged the entire length of the staircase. It was very quiet here, and Van Tassel looked about him curiously.Mildred gave him a smiling glance of mystery, "Let us go up and see Sayed Ibrahim," she said."Look here," returned Jack, frowning and smiling, "you are altogether too sophisticated.""Sayed doesn't think so," answered the girl, and they proceeded upstairs. Entering a hallway where was a heavy bronze door of fabulous age and richness of design, they were met by a tall handsome Oriental in robes and fez, whose melting eyes lighted as they recognized Mildred. He bowed low."How do you do, Sayed Ibrahim; I have brought another friend to see the beautiful house."He bowed again and held aside a portière of cloth-of-gold. The visitors passed within and found themselves in a spacious shadowy room with lofty arched ceiling. The windows were unglazed and shielded by curious hand-carved lattice work. Thick rugs were upon the floor, and small tables inlaid with pearl and ivory stood about. On a larger one were a number of tiny and precious coffee cups, held in little brass stands. Long-stemmed pipes hung upon the walls, and divans or cushions upon the floor invited to repose. Rich portières divided the suite of rooms one from another.The light was dim, coming out of the glaring street, and the colors in rugs and hangings were tempered in the wonderful Oriental weaving. There were no other visitors. Jack looked at the swarthy cicerone who stood ready to answer their questions."I do not wonder," he said to Mildred, "that you call this mysterious spot enchanted. It is a chapter out of the Arabian Nights.""Yes; are you ready to come back to the nineteenth century? The nineteenth century in Egypt, you know. I wouldn't make your fall too sudden and profound."Mildred moved to the broad window-seat which was covered with a rug, and smiled at the Arab. It was a language he understood as clearly as the Harvard graduate, and he hastened forward and threw open the lattice.Van Tassel seated himself opposite Mildred, and together they looked down upon the madding crowd.Their position was just opposite the camel stand, and from their height they commanded a view of the kaleidoscopic life of the street. The bystanders pressed about the cushions upon which the camels knelt to take on or be relieved of their burdens, and seemed to find never-failing entertainment in the behavior of those intrepid passengers who embarked for the adventurous journey to the end of the street and back again.Mildred and Jack in their romantic eyrie held their sides with laughter over the absurdities enacted before their eyes."If any trip ever deserved the name of pleasure exertion, that is the one," said Mildred, wiping her eyes, while she watched two girls who evidently took their lives in their hands as they seated themselves on the cushioned back of one of the patient beasts. The Arab driver cried out, and tapped the creature on the neck."Now then," said Jack, "see the ship of the desert let out the reefs in its legs!"Shrieks arose from the maidens at the first ascent, wilder and wilder cries and clutchings at the second and third, and by the time the animal had reached the stature of a camel and swung away, the whole crowd was uproarious, only quieting to observe the next pair embark."Miss Amelia Edwards says the camel is a beast that hates its rider," said Jack. "I wonder what are the private prejudices of the Cairo Street variety.""As if you couldn't see!" answered Mildred. "It wouldn't be half so funny if the camels didn't curl their lips and look so supercilious all the time those idiots are shrieking so. 'What fools these mortals be!' is the sentiment their faces express chronically. Poor things! Just think, that they are only intended to kneel once or twice a day, and here they have to go down every three minutes. How they would execrate Columbus if they only knew how! Oh, look at that old lady! It is a shame to let her go," added Mildred. "They will laugh at her, too.""Never mind. She will be the heroine of Perkins Point, or wherever it is, all the rest of her life.""She looks scared, Jack. Oh, dear! her bonnet is falling off. I wish she wouldn't. Why, there are Clover and Mr. Page! Do you see them? Let us go out on the balcony." Mildred left the window-seat, and Jack followed."Is there a balcony? Why didn't you say so?""Because I am economical of my pleasant surprises." The watchful Sayed threw open double doors of the lattice work, and revealed a small, square balcony upon which the visitors stepped into the sunlight. The fanciful minarets and spires of the street gleamed against an azure sky.Clover and Gorham had paused just below, also interested in the venturesome old lady, who was followed by cheers as her scornful camel bore her up the street.Jack took advantage of the temporary lull that followed, to whistle the bit from "Carmen."Clover instantly looked up and called the attention of her companion.Mildred beckoned."Clover knows the way," said Jack."Most certainly she does. We Chicagoans aren't Fair visitors. We are Fair livers.""Don't be so toplofty, mademoiselle. What am I, if not a Chicagoan?""Oh, a sort of deserter.""'I deny the allegation and despise the allegator.' I am going to marry a Chicago girl, and live here all my days.""Have you asked her?"Van Tassel, perhaps reminded by the neighborhood of his mentor, forbore from replying to the saucy smiling eyes, and here Clover and Gorham appeared at the door of the balcony."Come out," said Mildred, "it holds five. Is this the way you visit the Anthropological Building?""Why, this is all right," answered Page. "'Midway Plaisance, Department M. Ethnology.' Look on the catalogue, and you will see this is all a part of the Anthropological exhibit.""And apart from it," suggested Mildred, "which certainly is in its favor. I thought you would see enough ghastly pictures and graveyards and mummies in a short time.""The exhibits in the gallery are wonderful and beautiful," said Clover. "I don't believe you know what you are talking about.""I do, my dear. I have oh'd and ah'd over them all, from the dainty infinitesimal sea creatures on pink cotton to the mammoth. I felt so much obliged to him. He really made me feel small. Then the realistic cliff, with the birds and beasts artistically disposed, and the waterfall and flowing brook. I've seen them. How long have you been here?""Not very long. We have been watching the antics of the women on the camels, and the long-legged men on those tiny donkeys.""A great deal of human nature comes out in Cairo Street," said Page with interest. "One sees a great variety of motives, and many grades of self-control by that camel stand. See that little woman going now to take a trip. Is it amusement she's after? Not at all. Note the determination in her face. Duty calls and she obeys. Dollars to doughnuts she doesn't scream, Jack.""I'm out of doughnuts; but I'll bet you the supper she does. I haven't seen a quiet one yet.""Done! You will see one now.""That girl is from the East," said Mildred."I am sure of it," returned Page, gazing with pleased curiosity at his protégée, who stood waiting her turn; "but what brings you to that conclusion?""The trimming of her hat looks as if it were nailed on. They say all Boston women's bonnet trimmings are nailed on.""She is a character," said Page. "Now I would like to know what her motive is in riding that camel."Jack guffawed. "I am sure you would. You will be asking her the next thing we know.""Well, it is no idle one, I'm sure of that.""Perhaps she is a school teacher," suggested Van Tassel, "and wants to go home and tell her scholars how pitch-and-toss in Cairo Street differs from the usual game.""There she goes," said Clover, and they all watched the fair-faced girl approach and mount a camel whose expression for utter boredom rather outdid its neighbors. At the driver's cry it gathered itself convulsively. The rider lurched forward. Her back was to the watchers on the balcony, but they could not hear a sound from her. She lurched backward, still without a cry, and they were not surprised when the camel swung around to see her face still set in its determined and composed lines while the crowd looked on in silence."I shall enjoy that supper very much, Jack," said Gorham."You haven't won it yet. Wait till she comes back. When his Nibs kneels down is the time a girl's lungs really come into play. After she thinks every joint in his body has doubled up there comes one unexpected plunge that fetches the most dignified of them every time. They say a sailor came in here the other day and after riding one of our humped friends said that the camel played cup-and-ball with him the whole length of the street, and only missed him twice."In a few minutes, back came Gorham's heroine, still composed as she rocked back and forth clinging to the rope which the driver had handed her for a support."Now that supper hangs in the balance," remarked Page."I'm safe enough," returned Jack nonchalantly, "and I assure you my appetite is in prime condition."The camel, slowly winking and holding his nose aloft, approached his cushion, and began the series of spasmodic collapses which made its rider look as though at the mercy of a rocking-chair gone mad. She pitched wildly, but valiantly held her peace. Even Jack had to admit that she did not make a murmur, and all his protests against playing off a dumb girl on him were unheeded as Page gazed benignly down on the young woman, who smiled sweetly and triumphantly as she rejoined her friends."Five minutes of four," said Mildred. "The wedding procession will soon pass. Aren't we fortunate to have the balcony? Do you see, other people are daring to visit the house and taking our window-seat?""Your window-seat! That is pretty good," said Clover, turning toward the speaker with an arch smile. "We thought that was our window-seat, didn't we, Jack?"She saw the color flash over her sister's face in the instant before the girl controlled herself. She wondered if Jack had seen the novel evidence of feeling before Mildred turned to him coolly."So you have been here before," she remarked. "Why didn't you mention it?""Clover and I looked in a short time only, the evening we took supper in Germany," answered Van Tassel. "I did not examine the curious place at all then, so this is really my first view of it."Clover turned away to conceal her amusement. Jack in his embarrassment had implied all she could have asked from the disciplinary standpoint.But now the attention of the quartette was claimed by the wedding procession, which was seen coming down the street, the camels nearly hidden under their gaudy, bulky trappings, and the din of the tom-toms filling the air. When the music, dancing, and sword play were ended, Mildred spoke to her sister."What have you done with Mr. and Mrs. Page?""They went to the Chinese theatre, and we have promised to meet them in Old Vienna and take supper there.""Our dear Jack will have to take supper with us now," declared Gorham cordially."I suppose," said Van Tassel, addressing Mildred, "that Old Vienna is an oft-repeated experience to you?""At least I shall not pretend that it is a novelty," she answered without looking at him, and Jack was silent. He even colored, but it was not with proper contrition. It was a flush of pleasure that overspread his countenance as his brown eyes sent a quick glance into Clover's.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE FERRIS WHEEL.
It was half past nine when the wagonette bringing Clover and Jack stopped before the house. They were received with a chorus of questions, in which Mildred was too clever not to join. She was glad that Van Tassel must see Gorham seated near her, apart from the others, confidentially discoursing in the moonlight, even though Jack did not seem to observe it. He seated himself on the step near Mrs. Page, and leaned against a railing.
"We have had a fine time!" he exclaimed with what Mildred's practiced ear recognized as unmistakable sincerity.
"Oh, the German village by moonlight, Milly!" added Clover, taking a place near her sister. "You really ought to see it."
"We ought to have been there, Mr. Page," said Mildred regretfully.
"I doubt if I could have had a pleasanter evening anywhere," he returned; and if Miss Bryant had had power to decorate him she would have done so on the spot for that timely speech. She trusted Jack had heard it.
"We sat there at table, you know," went on the latter, "and saw the moon come up over those quaint old gables. Oh, it was fine. I declare, we didn't know where we were. Did we, Clover?"
"I thought you were quite certain by the alleged German you entertained me with."
"Alleged German! Well, if this isn't sad! There I wasted Heine's poems by the yard on you. Ungrateful girl! You will never know all the sweet things that were said to you to-night."
"I know you drank a lot of beer and smoked too many cigars."
"Of course, being in Rome I complimented the inhabitants by imitation."
"Mr. Jack," spoke Miss Berry reproachfully, "I remember well that you said once you only smoked on holidays and birthdays."
"Certainly, Aunt Love, that is my rule still. I never break it."
"Whose birthday is this?" demanded Miss Berry, somewhat taken back.
"How should I know? Somebody's, surely." Jack looked up innocently. "I never show favoritism."
"Oh!" groaned Gorham, rising. "I can't stay here. Discipline him, Aunt Love. I am going to my uncontaminated roof-tree."
"Let us all take Gorham home," suggested Jack, also rising. "I'm afraid to be left here with Aunt Love's righteous wrath. Come, all of you. Nobody is too tired to walk to that music."
For the band on the hotel piazza was playing the Washington Post March, which by midsummer was running neck and neck with "After the Ball."
"Come, Robert," said Hilda, shaking the somnolent form in the hammock.
"Hey? What? Don't disturb me. I can die here as well as anywhere. What! Walk home with Gorham? Do you take me for an idiot? Music and moonlight!" with deep scorn. "Oh, go to! Woman, stand aside, or I shall do you an injury. Don't tempt a desperate man."
"Dear Robert doesn't seem to care to come with us," laughed Mildredsotto voceto Jack. She was determined that none other than he should walk by her side to the hotel, and of course she had her way.
An hour later she came into Clover's bedroom, brushing her long hair. Her white wrapper fell open at the neck, disclosing her handsome throat, and she looked particularly beautiful to her partial sister.
"Where else did you and Jack go to-night beside the German village?" she asked.
"Nowhere."
"You took supper there and stayed all the evening?"
"Yes. We really couldn't tear ourselves away. It was like being in some romantic old story."
Mildred smiled and hummed her favorite bit from Iolanthe.
"No indeed," answered Clover. "I am not his mother. He doesn't pretend that I am, and he doesn't wish me to be: so your little song doesn't fit the case at all."
She did not look at her sister, but went on with her effort to braid her rebellious hair. Mildred ceased humming.
"I wish my hair was curly," she said at last.
"We all have our gifts," replied Clover. Mildred thought her tone sounded unusually complacent. It was a novel experience to feel aught but compassion, or tenderness, or reverent admiration for Clover, but now she suddenly found herself regarding her for the first time as another girl like herself, and observing her attractions with new eyes.
"What a pretty foot you have, Clover," she said, looking at her sister's slippered feet.
"Not a bit better shaped than yours, my dear. Let us have a select little mutual admiration society."
"But mine are large," returned Mildred, sitting down and thrusting forth her slippers for inspection.
"So are you," suggested Clover.
"But isn't it strange that people never consider that, in speaking of a woman's foot? She must have small feet irrespective of her size, or else they had better never be seen or mentioned. In old novels a man sometimes keeps his beloved's slipper under a glass case. What a formidable piece of furniture my lover will have when he gets a glass case for mine."
"Foolish child! You are proportioned just right."
"Perhaps; but what I say is that the consensus of opinion decides that I ought not to be. Shoe men fall in with that idea. Dainty shoes are small shoes. I tell you fame and wealth awaits the shoe-dealer who becomes inspired with the idea that large women want pretty shoes too."
"You seem to have made Mr. Page have a delightful evening," remarked Clover.
"Yes; he didn't ask for one of my slippers, though. Fancy sterling cousin Page ordering a glass case!"
Clover smiled in answer to Mildred's laugh.
"What did you talk about?"
"Oh, weights and measures, as usual. I wasn't in the mood to be good, and I tried conscientiously to make a fool of our friend."
"Mildred!"
"No harm done; I didn't succeed. He made one of me instead. This has been what you might term an off day for your little sister."
"What do you mean? How did he make a fool of you?" Clover turned with so much curiosity in her gaze that Mildred rose quickly.
"I'll never tell you,—or hardly ever. Perhaps when we are both married."
Clover turned back to the glass, and Mildred was a little dismayed. The words had slipped out unthinkingly. Until this evening she had agreed in her sister's acceptance of the fact that her life could not be like that of other girls.
"Good-night," she said, standing back of Clover and meeting her eyes in the mirror.
"Good-night," returned the other.
Mildred kissed her cheek. "Do you like me?" she asked softly.
"Pretty well," Mrs. Van Tassel smiled. "Lots better than you deserve."
The younger sister went to her room satisfied. Arrogant and autocratic she might be to her slaves, but Clover's approval was the necessary sunshine in which her life blossomed.
Van Tassel had to put a guard upon his lips in the next days. He was trying to follow Clover's advice not to ask Mildred again to go to the Fair with him. It made the case harder, inasmuch as he could not help feeling that now she expected it. He noticed that she did not make outside engagements as much as before; but was oftener at home, either sitting about the piazzas in gowns which Jack thought the most becoming that ever girl wore, or else romping with Blitzen and paying exasperating attention to Electra, who was fast developing into the most self-assured and exacting chicken of the Columbian year.
The following sort of scene was sometimes endured in anguish by the lover who was disciplining his lady to order.
Jack was one morning reading the newspaper on the piazza, Mildred sitting in the hammock, and Clover and Hilda training the morning-glories.
"Why don't I go to the Fair?" Mildred said, addressing the lake, resplendent with miles of diamonds.
Jack's hand closed on his paper in his longing to accept the challenge; not being at all certain that he would not receive a negative if he did, but still yearning to try his luck.
"Is it a conundrum?" asked Clover. "I can give a guess, if you like."
"Thank you; you're always so kind, dear. Come, and go up in the Ferris Wheel with me, Clover. If you will, that will decide me."
"I couldn't, really. I'm glad I have been. One must go, of course; but twice, no, I couldn't." Clover passed near Jack, who threw an imploring glance at her behind his paper. "I can feel my hair whitening!" he murmured; but Mrs. Van Tassel frowned warningly upon him.
"What a pity you didn't say something about it before Robert went," said Hilda. "I think he means to go in the wheel to-day, as that is one of the things I can't bring my mind to do."
"But you will have a hundred chances, Milly dear. Some of our friends are always going," added Clover comfortingly.
"Oh, don't trouble yourself," remarked Mildred with nonchalance. "I assure you I can go when I like," and she rose and sauntered into the house, followed by Hilda.
Clover laughed softly into the pink lips of a morning glory which she held in her hand.
"This may be very good fun for you," said Van Tassel, his unread paper dropped, "but let me tell you it is making an old man of me."
"Do your own way then, Jack, and live to repent of it."
"But I don't want to have to repent."
"Then behave as though you had some backbone. Remember Petruchio."
"Oh, that will do to say! Petruchio was married."
"All right. I wash my hands of you."
"No, no, don't, Clover."
Clover took pity on the clouded face.
"I'll give you a little bit of comfort, Jack," she said, gazing down at him knowingly.
"Angel!"
"Oh, it is only a wee, wee bit; but Mildred is uncomfortable."
"I should think that was wee," returned Van Tassel, his face falling.
"I don't know. It is the first time any man ever affected her that much."
"A very poor recommendation, I should think," remarked Van Tassel.
"Oh, Jack," Clover laughed, "I can see you would have had an awful time without me."
"I am having an awful time with you, Clover."
"Then gang your ain gait any time"—
"And may God have mercy on my soul, I suppose you mean," added Jack ruefully.
It was his habit to have flowers sent to the house almost daily, and Clover often wore his roses; Mildred never. Van Tassel asked her once if she never wore flowers, and she answered indifferently that she often did.
"I have never happened to see you with any on," he said.
"Indeed?" she returned with one of her characteristic smiles. "Then that must be because you never sent me any. Now don't look like that. Jack. If you should send me flowers, now, do you know what I should do with them?"
"Pitch them out the window, probably."
"No; for that would disfigure the lawn, and Clover is very particular about the lawn. I should present them to Aunt Love."
So Jack only gave one impotent look into her starry eyes, and continued to send his lavish floral gifts impersonally to the house.
But one morning Mildred came down with some sprays of heliotrope fastened in her dress. Van Tassel was delighted; but acting with blind faith in Clover, he did not appear to notice the concession. He had won several words of commendation from his mentor for the manner in which of late he had been playing his role. He had even called upon Mildred's friend, Miss Eames, in response to the latter's invitation, and had gone with her one day to the Art Gallery, and after coming home praised her discriminating and intelligent taste. It seemed to him an eternity since he had asked Mildred to go anywhere with him.
On this morning she waited for some remark upon her decoration, but none came. Matters had become serious if such condescension was not going to be gratefully received. The family usually sauntered out upon the piazza after breakfast, and Van Tassel took his paper with him to-day as usual. He was alive in every nerve to the fact that Mildred had on a street dress, which meant the Fair. He wondered profoundly, as he always did, what her plans were and whom she was going with, but he gazed unseeingly into his paper, and was dumb.
All of a sudden, a sort of electric shock seemed to pervade the air about him. Mildred was standing at his side.
"Did you notice how perfect this heliotrope is?" she asked, looking down, not at him, but at the blossoms on the lapel of her jacket.
"It is pretty," he answered, wondering how soon his evil star would lure him on to say the wrong thing.
His apparently indifferent manner piqued her still further. "If you feel very good, and are sure you are going to be good all day, I will give you a piece," she said, separating one spray from its fellows.
Van Tassel sprang to his feet, and in a second Mildred's fingers were upon his coat.
"The round world is just a rattle to her, and you are one of the bells on it that jingle when she moves you."
Clover's words were sounding warningly in his ears. He could not help it. He only prayed to jingle in tune, for moved he was to the depths of his being.
"You like heliotrope very much?" he asked, not daring to look below her cool, fair forehead.
"Yes. Sometimes, I think, best of all; but," with a sigh, "it goes quickly." And she dropped her hands and moved back.
"Like all the happiest moments of life," said Jack, and something leaped from his brown eyes that actually surprised Mildred, coming out of the long train of indifferent days.
"Oh, if Jack is like that," she thought, and a new respect grew in her for the man who ruled himself, and refused to submit to her caprice.
"It is a clear day, Mildred. Let us go up in the Wheel," he said. "Have you made the trip yet?"
"No, but I have a new idea about it. I'm sure it will make me dizzy. It did Clover; and I think I shall be afraid, too."
"Don't give up going. I'm sure you will not be afraid. It is an absolutely steady, safe motion, and the changing view is unique."
"No, indeed; I wouldn't give up going, only I think I would rather go alone. I don't want any one to behold my weakness."
"Oh, very well." Van Tassel made a gesture of indifferent assent, sat down, and returned to his paper. The little incident of the heliotrope had done more to convince him of Clover's wisdom than all her sage words. Its perfume stole up to him as he sat reading the same line over twelve times.
Mildred moved away, outwardly calm, inwardly vexed with Jack for his ready acquiescence.
She went into the house and met Clover. "Going to the Fair?" asked the latter.
"Yes, I think so."
"Wait half an hour or so, and go with us."
"I don't believe you will take my way, for I am going in the Wheel."
"With Jack?"
"No, alone."
"Mr. Page wants to go again. Let me ask him. He is upstairs writing a letter."
"Don't speak to him for anything."
"But I don't want you to go to the Midway alone, Milly. Hilda and both Mr. Pages and I are going to the Anthropological Building together. Do put off the Wheel, and come with us."
"No, I thank you. Our friend Gorham will be in his element, getting your mental and physical strength tested up there in the gallery. I wouldn't be in that revel for anything," and Mildred ran upstairs.
Clover passed out upon the piazza.
"Is Mildred going to the Fair?" asked Van Tassel, looking up quickly.
"Yes. I do wish for once, Jack, you had asked to go with her, for she is bound for the Ferris Wheel."
"I did."
"And she refused?" exclaimed Clover in surprise and exasperation. "Was there ever such an incomprehensible"—
"But she gave me this." Van Tassel exhibited his flower.
Clover looked interested. "Well, then, we are getting on," she said, much pleased. "Go on being an icicle, Jack. It is the only way. Don't for the world urge her to let you accompany her, even though I don't like her to go alone. In the first place she would only retreat as you advanced, and in the second it would probably be salutary for her to stick among the clouds of heaven for a few hours, so I won't worry about the Wheel."
Jack took his hat, lying on the chair beside him. "I think I will go on down," he said. "There is a bare possibility, you know, that I may meet Mildred. If she should be later than you expect in coming home, you would better think of me as being the trap than of the Wheel."
"You won't meet," sighed Clover. "What a foolish girl she is!"
To tell the truth, Mildred could not resist a certain suspicion of her own foolishness, as she emerged upon the piazza a few seconds later, ready to start. She was conscious of disappointment that Jack was not in sight. It was a warm day, and starting off alone was not inspiriting. It required all her pride to pursue her intention.
"You won't have a good time," prophesied Clover, and that strengthened her waning determination; so with a light response she set forth.
The Midway was a seething mass of humanity when she reached it, and she had hardly entered the street when she met her friend, Helen Eames. The latter greeted her eagerly, and began to talk about an entertainment Mildred had attended recently with Jack at her house.
Helen was voluble, and Mildred resented the tone in which she spoke of Jack, so she parted with her friend as soon as civility permitted, and passed on.
She began to feel that she was doing an absurd thing, to be forlornly and doggedly pursuing her way among the motley crowd, to the monotonous, rhythmic beat of drum, and the sing-song of strange voices.
Above their village the South Sea Islanders were pounding out their measures from a hollow log, and across the road the daintier Javanese rang muffled music from gongs and tinkling bells. Scenes and sounds had grown familiar to Mildred, but to-day she found neither truth nor poetry in them. Indian, Turk, and Bedouin passed her by, but she kept eyes ahead on the mammoth wheel, circling with ponderous deliberation. All she wished was to keep her word, take the skyward trip, and return home.
"All the girls are delighted with Mr. Van Tassel," Helen Eames had said.
"Silly thing! Does she suppose I will tell him?" thought Mildred, too absorbed in her own cogitations to note the "vera gooda, vera nice, vera sheep," of the jewelry venders, the stentorian exhortations to enter the dance houses and theatres, or the incessant "hot! hot! hot!" of those that offered the thin waffle-like Zelabiah.
Mildred did not like to find in her own heart the wish that Van Tassel had been with her, that Helen Eames might see him in his proper place this morning. She must indeed have fallen from her high estate if she could wish to display an admirer to another girl. All men were her admirers. It had been a foregone conclusion so long that she had never been obliged to harbor a thought of jealousy or rivalry, and she instantly challenged and condemned this novel weakness.
The Midway Plaisance was a strange place for introspection, yet Mildred's thoughts were sufficiently absorbing. People were always apt to turn and look a second time at her exceptionally vigorous young beauty, but she passed on to-day, totally unconscious of the glances bent upon her.
Might it be true that she had finally alienated Jack by her persistently capricious treatment? "All the girls admired him!" He did not fancy any of them, she was sure. If he cared for any woman, it was Clover; and then the girl coolly and impartially compared her gentle, sympathetic, tender sister with herself. Mildred possessed a clear head, and as she dwelt upon her own and Clover's characteristics, a sermon seemed preached to her amid that crowded babel, in a small voice which the noisy tongues could not drown.
"How would it be possible for a man in his senses to prefer me?" she thought, raising her eyes to a delicate, bell-hung minaret that pierced the cloudless sky. This novel humility impressed her with gravity.
But she had reached her destination. She moved up with the line to the ticket office that lay directly in her path, and bought her bit of pasteboard mechanically. In a moment more the movement of her fellow-passengers had brought her to the base of the wheel. Those who have stood in that position know the effect of looking straight up. Mildred, already feeling small, experienced a painful physical sense of being overwhelmed. The monster had paused for its cars to be filled, and she shrank from the prospect before her with unprecedented sensations. If she allowed herself to be shut up in that glass cab, it meant that two flights of two hundred and fifty feet skyward must be taken ere she could regain her liberty.
"I believe I am trying to be nervous," she said to herself coldly. "I did not know I was speaking truth to Jack this morning."
Oh, if only she were not the vainest and most obstinate of girls, this trip would be a pleasure instead of a pain!
The faint, steady color in her cheeks faded, but she walked into the car determinedly, and taking one of its swinging chairs looked steadily through the glass front. The seats filled, the door was closed, and the scarcely perceptible motion began.
The roof of the next car began to swing into view. The inexorableness of the journey began to impress itself upon Mildred's mind. She was trying to turn away from the thought, when a well-known voice set her beating heart to throbbing faster.
"Why, this is fortunate," it said, with studied carelessness.
She started and lifted her eager eyes. There was Jack Van Tassel looking down upon her, triumphant, but as usual uncertain of his reception.
It has been said before that Mr. Van Tassel was a good-looking young man; but the radiance which seemed to Mildred now to invest every feature of his face, and each dark hair of his head, was certainly the figment of an excited imagination.
"Why, Jack," she gasped, and clasped her hands tightly in her lap for fear they might tell too much.
"You are pale," he said, and stooped with tender concern.
"Why—the sun was pretty warm, didn't you think?" she returned.
Jack did think so. He had had considerable time in which to test it, dodging from one side of the Plaisance to the other in that crowd, where every one knows that his best friend had a faculty of dissolving from view even when he was supposed to be safely at one's side.
"Our poor heliotrope!" he said, glancing down at their decorations.
Mildred followed his gaze. The sprays on her jacket looked, she thought, much as she felt five minutes ago. "Let us throw them away," she answered, starting to withdraw the pin.
"Never," said Jack promptly, and the girl hesitated, then dropped her hand.
"Turn this way," he added. "See the University buildings,—a fine massive gray city that is going to be! Doesn't it seem strange to think that college will ever be venerable and have traditions?"
From this time their attention was fully occupied with the panoramic view. The crowd of sightseers in the Plaisance became a congregation of umbrellas and parasols, ever lessening in size, and whitened in patches where a number of faces were upturned at once to behold the gyration of the wheel. The strange colors and shapes in architecture brought from many lands stood in startling conjunction on either hand. Beyond stretched the Fair city with its winding waterways, held safe in the great azure crescent of Lake Michigan's embrace.
Mildred's eyes sparkled with interest and pleasure. The color had returned to her face, and her spirits to their natural level. When their car again neared earth she was glad, not sorry, that another circuit was in prospect to help her to a more satisfactory view of what had seemed but a tantalizing glimpse.
"The deed is done," said Jack, as at last the exit door of the car was opened, and the passengers passed from under the gigantic steel web and set foot on solid earth once more. "What is next on your programme?"
"I was going home," answered Mildred, rather hesitatingly.
"World's Fair finished?" asked Jack with a smile.
"I have seen almost everything in the Plaisance that I care for."
"But I haven't."
"What do you mean? Are you hinting?"
The girl smiled too, and somehow her expression was not so exasperating as at other times.
"Yes, I am hinting."
"Out with it, then. Speak up like a little man."
"Sometimes when I have spoken up like a little man you have made me feel like a little donkey."
"I don't see how you can like me at all, Jack," returned Mildred naïvely. "I made up my mind this morning that I was going to try to be more like Clover."
"Capital scheme!" exclaimed Van Tassel, with so much enthusiasm that Mildred felt disconcerted.
"I don't suppose the leopard can change his spots, though," she returned, rather stiffly.
"Let us go to Hagenbeck's and see," suggested Jack.
"It is rather far from here if we are going to do the shows with any system."
"Do you wish to, Mildred? Don't let me bore you."
"It only bores me to have you want me to be like somebody else."
Jack's lips drew together in an inaudible whistle, and it needed all Clover's warnings to aid him in holding the rein over himself. They were aimlessly walking east.
"But I honestly don't blame you," she added. "I have done nothing to make it pleasant for you here. In your own home it didn't seem necessary to treat you like a guest."
"You are right. There was no necessity in the matter; there isn't now. Perhaps you really wish to go home."
"Clover wouldn't go if she did wish it," Mildred smiled at him with a sidelong glance, "and so I will stay."
"Not with me," said Jack, lifting his hat and looking very firm as he paused in the road.
"Then you take it back that you wish me to be like little sister?" Mildred also paused, still smiling at him with her chin lifted.
"I want you to be honest."
"I am honest. I want to stay, you uncivil man."
CHAPTER XX.
THE MIDWAY PLAISANCE.
The magic carpet in the Arabian Nights which transported its owner from one country to another, remote, in the space of a few seconds, was the property of all visitors to the Midway Plaisance. Mildred and Jack spent a little time amid the Swiss Alps, the former amusing herself by picking out for Jack's benefit localities where she and Clover had traveled. Then they looked in at the Bedouin Encampment and saw an old woman making bread. She whirled the dough on one hand until it spread into a very thin sheet. This she flapped over a cushion and from thence transferred it to the top of an inverted iron basin, where it baked above burning sticks. It looked when cooked like a delicate cracker, as it was broken up and passed around to the spectators.
A gigantic black, clothed entirely in red from his high leather boots to the rope-like twists of cloth about his head, lay stretched on a divan beside another fire smoking a narghileh.
"The bread is coming this way," remarked Mildred apprehensively. "Let us go into that door and see what is there."
Jack followed her. "This room, Miss Bryant, is taken from a Damascus palace," he said. "I am surprised that you didn't recognize it at once. Observe these pieces of silver set into the walls, and the lavish number of mirrors. I believe a periodical lecturer appears in here."
"How much nicer to have it to ourselves, and guess about it. I have been standing so long, I can guess very closely what these gold-embroidered velvet divans are for," and Mildred stepped up on the dais at the end of the room and seated herself.
The ceiling was lofty, and in the centre of the room a fountain played. Beyond it was another dais surrounded by divans. The floors were covered with rugs. Outside, two Bedouins fenced with curious swords, the handles wrapped with twine, waving their small brass shields meanwhile with ostentatious gestures as they deliberately stepped about. Increasing in concentration and swift fury to the climax of the play, they paused unexpectedly, and seating themselves on the ground, fell to rolling cigarettes and making coffee over the small fire beside which lay the immobile black.
Shrill and dull arose the rhythm of the flageolets and the tambours. The click of castanets told that the dark-eyed women were dancing.
While Mildred and Jack still rested, an Arab in loose robes came in, and going to the fountain bathed his face and hands and dried them on a purple silk towel striped with yellow.
"How nice of him," said Mildred, acknowledging this touch added to the picture.
As they were passing out, one of the Bedouins, the cloth from his twisted turban hanging about his shoulders, paused near them with a baby in his arms, a curly-headed tot of a year old, around whose big brown eyes were drawn lines of artificial black. Mildred looked gently upon the child, and the father, smiling with pride and pleasure, glanced from one to the other; so she patted the baby.
"She is very pretty," she said, and he understood. His large gaze grew soft, and he nodded. Mildred looked at the dancing women with more interest. One of them, her chin tattooed with blue, was pointed out to her as the baby's mother.
A realization of the probable hardships and homesickness endured by these people in all the changes of scene and weather they had undergone assailed her; but it did not do to dwell too long on that side of life in the Plaisance. She only turned her sweetest smile once more on father and child, patted the baby's cheek, and followed Jack out.
To him it mattered little where they went. Each scene gained a glamour which, could the managers of the various enterprises have purchased it as a permanent adjunct to their attractions, would have ensured their fortunes. Passing from Arabia to the electric-lighted palms of the Moorish Palace, Van Tassel was prepared to admire everything. The labyrinth of mirrors which might in some moods have impressed him as a tiresome device, now triumphantly vindicated their right to be, by presenting him a hundred Mildreds so like the original as to be an embarrassment of riches. Even the wax figures above stairs were interesting. The rise and fall of the Sleeping Beauty's gentle breast was a marvel.
From the various tricks and optical illusions of the Moorish Palace they betook themselves to Hawaii, and stood together in darkness on the borders of a lava lake from whose centre shot living flames from the volcano's heart toward the lurid sky.
A priest, a shadowy figure, came forth among the gray rocks, and chanted a prayer to the dreadful goddess of fire. In the remote distance gleamed the peaceful blue waters of the Pacific. Jack would have been willing to stand for hours here by Mildred, in the weird dusky silence broken only by the monotonous chant, for the longer one lingered the more perfect grew the illusion; but she took him away presently, and in a trice the island of Hawaii had vanished and Egypt was gained via the western entrance to Cairo Street.
They passed in before the Temple of Luxor, in front of which a brazen-lunged American showman was reeling off a highly-colored description of the attractions within.
"Mummy of Rameses about the fifth on your right!" repeated Jack, laughing. "Let us postpone Rameses until he can be located a little more definitely."
"Yes, I want you to see the Soudanese pickaninny," said Mildred, and they went over to the tent where the jolly little black baby hopped about among her elders, shaking the girdle of feathers and shells about her hips and dimpling with delight in the applause and laughter she called forth. More interesting than the Soudanese were the Nubians, who came in from the dark huts adjoining, and danced in the same tent. One of these in particular attracted Jack's eye.
"What a splendid woman, Mildred!" he exclaimed. "What an artist's model she would make."
The object of his admiration was tall, straight as an arrow, dressed in a long robe of white, and wore large hoop earrings. She had symmetrical features of haughty mould, and was very dark, with thick crinkled black locks free from the feathers, shells and twine, braided among the Soudanese tresses. She was an impressive figure standing immovable upon the stage among the dancers.
"Like a splendid bronze!" said Jack, gazing at the delicate proud face with all his eyes. The Nubian smiled, disclosing the most perfect teeth imaginable, and Van Tassel regarded her with growing admiration.
"I tell you, Mildred," he said enthusiastically, "if that woman could have been brought up in a different environment she would have been superb. Fancy having her well-trained for a servant? How would you like her to pass you your coffee at breakfast?"
Mildred laughed. "What a pity that I am not a reporter," she said as they left the tent. "You could be worked into a taking newspaper article, Jack. A young scion of one of Chicago's well-known families is maturing a plan to abduct the chief of the tribe of Nubians in Cairo Street. It is feared there will be an uprising, and so forth, and so forth."
"A feminine chief? I don't blame them."
"No, sir. Your superb bronze woman, your artist's model, is Mohammed Ali, the chief of the Nubians."
Jack looked incredulous. "You expect me to believe that?"
"Not if you wish to go back and inquire. It is true, though. Mohammed is a friend of mine. He was good enough, when Clover and I looked into his hut, to show us how he polishes those perfect teeth of his with a little stick. Did you ever see anything so shining? You can buy his photograph, if you like, at one of these booths, and keep it as a memento of Mr. Van Tassel's"—
"Look ou-at. Look ou-at for Mary Anderson," called a donkey boy in a blue gown.
"You wouldn't run over me, would you, Toby?" asked Mildred.
The boy trudging by through the crowd, showed his ivories in a smile of recognition, and urged his little white donkey onward in the narrow, crooked, brick-paved street.
Such a throng, such a noise, only the memories of the experienced can witness to. Camels swung along between the irregular houses, the warning cries of their drivers mingling with the monotonous sing-song of the venders in the closely packed booths.
Egyptian flower girls, veiled to the eyes, plied their trade. A conjurer pushed his way amid the gazers, a hen's egg sticking in his eye and another clinging behind his jaw. The rhythm of the Midway sounded from two drums slung at either side of a gaudily caparisoned camel, and was sung monotonously from the booth of the much-vaunted Oriental sweetmeat:—
"Alla gooda bum-bum,Vera nice candy,Beautifula bum-bum,Vera good candy,"
"Alla gooda bum-bum,Vera nice candy,Beautifula bum-bum,Vera good candy,"
"Alla gooda bum-bum,
Vera nice candy,
Beautifula bum-bum,
Vera good candy,"
repeatedad libitumby the swarthy Arab presiding.
Mildred and Jack glanced into the showcases as they passed onward, the former restraining her companion from purchasing specimens of brasswork, filigree silver, ornaments, and embroidery. But once Mildred exclaimed with pleasure over a small hanging-lamp of dull silver.
"I will take it," said Jack to the instantly voluble salesman.
"Not for me; no don't," protested his companion.
"You must have a souvenir," returned Van Tassel, smiling over the word which had grown hateful by iteration to all Fair-goers.
"Please don't get it," said the girl; but the very tassel on their Oriental's fez was active in his zeal to wrap up the parcel for this gentleman who did not bargain.
The foreign fashion of changing a price by the beating-down process was one with which many Americans amused themselves when they found it was expected; but Jack was in that state of mind when an article which had the rare fortune to please Mildred was above rubies.
She dissembled her satisfaction, however. "If I had let you buy everything you have started to since we came into the street, we should have had to charter a donkey," she began.
"Look ou-at—look ou-at for Yanka Doodoo," bawled Achmet, the donkey boy, directly upon them.
"I don't like to feel that I mustn't admire anything," finished the girl as Jack stepped between her and the little quadruped who carried a much-excited and curled maiden of five.
"I like this lamp so much, I don't know that I shall let you have it," responded Van Tassel serenely, as he took the package. "Look up, Mildred. What a deep blue the sky gets between those irregular roofs."
"Only one of us can look up at a time, while the other keeps watch of the menagerie."
"There appears to be an extra crowd yonder," remarked Jack.
"Oh, that is the camel-stand. Hear the people laughing. How can anybody be willing to furnish so much amusement to the public as to mount one of those beasts? There is always just such a crowd there."
"Well, are we through here?" asked Van Tassel.
"What? Are you weary of Cairo Street?"
"Not if you are not; but it is rather warm, and there is a good deal of a mob, and I have inhaled enough attar of roses to last until my next incarnation. I thought perhaps you might be tired, standing."
"I am."
"There isn't a place to sit down, either," said Jack, looking around.
"That is just what almost every one thinks. I don't know how soon people will find out my enchanted palace, but they hadn't done so last week."
"Well, now, an enchanted palace is exactly what I am looking for," returned Van Tassel hopefully. "How did you learn the open sesame?"
"The open sesame is"—Mildred paused apologetically. "I am sorry to have to say it, but it is the only prosaic feature,—the open sesame is fifteen cents."
They moved along toward the crowd by the camel stand, and here in the noisiest, busiest portion of the winding street, Mildred led her companion into an open door which revealed a long, blank corridor. The dragon guarding it was a most commonplace American. Most people whose curiosity led them to look into the uninviting hallway were quickly frightened off by the placard stating the fifteen-cent admission fee. There was so much to see, and time and money were so limited, little wonder that the obvious attractions of the street decided them not to explore this side-show.
Mildred and Jack, leaving the din and bustle behind, pass the easily placated dragon, and at the end of the low, empty corridor found themselves in and open, floored court, out of which led a flight of stairs. A large earthen jar filled with water stood at one side over a smaller vessel into which the water filtered in crystal drops through the porous clay. Palms and lilies stood about, and edged the entire length of the staircase. It was very quiet here, and Van Tassel looked about him curiously.
Mildred gave him a smiling glance of mystery, "Let us go up and see Sayed Ibrahim," she said.
"Look here," returned Jack, frowning and smiling, "you are altogether too sophisticated."
"Sayed doesn't think so," answered the girl, and they proceeded upstairs. Entering a hallway where was a heavy bronze door of fabulous age and richness of design, they were met by a tall handsome Oriental in robes and fez, whose melting eyes lighted as they recognized Mildred. He bowed low.
"How do you do, Sayed Ibrahim; I have brought another friend to see the beautiful house."
He bowed again and held aside a portière of cloth-of-gold. The visitors passed within and found themselves in a spacious shadowy room with lofty arched ceiling. The windows were unglazed and shielded by curious hand-carved lattice work. Thick rugs were upon the floor, and small tables inlaid with pearl and ivory stood about. On a larger one were a number of tiny and precious coffee cups, held in little brass stands. Long-stemmed pipes hung upon the walls, and divans or cushions upon the floor invited to repose. Rich portières divided the suite of rooms one from another.
The light was dim, coming out of the glaring street, and the colors in rugs and hangings were tempered in the wonderful Oriental weaving. There were no other visitors. Jack looked at the swarthy cicerone who stood ready to answer their questions.
"I do not wonder," he said to Mildred, "that you call this mysterious spot enchanted. It is a chapter out of the Arabian Nights."
"Yes; are you ready to come back to the nineteenth century? The nineteenth century in Egypt, you know. I wouldn't make your fall too sudden and profound."
Mildred moved to the broad window-seat which was covered with a rug, and smiled at the Arab. It was a language he understood as clearly as the Harvard graduate, and he hastened forward and threw open the lattice.
Van Tassel seated himself opposite Mildred, and together they looked down upon the madding crowd.
Their position was just opposite the camel stand, and from their height they commanded a view of the kaleidoscopic life of the street. The bystanders pressed about the cushions upon which the camels knelt to take on or be relieved of their burdens, and seemed to find never-failing entertainment in the behavior of those intrepid passengers who embarked for the adventurous journey to the end of the street and back again.
Mildred and Jack in their romantic eyrie held their sides with laughter over the absurdities enacted before their eyes.
"If any trip ever deserved the name of pleasure exertion, that is the one," said Mildred, wiping her eyes, while she watched two girls who evidently took their lives in their hands as they seated themselves on the cushioned back of one of the patient beasts. The Arab driver cried out, and tapped the creature on the neck.
"Now then," said Jack, "see the ship of the desert let out the reefs in its legs!"
Shrieks arose from the maidens at the first ascent, wilder and wilder cries and clutchings at the second and third, and by the time the animal had reached the stature of a camel and swung away, the whole crowd was uproarious, only quieting to observe the next pair embark.
"Miss Amelia Edwards says the camel is a beast that hates its rider," said Jack. "I wonder what are the private prejudices of the Cairo Street variety."
"As if you couldn't see!" answered Mildred. "It wouldn't be half so funny if the camels didn't curl their lips and look so supercilious all the time those idiots are shrieking so. 'What fools these mortals be!' is the sentiment their faces express chronically. Poor things! Just think, that they are only intended to kneel once or twice a day, and here they have to go down every three minutes. How they would execrate Columbus if they only knew how! Oh, look at that old lady! It is a shame to let her go," added Mildred. "They will laugh at her, too."
"Never mind. She will be the heroine of Perkins Point, or wherever it is, all the rest of her life."
"She looks scared, Jack. Oh, dear! her bonnet is falling off. I wish she wouldn't. Why, there are Clover and Mr. Page! Do you see them? Let us go out on the balcony." Mildred left the window-seat, and Jack followed.
"Is there a balcony? Why didn't you say so?"
"Because I am economical of my pleasant surprises." The watchful Sayed threw open double doors of the lattice work, and revealed a small, square balcony upon which the visitors stepped into the sunlight. The fanciful minarets and spires of the street gleamed against an azure sky.
Clover and Gorham had paused just below, also interested in the venturesome old lady, who was followed by cheers as her scornful camel bore her up the street.
Jack took advantage of the temporary lull that followed, to whistle the bit from "Carmen."
Clover instantly looked up and called the attention of her companion.
Mildred beckoned.
"Clover knows the way," said Jack.
"Most certainly she does. We Chicagoans aren't Fair visitors. We are Fair livers."
"Don't be so toplofty, mademoiselle. What am I, if not a Chicagoan?"
"Oh, a sort of deserter."
"'I deny the allegation and despise the allegator.' I am going to marry a Chicago girl, and live here all my days."
"Have you asked her?"
Van Tassel, perhaps reminded by the neighborhood of his mentor, forbore from replying to the saucy smiling eyes, and here Clover and Gorham appeared at the door of the balcony.
"Come out," said Mildred, "it holds five. Is this the way you visit the Anthropological Building?"
"Why, this is all right," answered Page. "'Midway Plaisance, Department M. Ethnology.' Look on the catalogue, and you will see this is all a part of the Anthropological exhibit."
"And apart from it," suggested Mildred, "which certainly is in its favor. I thought you would see enough ghastly pictures and graveyards and mummies in a short time."
"The exhibits in the gallery are wonderful and beautiful," said Clover. "I don't believe you know what you are talking about."
"I do, my dear. I have oh'd and ah'd over them all, from the dainty infinitesimal sea creatures on pink cotton to the mammoth. I felt so much obliged to him. He really made me feel small. Then the realistic cliff, with the birds and beasts artistically disposed, and the waterfall and flowing brook. I've seen them. How long have you been here?"
"Not very long. We have been watching the antics of the women on the camels, and the long-legged men on those tiny donkeys."
"A great deal of human nature comes out in Cairo Street," said Page with interest. "One sees a great variety of motives, and many grades of self-control by that camel stand. See that little woman going now to take a trip. Is it amusement she's after? Not at all. Note the determination in her face. Duty calls and she obeys. Dollars to doughnuts she doesn't scream, Jack."
"I'm out of doughnuts; but I'll bet you the supper she does. I haven't seen a quiet one yet."
"Done! You will see one now."
"That girl is from the East," said Mildred.
"I am sure of it," returned Page, gazing with pleased curiosity at his protégée, who stood waiting her turn; "but what brings you to that conclusion?"
"The trimming of her hat looks as if it were nailed on. They say all Boston women's bonnet trimmings are nailed on."
"She is a character," said Page. "Now I would like to know what her motive is in riding that camel."
Jack guffawed. "I am sure you would. You will be asking her the next thing we know."
"Well, it is no idle one, I'm sure of that."
"Perhaps she is a school teacher," suggested Van Tassel, "and wants to go home and tell her scholars how pitch-and-toss in Cairo Street differs from the usual game."
"There she goes," said Clover, and they all watched the fair-faced girl approach and mount a camel whose expression for utter boredom rather outdid its neighbors. At the driver's cry it gathered itself convulsively. The rider lurched forward. Her back was to the watchers on the balcony, but they could not hear a sound from her. She lurched backward, still without a cry, and they were not surprised when the camel swung around to see her face still set in its determined and composed lines while the crowd looked on in silence.
"I shall enjoy that supper very much, Jack," said Gorham.
"You haven't won it yet. Wait till she comes back. When his Nibs kneels down is the time a girl's lungs really come into play. After she thinks every joint in his body has doubled up there comes one unexpected plunge that fetches the most dignified of them every time. They say a sailor came in here the other day and after riding one of our humped friends said that the camel played cup-and-ball with him the whole length of the street, and only missed him twice."
In a few minutes, back came Gorham's heroine, still composed as she rocked back and forth clinging to the rope which the driver had handed her for a support.
"Now that supper hangs in the balance," remarked Page.
"I'm safe enough," returned Jack nonchalantly, "and I assure you my appetite is in prime condition."
The camel, slowly winking and holding his nose aloft, approached his cushion, and began the series of spasmodic collapses which made its rider look as though at the mercy of a rocking-chair gone mad. She pitched wildly, but valiantly held her peace. Even Jack had to admit that she did not make a murmur, and all his protests against playing off a dumb girl on him were unheeded as Page gazed benignly down on the young woman, who smiled sweetly and triumphantly as she rejoined her friends.
"Five minutes of four," said Mildred. "The wedding procession will soon pass. Aren't we fortunate to have the balcony? Do you see, other people are daring to visit the house and taking our window-seat?"
"Your window-seat! That is pretty good," said Clover, turning toward the speaker with an arch smile. "We thought that was our window-seat, didn't we, Jack?"
She saw the color flash over her sister's face in the instant before the girl controlled herself. She wondered if Jack had seen the novel evidence of feeling before Mildred turned to him coolly.
"So you have been here before," she remarked. "Why didn't you mention it?"
"Clover and I looked in a short time only, the evening we took supper in Germany," answered Van Tassel. "I did not examine the curious place at all then, so this is really my first view of it."
Clover turned away to conceal her amusement. Jack in his embarrassment had implied all she could have asked from the disciplinary standpoint.
But now the attention of the quartette was claimed by the wedding procession, which was seen coming down the street, the camels nearly hidden under their gaudy, bulky trappings, and the din of the tom-toms filling the air. When the music, dancing, and sword play were ended, Mildred spoke to her sister.
"What have you done with Mr. and Mrs. Page?"
"They went to the Chinese theatre, and we have promised to meet them in Old Vienna and take supper there."
"Our dear Jack will have to take supper with us now," declared Gorham cordially.
"I suppose," said Van Tassel, addressing Mildred, "that Old Vienna is an oft-repeated experience to you?"
"At least I shall not pretend that it is a novelty," she answered without looking at him, and Jack was silent. He even colored, but it was not with proper contrition. It was a flush of pleasure that overspread his countenance as his brown eyes sent a quick glance into Clover's.