"Isn't that old mossback a treat for the sight of gods and men?" asked Polk with a laugh as we all stood watching the old gray coat-tails flapping in the warm breeze that was rollicking across the valley.

"I don't know what I would do without him," said Sadie softly, with tears suddenly misting the violets in her eyes as she turned away from us with the baby in her arms and went slowly up the front walk of Widegables.

"Please come stay with me a little while, Evelina," she pleaded back over her shoulder. "I feel faint."

I hesitated, for, as we were on my side of the Road, Polk was still my guest.

"Go on with Sallie, sweetie," he answered my hesitating. "I don't want the snapped-off fraction of a declaration like you were about to offer me. I can bide my time—and get my own." With which he turned and got into his car as I went across the street.

Jane, I feel encouraged. I have done well to-day to get half way through my declaration of independence—though he doesn't think that is what it is going to be—to Polk. If I can just tell him how much I love him, before he makes love to me we can get on such a sensible footing with each other. I'll command the situation then.

But suppose I do get Polk calmed down to a nice friendship after old Plato's recipe, what if I want to marry him?

Do I want to marry a friend?

Yes, I do!

No—no!



CHAPTER V

DEEPER THAN SHOULDERS AND RIBS

There are many fundamental differences between men and women which strike deeper than breadth of shoulders and number of ribs on the right side.

Men deliberately unearth matters of importance and women stumble on the same things in the dark. It is then a question of the individual as to the complications that result. One thing can be always counted on. A woman likes to tangle life into a large mass and then straighten out the threads at her leisure—and the man's leisure too.

Glendale affairs interest me more every day.

This has been a remarkable afternoon and I wish Jane had been in Glendale to witness it.

"Say, Evelina, all the folks over at our house have gone crazy, and I wish you would come over and help Cousin James with 'em," Henrietta demanded, as I sat on my side porch, calmly hemming a ruffle on a dress for the Kitten. Everybody sews for the twins and, as much as I hate it, I can't help doing it.

"Why, Henrietta, what is the matter?" I demanded, as I hurried down the front walk and across the road at her bare little heels. By the time I got to the front gate I could hear sounds of lamentation.

"A railroad train wants to run right through the middle of all their dead people and Sallie started the crying. Dead's dead, and if Cousin James wants 'em run over. I wants 'em run over too." She answered over her shoulder as we hurried through the wide front hall.

And a scene that beggars description met my eyes, as I stood in the living-room door. I hope this account I am going to try and write will get petrified by some kind of new element they will suddenly discover some day and the manuscript be dug up from the ruins of Glendale to interest the natives of the Argon age about 2800 A. D.

Sallie sat in the large armchair in the middle of the room weeping in the slow, regular way a woman has of starting out with tears, when she means to let them flow for hours, maybe days, and there were just five echoes to her grief, all done in different keys and characters.

Cousin Martha knelt beside the chair and held Sallie's head on her ample bosom, but I must say that the expression on her face was one of bewilderment, as well as of grief.

The three little Horton cousins sat close together in the middle of the old hair-cloth sofa by the window and were weeping as modestly and helplessly as they did everything else in life, while Mrs. Hargrove, in her chair under her son's portrait, was just plainly out and out howling.

And on the hearth-rug, before the tiny fire of oak chips that the old ladies liked to keep burning all summer, stood the master of the house and, for once in my life, I have seen the personification of masculine helplessness. He was a tragedy and I flew straight to him with arms wide open, which clasped both his shoulders as I gave him a good shake to arouse him from his paralyzation.

"What's the matter?" I demanded, with the second shake.

"I'm a brute, Evelina," he answered, and a sudden discouragement lined every feature of his beautiful biblical face. I couldn't stand that and I hugged him tight to my breast for an instant and then administered another earthquake shake.

"Tell me exactly what has happened," I demanded, looking straight into his tragic eyes and letting my hands slip from his shoulders down his arms until they held both of his hands tight and warm in mine.

Jane, I was glad that I had offered the cup of my eyes to him full of this curious inter-sex elixir of life that you have induced me to seek so blindly, for he responded to the dose immediately and the color came back into his face as he answered me just as sensibly as he would another man.

"The men who are surveying the new railroad from Cincinnati to the Gulf have laid their experimental lines across the corner of Greenwood Cemetery and they say it will have to run that way or go across the river and parallel the lines of the other road. If they come on this side of the river they will force the other road to come across, too, and in that case we will get the shops. It just happens that such a line will make necessary the removal of—of poor Henry's remains to another lot. Sallie's is the only lot in the cemetery that is that high on the bluff. Henry didn't like the situation when he bought it himself, and I thought that, as there is another lot right next to her mother's for sale, she would not—but, of course, I was brutal to mention it to her. I hope you will find it in your heart to forgive me, Sallie." And as he spoke he extracted himself from me and walked over and laid his hand on Sallie's head.

"It was such a shock to her—poor Henry," sobbed little Cousin Jasmine, and the other two little sisters sniffed in chorus.

"To have railroad trains running by Greenwood at all will be disturbing to the peace of the dead," snorted Mrs. Hargrove. "We need no railroad in Glendale. We have never had one, and that is my last word—no!"

"Four miles to the railroad station across the river is just a pleasant drive in good weather," said Cousin Martha, plaintively, as she cuddled Sallie's sobs more comfortably down on her shoulder.

"I feel that Henry would doubt my faithfulness to his memory, if I consented to such a desecration," came in smothered tones from the pillowing shoulder.

And not one of all those six women had stopped to think for one minute that the minor fact of the disturbing of the ashes of Henry Carruthers would be followed by the major one of the restoration of the widow's fortune and the lifting of a huge financial burden off the strong shoulders they were all separately and collectively leaning upon.

I exploded, but I am glad I drew the Crag out on the porch and did it to him alone.

"Evelina, you are refreshing if strenuous," he laughed, after I had spent five minutes in stating my opinions of women in general and a few in particular. "But I ought not to have hurt Sallie by telling her about the lines until they are a certainty. It is so far only a possibility. They may go across the river anyway."

"And as for seeing Sallie swaddled in your consideration, and fed yourself as a sacrifice from a spoon, I am tired of it," I flamed up again. "It's not good for her. Feed and clothe her and her progeny,—men in general have brought just such burdens as that upon you in particular by their attitude towards us,—but do let her begin to exert just a small area of her brain on the subject of the survival of the fit to live. You don't swaddle or feed me!"

"Eve," he said, softly under his breath as his wonderful gentle eyes sank down way below the indignation and explosiveness to the quiet pool that lies at the very bottom of my heart.

Nobody ever found it before and I didn't know it was there myself, but I felt as if it were being drained up into Heaven.

"Eve!" He said again, and it is a wonder that I didn't answer:

"Adam!"

I don't know just what would have happened if Uncle Peter hadn't broken in on the interview with his crustiest chips on both shoulders and so much excitement bottled up that he had to let it fly like a double reporter.

"Dodson is down at the Hotel looking for you, James," he began as he hurried up the steps. "Big scheme this—got him in a corner if the C. & G. comes along this side of Old Harpeth—make him squeal—hey?"

"Who's Dodson?" I asked with the greatest excitement. I was for the first time getting a whiff of the schemes of the masculine mighty, but I was squelched promptly by Uncle Peter.

"We've no time for questions, Evelina, now—go back to your tatting—hey?" He answered me as he began to buttonhole the Crag and lead him down the steps.

"Dodson is the man who is laying down and contracting for the line across the river, Evelina," answered Cousin James without taking any notice whatever of Uncle Peter's squelching of me. "If this other line can just be secured he will have to come to our terms—and the situation will be saved." As he spoke he took my hand in his and led me at his side, down the front walk to the gate, talking as he went, for Uncle Peter was chuckling on ahead like a steam tug in a hurry.

"And the shades of Henry will again assume the maintenance of his family," I hazarded with lack of respect of the dead, impudence to Cousin James about his own affairs, and unkindness by implication to Sallie, who loves me better than almost anybody in the world does. And I got my just punishment by seeing a lovely look of tender concern rise in Cousin James's eyes as he stopped short in the middle of the walk.

"I want to go back a minute to speak to Sallie before I go on down town," he said, quickly, and before Uncle Peter's remonstrances had exploded, he had taken the steps two at a bound and disappeared in the front door.

"Sooner he marries that lazy lollypop the better," fumed Uncle Peter, as he waited at the gate. "The way for a man to quench his thirst for woman-sweets is to marry a pot of honey like that, and then come right on back to the bread and butter game. Here's a letter Jasper gave me to bring along for you from town. Go on and read it and do not disturb the workings of my brain while I wait for James—workings of a great brain—hey?"

I took the letter and hurried across the street because I wanted anyway to get to some place by myself and think. There was no earthly reason for it but I felt like an animal that has been hurt and wants to go off and lick its wounds. A womanly woman that lives a lovely appealing life right in a man's own home has a perfect right to gain his love, especially if she is beautifully unconscious of her appeal. Besides, why should a man want to take an independent, explosive, impudent firebrand with all sorts of dreadful plots in her mind to his heart? He wouldn't and doesn't!

There is no better sedative for a woman's disturbed and wounded emotions than a little stiff brain work. Richard's letter braced my viny drooping of mind at once and from thinking into the Crag's affairs of sentiment, I turned with masculine vigor to begin to mix into his affairs of finance. However, I wish that the first big business letter I ever got in my life hadn't had to have a strain of love interest running through it! Still Dickie is a trump card in the man pack.

It seems that as his father is one of the most influential directors and largest stockholders in this new branch of the Cincinnati and Gulf railroad he has got the commission for making the plans for all the stations along the road, and he wants to give me the commission for drawing all the gardens for all the station-yards. It will be tremendous for both of us so young in life, and I never dared hope for such a thing. I had only hoped to get a few private gardens of some of my friends to laze and pose over, but this is startling. My mind is beginning to work on in terms of hedges and fountains already and Dickie may be coming South any minute.

And besides the hedges and gravel paths I have a feeling that Dickie's father and the Crag and Sallie's girl-babies are fomenting around in my mind getting ready to pop the cork of an idea soon. The combination feels like some kind of a hunch—I sat still for a long time and let it seethe, while I took stock of the situation.

There is a strange, mysterious kind of peace that begins to creep across the Harpeth Valley, just as soon as the sun sinks low enough to throw the red glow over the head of Old Harpeth. I suppose it happens in other hill-rimmed valleys in other parts of the Universe, but it does seem as if God himself is looking down to brood over us, and that the valley is the hollow of His hand into which he is gathering us to rest in the darkness of His night. I felt buffeted and in need of Him as I sank down under the rose-vine over the porch and looked out across my garden to the blue and rose hills beyond.

I have been in Glendale a whole month now, and I can't see that my influence has revolutionized the town as yet. I don't seem to be of half the importance that I thought I was going to be. I have tried, and I have offered that bucket of love that I thought up to everybody, but whether they have drunk of it to profit I am sure I can't say. In fact, my loneliness has liquefied my gaseous affection into what almost looks like officiousness.

Still, I know Uncle Peter is happier than he ever was before, because he has got me to come to as a refuge from Aunt Augusta, a confidante for his views of life that he is not allowed to express at home, and also the certainty of one of Jasper's juleps.

Sallie has grown so dependent on me that my shoulders are assuming a masculine squareness to support her weight. I am understudying Cousin James to such an extent over at Widegables that I feel like the heir to his house. Cousin Martha sends for me when the chimney smokes and the cows get sick. I have twice changed five dollars for little Cousin Jasmine, and sternly told the man from out on their farm on Providence Road that he must not root up the lavender bushes to plant turnip-greens in their places. I afterwards rented the patch from him to grow the lavender because he said he couldn't lose the price that the greens would bring him "for crotchets."

Mrs. Hargrove has given me her will to keep for her, and the sealed instructions for her burial. I hope when the time comes the two behests will strike a balance, but I doubt it.

Her ideas of a proper funeral seem to coincide with those of Queen Victoria, whom she has admired through life and mourns sincerely.

Henrietta has not been heard to indulge in profane language since I had a long talk with her last week out in the garden, that ended in stubby tears and the gift of a very lovely locket which I impressed upon her was as chaste in design as I wished her speech to become.

The twins have been provided with several very lovely pieces of wearing apparel from my rapidly skill-acquiring needle. That's on the credit side of my balance. But that is all—and it doesn't sound revolutionary, does it, Jane?

Petunia married Jasper according to his word of promise, and I have taught her to cook about five French dishes that he couldn't concoct to save his life, and which help her to keep him in his place. His pomposity grows daily but he eyes me with suspicion when he sees me in secret conclave with Petunia.

"We needs a man around this place," I heard him mutter the other day as I left the kitchen.

I wonder!

The garden has been weeded, replanted, trained, clipped and garnished, and my arms are as husky and strong as a boy's and my nose badly sunburned from my strenuosity with hoe and trimming scissors.

All of which I have done and done well. But when I think of all those five girls that are waiting for me to solve the emotional formula by which they can work out and establish the fact that man equals woman, I get weak in the knees.

Jane's letters are just prods.

* * * * *

Your highly cultivated artistic nature ought to be a very beautiful revelation to the spiritual character of the young Methodist divine you wrote me of in your last letter. Encourage him in every way with affectionate interest in his work, especially in the Epworth League on his country circuit. I am enclosing fifty dollars' subscription to the work and I hope you will give as much You have not mentioned Mr. Hayes for several letters. I fear you are prejudiced against him. Seek to know and weigh his character before you judge him as unfit for your love.

* * * * *

The highly spiritual Mr. Haley glared at Polk for an hour out here on my porch, when he interrupted us in one of our Epworth League talks, in such an unspiritual manner that Polk said he felt as if he had been introduced to the Apostle Paul while he was still Saul of Tarsus. I had to pet the Dominie decorously for a week before he regained his benign manner. Of course, however, it was trying to even a highly spiritual nature like his to have Polk insist on pinning a rose in my hair right before his eyes.

About Polk I feel that I am in the midst of one of those great calm, oily stretches of ocean that a ship is rocked gently in for a few hours before the storm tosses it first to Heaven and then to hell. He is so psychic, and in a way attuned to me, that he partly understands my purpose in declaring my love for him to put him at a disadvantage in his love-making to me, and he hasn't let me do it yet, while his tacit suit goes on. It is a drawn battle between us and is going to be fought to the death. In the meantime Nell—

And while I was on the porch sitting with Richard Hall's letter in my hand, still unread, Nell herself came down the front walk and sat down beside me.

"Why, I thought you had gone fishing with Polk," I said as I cuddled her up to me a second. She laid her head on my shoulder and heaved such a sigh that it shook us both.

"I didn't quite like to go with him alone and Henrietta wouldn't go because a bee had stung the red-headed twin, and she wanted to stay to scold Sallie," she answered with both hesitation and depression in her voice.

"Polk is—is strenuous for a whole day's companionship," I answered, experimentally, for I saw the time had come to exercise some of the biceps in Nell's femininity in preparation for just what I knew she was to get from Polk. My heart ached for what I knew she was suffering. I had had exactly those growing pains for months following that experience with him on the front porch after the dance four years ago. And I had had change of scene and occupation to help.

"I don't understand him at all," faltered Nell, and she raised her eyes as she bared her wound to me.

"Nell," I said with trepidation, as I began on this my first disciple, "you aren't a bit ashamed or embarrassed or humiliated in showing me that you love me, are you?"

"You know I've adored you ever since I could toddle at your heels, Evelina," she answered, and the love-message her great brown eyes flashed into mine was as sweet as anything that ever happened to me.

"Then, why should you wonder and suffer and restrain and be humiliated at your love for Polk?" I asked, firing point blank at all of Nell's traditions. "Why not tell him about it and ask him if he loves you?"

The shot landed with such force that Nell gasped, but answered as straight out from the shoulder as I had aimed.

"I would rather die than have Polk Hayes know how he—he affects me," she answered with her head held high.

"Then, what you feel for him is not worthy love, but something entirely unworthy," I answered loftily, with a very poor imitation of Jane's impressiveness of speech.

"I know it," she faltered into my shoulder, "if it were Mr. James Hardin I loved, I wouldn't mind anybody's knowing it, but something must be wrong with Polk or me or the way I feel. What is it?"

For a moment I got so stiff all over that Nell raised her head from my shoulder in surprise. Do all women feel about the Crag as I do?

"I don't know," I answered weakly.

And I don't know! Oh, Jane, your simple experiment proposition is about to become compound quadratics.

Then I got a still further surprise.

"I wouldn't in the least mind telling Mr. James how I like him—if you think it is all right," Nell mused, looking pensively at the first pale star that was rising over Old Harpeth. "I would enjoy it, because I have always adored him, and it would be so interesting to see what he'd say."

"Nell," I said suddenly with determination, "do it! Tell any man you like how much you like him—and see what happens."

"I feel as if—as if"—Nell faltered and I don't blame her; I wouldn't have said as much to her—"I feel that to tell Mr. James I love him would ease the pain, the—pain—that I feel about Polk. It would be so interesting to tell a man a thing like that."

"Do it!" I gasped, and went foot in the class in romantics.

If any jungle explorer thinks he has mapped and charted a woman's heart he had better pack up his instruments of warfare and recorders and come down to Glendale, Tennessee.

Nell and I must have talked further along the same lines, but I don't remember what we said. I have recorded the high lights on the conversation, but long after I lost her I kept my whirlwind feeling of amazement. It was like trying to balance calmly on the lid of the tinder-box when you didn't know whether or not you had touched off the fuse.

Has honeysuckle-garbed Old Harpeth been seeing things like this go on for centuries and not interrupted? I think I would have been sitting there questioning him until now, if Lee and Caroline hadn't stopped at the gate and called to me.

I think Lee was giving Caroline this stroll home from the post-office in the twilight as an extra treat in her week's allowance of him, and she was so soft and glowing and sweet and pale that I wonder the Cherokee roses on my hedge didn't droop their heads with humility before her.

"What's a lovely lady doing sitting all by herself in the gloaming?" Lee asked in his rich, warm voice.

I hate him!

"Come take a walk with us, Evelina, dear," Caroline begged softly, though I knew what it would mean to her if I should intrude on this precious hour with her near-lover.

Please, God—if I seem to be calling You into a profane situation I can't help it; I must have help!—show me some way to assist Caroline to make Lee into a real man and then get him for herself. She must have him and he needs her. And show me a way quick! Amen!

Jane, I hope you will be able to pick the data out of this jumble, but I doubt it. Anyway I'm grateful for the lock and key on this book.

As I stood at the gate and watched Lee and Caroline saunter down the moon-flecked street a mocking bird in the tallest of the oak twins that are my roof shelter called wooingly from one of the top boughs and got his answer from about the same place on the same limb.

If a woman starts out to be a trained nurse to an epidemic of love-making, she is in great danger of doing something foolish her own self. I am even glad it is prayer-meeting night for Mr. Haley; he is safe in performing his rituals. He might misunderstand this mood.

I wonder if I ever was really over in sunny France being wooed and happy!

Of course, I decided the first night I was here that, as circumstances over which I had no control had decreed that Cousin James should stand in the position of enforced protector to me, decent, communistic femino-masculine honor demands that I refrain from any manoeuvers in his direction to attract his thoughts and attention to the feminine me. I can only meet him on the ordinary grounds of fellowship. And I suppose the glad-to-see him coming up the street was of the neuter gender, but it was very interesting.

"What did Dodson have to say—is he coming across?" I demanded of him before he got quite to my gate.

"Not if he can help it," he answered as he came close and leaned against one of the tall stone posts, so that his grandly shaped head with its ante-bellum squirls of hair was silhouetted against the white-starred wistaria vine in a way that made me frantic for several buckets of monochrome water-colors and a couple of brushes as big as those used for white-washing. In about ten great splotches I could have done a masterpiece of him that would have drawn artistic fits from the public of gay Paris. I never see him that I don't long for a box of pastels or get the ghost of the odor of oil-paint in my nose.

"The whole thing will be settled in a month," he continued, with a sigh that had a hint of depression in it and an astral shape of Sallie manifested itself hanging on his shoulder. However, I controlled myself and listened to him. "There is to be a meeting of the directors of both roads over in Bolivar in a few weeks and they are to come to some understanding. The line across the river is unquestionably the cheapest and best grade and there is no chance of getting them to run along our bluff—unless we can show them some advantage in doing so, and I can't see what that will be."

"What makes it of advantage for a railroad to run through any given point in a rural community like this, Cousin James?" I asked, with a glow of intellect mounting to my head, the like of which I hadn't felt since I delivered my Junior thesis in Political Economy with Jane looking on, consumed with pride.

"Towns that have good stock or grain districts around them with good roads for hauling do what is called 'feeding' a railroad," he answered. "Bolivar can feed both roads with the whole of the Harpeth Valley on that side of the river. They'll get the roads, I'm thinking. Poor old Glendale!"

"Isn't there anything to feed the monsters this side of the river?" I demanded, indignant at the barrenness of the south side of the valley of Old Harpeth.

"Very little unless it's the scenery along the bluff," he replied, with the depression sounding still more clearly in his voice and his shoulders drooped against the unsympathetic old stone post in a way that sent a pang to my heart.

"Jamie, is all you've got tied up in the venture?" I asked softly, using the name that a very small I had given him in a long ago when the world was young and not full of problems.

"That's not the worst, Evelina," he answered in a voice that was positively haggard. "But what belongs to the rest of the family is all in the same leaky craft. Carruthers put Sallie's in himself, but I invested the mites belonging to the others. Of course, as far as the old folks are concerned, I can more than take care of them, and if anything happens there's enough life insurance and to spare for them. I don't feel exactly responsible for Sallie's situation, but I do feel the responsibility of their helplessness. Sallie is not fitted to cope with the world and she ought to be well provided for. I feel that more and more every day. Her helplessness is very beautiful and tender, but in a way tragic, don't you think?"

I wish I had dared tell him for the second time that day what I did think on the subject but I denied myself such frankness.

Anyway, men are just stupid, faithful children—some of them faithful, I mean.

I felt that if I stood there talking with the Crag any longer, I might grow pedagogical and teach him a few things so I sent him home across the road. I knew all six women would stay awake until they heard him lock them in, come down to the lodge and lock his own door.

It is very unworthy of me to enjoy his playing a watch-dog of tradition across the road to an emancipated woman like myself. The situation both keeps me awake and puts me to sleep—and it is sweet, though I don't know why.

God never made anything more wonderful than a good man,—even a stupid one. Lights out!



CHAPTER VI

MAX AND THE ASAFETIDA SPOON

I do wish the great man who is discovering how to put people into some sort of metaphysical pickle that will suspend their animations until he gets ready to wake them up, would hurry up with his investigations, so he can catch Sallie before she begins to fade or wilt. Sallie, just as she is, brought to life about five generations from now, would cause a sensation.

Some women are so feminine that they are sticky, unless well spiced with deviltry. Sallie's loveliness hasn't much seasoning. Still, I do love her dearly, and I am just as much her slave as are any of the others. I can't get out of it.

"Do you suppose we will ever get all of the clothes done for the twins?" Nell sighed gently as we sat on my porch whipping yards of lace upon white ruffles and whipping up our own spirits at the same time. Everybody in Glendale sews for Sallie's children and it takes her all her time to think up the clothes.

"Never," I answered.

"She's coming, and I do believe she has got more of this ruffling. I see it floating down her skirt," Nell fairly groaned.

Nell ought to like to sew. She isn't emancipated enough to hate a needle as I do. But the leaven is working and she's rising slowly. It might be well for some man to work the dough down a little before she runs over the pan. That's a primitively feminine wish and not at all in accordance with my own advanced ideas.

I was becoming slightly snarled with my thread, and I was glad when Sallie and her sweetness seated itself in the best rocker in the softest breeze, which Nell had vacated for her.

"Children are the greatest happiness in life and also the greatest responsibility, girls," she said, in her lovely rich voice that always melts me to a solution of sympathy whenever she uses it pensively on me. "Of course, I should be desolate without mine, but what could I do with them, if I didn't have all of you dear people to help me with them?"

Her wistful dependence had charm.

I looked at the twin with the yellow fuzz on the top of its head that has hall-marked it as the Kitten in my mind, seated on Sallie's lap with her head on Sallie's shoulder looking like a baby bud folded against the full rose, and I couldn't help laughing. Kit had been undressed three times after her bath this morning while Cousin Martha, Cousin Jasmine and Mrs. Hargrove argued with each other whether she should or shouldn't have a scrap of flannel put on over her fat little stomach. Henrietta finally decided the matter by being impudent and sensible to them all about the temperature.

"Don't you all 'spose God made the sun some to heat up Kit's stomach?" she demanded scornfully, as she grabbed the little roly-poly bone of contention and marched off with her to finish dressing her on the front porch in the direct rays of her instituted heater.

The household at large at Widegables can never agree on the clothing of the twins and Henrietta often has to finish their toilets thus, by force. Aunt Dilsie being reduced by her phthisic to a position that is almost entirely ornamental, Henrietta's strength of character is the only thing that has made the existence of the twins bearable to themselves or other people.

As I have said before, I do wish that some day in the future you will come under the direct rays of Henrietta's influence, Jane, dear!

"Yes, Sallie, I should call them a responsibility," I answered her with a laugh, as I reached up my arms for the Kitten. Then, as the little yellow head snuggled in the hollow that was instituted in the beginning between a woman's breast and arm for the purpose of just such nestlings, I whispered as I laid my lips against her little ear, "and a happiness, too, darling."

And as Sallie rocked and recuperated her breath Nell eyed the ruffle apprehensively.

"Are you going to let us make another dress for the kiddies, Sallie, dear?" she finally was forced by her uneasiness to ask, though with the deepest sweetness and consideration in her voice.

If I am ever a widow with young children I hope they will burn us all up with the deceased rather than keep me wrapped in a cotton-wool of sympathy, as all of us do Sallie.

"It's lovely of you, Nell, to want to do more for the babies after all the beautiful things you and Evelina have made them, and I may be able to get another white dress apiece for them after I give Cousin James the bills, that are awful already, but this is some ruffling that I just forced Mamie Hall to let me bring up to you girls to do for her baby. The poor little dear is two months old and Mamie is just beginning on his little dress for him. He has been wearing the plainest little slips. Mamie says Ned remarked on the fact that the baby was hardly presentable when you girls stopped in with him to see it the other day, Nell. I urged her to get right to work fixing him up. It is wrong for children not to be kept as daintily as their father likes to see them."

How any woman that is as spiritually-minded as I am, and who has so much love for the whole world in her heart, and such a deep purpose always to offer it to her fellowmen according to their need of it, can have the vile temper I possess I cannot see.

"And the sight that would please me better than anything else I have even thought up to want to see," I found myself saying when I became conscious—I hope I didn't use any of the oaths of my forefathers which must have been tempting my refined foremothers for generations and which I secretly admire Henrietta for indulging in on occasions of impatience with Sallie—"would be Ned Hall left entirely alone with that squirming baby, that looks exactly like him, when it is having a terrible spell of colic and Ned is in the midst of a sick headache, with all the other children cold, hungry, and cross, the cook gone to a funeral, and the nurse in a grouch because she couldn't go and—and he knowing that Mamie was attired in a lovely, cool muslin dress, sitting up here on the porch with us sipping a mint julep and smoking a ten-cent cigar, resting and getting up an appetite for supper. I want him to have about five years of such days and then he would deserve the joys of parenthood that he now does not appreciate."

"Oh, Mamie wouldn't smoke a cigar!" was the exclamation that showed how much Sallie got of the motif of my eruption.

"Glorious!" exclaimed Nell, with shining eyes.

I must be careful about Nell, she is going this new gait too fast for one so young. Women must learn to fletcherize freedom if it is not to give them indigestion of purpose.

"Still Ned provides everything in the world he can think of to help Mamie," said Caroline, who had come up the walk just in time to fan the flame in me by her sweet wistfulness, with a soft judiciousness in her voice and eyes. "And Mamie adores the children and him."

If one man is unattainable to a woman all the other creatures take on the hue of being valuable from the reflection. Caroline is pathetic!

"It would be robbing a woman of a privilege not to let her trot the colic out of her own baby," Sallie got near enough in sight of the discussion to shout softly from the rear.

I have often seen Cousin Martha on one side of the fire trotting the Pup, and Cousin Jasmine on the other ministrating likewise to the Kit. so Sallie could take a good nap, which she didn't at all need, on the long sofa in the living-room at Widegables.

"Ned is a delightful man and, of course, Mamie adores him." Nell agreed with an attitude of mind like to the attitude of a body sustained on the top rail of a shaky fence.

"He doubtless would be just as delightful to Mamie standing by dropping asafetida into a spoon to administer to the baby, as he is dancing with you at the Assembly, Nell," I said, still frothy around the temper.

"He'll never do it again," was the prompt result I got from my shot.

"The trouble with you, Evelina," said Sallie, with ruminative reflectiveness in her eyes, "is that you have never been married and do not understand how noble a man can be under—"

"Yes, I should say that you had hit Evelina's trouble exactly on the head, Sallie," came in Polk's drawl as he came over the rose hedge from the side street and seated himself beside Caroline on the steps.

"Well, if I ever have a husband he'll prove his nobility by being competent to make the correct connection between the asafetida spoon and his own baby," was the answer that came with so much force that I couldn't stop it after I fully realized Folk's presence and sex.

"Help!" exclaimed Polk, weakly, while Nell blushed into the fold of her ruffle, Caroline looked slightly shocked and Sallie wholly scandalized at my lack of delicacy.

I felt that the place had been reached, the audience provided, and the time ripe for the first gun in my general revolution planned for Glendale. I spoke calmly in a perfect panic of fear.

"I am glad Polk is here to speak for the masculine side of the question," I said, looking all the three astonished women straight in the face. "Polk, do you or do you not think that a man with a wife and seven children ought to assume at least some of the domestic strain resulting therefrom, like dropping the asafetida in the spoon for her while she is wrestling with the youngest-born's colic?"

"Do I have to answer?" pleaded Polk, with desperation.

"Yes!"

"Then, under the circumstances I think the man ought to say: 'To hell with the spoon,' grab a gun, go out and shoot up a bear and a couple of wild turkeys for breakfast, throttle some coin out of some nearby business corporation, send two to five trained nurses back to the wigwam, stay down town to lunch and then go home with a tender little kiss for the madame who meets him fluffy and smiling at the door. That's my idea of true connubial bliss. Applications considered in the order of their reception. Nell, you are sweet enough to eat in that blue muslin. I'm glad I asked you to get one just that shade!"

And the inane chorus of pleased laughs that followed Polk Hayes's brainless disposal of the important question in hand made me ashamed of being a woman—though it was funny. Still I bided my time and Polk saw the biding, I could tell by the expression in the corners of his eyes that he kept turned away from me.

And in less than a half-hour he was left to my mercies, anything but tender. Sallie took Nell and Caroline over home to help her decide how wide a band of white it would be decorous for her to sew in the neck of her new black meteor crepe. I see it coming that we will all have to unite in getting Sallie out of mourning and into the trappings of frivolity soon and I dread it. It takes so many opinions on any given subject to satisfy Sallie that she ought to keep a tabulated advice-book.

"Evelina," said Polk, experimentally, after he had seen them safely across the street, and he moved along the steps until he sat against my skirts, "are your family subject to colic?"

"No, they have strong brains instead," I answered icily.

"Said brains subject to colic, though," he mused in an impudent undertone.

I laughed: I couldn't help it. One of the dangerous things about Polk is that he gets you comfortable and warm of heart whenever he gets near you. It wouldn't matter at all to him if you should freeze later for lack of his warmth, just so he doesn't know about it.

"Polk," I began to say in a lovely serious tone of voice, looking him square in the eyes and determined that as we were now on the subject of basic things, like infantile colic, I would have it out with him along all lines, "there is an awful shock coming to you when you realize that—"

"That in the heat of this erudite and revolutionary discussion, which an evil fate led me to drop in on, I have forgotten to give you this telegram that came for you while I was down at the station shipping some lumber. Be as easy as you can with me, Evelina, and remember that I am your childhood's companion when you decide between us." With which he handed me a blue telegram.

I opened it hastily and found that it was from Richard:

Am coming down to Bolivar with C. & G. Commission. Be deciding about what I wrote you. Must.

RICHARD.

I sat perfectly still for several seconds because I felt that a good strong hand had reached out of the distance and gently grabbed me. Dickie had bossed me strenuously through two years of the time before I had awakened to the fact that, for his good, I must take the direction of the affairs of him and his kind on my and my kind's shoulders.

I suppose a great many years of emancipation will have to pass over the heads of women before they lose the gourd kind of feeling at the sight of a particularly broad, strong pair of shoulders. My heart sparkled at the idea of seeing Dickie again and being browbeaten in a good old, methodical, tender way. I suppose the sparkle in my heart showed in my eyes, for Polk sat up quickly and took notice of it very decidedly.

"Wire especially impassioned?" he asked, with a smolder in his eyes.

"Not especially." I answered serenely, "One of my friend's father is a director in the C. & G. and he is coming down with him for the conference over at Bolivar between the two roads next week."

"Good," answered Polk, heartily, as the flare died out of his eyes.

I was glad he didn't have to see the wire for I wanted to use Polk's brain a while if I could get his emotions to sleep in my presence. It is very exasperating for a woman to be offered flirtation when she is in need of common sense from a man. There are so many times she needs the one rather than the other, but the dear creatures refuse to realize it, if she's under forty.

"Polk, do you see any logical, honest or dishonest way to get that Road to take the Glendale bluff line?" I asked, with trepidation, for that was the first time I had ever even begun to discuss anything intelligently with Polk.

"None in the world, Evelina," he answered with a nice, straight, intellectuality showing over his whole face and even his lazy, posing figure. "I remonstrated with James and Henry Carruthers both when they used their influence to have the bonds voted and I told James it was madness to invest in all that field and swamp property with just a chance of the shops. The trouble was that James had always left all his business to Henry, along with the firm's business, for a man can't be the kind of lawyer James is, and carry the details of the handling of filthy lucre in the same mind that can make a speech like the one he made down in Nashville last April, on the exchange of the Judiciary. James can be the Governor of this good State any time he wants to, or could, if Henry hadn't turned toes and left him such a bag to hold—no reference to Sallie's figure intended, which is all to the good if you like that kind of curves!"

I took a moment to choose my words.

"The C. & G. is going to take that bluff route," I answered calmly from somewhere inside me that I had never used to speak from before.

"Do you know anything of the character of Mrs. Joshua?" asked Polk, admiringly, but slipping down from his intellectual attitude of mind and body and edging an inch nearer. "Bet she had a strong mind or Joshua never could have pulled off that sun and moon stunt."

"Do you know, Polk, there is one woman in the world who could—could handle you?" I said, as a sudden vision of what Jane would do, if Polk sat on her skirts as he did on mine, flashed across my troubled brain.

"I'd be mighty particular as to who handles me," he answered impudently, "Want to try?" And with the greatest audacity he laid his head gently against my knee. I let it rest there a second and then tipped it back against the arm of the rocker.

"It does hurt me to see a man like Cousin James fairly throttled by women as he is being," I said as I looked across the street and noted that the porch of Widegables was full to overflowing with the household of women.

"Evelina," said Polk, as he stood up suddenly in front of me, "that old Mossback is the finest man in this commonwealth, but from his situation nobody can extract him, unless it is a woman with the wiliness of the devil himself. Poison the whole bunch and I'll back you. But we'll have to plot it later on. I see his reverence coming tripping along with a tract in his hand for you and I'll be considerate enough to sneak through the kitchen, get a hot muffin-cake that has been tantalizing my nose all this time you have been sentimentalizing over me, and return anon when I can have you all to myself in the melting moonlight in the small hours after all religious folk are in bed. Until then!" And as he went back through the front hall Mr. Haley came down the front walk.

"My dear Miss Shelby, how fortunate I am to find you alone," he exclaimed with such genuine delight beaming from his nice, good, friendly, gray eyes that I beamed up myself a bit out of pure responsiveness.

"I am so glad to see you, Mr. Haley. Hasn't it been a lovely day?" I answered, as I offered him the large rocker Sallie had vacated.

"It has, indeed, and I don't know when I have been as deeply happy. This hour with you will be the very climax of the day's perfections, I feel sure."

I smiled.

To follow you, Jane, I "let a man look freely into my heart and thus encouraged he opened his to mine" and behold, I found Sallie and the twins and Henrietta all squatting in the Dominie's cardiac regions, just as comfortably as they do it at Widegables.

"My sympathies have become so enlisted in the struggle which Mrs. Carruthers is having to curb the eccentricities of her oldest daughter that I feel I must lay definite plans to help her. It is very difficult for a young and naturally yielding woman like Mrs. Carruthers to discipline alone even so young a child as Henrietta. I know you will help me all you can to help her. Believe me, my dear friend, even in the short time you have been in Glendale you have become a tower of strength to me. I feel that I can take my most difficult and sacred perplexities to you."

Now, what do you think of that, Jane? Be sure and rub this situation in on all the waiting Five disciples. I defy any of them to do so well in less than three months. This getting on a plane of common citizenship with a fellow-man is easy. That is, with some men.

Still while you are getting on the plane somebody else gets the man. What about that? I didn't want Mr. Haley, but what if I had?

"Yes, Henrietta is a handful, Mr. Haley," I answered with enthusiasm, for even the mention of Henrietta enlivens me and somehow Mr. Haley's getting in the game of "curbing" her stirred up my risibles. "But—but Sallie already has a good many people to help her with the children. I have been trying to—to influence Henrietta—and she does not swear except on the most exasperating occasions now."

"The dear little child created a slight consternation in her Sunday School class last week when they were being taught the great dramatic story of Jonah's three days' incarceration in the whale. To quote her exactly, so that you may see how it must have affected the other children, she said: 'I swallowed a live fly onct myself and I'm not damn fool enough to believe that whale kept Jonah down three days, alive and kicking, no matter who says so.'

"She then marched out of the class and has not returned these two succeeding Sabbaths. It was to talk over the matter I called on Mrs. Carruthers this afternoon, and I have never had my sympathies so stirred. We must help her, my dear friend!"

I never enjoyed anything more in my life than the hour I spent helping that dear, good, funny man plan first aids to the rearing of Sallie's children. Besides my cooeperation he has planned to enlist that of Aunt Augusta, and I was wicked enough to let him do it. In a small village where the inhabitants have no chance at diversions like Wagnerian operas and collapsing skyscrapers I felt that I had no right to avert the spectacle of Aunt Augusta's disciplining Henrietta.

I'll write you all about it, Jane, in a special delivery letter.

Jasper whipped Petunia with great apparent severity day before yesterday, and we have been having the most heavenly waffles and broiled chicken ever since. I dismissed Jasper for doing it, but Petunia came into my room and cried about it a half-hour, so I had to go out where he was rubbing the silver and forgive him and hire him over.

"When a woman gits her mouth stuck out at a man and the world in general three days hand running they ain't nothing to cure it but a stick," he answered with lofty scorn.

"Yes'm, dat's so," answered Petunia. "I never come outen a spell so easy before." And her yellow face had a pink glow of happiness all over it as she smiled lovably on the black brute.

I went off into a corner and sat down for a quiet hour to think. Nobody in the world knows everything.

"Supper's on the table," Jasper announced, after having seen Mr. Haley go down the front walk to-night. Jasper has such great respect for the cloth that never in the world would he have asked Mr. Haley in to supper without having at least a day to prepare for him. Any of my other friends he would have asked, regardless of whether or not I wanted them.

I somehow didn't feel that I could eat alone to-night, but it was too late to go for Sallie or Cousin Jasmine, and besides it is weak-minded to feel that way. Why shouldn't I want to eat by myself?

This is a great big house for just one woman, and I don't see why I have to be that one! I never was intended to be single. I seem to even think double. Way down in me there is a place that all my life I have been laying things aside in to tell some day to somebody that will understand. I don't remember a single one of them now, but when the time comes somebody is going to ask me a question very softly and it is going to be the key that will unlock the treasures of all my life, and he will take them out one by one, and look at them and love them and smile over them and scold over them and be frightened even to swearing over them, perhaps weep over them, and then—while I'm very close—pray over them. I could feel the tears getting tangled in my lashes, but I forced them back.

Now, I don't see why I should have been sentimentalizing over myself like that. Just such a longing, miserable, wait-until-he-comes—and why-doesn't-he-hurry-or-I'll-take-the-wrong-man attitude of mind and sentiment in women in general is what I have taken a vow on my soul, and made a great big important wager to do away with. There are millions of lovely men in the world and all I have to do is to go out and find the right one, be gentle with him until he understands my mode of attack to be a bit different from the usual crawfish one employed by women from prehistoric times until now, but not later: and then domesticate him in any way that suits me.

Here I've been in Glendale almost three months and have let my time be occupied keeping house for nobody but myself and to entertain my friends, planting a flower garden that can't be used at all for nourishment, and sewing on another woman's baby clothes.

I've written millions of words in this book and there is as yet not one word that will help the Five in the serious and important task of proving that they have a right to choose their own mates, and certainly nothing to help them perform the ceremonial.

If I don't do better than this Jane will withdraw her offer and there is no telling how many years the human race will be retarded by my lack of strength of character.

What do men do when they begin to see the gray hairs on their temples and when they have been best-man at twenty-three weddings, and are tired of being at christenings and buying rattles, and things at the club all taste exactly alike, and they have purchased ten different kinds of hair-tonic that it bores them to death to rub on the tops of their own heads?

I don't want any man I know! I might want Polk, if I let him have half a chance to make me, but that would be dishonorable.

I've got up so much nice warm sisterly love for Dickie and Mr. Haley that I couldn't begin to love them in the right way now, I am afraid. Still, I haven't seen Dickie for three months and maybe my desperation will have the effect of enhancing his attractions. I hope so.

Still I am disgusted deeply with myself. I believe if I could experiment with mankind I could make some kind of creature that would be a lot better than a woman for all purposes, and I would—

"Supper's ready and company come," Jasper came to the front door to announce for the third time, but this time with the unctuous voice of delight that a guest always inspires in him. I promptly went in to welcome my materialized desire whoever it happened to be.

The Crag was standing by the window in the half light that came, partly from the candles in their tall old silver candlesticks that were Grandmother Shelby's, and partly from the last glow of the sun down over the ridge. That was what I needed!

"I was coming in from the fields across your back yard and I saw the table lighted and you on the front porch, star-gazing, and—and I got Jasper to invite me." he said as he came over and drew out my chair on one side of that wide square table, while Jasper stood waiting to seat him at the other, about a mile away.

"I wanted you," I answered him stupidly, as I sank into my place and leaned my elbows on the table so I could drop my warm cheeks into my hands comfortably. I didn't see why I should be blushing.

"That's the reason I came then," he answered, as he looked at me across the bowl of musk roses that were sending out waves of sweetness to meet those that were coming in from the honeysuckle climbing over the window. "If you were ever lonely and needed me, Evelina, you would tell me, wouldn't you?" he asked, as he leaned towards me and regarded me still more closely.

And again those two treacherous tears rose and tangled themselves in my lashes, though I did shake them away quickly as a smile quivered its way to command of my mouth. But I was not quick enough and he saw them.

And what he did was just what I wanted him to do! He rose, picked up his chair and came around that huge old table and sat down at the corner just as near to my elbow as the steaming coffee pot would let him.

"If you wanted me any time, would you tell me, Evelina?" he insisted from this closer range.

"No, I wouldn't," I answered with a laugh. "I would expect you to know it, and come just like you did to-night."

"But—but it was I that wanted you badly in this case," he answered with an echo of the laugh.

But even under the laugh I saw signs of excitement in his deep eyes and his long, lean hands shook as they handed me his cup to pour the coffee. Jasper had laid his silver and napkin in front of him and retired to admonish Petunia as to the exact crispness of her first waffle.

"What is it?" I asked breathlessly, as I moved the coffee pot from between us to the other side.

"Just a letter that came to me from the Democratic Headquarters in the City, that shook me up a bit and made me want to—to tell you about it. Nobody else can know—I have been out on Old Harpeth all afternoon fighting that out, and telling you is the only thing I have allowed myself."

"They want you to be the next Governor," I said quickly. "And you will be, too," I added, again using that queer place in my brain that seems to know perfectly unknowable things and that only works in matters that concern him.

"No!"

"Yes, Your Excellency," I hurled at him defiantly.

"You witch, you," he answered me with a pleased, teasing whimsicality coming into his eyes. "Of course, you guessed the letter and it was dear to have you do it, but we both know it is impossible. Nobody must hear of it, and the telling you has been the best I could get out of it anyway. Jasper, take my compliments to Petunia, this chicken is perfection!"

That eighth wonder of the world which got lost was something even more mysterious than the Sphinx. It was a marvel that could have been used for women to compare men to. That man sat right there at my side and ate four waffles, two large pieces of chicken and a liver-wing, drank two cups of coffee, and then devoured a huge bowl of peaches and cream, with three muffin-cakes, while enduring the tragedy of the realization of having to decline the Governorship of his State.

I watched him do it, first in awe and then with a dim understanding of something, I wasn't sure what. Most women, under the circumstances, would have gone to bed and cried it out or at least have refused food for hours. We've got to get over those habits before we get to the point of having to refuse to be Governors of the States and railroad presidents and things like that.

And while he ate, there I sat not able to more than nibble because I was making up my mind to do something that scared me to death to think about. That gaunt, craggy man in a shabby gray coat, cut ante-bellum wise, with a cravat that wound itself around his collar, snowy and dainty, but on the same lines as the coat and evidently of rural manufacture in the style favored by the flower and chivalry of the day of Henry Clay, had progressive me as completely overawed for several minutes as any painted redskin ever dominated a squaw—or as Jasper did Petunia in my own kitchen.

But after we were left alone with the roses and the candles and his cigar, with only Jasper's gratified voice mumbling over compliments to Petunia in the distance, I took my courage in my hands and plunged.

This can he used as data for the Five.

"James." I said, with such cool determination in my voice that it almost froze my own tongue, "I meant to tell you about it several weeks ago, I have decided to adopt Sallie and all the children. I intend to legally adopt the children and just nominally adopt Sallie, but it will amount to the same thing. I don't have to have your consent but I think it is courteous to ask for it."

"What!" he exclaimed, as he sat up and looked at me with the expression an alienist might use in an important examination.

"Yes," I answered, gaining courage with time. "You see, I was crying out here on the porch with loneliness when you found me. I can't stand this any longer. I must have a family right away and Sallie's just suits me. I have to take a great deal of interest in them anyway and it would be easier if I had complete control of them. It will leave you with enough family to keep you from being lonely and then we can all be happy together down into old age."

"Have you said anything about this to Sallie?" he asked weakly as he dipped the end of his cigar into his glass of water and watched the sputter with the greatest interest.

"Not yet, but don't you feel sure that she will consent?" I asked, with confidence in my plan at fever heat. "Sallie is so generous and she can't want to see me live lonely always, without any family at all. Now, will she?"

"She would consent!" he answered slowly, and then he laid his head down on the table right against my arm and shook so that the candlesticks rattled against the candles. "But I don't," he gasped, and for the life of me I couldn't tell whether he was crying or laughing, until he sat up again.

"Eve," he said, with his eyes fairly dancing into mine, "if women in general mean to walk over political difficulties as you are planning to walk away with this one of mine, I'm for feminine rule. Don't you dare say one word about such a thing to Sallie. Of course, it is impossible as it is funny."

It was a tragedy to have such a lovely scheme as I had thought up on the spur of the moment, knocked down suddenly by a half dozen positive words from a mere man, and for a moment my eyes fought with his in open rebellion. Then I rose haughtily and walked out on the front porch.

"Dear," he said, as he followed me and took my hand in his and drew me near him, "don't you know that your wanting to put your shoulder under any burden I may be bearing lifts it completely? There are things in this situation that you can't understand. If I seem to make sacrifices, they come from the depths of my heart and are not sacrifices. Will you believe me?"

How can he help loving Sallie with her so emphatically there?

I answered him I suppose to his liking and he went on across the road to Widegables and left me alone in the cruel darkness.

Please, God, when things seem to be drowning me like this make me swim with head up. Amen!



CHAPTER VII

SOME SMOLDERINGS

I'm a failure! Yes, Jane, I am!

Polk Hayes is an up-to-date, bright man of the world, with lots of brains and I should say about the average masculine nature, and a great deal more than the average amount of human charm. However, he has got no more brains than I have, has had really fewer advantages, and it ought to be easy for me to hold my own against him. But I am about to fail on him.

For the last two weeks he has been constantly with Nell and has got her in a dreamy state that shows in her face and every movement of her slim body. And yet I know without the shadow of a doubt that he is just biding his time to try me out and get me on his own terms. My heart aches for Nell, and I just couldn't see him murder her girlhood, and it will amount to that if he involves her heart any more than it is. I made up my mind to have it out with him and accordingly let him come and sit on my side steps with me late yesterday afternoon, when I have avoided being alone with him for a month.

"Polk," I asked him suddenly without giving him time to get the situation into his own hands, skilled in their woman-handling, "do you intend to marry Nell or just plain break her heart for the fun you get out of it?"

His dangerous eyes smoldered back at me for a long minute before he answered me:

"Men don't break women's hearts, Evelina."

"I think you are right," I answered slowly, "they do just wring and distort them and deform them for life. But I intend to see that Nell's has no such torturous operation performed on it if I can appeal to you or convince her."

"When you argue with Nell be sure and don't tell her just exactly the things you have done to me all this summer through, Evelina." he answered coolly.

"What do you mean?" I demanded, positively cold with a kind of astonished fear.

"I mean that I have never offered Nell one half of the torture you have offered me, every day since you came home, with your damned affectionate friendliness. When I laugh, you answer it before it gets articulate, and when I gloom, you are as sympathetic as sympathy itself. I have held your hand and kissed it, instituting and not quenching a raging thirst thereby, as you are experienced enough to know. You have made yourself everything for me that is responsive and desirable and beautiful and worthy and have put me back every time I have reached out to grasp you. You don't want me, you don't want to marry me at all, you just want —excitement. You are as cold as ice that grinds and generates fire. Very well, you don't have to take me—and I'll get what I can from Nell—and others."

"Oh, Polk, how could you have misunderstood me like this?" I moaned from the depths of an almost broken heart. But as I moaned I understood—I understood!

I'm doing it all wrong! I had the most beautiful human love for him in my heart and he thought it was all dastardly, cold coquetting. An awful spark has been struck out of the flint. I'm not worthy to experiment with this dreadful man-and-woman question. I just laid my head down on my arms, resting on my knees and cowered at Polk's feet.

"Don't—Evelina, I didn't mean it." he said quickly in a shaken voice. But he did!

I couldn't answer him and as I sat still and prayed in my heart for some words to come that would do away with the horror I heard Sallie's voice from my front walk, and she and Mr. Haley, each carrying a sleeping twin, came around the corner of the porch.

That interruption was a direct answer to prayer, for God knew that I just must have time to think before having this out with Polk. I sometimes feel ashamed of the catastrophes I have to pray quick about, but what would I do if I couldn't?

I don't know how I got through the rest of this evening, but I did—I pray for sleep. Amen!

Watching the seasons follow each other in the Harpeth Valley gives me the agony of a dumb poet, who can feel though not sing.

It was spring when I came down here four months ago, a young, tender, mist-veiled, lilac-scented spring that nestled firmly in your heart and made it ache with sweetness that you hardly understood yourself.

But before I knew it the young darling, with her curls and buds and apple-blooms had gone and summer was rioting over the gardens and fields and hills, rich, lush colored, radiant, redolent, gorgeous, rose-scented and pulsing with a life that made me breathless. Even the roads along the valley were bordered with flowers that the sun had wooed to the swooning point.

But this week, early as it is, there has been a hint of autumn in the air, and a haze is beginning to creep over the whole world, especially in the early mornings, which are so dew-gemmed that they seem to be hinting a warning of the near coming of frost and snow.

My garden has grown into a perfect riot of blooms, but for the last two weeks queer slugs have begun to eat the tender buds that are forming for October blooming, and I have been mourning over it by day and by night and to everybody who will listen.

Aunt Augusta insists that the only thing to do is to get up with the first crack of dawn and carefully search out each slug, remove it and destroy it. She says if this is done for a week they will be exterminated.

I carefully explained it all to Jasper and when I came down to breakfast he was coming in with three queer green things, also with an injured air of having been kept up all night. I didn't feel equal to making him go on with the combat and ignored the question for two days until I saw all the buds on my largest Neron done for in one night.

I have always been able to get up at the break of day to go sketching—it was at daybreak that I made my sketch in the Defleury gardens that captured the French art eye enough to get me my Salon mention. If I could get up to splash water-colors at that hour, I surely could rush to the protection of my own roses, so I went to bed with gray dawn on my mind and the shutters wide open so the first light would get full in my eyes.

I am glad that it was a good bright ray that woke me and partly dazzled me, for the sight I had, after I had been kneeling down in the rose bed for fifteen minutes, was something of a shock to me, though no reason in the world why it should have been. I can't remember that I ever speculated as to whether the Crag wore pajamas or not, and I don't see that I should have been surprised that he did instead of the night shirt of our common ancestry.

He came around the side of the house out of the sun-shot mist and was half way down the garden path before I saw him or he saw me, and I must say that his unconcern under the circumstances was rather remarkable.

He was attired in a light blue silk pajama jacket that was open at the throat and half way down his broad breast. He had on his usual gray trousers, but tag's of blue trailed out and ruffled around his bare ankles, and across his bare heels that protruded from his slippers. His hair was in heavy tousled black curls all over his head and his gray eyes were positively mysterious with interrupted dreams. In one hand he carried a tin can and in the other a small pointed stick, which looked murderously fitted for the extermination of the marauders.

I was positively nervous over the prospect of his embarrassment when he should catch sight of me, but there was none.

"Eve!" he exclaimed, with surprise, and a ray of pure delight drove away the dreams in his eyes. Nobody in the wide world calls me Eve but just the Crag, and he does it in a queer, still way when he is surprised to see me, or glad, or sorry, or moved with any kind of sudden emotion.

And queer as it is I have to positively control the desire to answer him with the correlated title—Adam!

"I forgot to tell you yesterday that I was coming over to get the slugs for you, dear," he said as he came down the row of roses next to mine, squatted opposite to where I was kneeling by the bushy, suffering Neron and began to examine the under side of each leaf carefully. He was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in the early light with his great chest bare and the blue of the pajamas melting into the bronze of his throat and calling out the gray in his eyes. I had to force myself into being gardener rather than artist, as we laughed together over the glass bowl and silver spoon I had brought out for the undoing of the slugs. Some day I'm going to paint him like that!



I found out about the pajamas from questioning Aunt Martha discreetly. They seemed so incongruous in relation to the usual old Henry Clay coat and stock collar, that I had to know the reason why. Mrs. Hargrove's son was a very worldly man, she says, and wore them. It comforts her to make them for the Crag to wear in memoriam. He wears the collars Cousin Martha makes him with her own fingers after the pattern she made his father's by, for the same reason, and lets Cousin Jasmine cut his hair because she always cut her father's, Colonel Horton's, until his death. That accounts for the ante-bellum curls and the irregular tags in the back. I almost laughed when Cousin Martha was telling me, but I remembered how a glow rose in my heart when I saw that he still had Father's little old Confederate comrade tailor cut his coats on the same pattern on which he had cut Father's, since the days of reconstruction. Sometimes it startles me to find that with all my emancipation I am very like other women.

But I wonder what I would do if Sallie attired him in any of the late Henry's wearing apparel?

"What do you suppose is the why of such useless things as slugs?" I speculated to stop that thought off sharp as we crawled down the row together, he searching one side of each bush and I the other.

"Well, they brought on this nice companionable hunt for them, didn't they?" he asked, looking over into my eyes with a laugh.

"I wanted to see you early this morning anyway," he hastily resumed. "Sallie and the Dominie sat talking to you so late last night that I didn't feel it was fair to come across after they left. But I wanted you so I could hardly get to sleep, and I was just half awake from a dream of you, when I came into the garden."

"My evenings don't belong to anybody, if you need them, Jamie, and you don't have to be told that," I answered crossly when I thought what a grand time I might have been having talking about real things with the Crag, instead of wrestling with Polk's romantics or Sallie's and Mr. Haley's gush.

"Go on and tell me all about it, while I crawl after you like a worm myself," I snapped still further.

"Well, here goes! In the City Council meeting last night your Uncle Peter told us about the plans that they have made up at Bolivar for entertaining the C. & G. Commission, and the gloom of Polk and Lee, Ned and the rest of them could have easily been cut in blocks and used for cold storage purposes. They are just all down and out about it and no fight left. Of course, they all lose by the bond issue, but I can't see that it is bad enough to knock them all out like this. I got up in mighty wrath and—and I have got myself into one job. My eloquence landed me right into one large hole, and I am reaching out for a hand from you."

"Here it is," and I reached over and left a smear of loam across the back of his hand, while I brought away a brown circle around my wrist that the responsive grasp of his fingers left. "Do you want me single-handed to get the bluff line chosen?"

"Not quite, but almost," he answered with another laugh. "You would if you tried. I haven't a doubt. Do you remember the talk we had the other night about its seeming inhospitable of you not to invite the other gentlemen in the Commission over to see you when you invite Hall and his father? And you know you had partly planned some sort of entertainment for the whole bunch. You had the right idea at the right place, as you always do. As you said, we don't want Bolivar to see us with what looks like a grouch on us at their good fortune, and I think that as the Commission are all to be here as the guests of a private citizen, Glendale ought to entertain them publicly. There is no hope to get the line for us, but I would like those men at least to see what the beauty of that bluff road would be. The line across the river runs through the only ugly part of the valley, and while I know in the balance between dollars and scenery, scenery will go down and out, still it would be good for them to see it and at least get a vision of what might have been, to haunt them when they take their first trip through the swamps across the country there. Now, as you are to have them anyway, I want to have the whole town entertain the whole Commission and Bolivar with what is classically called among us a barbecue-rally, the countryside to be invited. Bolivar is going to give them a banquet, to be as near like what the Bolivarians imagine they have in New York as possible, and Mrs. Doctor Henderson is to give them a pink tea reception to which carefully chosen presentables, like you and me, are to be invited. You remember that circus day in July?—a rally will be like that or more so. What do you think?"

"Oh, I think you are a genius to think about it," I gasped, as I sat down on a very cruet Killarney branch and just as quickly sat up again, receiving comforting expressions of sympathy from across the bush, to which I paid no heed. "Those blase city men will go crazy about it. We can have the barbecue up on the bluff, where we have always had it for the political rallies, and a fish-fry and the country people in their wagons with children tumbling all over everything and—and you will make a great speech with all of us looking on and being proud of you, because nobody in New York or beyond can do as well. We can invite a lot of people up from the City and over from Bolivar and Hillsboro and Providence to hear you tell them all about Tennessee while things are cooking and—"

"This rally is to show off Glendale not—the Crag," he interrupted me with a quizzical laugh.

Now, how did he know I called him the Crag in my heart? I suppose I did it to his face and never knew. I seem to think right out loud when I am with him and feel out loud, too. I ignored his levity, that was out of place when he saw how my brain was beginning to work well and rapidly.

"You mean, don't you, Jamie, that you want to get Glendale past this place that is—humiliating—swimming with her head up?" I asked softly past a rose that drooped against my cheek.

Perfectly justifiable tears came to my lashes as I thought what a humiliation it all was to him and the rest of them, to be passed by an opportunity like that and left to die in their gray moldiness off the main line of life—shelved.

"That is one of my prayers, to get past humiliations, swimming with my head up," I added softly, though I blushed from my toes to my top curl at the necessity that had called out the prayer the last time. It's awful on a woman to feel herself growing up stiff and sturdy by a man's side and then to get sight of a gourd-vine tangling itself up between them. I'm the dryad out of one of my own twin oaks down by the gate, and I want the other twin to be—

I wonder if his eyes really look to other women like deep gray pools that you can look deeper and deeper into and never seem to get to the bottom, no matter if the look does seem to last forever and you feel yourself blushing and wanting to take your eyes away, or if it is just I that get so drowned in them!

"You've a gallant stroke, Evelina," he said softly, as I at last gained possession of my own sight. "And here I am with a hand out to you for assistance in carrying out your own plan that seems to be just the thing to—"

"Say, Cousin James. Aunt Marfy says for you to come home to breakfast right away. Mis' Hargrove won't let nobody begin until you says the blessing, and Cousin Jasmine have got the headache from waiting for her coffee. What do you want to fool with Evelina this time of day for anyway?" And with the delivery of which message and reproof Henrietta stood on the edge of the path looking down upon us with great and scornful interest.

"You've got on your night shirt and haven't combed your hair or washed your face," she continued sternly. "There'll be hell to pay with all the breakfast getting cold, and I'm empty down to my feet. Come on, quick!"

"Henrietta," I said, sternly, as I rose to my feet, "I've asked you once not to say ugly words like that."

"I'll go make the lightning toilet, Henrietta. Do run like a good girl and ask Mrs. Hargrove to let Cousin Jasmine have her cup of coffee right away. I'll be there before the rest are dead from hunger," and Cousin James skilfully interrupted the threatened feminine clash as he emptied my glass bowl into his tin can and stuck the sharp stick in the ground for future reference. Even Henrietta's pointed allusion to his toilet had not in the least ruffled his equanimity or brought a shade of consciousness to his face.

"Mis' Hargrove said that the Bible said not for any woman to say a blessing at any table or at any place that anybody can hear her, when Cousin Marfy wanted to be polite to the Lord by saying just a little one and go on before we was all too hungry," answered Henrietta, in her most scornfully tolerant voice. "If women eat out loud before everybody why can't they pray their thank-you out loud like any man?"

"Answer her, Evelina," laughed Cousin James, as he hurried down the walk away from us.

"Henrietta," I asked, in a calmly argumentative tone of voice as she and I walked up the path to the house, "didn't Mr. Haley talk to you just yesterday and tell you how wicked it is for you to use—use such strong words as you do?"

Mr. Haley had told me just a few days ago that he and Aunt Augusta had agreed to open their campaign of reform on Henrietta by a pastoral lecture from him, to be followed strongly by a neighborly one from her.

"No, he never did any such thing," answered Henrietta, promptly—and what Henrietta says is always the truth, because she isn't afraid of anybody or anything enough to tell a lie—-"he just telled me over and over in a whole lot of words how I ought to love and be good to Sallie. If I was to love Sallie that kind of way, he said, I would be so busy I couldn't do none of the things Sallie don't like to do herself and makes me do. 'Stid er saying, 'my precious mother, I love you and want to be good because you want me to,' about every hour, I had better wipe the twins' noses, and wash the dirt often them, and light Aunt Dilsie's phthisic pipe, and get things upstairs for Sallie and Miss Jasmine and everybody when they are downstairs. I'm too busy, I am, to be so religious. And I'm too hungry to talk any more about it." With which she departed.

I sank on the side steps and laughed until a busy old bumble-bee came down from a late honeysuckle blossom and buzzed around to see what it was all about. Henrietta's statement of the case was a graphic and just one. Sallie has got a tendril around Henrietta which grows by the day. Poor tot, she does have a hard and hardening time—and how can I lecture her for swearing?

With a train of thought started by Henrietta I sat at my solitary breakfast in a deeply contemplative mood. Life was going to press hard on Henrietta. And reared in the fossilized atmosphere of Widegables, which tried to draw all its six separate feminine breaths as one with a lone, supporting man, how was she to develop the biceps of strength of mind and soul, as well as body, to meet the conditions she was likely to have to meet? Still her coming tussle with Aunt Augusta would be a tonic at least. I was just breaking a last muffin and beginning to smile when I saw a delegation coming down the street and turning into my front gate; I rose to meet it with distinction.

Aunt Augusta marched at the head and Nell and Caroline were on each side of her, while Sallie and Mamie Hall brought up the rear, walking more deliberately and each carrying a baby, comparing some sort of white tags of sewing. Cousin Martha was crossing the Road in their wake with her knitting bag and palm leaf fan.

One thing I am proud of having accomplished this summer is the establishing of friendly relations with Aunt Augusta. I made up my mind that she probably needed to have some of my affection ladled out to her more than anybody in Glendale, and I worked on all the volatile fear and resentment and dislike I had ever had for her all my life, and I have succeeded in liquefying it into a genuine liking for the martial old personality. If Aunt Augusta had been a man she would have probably led a regiment up San Juan Hill, died in the trenches, and covered herself and family with glory. She is the newest woman in the Harpeth Valley, and though sixty years old, she is lineally Sallie Carruthers's own granddaughter.

"Evelina," she began, as soon as she had martialed her forces into rocking-chairs, though she had Jasper bring her the stiffest and straightest-backed one in the house, "I have collected as many women as I had time to, and have come up here to tell you, and them, that the men in Glendale are so lacking in sense and judgment that the time has come for women to stand forth and assume the responsibility of them and Glendale in general. As the wife of the poor decrepit Mayor, I appoint myself chairman of the meeting pro tem and ask you to take the first minutes. If disgrace is threatening us we must at least face it in an orderly and parliamentary way. And I—"

"Oh, Mrs. Shelby, is it—is it smallpox?" and as Sallie spoke she hugged up the Puppy baby, who happened to be the twin in her arms, so that she bubbled and giggled, mistaking her embraces for those of frolicsome affection.

Mamie turned pale and held her baby tight and I could see that she was having light spasms of alarm, one for each one of the children and one for Ned.

"Smallpox, fiddlesticks—I said disgrace, Sallie Carruthers, and the worst kind of disgrace—municipal disgrace." And as Aunt Augusta named the plague that was to come upon us, she looked as if she expected it to wilt us all into sear and dried leaves. And in point of fact, we all did rustle.

"Tell us about it," said Nell, with sparkling eyes and sitting up in her low rocker as straight as Aunt Augusta did in her uncompromising seat. The rest of them just looked helpless and undecided as to whether to be relieved or not.

"Yes, municipal disgrace threatens the town, and the women must rise in their strength and avert it," she declaimed majestically with her dark eyes snapping.

"Yesterday afternoon James Hardin, who is the only patriotic male in Glendale, put before the Town Council a most reasonable and pride-bestirring proposition originated by Evelina Shelby, one of Glendale's leading citizens, though a woman. She wants to offer the far-famed hospitality of Glendale—which is the oldest and most aristocratic town in the Harpeth Valley, except perhaps Hillsboro, and which is not in the class with a vulgarly rich, modern place like Bolivar, that has a soap-factory and streetcars, and was a mud-hole in the landscape when the first Shelby built this very house,—to the Commission of magnates who are to come down about the railroad lines that are to be laid near us. James agrees with her and urges that it is fitting and dignified that, when they are through with their vulgar trafficking over at insignificant Bolivar, they be asked to partake of real southern hospitality at its fountain head, especially as Evelina is obliged to invite two of them as personal friends. Do you not see it in that light?" And Aunt Augusta looked at us with the martial mien of a general commanding his army for a campaign.

"It would be nice," answered Mamie, as she turned little Ned over on his stomach across her knee and began to sway him and trot him at the same time, which was his signal to get off into a nap. "But Ned said last night that he had lost so much in the bond subscription, that he didn't feel like spending any more money for an entertainment, that wouldn't do one bit of good about the taxes or bonds or anything. The baby was beginning to fret, so I don't think I understood it exactly."

"I don't think you did," answered Aunt Augusta, witheringly, "That is not the point at all, and—"

"But Mr. Greenfield said last night, while he was discussing it with Father, that it would do no good whatever and probably be an embarrassment to the Commission, our putting in a pitiful bid like that. He—" but Caroline got no further with the feminine echo of her masculine opinion-former.

"Peter Shelby put that objection much more picturesquely than Lee Greenfield," Aunt Augusta snapped. "He said that licking those men's hands would turn his stomach, after swallowing that bond issue. However, all this has nothing to do with the case. I am trying to—"

"Polk said last night that he thought it would be much more spectacular for all the good looking women in town to go when we are invited to Mrs. Henderson's tea for the big bugs, and dazzle 'em so that it would at least put Glendale on the map," said Nell, with spirit. "He made me so mad that I—"

"Mr. Haley thinks that we should be very careful not to feel malice or envy towards Bolivar, but to rejoice at their good fortune in getting both roads and the shops, even if it does mean a loss to us. What is material wealth in this world anyway when we can depend so on—" Sallie's expression was so beautifully silly and like the Dominie's, that it was all that I could do not to give vent to an unworthy shout. Nell saw it as I did and I felt her smother a giggle.

But before Aunt Augusta could get her breath to put the crux of the matter straight before her feminine tribunal, Aunt Martha beat her to it as she placidly rocked back and forth knitting lace for a petticoat for Henrietta.

"Of course, Glendale doesn't really care about the railroad; in fact, we would much rather not have our seclusion broken in upon, especially as they might choose the route they have prospected"—with a glance at Sallie—"but it is to show them our friendliness, more Bolivar than the actual Commission, and our desire to rejoice with them in their good fortune. It would be very mean spirited of us to ignore them and not assist them in entertaining their guests, especially as some of them must be invited. We've never been in such an attitude as that to Bolivar!"

"Exactly, Martha," answered Aunt Augusta with relief. "The thought of proud old Glendale putting herself in an attitude of municipal sulks towards common Bolivar seemed an unbearable disgrace to me. Didn't we invite them up for a great fish-fry on the river when they opened that odious soap factory, and ask them to let us help take care of some of their delegates when they had the Methodist Conference? They sent one of the two bishops to you, you remember, Martha, and I am sure your entertainment of him was so lavish that he went home ill. No man said us nay in the exercising our right of religious hospitality, why should they in our civic? We must not allow the town to put us in such an attitude! Must Not! It was for this that I called this meeting at Evelina's, as she was the one to propose this public-spirited and creditable plan."

"But what shall we do if they don't want to have it?" asked Mamie.

"I have asked, when did the men of Glendale begin to dictate to the women as to whom they should offer their hospitality?" answered Aunt Augusta, as she arose to her feet. "Are we free women, and have we, or have we not, command of our own storerooms and our own servants and our own time and strength?"

And as I looked up at the tall, fierce, white-haired old dame of high degree, daughter of the women of the Colonies and the women of the Wilderness days, I got exactly the same sensation I had when I saw the Goddess of Liberty loom up out of the mist as I sailed into the harbor of my own land from a foreign one. And what I was feeling I knew every woman present was feeling in a greater or less degree, except perhaps Sallie, for her face was a puzzle of sore amazement and a pleading desire for further sleep.

"Have we or have we not?" Aunt Augusta again demanded, and just then a most wonderful thing happened!

Jane stood in our midst!

Oh, Jane, you were a miracle to me, but I must go on writing about it all calmly for the sake of the Five!

I made a mad rush from my rocker to throw myself into her arms, but she stopped me with one glance of her cold, official eye that quelled me, and stood attention before Aunt Augusta.

"Madam President," she said in her grandest parliamentary voice, "it was by accident that I interrupted the proceedings of what I take to be an official meeting. Have I your permission to withdraw? I am Miss Shelby's guest, Miss Mathers, and I can easily await her greetings until the adjournment of this body."

Oh, Jane, and my arms just hungry for you!

"Madam," answered Aunt Augusta, in her grandest manner and a voice so filled with cordiality that I hardly knew it, "it is the pleasure of the chair to interrupt proceedings and to welcome you. Evelina, introduce us all!"

It was all just glorious! I never saw anybody get a more lovely ovation than Jane did from my friends, for they had all heard about her, read with awe clippings I showed them about her speeches and—were about ready for her.

Sallie kissed her on both cheeks, Mamie laid the baby in her arms with a devout expression, and Nell clung to her with the rapture of the newly proselyted in her face. Aunt Martha made her welcome in her dearest manner and Caroline beamed on her with the return of a lot of the fire and spirit of the youth that hanging on the doled-out affections of Lee Greenfield had starved in her.

And it was characteristic of Jane and her methods that it took much less time than it takes me to write it, for her to get all the greetings over with, explain that she had sent me a letter telling me that she was coming that must have gone astray, get everybody named and ticketed in her mind, and get us all back to business.

Aunt Augusta explained the situation to her with so much feeling and eloquence that she swept us all off our feet, and when she was ready to put the question again to us as to our willingness to embark on our defiance of our fellow-townsmen, the answer of enthusiastic acquiescence was ready for her.

"Of course, as none of you have any official municipal status, the invitation will have to be given informally, in a social way, to the Commission through Miss Shelby's friend, Mr. Richard Hall," said Jane, when Aunt Augusta had called on her to give us her opinion of the situation in general and the mode of procedure. "We find it best in all women-questions of the present, to do things in a perfectly legal and parliamentary way."

"Must we tell them about it or not?" asked Mamie, in a wavering voice, looking up devoutly at Jane, who had held young Ned against the stiff white linen shirt of her traveling dress just as comfortably as if he were her own seventh.

"Did they consult you before deciding to refuse your suggestion?" asked Jane, calmly and thoughtfully.

"They did not," trumpeted Aunt Augusta.

"Then wouldn't it be the most regular way to proceed to get an acceptance of the invitation from the Commission and then extend them one to be present?" pronounced Jane, coolly, seemingly totally unconscious that she was exploding; a bomb shell.

"It would, and we will consider it so settled," answered Aunt Augusta, dominatingly.

This quick and revolutionary decision gave me a shock. I could see that a woman doesn't like to feel that there is a stick of dynamite between her and a man, when she puts her head down under his chin or her cheek to his, but advanced women must suffer that. Still I'm glad that the Crag is on our side of the fence. I felt sorry for Mamie and Caroline—and Sallie looked a tragedy.

In fact, a shade of depression was about to steal over the spirits of the meeting when Aunt Augusta luckily called for the discussion of plans for the rally.

Feeding other human beings is the natural, instituted, physiological, pathological, metaphysical, and spiritual outlet for a woman's nature, and that is why she is so happy when she gets out her family receipt book for a called rehearsal for the functioning of her hospitality. The revolution went home happy and excited over the martialing of their flesh pots.

I'm glad Jane is asleep across the hall to-night. If I had had to shoulder all this outbreak by myself I would have compromised by instituting a campaign of wheedling, the like of which this town never suffered before, and then when this glorious rally was finally pulled off, the cajoled masculine population would have fairly swelled with pride over having done it!

Of course, by every known test of conduct and economics, their attitude in the matter is entirely right. Men work to all given points in straight, clear-cut, logical lines only to find women at the point of results waiting for them, with unforeseen culminations, which would have been impossible to them.

And I am also glad the Crag is partly responsible for starting, or at least unconsciously aiding, this scheme in high finance of mine; and he is also in reality the silent sponsor for this unhatched revolution. I am deeply contented to go to sleep with that comforting; thought tucked under my pillow.



CHAPTER VIII

AN ATTAINED TO-MORROW

I've changed my mind about a woman's being like a whirlwind. The women of now are the attained to-morrow that the world since the beginning has been trying to catch up with. Jane is that, and then the day after, too, and what she has done to Glendale in these two weeks has stunned the old town into a trance of delight and amazement. She has recreated us, breathed the breath of modernity into us, and started the machine up the grade of civilization at a pace that makes me hold my breath for fear of something jolting us.

She and Aunt Augusta have organized an Equality League, and that wheel came very near flying loose and being the finish of Uncle Peter.

He came to see me the morning of the first meeting and, when I saw him coming up the front walk, I got an astral vision of the chips on his shoulder enlarged to twice their natural size, and called to Jasper to mix the juleps very long and extra deep. But deep as they were, to the very top of the longest glasses, he couldn't drown his wrath in his.

"Women, women," he exploded from over the very mint sprig itself, "all fools, all fools from the beginning of time; made that way on purpose—on purpose—hey? World needs some sort of creature with no better sense than to want to spend their lives fooling with babies and the bread of life. Human young and religion are the only things in the world men can't attend to for themselves and that's what they need women for. Women with no brains—but all heart—all heart—hey?"

"Why should just a little brain hurt their heart-action. Uncle Peter?" I asked mildly. There is nothing in the world that I ever met that I enjoy any more than one of Uncle Peter's rages, and I always try to be meekly inflammatory.

"They're never satisfied with using them to run church societies and children's internal organs, but they want to use 'em on men and civilization in general. Where'd you get that Yankee school-marm—hey? Why don't she get a husband and a baby and settle down? Ten babies, twenty babies if necessary—hey?"

"You are entirely mistaken as to the plans that Jane and Aunt Augusta have for the League they are forming this morning, Uncle Peter." I began to say with delight as to what was likely to ensue. "If you would only listen to Jane while she—"

"Don't want to hear a word she has to say! All 'as the crackling of thorns under a pot'—all the talk of fools."

"But surely you are not afraid to listen to her, Uncle Peter," I dared to say, and then stood away.

"Afraid, afraid—never was afraid of anybody in my life, Augusta not excepted!" he exclaimed, as he rose in his wrath. "The men of this town will show the uprising hussies what we think of 'em, and put 'em back to the heels of men, where they belong—belong—hey?"