After she had seen that Phil and the paintings occupied his attention to some extent, Dolly left them.
“I was beginning to think about pies and puddings when you came,” she said, “and I must go back to them. Saturday is the only day Lady Augusta leaves me, in which to improve in branches of domestic usefulness,” with an iniquitous imitation of her ladyship's manner.
After which she went down to the kitchen again and plunged into culinary detail with renewed vigor, thinking of the six-roomed house in the suburbs, and the green sofa which was to fit into the alcove in the front parlor, growing quite happy over the mental picture, in blissful unconsciousness of the fact that a train had been that day laid, and that a spark would be applied that very night through the medium of a simple observation made by Phil to her lover.
“Gowan was here this morning, Grif, and Dolly brought him into the studio. He's not a bad sort of fellow for a Philistine, and he seems to know something about pictures. I should n't be surprised if he came again.”
THIS was the significant and poetic appellation which at once attached itself to Ralph Gowan after his first visit to the studio in Bloomsbury Place, and, as might have been expected, it was a fancy of Dolly's, the affixing of significant titles being one of herfortes.
“The lilies of the field,” she observed, astutely, “are a distinct class. They toil not, neither do they spin, and yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Yes, my young friends, Mr. Ralph Gowan is a lily of the field.”
And she was not far wrong. Twenty-seven years before Mr. Ralph Gowan had been presented to an extended circle of admiring friends as the sole heir to a fortune large enough to have satisfied the ambitions of half a dozen heirs of moderate aspirations, and from that time forward his lines had continually fallen in pleasant places. As a boy he had been handsome, attractive, and thoroughbred, and consequently popular; his good looks made him a favorite with women, his good fortune with men; his friends were rather proud of him, and his enemies were powerless against him; he found it easy to be amiable because no obstacles to amiability lay in his path; and altogether he regarded existence as a comfortable enough affair.
At school his fellows had liked him just as boys as well as men are apt to like fortunate people; and as he had grown older he had always found himself a favorite, it may be for something of the same reason. But being, happily, a gentleman by nature, he had not been much spoiled by the general adulation. Having been born to it, he carried himself easily through it, scarcely recognizing the presence of what would have been patent to men less used to popularity. He was fond of travelling, and so had amused himself by comfortably arranging uncomfortable journeys and exploring pleasantly those parts of the earth which to ordinary tourists would appear unattainable.
He was not an ordinary young man, upon the whole, which was evinced by his making no attempt to write a book of travels, though he might safely have done so; and really, upon the whole, “lily of the field” though chance had made him, he was neither useless nor purposeless, and rather deserved his good luck than otherwise.
Perhaps it was because he was not an ordinary individual that his fancy was taken by the glimpse he had caught of life in Vagabondia. It was his first glimpse of the inner workings of such a life, and its novelty interested him. A girl of twenty-two who received attention and admiration in an enjoyable, matter-of-fact manner, as if she was used to and neither over- nor under-valued it, who could make coffee and conversation bearable and even exciting, who could hold her own against patronage and slights, and be as piquant and self-possessed at home as in society, who could be dazzling at night and charming in the morning, was novelty enough in herself to make Bloomsbury Place attractive, even at its dingiest, and there were other attractions aside from this one.
Phil in the studio, taking life philosophically, and regarding the world and society in general with sublime and amiable tolerance, was as unique in his way as Dolly was in hers; his handsome girl-wife, who had come in to them with her handsome child in her arms, was unique also; Mollie herself, who had opened the door and quite startled him with the mere sight of her face,—well, Mollie had impressed him as she impressed everybody. And he was quite observant enough to see the element of matter-of-fact, half-jocular affection that bound them one to another; he could not help seeing it, and it almost touched him. They were not a sentimental assembly, upon the whole, but they were fond of each other in a style peculiar to themselves, and ready to unite in any cause which was the cause of the common weal. The family habit of taking existence easily and regarding misfortunes from a serenely philosophical standpoint, amused Ralph Gowan intensely. It had spiced Dolly's conversation, and it spiced Phil's; indeed, it showed itself in more than words. They had banded themselves against unavoidable tribulation, and it could not fail to be beautifully patent to the far-seeing mind that, taking all things together, tribulation had the worst of it.
They were an artistic study, Ralph Gowan found, and so, in his character of a “lily of the field,” he fell into the habit of studying them, as an amusement at first, afterwards because his liking for them became friendly and sincere.
It was an easy matter to call again after the first visit,—people always did call again at Bloomsbury Place, and Ralph Gowan was no exception to the rule. He met Phil in the city, and sauntered home with him to discuss art and look at his work; he invited him to first-class little dinners, and introduced him to one or two men worth knowing; in short, it was not long before the two were fond of each other in undemonstrative man fashion. The studio was the sort of place Gowan liked to drop into when time hung heavily on his hands, and consequently hardly a week passed without his having at least once or twice dropped into it to sit among the half dozen of Phil's fellow Bohemians, who were also fond of dropping in as the young man sat at his easel, sometimes furiously at work, sometimes tranquilly loitering over the finishing touches of a picture. They were good-natured, jovial fellows, too, these Bohemian visitors, though they were more frequently than not highly scented with the odor of inferior tobacco, and rarely made an ostentatious display in the matter of costume, or were conspicuously faultless in the matter of linen; they failed to patronize the hairdresser, and were prone to various convivialities, but they were neither vicious nor vulgar, and they were singularly faithful to their friendships for each other. They were all fond of Phil, and accordingly fraternized at once with his new friend, adopting him into their circle with the ease of manner and freedom of sentiment which seemed the characteristic of their class; and they took to him all the more kindly because, amateur though he was, he shared many of their enthusiasms.
Of course he did not always see Dolly when he went. During every other day of the week but Saturday she spent her time from nine in the morning until five in the afternoon in the rather depressing atmosphere of the Bilberry school-room. She vigorously assaulted the foundations of Lindley Murray, and attacked the rules of arithmetic; she taught Phemie French, and made despairing but continuous efforts at “finishing” her in music. But poor Phemie was not easily “finished,” and hung somewhat heavily upon the hands of her youthful instructress; still, she was affectionate, if weak-minded, and so Dolly managed to retain her good spirits.
“I believe they are all fond of me in their way,” she said to Griffith,—"all the children, I mean; and that is something to be thankful for.”
“They couldn't help being fond of you,” returned the young man. “Did any human being ever know you without being fond of you?”
“Yes,” said Dolly; “Lady Augusta knows me; and I do not think—no,” with a cheerfully resigned shake of the head, which did not exactly express deep regret or contrition, “I really do not think Lady Augusta is what you might call overwhelmed with the strength of her attachment for me.”
“Oh, Lady Augusta!” said Griffith. “Confound Lady Augusta!”
Griffith was one of the very few people who did not like Ralph Gowan, and perhaps charitably inclined persons will be half inclined to excuse his weakness. It was rather trying, it must be admitted, for a desponding young man rather under stress of weather, so to speak, to find himself thrown into sharp contrast with an individual who had sailed in smooth waters all his life, and to whom a ripple would have been a by no means unpleasant excitement; it was rather chafing to constantly encounter this favorite of fortune in the best of humors, because he had nothing to irritate him; thoroughbred, unruffled, anddébonnairebecause he had nothing of pain or privation to face; handsome, well dressed, and at ease, because his income and his tastes balanced against each other accommodatingly. Human nature rose up and battled in the Vagabondian breast; there were times when, for the privilege of administering severe corporeal chastisement to Ralph Gowan, Griffith would have sacrificed his modest salary with a Christian fortitude and resignation beautiful to behold. To see him sitting in one of the faded padded chairs, roused all his ire, and his consciousness of his own weakness made the matter worse; to see him talking to Dolly, and see her making brisk little jokes for his amusement, was worse still, and drove him so frantic that more than once he had turned quite pale in his secret frenzy of despair and jealousy, and had quite frightened the girl, though he was wise enough to keep his secret to himself. It was plain enough that Gowan admired Dolly, but other men had admired her before; the sting of it was that this fellow, with his cool airs and graces and tantalizing repose of manner, had no need to hold back if he could win her. There would be no need for him to plan and pinch and despair; no need for faltering over odd shillings and calculating odd pence;hecould marry her in an hour if she cared for him, and he could surround her with luxuries, and dress her like a queen, and make her happy, as she deserved to be. And then the poor fellow's heart would beat fiercely, and the very blood would tremble in his veins, at the mere thought of giving her up.
One night after they had been sitting together, and Gowan had just left the room with Phil, Dolly glanced up from her work and saw her lover looking at her with a face so pale and wretched that she was thrown into a passion of fear.
She tossed her work away in a second, and, making one of her little rushes at him, was caught in his arms and half suffocated. She knew the instant she caught sight of his face what he was suffering, though perhaps she did not know the worst.
“Oh, why will you?” she cried out, in tears, all at once. “It is cruel! You are as pale as death, and I know—I know so well what it means.”
“Tell me you will never forget what we have been to each other,” he said, when he could speak; “tell me you don't care for that fellow,—tell me you love me, Dolly, tell me you love me.”
She did not hesitate a moment; she had never flirted with Griffith in her life, and she knew him too well to try him when he wore that desperate, feverish look of longing in his eyes. She burst into an impetuous sob, and clung to him with both hands.
“I love you with all my soul,” she said. “I will neverletyou give me up; and as to forgetting, I might die, but I could never forget. Care for Ralph Gowan! I loveyou, Griffith, I loveyou!”
“And you don't regret?” he said, piteously. “Oh, Dolly, just think of whathecould give you; and then think of our hopeless dreams about miserable six-roomed houses and cheap furniture.”
“You will make me hate him,” cried Dolly, her gust of love and pity making her fierce. “I don't want anything anybody could give me. I only want you,dearold fellow,—darlingold fellow,” holding him fast, as if she would never let him go, and shedding a shower of impassioned, tender tears. “Oh, my darling, only wait until I am your own wife, and see how happy I will be, and how happy I will make you,—for Icanmake you happy,—and see how I will work in our little home for your sake, and how content I will be with a little. Oh, what must I do to show you how I love you! Do you think I could have cared for Ralph Gowan all these years as I have cared for you? No indeed; but I shall care for you forever, and I would wait for you athousandyears if I might only be your wife, and die in your arms at the end of it.”
And she believed every word she said, too, and would have been willing to lay down her young life to prove it, extravagant as it may all sound to the discreet. And she quite believed, too, that she could never have so loved any other man than this unlucky, jealous, tempestuous one; but I will take the liberty of saying that this was a mistake, for, being an impassioned, heart-ruled, unworldly young person, it is quite likely that if Ralph Gowan had stood in Mr. Griffith Donne's not exactly water-tight shoes, she would have clung to him quite as faithfully, and believed in his perfections quite as implicitly, and quite as scornfully would have depreciated the merits of his rival; but chance had arranged the matter for her years before, and so Mr. Griffith was the hero.
“Ralph Gowan!” she flung out. “What is Ralph Gowan, or any other man on earth, to me? Did I lovehimbefore I knew what love was, and scarcely understood my own heart? Did I grow into a woman lovinghimand clinging tohimand dreaming about him? Have I ever had any troubles in common withhim? Did we grow up together, and tell each other all our thoughts and help each other to bear things? Let him travel in the East, if he likes,"—with high and rather inconsistent disdain,—"and let him have ten thousand a year, if he will,—a hundred thousand millions a year wouldn't buy me from you—my own!” In another burst, “Let him ride in his carriage, if he chooses,"—rather, as if such a course would imply the most degraded weakness; but, as I have said before, she was illogical, if affectionate,—"let him ride in his carriage. I would rather walk barefoot through the world with you than ride in a hundred carriages, if every one of them was lined with diamonds and studded with pearls.”
There was the true flavor of Vagabondia's indiscretion and want of forethought in this, I grant you; but such speeches as these were Dolly Crewe's mode of comforting her lover in his dark moods; at least, she was sincere,—and sincerity will excuse many touches of extravagance. And as to Griffith, every touch of loving, foolish rhapsody dropped upon his heart like dew from heaven, filling him with rapture and drawing him nearer to her than before.
“But,” he objected,—a rather weak objection, offered rather weakly, because he was so full of renewed confidence and bliss,—"but he is a handsomer fellow than I am, Dolly, and it must be confessed he has good taste.”
“Handsomer!” echoed Dolly. “What do I care about his beauty? He is n'tyou,—that is where he fails to come up to the mark. And as to his good taste, do you suppose for a second that I could ever admire the most imposing 'get-up' by Poole, as I love this threadbare coat of yours, that I have laid my cheek against for the last three years?” And she bent down all at once and kissed the shabby sleeve.
“No,” she said, looking up the next minute with her eyes as bright as stars. “We have beengivento each other, that is it. It was n't chance, it was something higher. We needed each other, and a higher power than Fate bound us together, and it was a power that is n't cruel enough to separate us now, after all these years have woven our lives in one chord, and drawn our hearts close, and taught us how to comfort and bear with each other. I was given to you because I could help to make your life brighter,—and you were given to me because you could help to brighten mine, and God will never part us so long as we are true.”
The coat sleeve came into requisition again then, as it often did. Her enthusiastic burst ended in a gush of heart-full tears, and she hid her face on the coat sleeve until they were shed; Griffith in the mean time touching her partly bent head caressingly with his hand, but remaining silent because he could not trust himself to speak.
But she became quieter at last, and got over it so far as to look up and smile.
“I could n't give up the six-roomed house and the green sofa, Griffith,” she said. “They are like a great many other things,—the more I don't get them the more I want them. And the long winter evenings we are to spend together, when you are to read and I am to sew, and we are both to be blissfully happy. I could n't give those up on any account. And how could I bear to see Ralph Gowan, or any one else, seated in the orthodox arm-chair?”
The very idea of this latter calamity occurring crushed Griffith completely. The long winter evenings they were to spend together were such a pleasant legend. Scarcely a day passed without his drawing a mental picture of the room which was to be their parlor, and of the fireside Dolly was to adorn. It required only a slight effort of imagination to picture her shining in the tiny room whose door closed upon an outside world of struggling and an inside world of love and hope and trust. He imagined Dolly under a variety of circumstances, but nothing pleased and touched him so tenderly as this fireside picture,—its ideal warmth and glow, and its poetic placing of Dolly as his wife sitting near to him with her smiles and winsome ways and looks—his own, at last, unshared by any outsiders. Giving that long-cherished fancy up would have killed him, if he could have borne all the rest. And while these two experienced the recorded fluctuations of their romance in private, Ralph Gowan had followed Phil into the studio.
They found Mollie there on going into the room; and Mollie lying upon the sofa asleep, with her brown head upon a big soft purple cushion, was quite worthy a second glance. She had been rather overpowered in the parlor by the presence of Ralph Gowan, and, knowing there was a fire in the studio, and a couch drawn near it, she had retired there, and, appropriating a pile of cushions, had dropped asleep, and lay there curled up among them.
Seeing her, Gowan found himself smiling faintly. Mollie amused him just as she amused Dolly. It was so difficult a matter to assign her any settled position in the world; She was taller than the other girls, and far larger and more statuesque; indeed, there were moments when she seemed to be almost imposing in presence, but this only rendered her still more a charming incongruity. She might have carried herself like a royal princess, but she blushed up to the tips of her ears at a glance, and was otherwise as innocently awkward as a beauty may be. She was not fond of strangers either, and generally lapsed into silence when spoken to. Public admiration only disconcerted her, and made her pout, and the unceremonious but friendly compliments of Phil's brethren in art were her special grievance.
“They stare at me, and stare at me, and stare at me,” she complained, pettishly, to Dolly, “and some of them say things to me. I wish they would attend to their pictures and leave me alone.”
But she had never evinced any particular dislike to Ralph Gowan. She was overpowered by a secret sense of his vast superiority to the generality of mankind, but she rather admired him upon the whole. She liked to hear him talk to Dolly, and she approved of his style. It was such a novel sort of thing to meet with a man who was not shabby, and whose clothes seemed made for him and were worn with a grace. He was handsome, too, and witty and polite, and his cool, comfortable manner reminded her vaguely of Dolly's own. So she used to sit and listen to the two as they chatted, and in the end her guileless admiration of Dolly's eligible Philistine became pretty thoroughly established.
When the sound of advancing footsteps roused her from her nap she woke with great tranquillity, and sat up rubbing her drowsy eyes serenely for a minute or so before she discovered that Phil had a companion. But when she did discover that such was the fact she blushed all over, and looked up at Ralph Gowan in some naïve distress.
“I did n't know any one was coming,” she said, “and I was so comfortable that I fell asleep. It was the cushions, I think.”
“I dare say it was,” answered Gowan, regarding her sleep-flushed cheeks and exquisite eyes with the pleasure he always felt in any beauty, animate or inanimate. “May I sit here, Mollie?” and then he looked at her again and decided that he was quite right in speaking to her as he would have spoken to a child, because shewassuch a very child.
“By me, on the sofa?” she answered. “Oh, yes.”
“Are you going to talk business with Phil?” she asked him next, “or may I stay here? Griffith and Dolly won't want me in the parlor, and I don't want to go into the kitchen.”
“I have no doubt you may stay here,” he said, quite seriously; “but why won't they want you in the parlor?”
“They never want anybody,” astutely. “I dare say they are making love,—they generally are.”
“Making love,” he repeated. “Ah, indeed!” and for the next few minutes was so absorbed in thought that Mollie was quite forgotten.
Making love were they,—this shabby, rather un-amiable young man and the elder Miss Crewe? It sounded rather like nonsense to Ralph Gowan, but it was not a pleasant sort of thing to think about. It is not to be supposed that he himself was very desperately in love with Dolly just yet, but it must be admitted he admired her decidedly. Beauty as Mollie was, he scarcely gave her a glance when Dolly was in the room,—he recognized the beauty, but it did not enslave him, it did not even attract him as Dolly's imperfect charms did. And perhaps he had his own ideas of what Dolly's love-making would be, of the spice and variety which would form its characteristics, and of the little bursts of warmth and affection that would render it delightful. It was not soothing to think of all this being lavished on a shabby young man who was not always urbane in demeanor and who stubbornly objected to being propitiated by politeness.
As was very natural, Mr. Ralph Gowan did not admire Mr. Griffith Donne enthusiastically. In his visits to Bloomsbury Place, finding an ill-dressed young man whose position in the household he could not understand, he began by treating him with good-natured suavity, being ready enough to make friends with him, as he had made friends with the rest of Phil's compatriots. But influenced by objections to certain things, Griffith was not to be treated suavely, but rather resented it. There was no good reason for his resenting it, but resent it he did, as openly as he could, without being an absolute savage and attracting attention. The weakness of such a line of conduct is glaringly patent, of course, to the well-regulated mind; but then Mr. Griffith Donne's mind was not well-regulated, and he was, on the contrary, a very hot-headed, undisciplined young man, and exceedingly sensitive to his own misfortunes and shabbiness, and infatuated in his passion for the object of his enemy's admiration. But Ralph Gowan could afford to be tolerant; in the matter of position he was secure, he had never been slighted or patronized in his life, and so had no shrinkings from such an ordeal; he was not disturbed by any bitter pang of jealousy as yet, and so, while he could not understand Griffith's restless anxiety to resent his presence, could still tolerate it and keep cool. Yet, as might be expected, he rather underrated his antagonist. Seeing him only in this one unfavorable light, he regarded him simply as a rather ill-bred, or, at least, aggressively inclined individual, whose temper and tone of mind might reasonably be objected to. Once or twice he had even felt his own blood rise at some implied ignoring of himself; but he was far the more urbane and well-disposed of the two, yet whether he was to be highly lauded for his forbearance, or whether, while lauding him, it would not be as well to think as well as possible of his enemy, is a matter for charity to decide.
It had not occurred to him before that Griffith's frequent and unceremonious visits implied anything very serious. There were so many free-and-easy visitors at the house, and they all so plainly cultivated Dolly, if they did not make actual love to her; and really outsiders would hardly have been impressed with her deportment toward her betrothed. She was not prone to exhibit her preference sentimentally in public. So Ralph Gowan had been deceived,—and so he was deceived still.
“This sort of fellow,” as he mentally put it with unconscious high-handedness, was not the man to make such a woman happy, however ready she was to bear with him. It was just such men as he was, who, when the novelty of possession wore off, deteriorated into tyrannical, irritable husbands, and were not too well bred in their manners. So he became reflective and silent, when Mollie said that the two were “making love.”
But at last it occurred to him that even to Mollie his preoccupation might appear singular, and he roused himself accordingly.
“Making love!” he said again. “Blissful occupation! I wonder how they do it. Do you know, Mollie?”
Mollie looked at him with a freedom from scruples or embarrassment at the conversation taking such a turn, which told its own story.
“Yes,” she said. “They talk, you know, and say things to each other just as other people do, and he kisses her sometimes. I know that,” with a decided air, “because I have seen him do it.”
“Cool enough, that, upon my word,” was her questioner's mental comment, “and not unpleasant for Donne; but hardly significant of a fastidious taste, if it is a public exhibition.” “Ah, indeed!” he said, aloud.
“They have been engaged so long, you know,” volunteered Mollie.
“Singularly enough, I did not know, Mollie,” he replied. “Are you sure yourself?”
“Oh, yes!” exclaimed Mollie, opening her eyes. “I thought everybody knew that. They have been engaged ever since they were ever so much younger. Dolly was only fifteen, and Griffith was only eighteen, when they first fell in love.”
“And they have been engaged ever since?” said Gowan, his curiosity getting decidedly the better of him.
“Yes, and would have been married long ago, if Griffith could have got into something; or if Old Flynn would have raised his salary. He has only a hundred a year,” with unabashed frankness, “and, of course, they couldn't be married on that, so they are obliged to wait. A hundred and fifty would do, Dolly says,—but then, they have n't got a hundred and fifty.”
Ralph Gowan was meanly conscious of not being overpowered with regret on hearing this latter statement of facts. And yet he was by no means devoid of generous impulse. He was quite honest, however deeply he might be mistaken, in deciding that it would be an unfortunate thing for Dolly if she married Griffith Donne. He thought he was right, and certainly if there had been no more good in his rival than he himself had seen on the surface, he would not have been far wrong; but as it was he was unconsciously very far wrong indeed. He ran into the almost excusable extreme of condemning Griffith upon circumstantial evidence. Unfair advantage had been taken of Dolly, he told himself. She had engaged herself before she knew her own heart, and was true to her lover because it was not in her nature to be false. Besides, what right has a man with a hundred a year to bind any woman to the prospect of the life of narrow economies and privations such an income would necessarily entail? And forthwith his admiration of Dolly became touched with pity, and increased fourfold.Shewas unselfish, at least, whatever her affianced might be. Poor little soul! (It is a circumstance worthy of note, because illustrative of the blindness of human nature, that at this very moment Miss Dorothea Crewe was enjoying her quiettête-à-têtewith her lover wondrously, and would not have changed places with any young lady in the kingdom upon any consideration whatever.)
It is not at all to be wondered at that, in the absence of other entertainment, Gowan drifted into a confidential chat with Mollie. She was the sort of girl few people could have remained entirely indifferent to. Hernaïvetéwas as novel as her beauty, and her weakness, so to speak, was her strength. Gowan found it so at least, but still it must be confessed that Dolly was the chief subject of their conversation.
“You are very fond of your sister?” he said to the child.
Mollie nodded.
“Yes,” she said, “I am very fond of her. We are all very fond of her. Dolly 's the clever one of the family, next to Phil. She is n't afraid of anybody, and things don't upset her. I wish I was like her. You ought to see her talk to Lady Augusta, I believe she is the only person in the world Lady Augusta can't patronize, and she is always trying to snub her just because she is so cool. But it never troubles Dolly. I have seen her sit and smile and talk in her quiet way until Lady Augusta could do nothing but sit still and stare at her as if she was choked, with her bonnet strings actually trembling.”
Gowan laughed. He could imagine the effect produced so well, and it was so easy to picture Dolly smiling up in the face of her gaunt patroness, and all the time favoring her with a shower of beautiful little stabs, rendered pointed by the very essence of artfulness. He decided that upon the whole Lady Augusta was somewhat to be pitied.
“Dolly says,” proceeded Mollie, “that she would like to be a beauty; but if I was like her I should n't care about being a beauty.”
“Ah!” said Gowan, unable to resist the temptation to try with a fine speech,—"ah! it is all very well foryouto talk about not caring to be a beauty.”
It did not occur to him for an instant that it was indiscreet to say such a thing to her. He only meant it for a jest, and nine girls out of ten even at sixteen would have understood his languid air of grandiloquence in an instant. But Mollie at sixteen was extremely liberal-minded, and almost Arcadian in her simplicity of thought and demeanor.
Her brown eyes flew wide open, and for a minute she stared at him with mingled amazement and questioning.
“Me!” she said, ignoring all given rules of propriety of speech.
“Yes, you,” answered Gowan, smiling, and looking down at her amusedly. “I have been paying you a compliment, Mollie.”
“Oh!” said Mollie, bewilderment settling on her face. But the next instant the blood rushed to her cheeks, and her eyes fell, and she moved a little farther away from him.
It was the first compliment she had received in all her life, and it was the beginning of an era.
“We are going,” Dolly to Ralph Gowan, “to have a family rejoicing, and we should like you to join us. We are going to celebrate Mollie's birthday.”
“Thanks,” he answered, “I shall be delighted.” He had heard of these family rejoicings before, and was really pleased with the idea of attending one of them. They were strictly Vagabondian, which was one recommendation, and they were entirely free from the Bilberry element, which was another. They were not grand affairs, it is true, and set etiquette and the rules of society at open defiance, but they were cheerful, at least, and nobody attended them who had not previously resolved upon enjoying himself and taking kindly to even the most unexpected state of affairs. At Bloomsbury Place, Lady Augusta's “coffee and conversation” became “conversation and coffee,” and the conversation came as naturally as the coffee. People who had jokes to make made them, and people who had not were exhilarated by thebon-motsof the rest.
“Mollie will be seventeen,” said Dolly, “and it is rather a trial to me.”
Gowan laughed.
“Why?” he asked.
She shook her head gravely.
“In the first place,” she answered, “it makes me feel as if the dust of ages was accumulating in my pathway, and in the second, it is not safe for her.”
“Why, again?” he demanded.
“She is far too pretty, and her knowledge of the world is far too limited. She secretly believes in Lord Burleigh, and clings to the poetic memory of King Cophetua and the Beggar-maid.”
“And you do not?”
She held up her small forefinger and shook it at him.
“If ever there was an artful little minx,” she said, “that Beggar-maid was one. I never believed in her. I doubted her before I was twelve. With her eyes cast down and her sly tricks! She did not cast them down for nothing. She did it because she had long eyelashes, and it was becoming. And it is my impression she knew more about the king than she professed to. She had studied his character and found it weak. Beggar-maid me no beggar-maids! She was as deep as she was handsome.”
Of course he laughed again. Her air of severe worldly experience and that small warning forefinger were irresistible.
“But Mollie,” he said, “with all her belief in Cophetua, you think there is not enough of the beggar-maid element in her character to sustain her under like circumstances?”
“If she met a Cophetua,” she answered, “she would open her great eyes at his royal purple in positive delight, and if he caught her looking at him she would blush furiously and pout a little, and be so ashamed of her weakness that she would be ready to run away; but if he was artful enough to manage her aright, she would believe every word he said, and romance about him until her head was turned upside down. My fear is that some false Cophetua will masquerade for her benefit some day. She would never doubt his veracity, and if he asked her to run away with him I believe she would enjoy the idea. We shall have to keep sharp watch upon her.”
“You never were so troubled about Aimée?” Gowan suggested.
“Aimée!” she exclaimed. “Aimée has kept us all in order, and managed our affairs for us ever since she wore Berlin wool boots and a coral necklace. She regulated the household in her earliest years, and will regulate it until she dies or somebody marries her, and what we are to do then our lares and pénates only know. Aimée! Nobody ever had any trouble with Aimée, and nobody ever will. Mollie is more like me, you see,—shares my weaknesses and minor sins, and always sees her indiscretions ten minutes too late for redemption. And then, since she is the youngest, and has been the baby so long, we have not been in the habit of regarding her as a responsible being exactly. It has struck me once or twice that Bloomsbury Place hardly afforded wise training to Mollie. Poor little soul!” And a faint shadow fell upon her face and rested there for a moment.
But it faded out again as her fits of gravity usually did, and in a few minutes she was giving him such a description of Lady Augusta's unexpected appearance upon a like occasion in time past, that he laughed until the room echoed, and forgot everything else but the audacious grotesqueness of her mimicry.
It being agreed upon that Mollie's birthday was to be celebrated, the whole household was plunged into preparations at once, though, of course, they were preparations upon a small scale and of a strictly private and domestic nature. Belinda, being promptly attacked with inflammation of the throat, which was a chronic weakness of hers, was rather inconveniently, but not at all to the surprise of her employers, incapacitated from service, and accordingly Dolly's duties became varied and multitudinous.
Sudden inflammation on the part of Belinda was so unavoidable a consequence of any approaching demand upon her services as to have become proverbial, and the swelling of that young person's “tornsuls,” as she termed them, was anticipated as might be anticipated the rising of the sun. Not that it was Belinda's fault, however; Belinda's anxiety to be useful amounted at all times to something very nearly approaching a monomania; the fact simply was, that, her ailment being chronic, it usually evinced itself at inopportune periods. “It's the luck of the family,” said Phil. “We never loved a tree or flower, etc.”
And so Belinda was accepted as an unavoidable inconvenience, and was borne with cheerfully, accordingly.
It was not expected of her that she should appear otherwise on the eventful day than with the regulation roll of flannel about her neck. Dolly did not expect it of her at least, so she was not surprised, on entering the kitchen in the morning, to be accosted by her grimy young handmaiden in the usual form of announcement:—
“Which, if yer please, miss, my tornsuls is swole most awful.”
“Are they?” said Dolly. “Well, I am very sorry, Belinda. It can't be helped, though; Mollie will have to run the errands and answer the door-bell, and you must stay with me and keep out of the draught. You can help a little, I dare say, if you are obliged to stay in the kitchen.”
“Yes, 'm,” said Belinda, and then sidling up to the dresser, and rubbing her nose in an abasement of spirit, which resulted in divers startling adornments of that already rather highly ornamented feature. “If yer please, 'm,” she said, “I 'm very sorry, Miss Dolly. Seems like I ain't never o' no use to yer?”
“Yes, you are,” said Dolly, cheerily, “and you can't help the sore throat, you know. You are a great deal of use to me sometimes. See how you save my hands from being spoiled; they would n't be as white as they are if I had to polish the grates and build the fires. Never mind, you will be better in a day or so. Now for the cookery-book.”
“I never seen no one like her,” muttered the delighted Sepoy, returning to her vigorous cleaning of kettles and pans. “I never seen no one like none on 'em, they 're that there good-natured an' easy on folk.”
It was a busy day for Dolly, as well as for the rest of them, and there was a by no means unpleasant excitement in the atmosphere of business. The cookery, too, was a success, the game pâtés being a triumph, the tarts beautiful to behold, and the rest of the culinary experiments so marvellous, that Griffith, arriving early in the morning, and being led down into the pantry to look at them as a preliminary ceremony, professed to be struck dumb with admiration.
“There,” said Dolly, backing up against the wall in her excitement, and thrusting her hands very far into her apron pockets indeed,—"there! what do you think ofthat, sir?” And she stood before him in a perfect glow of triumph, her cheeks like roses, her sleeves rolled above her dimpled elbows, her hair pushed on her forehead, and her general appearance so deliciously business-like and agreeably professional that the dusts of flour that were so prominent a feature in her costume seemed only an additional charm.
“Think of it?” said Griffith. “It is the most imposing display I ever saw in my life. The trimmings upon those tarts are positively artistic. You don't mean to say you did it all yourself?”
“Yes,” regarding them critically,—"ev-er-y bit,” with a little nod for every syllable.
“Won-der-ful!” with an air of complimentary incredulity. “May I ask if there is anything you cannotdo?”
“There is absolutely nothing,” sententiously. And then somehow or other they were standing close together, as usual, his arm around her waist, her hands clasped upon his sleeve. “When we get the house in Putney, or Bayswater, or Peckham Eise, or whatever it is to be,” she said, laughing in her most coaxing way, “this sort of thing will be convenient. And itisto come, you know,—the house, I mean.”
“Yes,” admitted Griffith, with dubious cheerfulness, “itisto come,—some time or other.”
But her cheerfulness was not of a dubious kind at all. She only laughed again, and patted his arm with a charming air of proprietorship.
“I have got something else to show you,” she said; “something up-stairs. Can you guess what it is? Something for Mollie,—something she wanted which is dreadfully extravagant.”
“What!” exclaimed Griffith. “Not the maroon silk affair!”
“Yes,” her doubt as to the wisdom of her course expressing itself in a whimsical little grimace. “I could n't help it. It will make her so happy; and I should so have liked it myself if I had been in her place.”
She had been going to lead him up-stairs to show it to him as it lay in state, locked up in the parlor, but all at once she changed her mind.
“No,” she said; “I think you had better not see it until Mollie comes down in state. It will look best then; so I won't spoil the effect by letting you see it now.”
Griffith had brought his offering, too,—not much of an offering, perhaps, but worth a good deal when valued according to the affectionate good-will it represented. “The girls” had a very warm corner in the young man's tender heart, and the half-dozen pairs of gloves he produced from the shades of an inconvenient pocket of his great-coat, held their own modest significance.
“Gloves,” he said, half apologetically, “always come in; and I believe I heard Mollie complaining of hers the other day.”
Certainly they were appreciated by the young lady in question, their timely appearance disposing of a slight difficulty of addition to her toilet.
The maroon silk was to be a surprise; and surely, if ever surprise was a success, this was. Taking into consideration the fact that she had spent the earlier part of the day in plaintive efforts to remodel a dubious garment into a form fitting to grace the occasion, it is not to be wondered at that the sudden realization of one of her most hopelessly vivid imaginings rather destroyed the perfect balance of her equilibrium.
She had almost completed her toilet when Dolly produced her treasure; nothing, in fact, remained to be done but to don the dubious garment, when Dolly, slipping out of the room, returned almost immediately with something on her arm.
“Never mind your old alpaca, Mollie,” she said. “I have something better for you here.”
Mollie turned round in some wonder to see what she meant, and the next minute she turned red and pale with admiring amazement.
“Dolly,” she said, rather unnecessarily, “it's a maroon silk.” And she sat down with her hands clasped, and stared at it in the intensity of her wonder.
“Yes,” said Dolly, “it is a maroon silk, and you are to wear it to-night. It is Phil's birthday present to you,—and mine.”
The spell was broken at once. The girl got up and made an impulsive rush at her, and, flinging her bare white arms out, caught her in a tempestuous embrace, maroon silk and all, laughing and crying both together.
“Dolly,” she said,—"Dolly, it is the grandest thing I ever had in my life, and you are the best two—you and Phil—that ever lived!” And not being as eloquent by nature as she was grateful and affectionate, she poured out the rest of her thanks in kisses and interjections.
Then Dolly, extricating herself, proceeded to add the final touches to the unfinished toilet, and in a very few minutes Miss Mollie stood before the glass regarding herself in such ecstatic content as she had perhaps never before experienced.
“Who is going to be here, Dolly?” she asked, after taking her first survey.
“Who?” said Dolly. “Well, I scarcely know. Only one or two of Phil's friends and Ralph Gowan.”
Mollie gave a little start, and then blushed in the most pathetically helpless way.
“Ah!” she said, and looked at her reflection in the glass again, as if she did not exactly know what else to do.
A swift shadow of surprise showed itself in Dolly's eyes, and died out almost at the same moment.
“Are you ready?” she said, briefly. “If you are, we will go down-stairs.”
There was a simultaneous cry of admiration from them all when the two entered the parlor below, and Miss Mollie appeared attired in all her glory.
“Here she is!” exclaimed 'Toinetté and Aimée, together.
“Just the right shade,” was Phil's immediate comment. “Catches the lights and throws out her coloring so finely. Turn round, Mollie.”
And Mollie turned round obediently, a trifle abashed by her own gorgeousness, and looking all the lovelier for her momentary abasement.
Griffith was delighted. He went to her and kissed her, and praised her with the enthusiastic frankness which characterized all his proceedings with regard to the different members of the family of his betrothed. He was as proud of the girl's beauty as if she were a sister of his own.
Then the object of their mutual admiration knelt down upon the hearth-rug, before Tod, who, attired in ephemeral splendor, had stopped in his tour across the room to stare up with bright baby wonder at the novelty of warm, rich color which had caught his fancy.
“I must kiss Tod,” she said; no ceremony was ever considered complete, and no occasion perfect, unless Tod had been kissed, and so taken into the general confidence. “Tod, come and be kissed.”
But, being a young gentleman of by no means effusive nature, Tod preferred to remain stationary, holding to the toe of his red shoe and gazing upward with an expression of approbation and indifference commingled, which delighted his feminine admirers beyond expression.
“He knows it is something new,” said 'Toinette. “See how he looks at it.” Whereupon, of course, there was a chorus of delighted acquiescence, and Aunt Dolly must needs go down upon the hearthrug, too.
“Has Aunt Mollie got a grand new dress on, Beauty?” she said, glowing with such pretty, womanly adoration of this atom of all-ruling baby-dom, as made her seem the very cream and essence of lovableness and sweet nonsense. And then, Master Tod, still remaining unmoved by adulation, and still regarding his small circle of tender sycophants with round, liquid, baby eyes serene, and dewy red lips apart, was so effective in this one of his many entrancing moods, that he was no longer to be resisted, and so was caught up and embraced with ecstasy.
“He notices everything,” cries Aunt Dolly; “and I 'm sure he understands every word he hears. He issodifferent from other babies.”
Different! Of course he was different. There was not one of them but indignantly scouted at the idea of there ever having before existed such a combination of infantile gifts and graces. The most obtuse of people could not fail to acknowledge his vast superiority, in spite of their obtuseness.
“But,” remarked Aimée, with discretion, “you had better stand up, Mollie, or you will crush your front breadths."
Mollie, with a saving recollection of front breadths, arose, and as it chanced just in time to turn toward the door as Ralph Gowan came in.
He was looking his best to-night,—that enviable, thorough-bred best, which was the natural result of culture, money, and ease; and Dolly, catching sight of Mollie's guileless blushes, deplored, while she did not wonder at them, understanding her as she did. It was just like the child to blush, feeling herself the centre of observation, but she could not help wishing that her blush had not been quite so quick and sensitive.
But if she had flushed when he entered, she flushed far more when he came to speak to her. He held in his hand a bouquet of flowers,—white camellia buds and bloom, and dark, shadowy green; a whim of his own, he said.
“I heard about the maroon dress,” he added, when he had given it to her, “and my choice of your flowers was guided accordingly. White camellias, worn with maroon sik, are artistic, Mollie, your brother will tell you.”
“They are very pretty,” said Mollie, looking down at them in grateful confusion; “and I am much obliged. Thank you, Mr. Gowan.”
“A great many good wishes go with them,” he said, good-naturedly. “If I were an enchanter, you should never grow any older from this day forward.” And his speech was something more than an idle compliment. There was something touching to him, too, in the fact of the child's leaving her childhood behind her, and confronting so ignorantly the unconscious dawn of a womanhood which might hold so much of the bitterness of knowledge.
But, of course, Mollie did not understand this.
“Why?” she asked him, forgetting her camellias, in her wonder at his fancy.
“Why?” said he. “Because seventeen is such a charming age, Mollie; and it would be well for so many of us if we did not outlive its faith and freshness.”
He crossed over to Dolly then, and made his well-turned speech of friendly greeting to her also, but his most ordinary speech to her had its own subtle warmth. He was growing very fond of Dolly Crewe. But Dolly was a trifle preoccupied; she was looking almost anxiously at Mollie and the camellias.
“He has been paying her a compliment or she would not look so fluttered and happy,” she was saying to herself. “I wish he wouldn't. It may please him, but it is dangerous work for Mollie.”
And when she raised her eyes to meet Ralph Gowan's, he saw that there was the ghost of a regretful shadow in them.
She had too much to do, however, to be troubled long. Phil's friends began to drop in, one by one, and the business of the evening occupied her attention. There was coffee to be handed round, and she stood at a side-table and poured it out herself into quaint cups of old china, which were a relic of former grandeur; and as she moved to and fro, bringing one of these cups to one, or a plate of fantastic little cakes to another, and flavoring the whole repast with her running fire of spicy speeches, Gowan found himself following her with his eyes and rather extravagantly comparing her to ambrosia-bearing Hebe, at the same time thinking that in Vagabondia these tilings were better done than elsewhere.
The mostoutréof Phil's hirsute and carelessly garbed fellow-Bohemians somehow or other seemed neither vulgar nor ill at ease. They evidently felt at home, and admired faithfully and with complete unison the feminine members of their friend's family; and their readiness to catch at the bright or grotesque side of any situation evinced itself in a manner worthy of imitation. Then, too, there was Tod, taking excursionary rambles about the carpet, and, far from being in the way, rendering himself an innocent centre of attraction. Brown cracked jokes with him, Jones bribed him with cake to the performance of before-unheard-of feats, and one muscular, fiercely mustached and bearded young man, whose artistic forte was battle-pieces of the most sanguinary description, appropriated him bodily and set him on his shoulder, greatly to the detriment of his paper collar.
“The spirit of Vagabondia is strong in Tod,” said Dolly, who at the time was standing near Gowan upon the hearth-rug, with her own coffee-cup in hand; “its manifestation being his readiness to accommodate himself to circumstances.”
Through the whole of the evening Mollie and the camellias shone forth with resplendence. Those of Phil's masculine friends who had known her since her babyhood felt instinctively that to-night the Rubicon had been passed. Unconscious as she was of herself, she was imposing in the maroon silk, and these free-and-easy, good-natured fellows were the very men to be keenly alive to any subtle power of womanhood. So when they addressed her their manner was a trifle subdued, and their deportment toward her had a faint savor of delicate reverence.
Dolly was in her element. Her songs, her little supper, and her plans of entertainment were a perfect success. Such jokes as she made and such laughter as she managed to elicit through the medium of the smallest of them, and such aptness and tact as she displayed in keeping up the general fusillade ofbon-motsand repartee. It would have been impossible for a witticism to fall short of its mark under her active superintendence, even if witticisms had been prone to fall short in Vagabondia, which they decidedly were not. She kept Griffith busy, too, from first to last, perhaps because she felt it to be the safest plan; at any rate, she held him near her, and managed to keep him in the best of spirits all the evening, and more than once Gowan, catching a glimpse of her as she addressed some simple remark to the favored one, recognized a certain bright softness in her face which told its own story. But there would have been little use in openly displaying his discomfiture; so, after feeling irritated for a moment or so, Ralph Gowan allowed himself to drift into attendance on Mollie, and, being almost gratefully received by that young lady, he did not find that the time passed slowly.
“I am so glad you came here.” she said to him, plaintively, when he first crossed the room to her side. “I do so hate Brown.”
“Brown!” he echoed. “WhoisBrown, Mollie? and what has Brown been doing to incur your resentment?”
Mollie gave her shoulders a petulant shrug.
“Brown is that little man in the big coat,” she said, “the one who went away when you came. I wish he would stay away. I can't bear him,” with delightful candor.
“But why?” persisted Gowan, casting a glance at the side of the room where Dolly stood talking to her lover. “Is it because his coat is so big, or because he is so little, that he is so objectionable? To be at once moral and instructive, Mollie, a man is not to be judged by his coat.”
“I know that,” returned Mollie, her unconscious innocence asserting itself; “it is n't that.Youcouldn't be as disagreeable as he is if you were dressed in rags.”
Gowan turned quickly to look at her, forgetting even Dolly for the instant,—but she was quite in earnest, and met his questioning eyes with the most pathetic ignorance of having said anything extraordinary. Indeed, her faith in what she had said was so patent that he found it impossible to answer her with a light or jesting speech.
“It is n't that,” she went on, pulling at a glossy green leaf on her bouquet. “If he did n't—if he would n't—if he didn't keep saying things—”
“What sort of things?” asked Gowan, to help her out of her dilemma.
“I—don't know,” was the shy reply. “Stupid things.”
“Stupid things!” he repeated. “Poor Brown!” and his eyes wandered to Dolly again.
But it would not have been natural if he had not been attracted by Mollie, after all, and in the course of time in a measure consoled by her. She was so glad to be protected from the advances of the much despised Brown, that he found it rather pleasant than otherwise to constitute himself her body-guard,—to talk to her as they sat, and to be her partner in the stray dances which accidentally enlivened the evening entertainment. She danced well, too, he discovered, and with such evident enjoyment of her own smooth, swaying movements as was quite magnetic, and made him half reluctant to release her when their first waltz was ended, and she stopped all aflush with new bloom.
“I amsofond of dancing,” she said, catching her breath in a little sigh of ecstasy. “We all are. It is one of the things wecando without spending any money, you know.”
It was shortly after this, just as they were standing in twos and threes, chatting and refreshing themselves with Dolly's confections and iced lemonade, that an entirely unexpected advent occurred. There suddenly fell upon the general ear a sound as of rolling wheels, and a carriage stopped before the door.
Dolly, standing in the midst of a small circle of her own, paused in her remarks to listen.
“It is a carriage, that is certain,” she said,—"and somebody is getting out. I don't know “—and then a light breaking over her face in a flash of horror and delight in the situation commingled. “Phil,” she exclaimed, “the Philistines be upon us,—it is Lady Augusta!”
And it was. In two minutes that majestic lady was ushered in by the excited Belinda, and announced in the following rather remarkable manner,—
“If yer please, Miss Dolly, here's your aunt, Mr. Phil.”
For a second her ladyship was speechless, even though Dolly advanced to meet her at once. The festive gathering was too much for her, and the sight of Ralph Gowan leaning over Mollie in all her bravery, holding her flowers for her, and appearing so evidently at home, overpowered her completely. But she recovered herself at length.
“I was not aware,” she said to Dolly, “that you were having a"—pause for a word sufficiently significant—"that you were holding a reception,"—a scathing glance at the pensive Brown, who was at once annihilated. “You will possibly excuse my involuntary intrusion. I thought, ofcourse” (emphasis), “that I should find you alone, and as I had something to say to you concerning Euphemia, I decided to call tonight on my way from the conversazione at Dr. Bugby's,—perhaps, Dorothea, your friends” (emphasis again) “will excuse you for a moment, and you will take me into another room,"—this last as if she had suddenly found herself in a fever hospital and was rather afraid of contagion.
But apart from Mollie, who pouted and flushed, and was extremely uncomfortable, nobody seemed to be either chilled or overwhelmed. Phil's greeting was so cordial and unmoved that her ladyship could only proffer him the tips of her fingers in imposing silence, and Dolly's air of placid good-humor was so perfect that it was as good as a modest theatrical entertainment.
She led her visitor out of the room with a most untroubled countenance, after her ladyship had honored Gowan with a word or so, kindly signifying her intense surprise at meeting him in the house, and rather intimating, delicately, that she could not comprehend his extraordinary conduct, and hoped he would not live to regret it.
The interview was not a long one, however. In about ten minutes the carriage rolled away, and Dolly came back to the parlor with a touch of new color on her cheek, and a dying-out spark of fire in her eye; and though her spirits did not seem to have failed her, she was certainly a trifle moved by something.
“Let us have another waltz.” she said, rather as if she wished to dismiss Lady Augusta from the carpet “I will play this time. Phil, find a partner.”
She sat down to the piano at once, and swept off into one of Phil's own compositions, and from that time till the end of the evening she scarcely gave them a moment's pause, and was herself so full of sparkle and resources that she quite enraptured Gowan, and made the shabby room and the queer life seem more novel and entrancing than ever.
But when the guests were gone, and only Griffith, who was always last, remained with Phil and the girls, grouped about the fire, the light died out of her mood, and she looked just a trifle anxious and tired.
“Girls,” she said, “I have some bad news to tell you,—at least some news that isn't exactly good. Lady Augusta has given me what Belinda would call 'a warning.' I visit the select precincts of Bilberry House as governess no more.”
There is no denying it was a blow to them all. Her salary had been a very necessary part of the family income, and if they had been straitened with it, certainly there would be a struggle without it.
“Oh!” cried Mollie, remorsefully. “And you have just spent nearly all you had on my dress. And you do so want things yourself, Dolly. What shall you do?”
“Begin to take in the daily papers and peruse the advertising column,” she answered, courageously. “Never mind, it will all come right before long, and we can keep up our spirits until then.”
But, despite her assumed good spirits, when she went to see Griffith out of the front door, she held to his arm with a significantly clinging touch, and was so silent for a moment that he stooped in the dark to kiss her, and found her cheek wet with tears.
It quite upset him, too, poor fellow! Dolly crying and daunted was a state of affairs fraught with anguish to him.
“Why, Dolly!” he exclaimed, tremulously. “Dolly, you are crying!”
And then she did give way, and for a minute or so quite needed the shelter and rest of his arms. She cared for no other shelter or rest; he was quite enough for her in her brightest or darkest day,—just this impecunious young man, whose prospects were so limited, but whose affection for her was so wholly without limit. She might be daunted, but she could not remain long uncomforted while her love and trust were still unchanged. Ah! there was a vast amount of magic in the simple, silent pressure of the arm within that shabby coat-sleeve.
So, as might be expected, she managed to recover herself before many minutes, and receive his tender condolences with renewed spirit; and when she bade him good-night she was almost herself again, and was laughing, even though her eyelashes were wet.
“No,” she said, “we arenotgoing to destruction, Lady Augusta to the contrary, and the family luck must assert itself some time, since it has kept itself so long in the background. And in the mean time—well,” with a little parting wave of her hand, “Vagabondia to the rescue!”