Vagabondia Read online

  CHAPTER III. ~ IN WHICH THE TRAIN IS LAID.

  “After a holiday comes a rest day.” The astuteness of this proverbcontinually proved itself in Vagabondia, and this was more particularlythe case when the holiday had been Dolly’s, inasmuch as Dolly wasinvariably called upon to “fight her battles o’er again,” and recounther experiences the day following a visit, for the delectation of thehousehold. Had there appeared in the camps a Philistine of notoriety,then that Philistine must play his or her part again through the mediumof Dolly’s own inimitable powers of description or representation;had any little scene occurred possessing a spice of flavoring, orillustrating any Philistine peculiarity, then Dolly was quite equal tothe task of putting it upon the family stage, and re-enacting it withiniquitous seasonings and additions of her own. And yet the fun wasnever of an ill-natured sort. When Dolly gave them a correct embodimentof Lady Augusta in reception of her guests, with an accurate descriptionof the “great Copper-Boiler costume,” the bursts of applause meantnothing more than that Dolly’s imitative gifts were in good condition,and that the “great Copper-Boiler costume” was a success. Then, thefeminine mind being keenly alive to an interest in earthly vanities, anenlargement on Philistine adornments was considered necessary, and Dollyalways rendered herself popular by a minute description of the reigningfashions, as displayed by the Bilberry element. She found herself quiterepaid for the trouble of going into detail, by the unsophisticatedpleasure in Mollie’s eyes alone, for to Mollie outward furnishingsseemed more than worthy of description and discussion.

  Accordingly, the morning after Lady Augusta’s _conversazione_, Dollygave herself up to the task of enlivening the household. It was Saturdaymorning, fortunately, and on Saturday her visits to the Bilberry mansionwere dispensed with, so she was quite at liberty to seat herself bythe fire, with Tod in her arms, and recount the events of the evening.Somehow or other, she had almost regarded him as a special chargefrom the first. She had always been a favorite with him, as she was afavorite with most children. She was just as natural and thoroughly athome with Tod in her arms, or clambering over her feet, or clutching atthe trimmings of her dress, as she was under any other circumstances;and when on this occasion Griffith came in at noon to hear the news, andfound her kneeling upon the carpet with outstretched hands teaching thepretty little tottering fellow to walk, he felt her simply irresistible.

  “Come to Aunt Dolly,” she was saying. “Tod, come to Aunt Dolly.” Andthen she looked up laughing. “Look at him, Griffith,” she said. “He haswalked all the way from that arm-chair.” And then she made a rush atthe child, and caught him in her arms with a little whirl, and jumpedup with such a light-hearted enjoyment of the whole affair that it waspositively exciting to look at her.

  It was quite natural--indeed, it would have been quite unnatural if shehad not found her usual abiding-place in her lover’s encircling armat once, even with Tod conveniently established on one of her own,and evidently regarding his own proximity upon such an occasion asremarkable if nothing else. That arm of Griffith’s usually _did_ sliparound her waist even at the most ordinary times, and long use hadso accustomed Dolly to the habit that she would have experienced someslight feeling of astonishment if the familiarity had been omitted.

  It was rather a surprise to the young man to find that Miss MacDowlashad appeared upon the scene, and that she had partaken of coffee andconversation in the flesh the evening before.

  “But it’s just like her,” he said. “She is the sort of relative whoalways _does_ turn up unexpectedly, Dolly. How does she look?”

  “Juvenescent,” said Dolly; “depressingly so to persons who rely upon herfor the realizing of expectations. A very few minutes satisfied me thatI should never become Mrs. Griffith Donne upon _her_ money. It is avery fortunate thing for us that we are of Vagabondian antecedents,Griffith,--just see how we might trouble ourselves, and wear ourpatience out over Miss MacDowlas, if we troubled ourselves aboutanything. This being utterly free from the care of worldly possessionsmakes one touchingly disinterested. Since we have nothing to expect, weare perfectly willing to wait until we get it.”

  She had thought so little about Ralph Gowan,--once losing sight ofhim, as he stood watching her on the pavement, that in discussing othersubjects she had forgotten to mention him, and it was only Mollie’sentrance into the room that brought him upon the carpet.

  Coming in, with her hair bunched up in a lovely, disorderly knot, andthe dimple on her left cheek artistically accentuated by a small patchof black, the youngest Miss Crewe yet appeared to advantage, when, afterappropriating Tod, she slipped down into a sitting posture with him onthe carpet, in the midst of the amplitude of folds of Lady Augusta’sonce gorgeous wrapper.

  “Have you told him about the great Copper-Boiler costume, Dolly?” shesaid, bending down so that one brown tress hung swaying before Tod’seyes. “Has she, Griffith?”

  “Yes,” answered Griffith, looking at her with a vague sense ofadmiration. He shared all Dolly’s enthusiasm on the subject of Mollie’sprettiness.

  “Was n’t it good? I wish I was as cool as Dolly is. And poor Phemie--andthe gentleman who made love to you all the evening, Dolly. What was hisname? Was n’t it Gowan?”

  Griffith’s eyes turned toward Dolly that instant.

  “Gowan!” he exclaimed. “You didn’t say anything about him. You didn’teven say he was there.”

  “Did n’t she?” said Mollie, looking up with innocently wide-open eyes.“Why, he made love to her all--”

  “I wish you would n’t talk such rubbish, Mollie,” Dolly interruptedher--a trifle sharply because she understood the cloud on her lover’sface so well. “Who said Mr. Gowan made love to me? Not I, you may besure. I told you he talked to me, and that was all.”

  “You did not tell _me_ that much,” said Griffith, dryly.

  It would scarcely have been human nature for Dolly not to have fired alittle then, in spite of herself. She was constitutionally good-natured,but she was not seraphic, and her lover’s rather excusable jealousywas specially hard to bear, when, as upon this occasion, it had no realfoundation.

  “I did not think it necessary,” she said; “and, besides, I forgot;but if you wish to know the particulars,” with a stiff little airof dignity, “I can give them you. Mr. Gowan was there, and found theevening stupid, as every one else did. There was no one else to talk to,so he talked to me, and when I came home he put me into the cab. And,the fact is, he is a good-natured Philistine enough. That is all, Ibelieve, unless you would like me to try to record all he said.”

  “No, thank you,” answered Griffith, and instantly began to torturehimself with imagining what he really had said, making the very naturalmistake of imagining what he would have said himself, and then givingRalph Gowan credit for having perpetrated like tender gallantries. Henever could divest himself of the idea that every living man foundDolly as entrancing as he found her himself. It could only be one man’sbitter-sweet portion to be as desperately and inconsolably in love withher as he was himself, and no other than himself, or a man who might behis exact prototype, could have cherished a love at once so strong andso weak. There had been other men who had loved Dolly Crewe,---adoredher for a while, in fact, and imagined themselves wretches because theyhad been unsuccessful; but they had generally outlived their despair,and their adoration, cooling for want of sustenance, had usually settleddown into a comfortable admiring liking for the cause of theirmisery, but it would never have been so with Griffith. This ordinary,hard-working, ill-paid young man had passionate impulse and hidden powerof suffering enough in his restive nature to make a broken hope abroken life to him. His long-cherished love for the shabbily attired,often-snubbed, dauntless young person yclept Dorothea Crewe was themainspring of his existence. He would have done daring deeds of valorfor her sake, if circumstances had called upon him to comport himselfin such tragic manner; had he been a knight of olden time, he would justhave been the chivalrous, hotheaded, but affectionate young man to havee
ntered the lists in his love’s behalf, and tilted against tremendousodds, and died unvanquished; but living in the nineteenth century, hisimpetuosity, being necessarily restrained, became concentrated upon onepoint, and chafed him terribly at times. Without Dolly, he would havebeen without an object in life; with Dolly, he was willing to faceany amount of discouragement and misfortune; and at this stage of hisaffection--after years of belief in that far-off blissful future--tolose her would have brought him wreck and ruin.

  So when Dolly, in the full consciousness of present freedom frominiquity, withdrew herself from his encircling arm and turned herattention to Tod and Mollie, he was far more wretched than he had anyright to be, and stood watching them, and gnawing his slender mustache,gloomy and distrustful.

  But this could not last long, of course. They might quarrel, but theyalways made friends; and when in a short time Mollie, doubtless feelingherself a trifle in the way, left the room with the child, Dolly’simpulsive warm-heartedness got the better of her upon this occasion asupon all others.

  She came back to her lover’s side and laid her hand on his arm.

  “Don’t let us quarrel about Ralph Gowan, Griffith,” she said. “It was myfault; I ought to have told you.”

  He fairly crushed her in his remorseful embrace almost before she hadfinished her appeal. His distrust of her was as easily overcome as itwas roused; one touch of her hand, one suspicion of a tremor in hervoice, always conquered him and reduced him to penitent submission.

  “You are an angel,” he said, “and I am an unfeeling clod. No other womanwould bear with me as you do. God bless you, Dolly.”

  She nestled within his arms and took his caresses almost gratefully.Perhaps it would have been wiser to have shown him how deep a sting hiswant of faith gave her sometimes, but she was always so glad when theirmisunderstandings were at an end, that she would not have so revengedherself upon him for the world. The cool, audacious self she exhibitedin the camps of the Philistines was never shown to Griffith; in herintercourse with him she was only a slightly intensified edition of thechild he had fallen in love with years before,--a bright, quick-wittedchild, with a deep nature and an immense faculty for loving and clingingto people. Dolly at twenty-two was pretty much what she had been atfifteen, when they had quarrelled and made up again, loved each otherand romanced over the future brilliancy of prospect which now seemedjust as far off as ever.

  In five minutes after the clearing away of the temporary cloud, theywere in a seventh heaven of bliss, as usual. In some of his wanderingsabout town, Griffith had met with a modest house, which would have beenthe very thing for them if they had possessed about double the income ofwhich they were at present in receipt. He often met with houses of thiskind; they seemed, in fact, to present themselves to his longing visionevery week of his life; and I think it rather to his credit to mentionthat he never failed to describe them to Dolly, and enlarge upon theirmerits with much eloquence. Furniture warehouses also were a source ofsome simple pleasure to them. _If_ they possessed the income (not thatthey had the remotest prospect of possessing it), and rented the house,naturally they would require furniture, and it was encouraging toknow that the necessary articles might be bought _if_ the money wasforthcoming. Consequently a low-priced table or a cheap sofa was aconsolation, if not a source of rejoicing, and their happiest hours werespent in counting the cost of parlor carpets never to be purchased,and window curtains of thin air. They even economized sternly in minormatters, and debated the expenditure of an extra shilling as closely asif it had been a matter entailing the deepest anxiety; and on the whole,perhaps, practical persons might have condemned their affectionate,hopeful weakness as childish and nonsensical, but they were happy in theindulgence of it, at all events, and surely they might have been engagedin a less tender and more worldly pastime. There were other people,perhaps, weak and imprudent themselves it may be, who would have seen atouch of simple pathos in this unconsciously shown faith in Fortune andher not too kindly moods.

  “Old Flynn ought to raise my salary, you know, Dolly,” said Griffith. “Iwork hard enough for him, confound him!” somewhat irrelevantly, but withlaudable and not unamiable vigor. He meant no harm to “Old Flynn;” hewould have done a good-natured thing for him at any moment, the mildexpletive was simply the result of adopted custom. “There is n’t afellow in the place who does as much as I do. I worked from seven inthe morning till midnight every day last week, and I wrote half hiseditorials for him, and nobody knows he does n’t get them up himself. Ifhe would only give me two hundred instead of one, just see how we couldlive.”

  “We could live on a hundred and fifty,” put in Dolly, with an air ofpractical speculation which did her credit, “if we were economical.”

  “Well, say a hundred and fifty, then,” returned Griffith, quite asseriously, “for we should be economical. Say a hundred and fifty. Itwould be nothing to him,--confound him!--but it would be everything inthe world to us. That house in the suburbs was only thirty pounds,taxes and all, and it was just the very thing we should want if we weremarried.”

  “How many rooms?” asked Dolly.

  “Six, and kitchen and cupboards and all that sort of contrivances. Iasked particularly--went to see the landlord to inquire and see whatrepairing he would do if we wanted the place. There is a garden of afew yards in the front, too, and one or two rose-bushes. I don’t knowwhether they ever bloom, but if they do, you could wear them in yourhair. I thought of that the minute I saw them. The first time I saw you,Dolly, you had a rose in your hair, and I remember thinking I had neverseen a flower worn in the same way. Other girls do n’t wear things asyou wear them somehow or other.”

  Dolly acknowledged the compliment with a laugh and a coaxing,patronizing little squeeze of his arm. 

  “You think they don’t,” she said, “you affectionate old fellow, that isit. Well, and what did the landlord say? Would he beautify?”

  “Well, yes, I think he would if the matter was pressed,” said Griffith,returning to the subject with a vigor of enjoyment inspiriting tobehold. “And, by the way, Dolly, I saw a small sofa at a place in townwhich was just the right size to fit into a sort of alcove there is inthe front parlor.”

  “Did you inquire the price?” said Dolly.

  “Well--no,” cheerfully; “but I can, if you would like to know it. Yousee, I had n’t any money, and did n’t know when I should have any, andI felt rather discouraged at the time, and I had an idea the price wouldmake me feel worse, so I did not go in. But it was a comfortable, plumplittle affair, covered with green,--the sort of thing I should like tohave in our house, when we have one. It would be so comfortable to throwone’s self down on to after a hard day’s work, particularly if one had aheadache.”

  “Yes,” said Dolly; and then, half unconsciously and quite in spite ofherself, the ghost of a sigh escaped her. She could not help wishingthings were a trifle more real sometimes, bright and whimsicallyunworldly as she was.

  “What did that mean?” Griffith asked her.

  She wakened up, as it were, and looked as happy as ever in an instant,creeping a trifle closer to him in her loving anxiety to blind him tothe presence of the little pain in her heart.

  “Nothing,” she said, briskly. And then--“We don’t want much, do we,Griffith?”

  “No,” said Griffith, a certain grim sense of humor getting the better ofhim. “And we have n’t got it.”

  She laughed outright at the joke quite enjoyably. Even the grimmest ofjocosities wins its measure of respect in Vagabondia, and besides,her laugh removed the impression her sigh might have created. She washerself again at once.

  “Never mind,” she said. (It was always “never mind.”) “Never mind, itwill all come right in the end. Humble merit _must_ be rewarded, and ifhumble merit isn’t, we can only console ourselves with the reasonablereflection that there must be something radically wrong with the stateof society. Who knows whether you may not ‘get into something,’ as Philsays, which may be twenty times bette
r than anything Old Flynn can giveyou!” with characteristic Vagabondian hopefulness.

  Just at this juncture Phil himself entered, or, rather, half entered,for he only put his head--a comely, curled head surmounted by adisreputable velvet cap--half into the room.

  “Oh, you are here, are you?” he said. “You are the fellow I want. I amjust touching up something I want to show you. Come into the studio fora minute or so, Grif.”

  “It is that picture Mollie sat for,” he explained, as they followed himinto the big, barren room, dignified by the name of studio. “I have justfinished it.”

  Mollie was standing before the picture herself when they went in to lookat it, but she did not turn round on hearing them. She had Tod in herarms yet, but she seemed to have forgotten his very existence in herpreoccupation. And it was scarcely to be wondered at. The picture wasonly a head,--Mollie’s own fresh, drowsy-eyed face standing out incontrast under some folds of dark drapery thrown over the brown hairlike a monk’s cowl, two or three autumn-tinted oak leaves clinging toa straying tress,--but it was effective and novel enough to be atrifle startling. And Mollie was looking at it with a growing shadow ofpleasure in her expression. She was slowly awakening to a sense of itsbeauty, and she was by no means dissatisfied.

  “It is lovely!” Dolly cried out, enthusiastically.

  “So it is,” said Griffith. “And as like her as art can make it. It’s asuccess, Phil.”

  Phil stepped back with a critical air to give it a new inspection.

  “Yes, it is a success,” he said. “Just give me a chance to get it hungwell, and it will draw a crowd next season. You shall have a new dressif it does, Mollie, and you shall choose it yourself.”

  Mollie roused herself for a moment, and lighted up.

  “Shall I?” she said; and then all at once she blushed in a way thatmade Dolly stare at her in some wonder. It seemed queer to think thatMollie--careless child Mollie--was woman enough to blush over anything.

  And then Aimée and ‘Toinette came in, and looked on and admired just asopenly and heartily as the rest, only Aimée was rather the more reticentof the two, and cast furtive glances at Mollie now and then. But Molliewas in a new mood, and had very little to say; and half an hour after,when her elder sister went into the family sitting-room, she found hercurled up in an easy-chair by the fire, looking reflective. Dolly wentto the hearth and stood near her.

  “What are you thinking about?” she asked.

  Mollie stirred uneasily, and half blushed again.

  “I don’t know,” she answered.

  “Yes, you do,” contradicted Dolly, good-naturedly. “Are you thinkingthat it is a pleasant sort of a thing to be handsome enough to be made apicture of, Mollie?”

  The brown eyes met hers with an innocent sort of deprecatingconsciousness. “I--I never thought about myself in that way before,” admitted Mollie, naively.

  “Why,” returned Dolly, quite sincerely, “you must have looked in theglass.”

  “Ye-es,” with a slow shake of the head; “but it did n’t look the sameway in the glass,--it did n’t look as nice.”

  Dolly regarded her with a surprise which was not unmingled withaffectionate pity. She was not as unsophisticated as Mollie, and neverhad been. As the feminine head of the family, she had acquired a certainshrewdness early in life, and had taken a place in the household therest were hardly equal to. There had been no such awakening as this forher. At fourteen, she had been fully and complacently conscious of theexact status of her charms and abilities, physical and mental. She hadneither under-nor over-rated them. She had smiled back at her reflectionin her mirror, showing two rows of little milk-white teeth, and beingwell enough satisfied with being a charming young person with a securecomplexion and enviable self-poise. She understood herself, andattained perfection in the art of understanding others. Her rathersharp experience had not allowed _her_ to look in the glass in guilelessignorance of what she saw there, and perhaps this made her all thefonder of Mollie.

  “What kind of a dress are you going to choose if Phil buys you one?” sheasked.

  “Maroon,” answered Mollie. “Oh!” with a little shuddering breath ofdesperate delight, “how I wish I could have a maroon silk!”

  Dolly shook her head doubtfully.

  “It wouldn’t be serviceable, because you could only have the one, andyou could n’t wear it on wet days,” she said.

  “I should n’t care about its being serviceable,” burst forth innocentVagabondia, rebelling against the trammels of prudence. “I wantsomething pretty. I do so detest serviceable things. I would stay in thehouse all the wet days if I might have a maroon silk to wear when it wasfine.”

  “She is beginning to long for purple and fine linen,” sighed Dolly, asshe ran up to her bedroom afterward. “The saints forefend! It is a badsign. She will fall in love the next thing. Poor, indiscreet littledamsel!”

  But, despite her sage lamentations, there was even at that moment a planmaturing in her mind which was an inconsistent mixture of Vagabondia’sgoodnature and whim. Mollie’s fancy for the maroon silk had struck heras being artistic, and there was not a Crewe among them who had nota weakness for the artistic in effect. Tod himself was imaginativelysupposed to share it and exhibit preternatural intelligence upon thesubject. In Dolly it amounted to a passion which she found it impossibleto resist. By it she was prompted to divers small extravagances attimes, and by it she was assisted in the arranging of all her personaladornments. It was impossible to slight the mental picture of Molliewith maroon drapery falling about her feet, with her cheeks tinted withexcited color, and with that marvel of delight in her eyes. She couldnot help thinking about it.

  “She would be simply incomparable,” she found herself soliloquizing.“Just give her that dress, put a white flower in her hair and set herdown in a ballroom, or in the dress circle of a theatre, and she wouldset the whole place astir. Oh, she must have it.”

  It was very foolish and extravagant of course; even the people who areweakly tolerant enough to rather lean toward Dorothea Crewe, willadmit this. The money that would purchase the maroon garment would havepurchased a dozen minor articles far more necessary to the dilapidatedhousehold; but while straining at such domestic gnats as these articleswere, she was quite willing and even a trifle anxious to swallowMollie’s gorgeous camel. Such impulsive inconsistency wascharacteristic, however, and she betook herself to her bedroom with theintention of working out the problem of accommodating supply to demand.

  She took out her purse and emptied its contents on to herdressing-table. Two or three crushed bills, a scrap or so ofpoetry presented by Griffith upon various tender occasions, and adiscouragingly small banknote, the sole remains of her last quarter’ssalary The supply was not equal to the demand, it was evident. But shewas by no means overpowered. She was dashed, but not despairing. Ofcourse, she had not expected to launch into such a reckless piece ofexpenditure all at once, she had only thought she might attain hermodest ambition in the due course of time, and she thought so yet. Shecrammed bills and bank-note back into the purse with serene cheerfulnessand shut it with a little snap of the clasp.

  “I will begin to save up,” she said, “and I will persuade Phil to helpme. We can surely do it between us, and then we will take her somewhereand let her have her first experience of modern society. What asensation she would create in the camps of the Philistines!”

  She descended into the kitchen after this, appearing in those lowerregions in the full glory of apron and rolled-up sleeves, greatly to thedelight of the youthful maid-of-all-work, who, being feeble of intellectand fond of society, regarded the prospect of spending the afternoonwith her as a source of absolute rejoicing. The “Sepoy,” as she wasfamiliarly designated by the family, was strongly attached to Dolly, as,indeed, she was to every other member of the household. The truth was,that the usefulness of the Sepoy (whose baptismal name was Belinda) wasrather an agreeable fiction than a well-established fact. She had beenadopted as a matter of ch
arity, and it was charity rather than anyrecognized brilliance of parts which caused her to be retained. Phil hadpicked her up on the streets one night in time gone by, and had broughther home principally because her rags were soaked and she had assertedthat she had nowhere to go for shelter, and partly, it must beconfessed, because she was a curiosity. Having taken her in, nobody wasstern enough to turn her out to face her fate again, and so she stayed.Nobody taught her anything in particular about household economy,because nobody knew anything particular to teach her. It was understoodthat she was to do what she could, and that what she could not doshould be shared among them. She could fetch and carry, execute smallcommissions, manage the drudgery and answer the door-bell, when she waspresentable, which was not often; indeed, this last duty had ceasedto devolve upon her, after she had once confronted Lady Augusta withpersonal adornments so remarkable as to strike that august lady dumband rigid with indignation upon the threshold, and cause her, when sherecovered herself, to stonily, but irately demand an explanation of thegratuitous insult she considered had been offered her. Belinda’splace was in the kitchen, after this, and to these regions she usuallyconfined herself, happily vigorous in the discharge of her daily duties.She was very fond of Dolly, and hailed the approach of her days offreedom with secret demonstrations of joy. She hoarded the simplepresents of finery given her by that young person with care, andregarded them in the light of sacred talismans. A subtle something inher dwarfed, feeble, starved-out nature was stirred, it may be, by thesight of the girl’s life and brightness; and, apart from this, itwould not have been like Dolly Crewe if she had not sympathized, halfunconsciously, half because she was constitutionally sympathetic, witheven this poor stray. If she had been of a more practical turn of mind,in all probability she would have taken Belinda in hand and attacked thework of training her with laudable persistence; but, as it was, privatemisgivings as to the strength of her own domestic accomplishments causedher to confine herself to more modest achievements. She could encourageher, at least, and encourage her she did with divers good-naturedspeeches and a leniency of demeanor which took the admiring Sepoy bystorm.

  Saturday became a white day in the eyes of Belinda, because, being aholiday, it left Dolly at liberty to descend into the kitchen and applyherself to the study of cookery as a science, with much agreeable bustleand a pleasant display of high spirit and enjoyment of the novelty ofher position. She had her own innocent reasons for wishing to become aproficient in the art, and if her efforts were not always crowned withsuccess, the appearance of her handiwork upon the table on theoccasion of the Sunday’s dinner never disturbed the family equilibrium,principally, perhaps, because the family digestion was unimpaired. Theymight be jocose, they had been ironical, but they were never severe,and they always addressed themselves to the occasionally arduous taskof disposing of the viands with an indifference to consequences whichnothing could disturb.

  “One cannot possibly be married without knowing something of cookery,” Dolly had announced oracularly; “and one cannot gain a knowledge ofit without practising, so I am going to practise. None of you aredyspeptic, thank goodness, so you can stand it. The only risk we run isthat Tod might get hold of a piece of the pastry and be cut off in thebloom of his youth; but we must keep a strict watch upon him.”

  And she purchased a cookery book and commenced operations, and heldto her resolve with Spartan firmness, encouraged by private butenthusiastic bursts of commendation from Griffith, who, finding her out,read the tender meaning of the fanciful seeming whim, and was so touchedthereby that the mere sight of her in her nonsensical little affectationof working paraphernalia raised him to a seventh heaven of bliss.

  When she made her entrance into the kitchen on this occasion, and beganto bustle about in search for her apron, Belinda, who was on her kneespolishing the grate, amidst a formidable display of rags and brushes,paused to take breath and look at her admiringly.

  “Are yer goin’ to make yer pies ‘n things, Miss Dolly?” she asked.“Which, if ye are, yer apern ‘s in the left ‘and dror.”

  “So it is,” said Dolly. “Thank you. Now where is the cookery book?”

  “Left ‘and dror agin,” announced Belinda, with a faint grin. “I allusputs it there.”

  Whereupon Dolly, making industrious search for it, found it, and appliedherself to a deep study of it, resting her white elbows on the dresser,and looking as if she had been suddenly called upon to master itscontents or be led to the stake. She could not help being intense and inearnest even over this every-day problem of pies and puddings.

  “Fricassee?” she murmured. “Fricassee was a failure, so was mock-turtlesoup; it looked discouraging, and the fat _would_ swim about in a waythat attracted attention. Croquettes were not so bad, though they werea little stringy; but beef _à la mode_ was positively unpleasant. Juggedhare did very well, but oyster _pâtés_ were dubious. Veal pie Griffithliked.”

  “There’s somebody a-ringin’ at the door-bell,” said Belinda, breakingin upon her. “He’s rung twict, which I can go, mum, if I ain’t got nosmuts.”

  Dolly looked up from her book.

  “Some one is going now, I think,” she said. “I hope it is n’t avisitor,” listening attentively.

  But it was a visitor, unfortunately. In a few minutes Mollie came in,studiously perusing a card she held in her hand.

  “Ralph,” she proclaimed, coming forward slowly. “Ralph Gowan. It’s LadyAugusta’s gentleman, Dolly, and he wants to see you.”

  Dolly took the card and looked at it, giving her shoulders a tiny shrugof surprise.

  “He has not waited long,” she said; “and it is rather inconvenient, butit can’t be helped. I suppose I shall have to run up-stairs and presenthim to Phil.”

  She untied her apron, drew down her sleeves, settled the bit of ribbonat her throat, and in three minutes opened the parlor door and greetedher visitor, looking quite as much in the right place as she had donethe night before in the white merino.

  “I am very glad to see you,” she said, shaking hands with him, “and Iam sure Phil will be, too. He is always glad to see people, and just nowyou will be doubly welcome, because he has a new picture to talk about.Will you come into the studio, or shall I bring him here? I think it hadbetter be the studio at once, because you will be sure to drift there inthe end,--visitors always do.”

  “The studio let it be, if you please,” answered Gowan, wondering, justas he had done the night before, at the indescribable something inher manner which was so novel because it was so utterly free from anysuggestion of affectation. It would have been a difficult matter to tellher that he had not come for any other reason than to see herself again,and yet this really was the case.

  But his rather fanciful taste found Phil a novelty also when she led himinto the studio, and presented him to that young man, who was lying upona couch with a cigar in his mouth.

  Phil had something of the same cool friendliness of deportment, and,being used to the unexpected advent of guests at all hours, was quiteready to welcome him. He had the same faculty for making noticeablespeeches, too, and was amiable, though languid and _débonnaire_, and byno means prone to ceremony. In ten minutes after he had entered the roomRalph Gowan understood, as by magic, that, little as the world was tothese people, they had, in their Bohemian fashion, learned through sheertact to comprehend and tolerate its weaknesses. He examined the pictureson the walls and in the folios, and now and then found himself rousedinto something more than ordinary admiration. But he was disappointed inone thing. He failed in accomplishing the object of his visit.

  After she had seen that Phil and the paintings occupied his attention tosome extent, Dolly left them.

  “I was beginning to think about pies and puddings when you came,” shesaid, “and I must go back to them. Saturday is the only day Lady Augustaleaves me, in which to improve in branches of domestic usefulness,” withan iniquitous imitation of her ladyship’s manner.

  After which she went down to the kitche
n again and plunged into culinarydetail with renewed vigor, thinking of the six-roomed house in thesuburbs, and the green sofa which was to fit into the alcove in thefront parlor, growing quite happy over the mental picture, in blissfulunconsciousness of the fact that a train had been that day laid, andthat a spark would be applied that very night through the medium of asimple observation made by Phil to her lover.

  “Gowan was here this morning, Grif, and Dolly brought him into thestudio. He’s not a bad sort of fellow for a Philistine, and he seemsto know something about pictures. I should n’t be surprised if he cameagain.”