BOOK ONE: THE CAMPAIGN OPENS

INVINCIBLE MINNIE

CHAPTER ONE

I

Mr. Petersen rode along in the choking dust, considering the problem with perplexity but with good-humour. After all, it was absurd.... He wanted to be kind, but he didn’t want to be ridiculous.

In spite of himself, a grin came over his face. He was remembering his last visit to the old lady. He had ridden out to the miserable old farm and very politely introduced himself as her new landlord. He had bought the place for next to nothing, and, considering this, and the dilapidated state it was in, his sensitive conscience required that he should reduce the rent. But he never got so far as to propose this.

The old lady received him with lofty affability and invited him to sit down in her parlour, then left him there for a long time while she prepared refreshments. He had waited awkwardly enough, touched by the shabbiness of the place and its evident decline. Old mahogany furniture, ugly in style, but good—once very good—and now so battered, arms gone, legs gone, splinters torn off, cushions disgorging hair, springs sagging. His skilful fingers longed to be at it.

She came in again, with a plate of cookies and a jug of lemonade, and sat down at a little table to dispense them, with a regal air.

“Well!” she said, with a grim smile, “I suppose you’ve come about the rent, Mr. Petersen. I might as well be frank. I haven’t got it. I’ve had orders for some preserves, so perhaps I’ll have it next month. I hope so, I’m sure. But you can’t draw blood from a stone, Mr. Petersen.”

He had gone away that time utterly defeated, and he was returning now without much hope. What was one to do in such a case? Impossible to turn out the poor little old woman of seventy, alone on earth. He didn’t need the money from the house, he was quite able to permit her to live there free for the rest of her life, but that would be, he saw, a ridiculous thing to do. Unbusinesslike. Fantastic. She would laugh at him, and so would everyone else. People would be sure to find out, and his reputation as a shrewd and sensible man would suffer. And although he was a Socialist, and opposed to the paying of rents, his common-sense forbade exceptions. Either no one must pay rent, or everyone must.

He pulled up his horse and wiped his face, for the house was in sight and he was anxious to look well in the eyes of the queenly and provoking old lady. She was a Defoe, and married to a cousin Defoe, and this was, to her, a fact of immense significance. From it she derived her superiority to everyone else. She regarded Mr. Petersen as nobody at all, and a foreigner at that. He was aware of her attitude, and not at all pleased, for he had his own modest pride.

He even went so far as to take out a small pocket mirror and smooth his moustache—a long yellow moustache, standing out fiercely like a cat’s. His appearance was at no time satisfactory to him; it was rather too Socialistic. He was an enormous fellow of five and thirty, with huge hands and a blunt red face, handsome in a way, but certainly lacking in distinction, certainly not an exterior to commend itself to a Defoe.

He was quite correctly dressed in riding breeches and a linen jacket, all fitting very well, but all the more offensive to a Defoe because of their excellence. In Brownsville Landing people of Mr. Petersen’s class didn’t ride horseback under any circumstances; above all, not in clothes designed for such a purpose. It was presumptuous and it was foreign.

The old lady saw him from the window, cantering along the almost obliterated driveway, and by the time he had dismounted and tied his horse to an old apple tree, she was standing in the doorway, in the attitude of a tenant insolvent but unbowed.

“Good day!” she said. “Step in, Mr. Petersen!”

So once again he went into that parlour, dim and cool, aged and forlorn like herself, and once more sat down to wait for the cookies and the lemonade which he detested.

But this time it was not the old lady who brought them in. It was Minnie. Minnie, until that instant unknown to him, unimagined, but predestined to his ruin....

II

He was, innocently enough, pleased with her appearance, and saw nothing sinister, nothing extraordinary about her. A rather short, full-bosomed young woman of perhaps twenty, with a dark, freckled face and an expression very pleasant and friendly. She smiled at him as soon as she entered.

“Mrs. Defoe will be back in a minute,” she said, as she set down her tray. She was wearing a ruffled little apron tied about her neat waist, and her air was altogether housewifely and homely, as if she had been brought up from infancy in that very house. He couldn’t imagine who she was. He knew that the old lady lived alone, had lived alone since the death of her husband twelve years ago. This agreeable young person was certainly not a servant, and he was sure she didn’t belong in the neighbourhood. If he had seen her, he knew he would have remembered her.

She gave him a glass of lemonade and sat down opposite him, amiably prepared to entertain him.

“It’s growing warm, isn’t it?” she said, and he recognised in her voice and accent something far superior to the native language of Brownsville Landing.

“It’s what we want, for the fruit,” he answered, in his sing-song drawl. “It was a cold Spring here.”

“So I’ve heard.... What a nice horse! Is it yours, Mr. Petersen?”

He was very much pleased; he said it was, and went on to tell of the virtues and eccentricities of his beloved mare.

Minnie said she didn’t ride, but was very fond of driving.

Riding suited Mr. Petersen better; it made one feel more independent.

“Oh, well, you’re a man!” said she. “A girl can’t go riding about alone, very well.”

In some way this made him suddenly conscious of her smallness and feminineness and of all the handicaps imposed upon her by God and by man. Mr. Petersen’s views about women were definite. She was neither above nor below, neither hallowed nor accursed, but a quite ordinary human being, like himself, equally responsible, equally privileged. A woman—the right sort—was a friend, simply. And he saw in Minnie a friend, candid and good-tempered.... (Minnie a friend!)

“I was so pleased,” she went on, “to find a horse here. Of course, I don’t really know much about them. I’ve never lived in the country, really. But I love animals. All animals. And I think I have a sort of knack with them——”

He was acquainted with Mrs. Defoe’s horse, a ridiculously coy old skeleton that came into the village once a week harnessed to a buggy and driven by a Negro truck farmer who cultivated the old lady’s arid fields on shares. He could not imagine anyone’s having much affection for that caricature. It touched him. He could think of nothing to say, and the young woman had once more to start up a conversation.

“I hope I haven’t made your lemonade too sweet!” she began, anxiously, but was interrupted by Mrs. Defoe calling from upstairs.

“Minnie! Minnie!”

“Excuse me,” she murmured, and vanished. He heard her running up the stairs, then not another sound for a long time. He sat still, with his glass in his hand, and waited.

She didn’t run down; she came slowly, with obvious reluctance.

“I’m very sorry,” she said, “but—Mrs. Defoe wants to know—if you’d be good enough to—wait just a little longer——”

She was very much distressed; said something about preserves and next week and the expensiveness of jelly glasses. Mr. Petersen’s face turned still redder.

“Pshaw!” he said, awkwardly, “It doesn’t matter to me. I can wait any length of time. Don’t worry. Tell Mrs. Defoe not to worry. I—perhaps she will send a message when she’s ready——”

“Positively next Tuesday,” said Minnie, firmly. “And I’m dreadfully sorry, Mr. Petersen. I appreciate your kindness.”

She held out a small plump hand which he grasped earnestly.

“But just the same, who is she?” he asked himself as he rode away.

III

He went home to his house on a shady street of the village, and strolled into the kitchen where his housekeeper was cooking a rabbit.

“Mrs. Hansen,” he said, “who’s that up at Mrs. Defoe’s?”

Of course she knew.

“Her granddaughter, Mr. Petersen. Two of them,” she answered, eagerly, delighted at being questioned. “They came from New York a week ago. Two young orphans. Just lost their father. He was thought to be rich, but it seems he wasn’t. He didn’t leave them a penny. And they’ve been brought up to expect the best of everything, so I’ve heard. It’s sad, isn’t it, Mr. Petersen?”

He thought it was; the phrase “two young orphans” stuck in his mind, and while he walked about his garden, inspecting his trees and vegetables, he reflected on it. “Young orphans.” He remembered that she had been wearing a black dress, and that the ribbons in her little apron had been black. And there had been a sobriety in her bearing....

Mrs. Hansen wished to pursue the subject. She began when she had put his excellent dinner on the table.

“Excuse me, Mr. Petersen,” she said—he wouldn’t allow “sir”—“But which of the young ladies did you see? I hear that one of them is very handsome.”

He reflected. No, Minnie was not very handsome; nice looking, and with fine dark eyes, but not handsome.

He smiled a little.

“It’s hard to say. I’m not a judge, Mrs. Hansen. The one I saw was dark——”

“They’re both dark. But one’s——”

“This rabbit stew is very good, Mrs. Hansen,” he interposed, and she took the hint and left him to read the local paper in peace, as was his custom during dinner.

Afterwards he went out to sit on his little porch and smoke. And thought very kindly of the “young orphan,” who hadn’t a penny.

The least he could do, he decided, was not to trouble them about the rent—a decision which suited them, apparently, for he neither saw nor heard anything of the Defoe family for a long time. In fact, until he was needed by one of them.

CHAPTER TWO

I

Two years previously Mr. Petersen had arrived in Brownsville Landing and had rented an office in the most up-to-date building there was, putting up a modest sign, “Christian Petersen, Lawyer.” The other lawyers, who announced themselves LL.D’s, laughed at his sign, but all the same, in spite of it, or perhaps because of its old-fashioned simplicity, he attracted clients from the beginning. People liked him; he was careful, polite and he knew his business. Although a foreigner, he was not offensively eccentric or ridiculous. There were one or two little things, such as riding a saddle horse, and wearing breeches and leggins, which were not approved of, nor was his polite avoidance of any social relations. Still, he was always friendly and antagonised no one.

After six months of legal practice, he branched out unexpectedly. A new sign appeared under the old one: “Real Estate.” Now he began making money in earnest. The town was growing, new factories were building, and he knew how to take advantage of the growth.

It was a horrible, squalid little town, too near the city for any but the pettiest of retail trade to flourish, too far for any influence of urbanity. It was technically on the Hudson River, but as a matter of fact, the river bank was used exclusively for commercial purposes, freight yards and so on, and the town itself lay in a little hollow, which was stiflingly hot all summer long. There were the old people, whose families had lived there for generations, who had old Colonial houses and furniture; they looked with alarm and hostility upon the new element, the workers in the mills, the factories, the brick yards, this foreign-born, incomprehensible rabble, which was, nevertheless, the life blood of the town, which sustained three savings banks and fourteen saloons, which lay dead drunk by the roadsides, and crowded the public library. Then there were “new people,” factory managers, and their like, who were respectable and well-to-do, but not “quite”.... And with all these people Mr. Petersen was perfectly at home, buying, selling, renting, and arranging for them all.

Before long a third sign appeared: “Contractor.” And in this capacity he had perhaps his greatest success. He began with the building of some little cottages for the workers in a cotton mill, and he was so excellent and painstaking and experienced a supervisor that his fame spread rapidly. He explained with simplicity that as a boy in the “old country” he had been apprenticed to a builder. And although a lawyer, he was not at all ashamed of this; he was, on the contrary, quite proud of his thorough knowledge of the trade.

He was a Swede, son of a poor man, and self-educated, but there were few people in the town who spoke English as well as he did, in spite of a singing drawl and an indefinably exotic note.

II

He was sitting, this summer morning, at his desk, in his shirt-sleeves, reading a contract with twofold attention, once as a lawyer, once as a builder. His door was open, and when someone knocked, he called out, “Come in!” without turning his head. He expected to be spoken to, and when he wasn’t, he looked up to see who could be there, waiting in silence. And saw a most splendid young creature, tall, broad-shouldered, with a healthy sunburned face of vivid colouring and severely perfect features, eager, vigorous, yet full of a fine young dignity.

He rose at once and put on his coat.

“What can I do for you?” he asked, with his invariable politeness.

The girl’s brown face flushed, but she answered without hesitation.

“I’m Frances Defoe—Mrs. Defoe’s granddaughter, you know. My sister told me how nice you’d been about—Grandma and the rent, so I thought perhaps you’d be good enough to—oh, to give me a little advice.”

“Please sit down,” he said cheerfully. “Now!”

“I want something to do, work of some sort. I heard that you were the most progressive man in the village, so I thought you’d be the best one to consult.”

He was pleased and embarrassed by the compliment, which he knew to be merited.

“I don’t suppose,” she went on, in her clear, somewhat imperious voice, “that there’s much opportunity here, is there?”

He had found opportunities enough; still he answered, no, not many, but that perhaps——

“Have you had any sort of experience?” he asked.

She said no; but that she’d studied a lot and was good at mathematics and figures in general, and knew something of French and German.

“And I can type a little,” she added. “I used to do my essays and things on a typewriter at college.”

“Fine!” said Mr. Petersen. “Now, let’s see where that would fit in.”

He leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, thinking in his slow and prudent fashion.

At last he brought his glance back to the girl.

“If you’d care for it,” he remarked, “there’s an opening here. I need a young lady to help me, to be in the office while I’m out, to answer the telephone and so forth. It’s not much of a place—not more than eight dollars a week to begin——”

He paused.

“If it would suit you——”

“Oh, yes!” she cried. “If you think I’d do!”

He smiled; he had sufficient imagination to comprehend the thrill of a first job.

“Suppose we try then,” he said. “Let’s see.... This is Friday. Next Monday at nine, Miss Defoe.”

She gave him a bright, a grateful smile, and got up, ready to go.

“I’m awfully glad to get such a chance,” she said. “I hope I’ll be satisfactory.”

Mr. Petersen also rose.

“Mrs. Defoe quite well?” he enquired.

“Yes; at least she says so. She never complains.”

“And—I believe it was your sister I spoke to——”

“Minnie? Oh, she’s always well,” she answered, carelessly, and with still another glowing smile, went off, elated.

Undoubtedly she was the handsome one—a striking figure. But somehow, for him, at any rate, lacking the peculiar charm of her plainer sister; that sober and matronly young creature in the little apron.

He felt a most Quixotic interest in both of the “young orphans.” He would have done a very great deal for them. In fact, he did....

III

He was surprised and disappointed when she didn’t appear on Monday morning. At half past ten he gave her up and went out about some business, reflecting upon the instability of women. He came back in half an hour, and had just sat down at his desk when she entered, terribly flushed and dusty. Her expression was defiant, but her voice suspiciously uncertain.

“I’m very sorry to be so late,” she said. “It won’t happen again. I had to walk, and I missed the way. But I’ll arrange better after this.”

To hide his own distress and hers, he promptly gave her something to type—he didn’t care what—and sat down at his own desk, where he pretended to work. But he knew, without venturing to turn his head, that she was stealthily wiping her eyes, and he was sure there had been some serious trouble at home. A five-mile walk along that dusty road, on an August day! Poor girl!

There had indeed been a classic and unforgettable encounter, ending in a drawn battle. She couldn’t get it out of her head, no matter how she tried to concentrate her attention on this new work.

In the first place, her sister and her grandmother had both protested passionately against her plan as soon as they heard of it. She had gone home triumphantly to tell them that she had a “job” at eight dollars a week, in Mr. Petersen’s office.

“Why, child!” cried the old lady, affronted. “What an idea!”

She was really shocked. A Defoe working for a Petersen!

Minnie, too, was shocked; they both argued, reasoned and expostulated, but to no avail. Then Minnie, to the point:

“How do you expect to get there, Frankie?”

Her sister was slightly crestfallen.

“I thought you’d drive me in,” she admitted, “I’d pay you for it.”

“Thank you!” said Minnie, coldly. “But I couldn’t possibly. At that time in the morning, with all the work to be done.”

“Very well,” said Frankie, “I’ll walk.”

She was confident that when the time came, Minnie would yield, Minnie who was so kind-hearted, so self-sacrificing. And she couldn’t believe it when Monday morning actually came, and she remained obdurate.

“I said I wouldn’t, and I won’t,” she repeated. “I don’t approve of your working for that man, and I certainly shan’t help you in any way.”

Frances had no idea how to harness the horse; she was at her sister’s mercy, absolutely.

“Minnie, don’t be such a beast! And a prig. You’re not my nurse, you know. I’m old enough to decide for myself.”

“Decide everything you like,” Minnie replied, “but I shan’t help you in such a nasty, undignified affair. I can’t stop you. Why don’t you walk? You said you would.”

Frances looked at her with blazing scorn.

“You darned little hypocrite!” she cried. “Very well, I will walk, if it takes me all day.”

She wasn’t even sure of the way. She strode doggedly along in the dust and the scorching sun, furious and defiant, for more than two hours.

“I’ll walk back and forth every day,” she said to herself, “if it kills me. I won’t give in to her. She always gets her own way. Not this time, though. I’ll wait till I get my first pay, and then I’ll hire someone. I won’t give up this job!”

Twelve o’clock came.

“You’re a stranger here,” said Mr. Petersen, “perhaps you don’t know where to go for lunch. If you’d do me the honour, this first day——”

She was not quite sure what was the proper course for a business woman, but she knew that Mr. Petersen was absolutely “all right,” and to be trusted, so she accepted, and went up the street to the Eagle House with him.

The Eagle House was a fly-blown and extraordinarily dingy hotel patronised by travelling salesmen; the food was horrible but the atmosphere impeccably respectable. Frances was delighted with it. Never before had she felt so adult, so independent. She was sure that Mr. Petersen took her seriously, judged her upon her merits as an individual and not as a Defoe or as a young girl—not as a female at all. She liked him! She remembered what Minnie had said about him and rejected it all. “Common,” “presumptuous,” “thick-skinned”; snobbish nonsense, all that!

They walked back to the office and spent a very agreeable afternoon there. He explained the work to her, and was pleased by the quickness with which she grasped his explanations. He saw that she would soon be really very useful. She was not only intelligent and ambitious, but she had that remarkable feminine loyalty, that willingness to use all her powers in behalf of some one else, that is the curse and the glory of her sex. She never viewed Mr. Petersen as an ambitious young man would have done, as a stepping stone in her own career; she was genuinely concerned with how she could help Mr. Petersen with Mr. Petersen’s business.

Five o’clock came very soon, she thought. Mr. Petersen looked at the clock and closed his desk.

“Closing time!” he said cheerfully, “I hope your first day in business hasn’t——”

He stopped short because her face had changed so suddenly. She turned pale as he was speaking.

“Oh!” she said, with a gasp.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, anxiously. “Are you ill?”

“No—only—I’d forgotten.... Is there a short cut?”

Even her fine courage faltered at the prospect of once more walking those five dusty miles; it really appalled her. Yet, with a quite empty pocketbook, what could she do?

“A short cut?” he repeated, puzzled. “But—you don’t mean to say you expect to walk home?”

“I’ve got to!”

“Wait a bit!... I’ve a nice little trap in my stable. I’ll be back in ten minutes to fetch you. No; I shan’t listen to you. It’s out of the question, walking back.”

She was so relieved. She climbed into his nice little trap, behind his brisk little mare and they set off smartly. Of course, Mr. Petersen did look undeniably like a coachman, with his back like a ramrod and his red neck and his huge hands holding the reins so very correctly.... But what does it matter? “He’s a gentleman, if there ever was one,” she told herself. “He’s a dear!”

They had not gone half the distance, when whom should they meet but Minnie, in the ramshackle buggy, with the silly old horse. Her eyes were red and her expression uncertain.

“Frankie!” she cried, “I’ve been so worried! Come right in here!”

She smiled a wan greeting at Mr. Petersen.

“I didn’t think she’d really do it,” she said. “I thought she’d turn back. And when I realised that she’d really gone, all that long way—— You poor old Frankie!”

With her sister established by her side, she turned again to Mr. Petersen.

“Well!” she said. “We’ll have to give in. And let her go. No matter how much we miss her.”

Which gave him the impression that the objection to Frankie’s enterprise was solely one of sentiment. An impression altogether false, but then, he didn’t really know any of the Defoes or their principles. It never occurred to him that it was disgraceful and shameful to work in his office.

He looked after the sisters with a kindliness which had now become almost affection, and he thought what a loving, unreasonable little soul Minnie was. Couldn’t bear her sister out of her sight! A thorough woman, she was!

CHAPTER THREE

I

It was Frances who was usually considered the snob of the family, for Frances was imperious and inclined to be haughty, and had a sense of her personal dignity. But, as a matter of fact, she was as little snobbish as one so brought up could well be. She respected herself but she respected others. She was devilishly proud, but she permitted pride in others. She was capable of admiring worth wherever found and was quite honest about it. She really did not stand upon her Defoeness. She had, it must be admitted, a fair share of young conceit; she believed herself to be handsome and intelligent and resolute, and these were her claims upon the world’s regard. Whereas Minnie, far more humble as an individual, demanded a slavish servility from the majority of mankind simply because she was what she called a “gentlewoman.” It entailed no obligations, required no effort. One was, or one wasn’t. Like being born a sacred white bull. It was an involuntary sanctity which all right-minded people of the lower orders could instantly recognise.

Her grandmother thought as she did. Between them they ordained that Mr. Petersen did not exist, and they had tried in vain to convince Frankie of it. She had been very, very trying!

The two sisters drove on in a rather constrained silence after the bone of contention had gone. Minnie was absorbed in the management of the capricious skeleton, but was still able to suggest a forgiveness that irritated Frances. And Frances couldn’t quite stifle her remorse. She remembered dreadful things she had said to Minnie that morning. Things which had evidently made her weep.

All on account of Mr. Petersen; because he was so utterly unworthy of being served by one of the Brahmin caste. How vain their prayers and tears. She had suffered too much from that life without hope or sympathy. She knew that they could not comprehend her pain, and she could not endure attempting to explain. She knew that Mr. Petersen had saved her from despair.

She looked at Minnie’s obstinate, tear-stained face, and was filled with a great regret and a sort of loneliness.

“Oh, Minnie!” she cried. “Do try to understand a little! Don’t you see that I couldn’t bear a life like this?”

“There’s no use talking about it. Only, Frankie, don’t imagine it hasn’t been hard for me,” she answered. “After all, I suppose I am a human being.”

“I know it, darling, I’m awfully sorry for you!” Frances assured her contritely.

Minnie had a not very admirable trait of always pressing an advantage.

“In a way,” she went on, “I feel it more. I was home so much more—with him.”

Her eyes filled with tears; her thoughts flew back to that day, six weeks ago....

II

She was sitting alone in the studio, copying a cast of a child’s foot with great care. She had expressed a ladylike desire to “learn drawing” and her father had willingly consented, and arranged for private lessons, which she took in the afternoon, when the other girls had gone home. She was a bitter cross to her teacher, for not only was she quite without aptitude, but she likewise had no taste and no spirit. She couldn’t be fired. She wished to “learn drawing” simply; art and beauty had nothing to do with it. An artist, to Minnie, was a person who could so present things that you recognised them on paper. She was often pleased with her own drawings.

According to her habit, the young teacher had gone out of the room. Minnie was perfectly contented to be alone, to potter away with those exasperating fine little lines. She couldn’t be taught, anyway; it was of no use even to criticise. She had accepted what was told her about tacking paper on a board, about the mechanical uses of charcoal and fixative and so forth, and after that wished to go ahead in her own way, simply drawing. Nothing more to it. She sat before her easel very straight and serious. She was really absorbed in her messy little drawing; she thought it was “sweet,” and contemplated giving it to her father, nicely framed, as a Christmas present. He was sure to admire anything she did.

The big room was absolutely silent, peopled with ghostly white casts, heads, limbs, entire figures, lighted coldly from a skylight, so that she seemed in a world quite different from the brilliant autumn outside. Calm, quiet, satisfied, in the midst of an extraordinary peace—a peace which had surrounded her all her short years.

And which ended forever that day. She heard the footsteps of the teacher coming back along the corridor, more quickly than usual.

“Minnie, dear,” she said, “Miss Leland wishes to see you.”

This surprised Minnie mildly. With her usual docility she got up, put her charcoal in its little box, and hurried down the corridor, past all the rooms familiar to her for nearly ten years, rooms all empty now, with rows and rows of chairs and desks, with their blackboards and charts and maps, well known to her and more or less dear. She had been graduated from the school a year ago, and was now, of course, beyond all that and superior to it, but she enjoyed coming back for these drawing lessons. She clung to familiar places.

Down the stairs, three flights, and to the comfortable little study of the principal. Minnie had no reproof to dread, she was and had always been beyond reproach in everything, a model girl. She tapped on the door and was bidden to enter.

As soon as she saw her cousin there, she knew something was wrong. A great dread came over her. She didn’t look at Miss Leland at all.

“What is it, Cousin Ella?” she asked, sharply.

The forlorn spinster, who had years ago technically replaced their mother, suddenly burst into tears.

“My poor child!” she cried, “My poor child!”

She had come, trembling with dread and grief, prepared to “break” it to Minnie in a merciful way. But couldn’t endure the sight of the unsuspecting orphan.

“Minnie!” she sobbed. “Your poor father——”

Minnie had turned very pale.

“Hurry up!” she cried. “Is he—dead?”

Cousin Ella told her in a confused and broken way. A cable had come to tell of his death from pneumonia in Liverpool, the very day he had landed.

“I came to you at once” she said. “The very instant I had read it.”

That was her duty, of course. News of death must be spread without delay. She had driven off immediately to intercept Minnie, so that she should learn of it at least an hour sooner than if she had come home in the usual way.

Minnie was stunned and incredulous. Cousin Ella always got things mixed, anyway.

“Let’s see the cable!” she demanded.

Cousin Ella answered, with a shade of resentment, that she hadn’t brought it.

In a horrible nightmare daze, Minnie followed her to the carriage. It was not sorrow she felt, but dread; as if the catastrophe instead of having taken place already, were about to happen, were imminent. They drove along the familiar suburban roads, lined with charming houses, smooth lawns without fence or hedge, great trees, a domain prosperous, lovely and serene. They reached home, a grey stone house on a hill, planted with dwarf evergreens; they went in. Nothing in any way changed, the same well-ordered, comfortable dignity. It couldn’t be true! Father never coming back?

She again demanded the cable, and obtained it.

“Mr. Defoe died this morning. Pneumonia. Seven o’clock. Writing. Johnson.”

So it wasn’t a mistake. She looked round instinctively for support, for reassurance, in her terror.

“Oh, father!” she cried, in a sort of shriek. “Cousin Ella! Oh.... Do something! Don’t let it be!”

In that instant, the very essence of her father’s soul was comprehended by her; she could realise him, all his fondness, his immeasurable indulgence for her. She saw what she had lost, and was overwhelmed. It was the end of her childhood, the last wholly genuine, wholly disinterested emotion she was ever to feel.

III

He had been a “business man,” engaged in a very vague business—promoting schemes and so on. He had spent money lavishly on his adored daughters, and when he was at home, in the intervals between mysterious trips, he liked to talk to them about their future, and ask them what they wanted him to do for them. Poor devil! Evidently he expected to live forever, for he had made no provision at all for them, not even life insurance. There was not a penny.

Frances had been at college just a month when she was recalled. The lawyer had gone out to break the news to her of her father’s death and her own destitution, and it must be admitted that she had behaved very badly. At first she refused absolutely to come home. She said she would go on, no matter what happened; she’d work her way through college; lots of girls did. She had made up her mind to become a doctor, and she wasn’t going to be stopped now, at the very start. The lawyer pointed out that as this plan demanded quite eight years of study, she might well spare a day or two now to attend to her poor sister. So she consented, though she felt in her heart that it was the end. She went, but she was markedly sullen.

Sober little Minnie, tired out with crying, reproved her.

“Can’t you think of something else beside yourself, Frankie?” she asked.

Frankie was abashed. She had an unbounded admiration for Minnie’s moral worth; the very fact of her being smaller, plainer and stupider than she was, was somehow proof of it. She really made an effort to look upon her ambition as selfish and petty and to concentrate her eager and vigorous mind solely on her father’s death.

Minnie had no ambition to give up. She supposed that in the course of time she would marry, and that would suffice. She was not able to show much sympathy for her sister’s intolerable disappointment.

“I know it’s hard to leave college and all that,” she said. “But after all, Frankie, I don’t think you’d have stuck it out for eight years. You wouldn’t have liked being a doctor, when the time came. Such a queer thing for a girl.”

“Nonsense!” cried Frances, angrily, “you have the stupidest, most antiquated ideas!”

“I’ll work my way through,” she went on, “I’ll be a waitress or something. But I won’t give up!”

Minnie began to cry.

“Please, Frankie, stay with me a little while,” she entreated. “I’m so lonely!”

Who could refuse?

IV

Cousin Ella advised them to accept the offer of their grandmother, their father’s mother. She was the only living soul who wanted them, anyway.

Frankie protested.

“Brownsville Landing!” she cried. “Oh, Cousin Ella! It’s the worst place!”

She remembered visits there in the summer holidays, the boredom of it, the ugliness. But Minnie assured her that it would only be temporary, while they looked about and made their plans. She brought forward the sensibleness of it, made Frances feel how rash and headstrong it would be not to go.

She had her way, as she always did. The house was closed, the furniture sold, the servants dismissed. After a curious fortnight in a boarding house nearby, where their friends came to say good-by, they went off, with all their effects in two modest trunks.

Early in the afternoon they reached Brownsville Landing.

Even grief could not blind them to the fact that they were interesting figures—two young orphans. They were aware that every one of the idlers in the station knew who they were and where they were going. They followed Thomas Washington to the battered old surrey and sat down, perfectly decorous, without turning their heads, conscious nevertheless of being regarded with sympathy, with speculation.

They were tacitly agreed that it would not be correct to talk; in silence and concealing all trace of curiosity they went rattling off up Main Street and along the dusty five-mile road to the farm.

Their grandmother was waiting for them in terror. How to console them? Their loss seemed to her so terrible, so desolating. She could with truth say nothing better than—“You are utterly ruined and alone in the world, friendless and penniless.” She watched the carriage coming, with the girls side by side, images of decent grief, perfectly restrained; then, when the carriage stopped, the restraint vanished, and they rushed into her arms, sobbing.

She led them into the darkened parlour, and sat down on the sofa between them, trying in a trembling voice to comfort them with religion and proverbs, inextricably mixed. But Frankie was not in any way to be quieted. She wept so violently, so passionately that the old lady could think of nothing better to do than to lead her upstairs and urge her to lie down.

“There! There!” she murmured. “What can Grandma do for you?”

She answered, in a muffled voice, her head buried in the pillows:

“Please—let me alone ... a little while.”

“I think we’d better,” whispered Minnie, and they went out, carefully closing the door upon Frankie’s weeping.

The first glimpse of the farm had overwhelmed her completely. She remembered the college, august, beautiful, with the orderly and purposeful life that so appealed to her, she thought of her old home, as it would look now, in the late afternoon sunshine, of its dignity and freedom, the hope she had known there. And then this, this shabby, forlorn old house standing alone in a weed-grown straggling garden, surrounded by the neglected fields, which stretched away to the cold and unknown blue hills. All that she hated most, solitude, stagnation, neglect.

V

The old lady turned with relief to Minnie, who was so much more amenable. She led her down into the kitchen where she had been cooking her choicest dishes for the orphans, gave her milk to drink and fresh cake to eat, and watched her with melancholy in which there was considerable satisfaction. So absolutely what it should be was Minnie’s attitude. She was worn and tired, her eyes reddened with crying, all of which rendered so touching her pleasantness and politeness, her willingness to answer questions. A womanly little soul, altogether. The old lady fancied she saw in her the amiable and domestic creature desired by all old people, the consolation of her age; youth with none of youth’s disadvantages, the sedateness, the responsibility of maturity with the vigour and charm proper to her twenty years. She acclaimed Minnie a paragon, a Phœnix among maidens.

Minnie herself began to feel comforted. The quiet kitchen in the last brightness of the Spring day, with the dinner pots and pans hissing on the stove and a pleasant fragrance of freshly baked bread and cake in the air, all the homeliness and friendly peace about her assuaged her grief, strengthened her soul. Her thoughts began to turn to the future—she tried to imagine a possible life there.

“Do you still live here all alone, Grandma?” she asked.

The old lady sighed. Poor creature! When she allowed herself to think of it, she wondered how she succeeded in living at all.

Her husband had been one of those happy and lavish persons who obtain, Heaven knows how, a reputation for wealth. He had always had plenty of money to spend, and everything he or his family needed, but it was, unfortunately, a sort of Fortunatus’ purse, into which he could dip without limit, but which couldn’t be bequeathed, which for everyone else lay flat and empty.

At least he had insured his life, and his widow received a monthly income of twenty-five dollars from this—her sole income. An impossible situation. How she struggled along, no one knew, not even herself. Although struggle is not the word; she didn’t struggle; she simply went on existing, miraculously sustained by the forbearance of others. It was impossible to turn the poor creature out, rent or no rent, or to refuse her credit for food, in this town where she had lived for sixty years. She “managed.” When she couldn’t pay, she didn’t pay. Her quite simple rule was to give cash when compelled, and to commandeer the rest of her necessities. She didn’t worry very much over her debts. She had a phrase which satisfied her completely. “You can’t draw blood from a stone,” she would say.

Her son had sent her money now and then, but very little. He had not been a good son; ‘his father over again,’ she often reflected, ‘out of sight, out of mind.’ A present at Christmas time, or when the girls came to visit. He never asked her how she managed, because he didn’t want to know.

And here were the girls left as she had been left.... Her eyes filled with tears as she looked at Minnie.

“Yes, I’ve been a lonely old woman,” she said, “but I hope I shan’t be any more.”

Minnie kissed her soberly.

“No, Grandma, dear,” she said. “We won’t leave you again.”

“Where else could we go, anyway?” she added to herself, in her practical way.

CHAPTER FOUR

I

Frances had waked up early that first morning. She looked round the big, low-ceilinged room, at the pictures on the walls, sheep in a snowstorm, ships at sea, religious maidens, hung with a sole aim of covering up the most badly stained places in the faded paper, at the white iron wash stand, the lame chest of drawers on which stood a quite unrelated and unattached mirror, the dusty strips of old carpets serving as rugs, at all the dinginess and shabbiness and deserted old age, and in a sort of frenzy, she began to shake Minnie.

Minnie opened her black eyes.

“Well!” she said, sleepy but good-humoured.

“Minnie, isn’t this awful!”

“The same as it always was,” she replied, slowly, “and it seems to me we can be pretty useful here.”

Frances frowned.

“To Grandma? Of course.... Only, isn’t it senseless for two healthy young women to spend their time looking after one old lady?”

“I shouldn’t call it senseless.”

“I could help much more by earning money and sending it to her,” said Frances.

“You don’t have to decide all that now,” Minnie returned, rather severely. “You can give yourself a week or so to rest—after what’s happened.”

Frankie said no more, but remained unconvinced. She made up her mind she wouldn’t stay on that farm—not for a week.

Poor Frankie! Doomed to stay there for how many weeks!

She tried in vain to think of some means of getting away. At first there were a dozen radiant vistas, possibilities of all sorts. She contemplated becoming a secretary, a writer, a doctor’s assistant, a teacher, or, as a last resort, the wife of an extraordinary man. It was a long time before she could realise of how little value she was, how undesired. She hadn’t even money for her fare to New York, and her answers to advertisements found in the city papers were always late and never regarded. She was amazed to find herself in this blind alley: her eager hands groped for some sort of outlet; she couldn’t believe that she was actually obliged to stay in Brownsville Landing.

It cannot be denied that she was a trial to the other two. She shirked her share of the housework and remained obstinately shut up in her room with her old school books. And every time they drove into the village she insisted upon stopping at the Carnegie Library and exchanging piles of books, keeping Minnie waiting an outrageous length of time. Minnie and her grandmother had each to take out cards so that she could get as many books as she could carry.

She used to cry, too, at night, and tell Minnie she couldn’t stand it. Some days she was scornful and silent, scarcely saw them except at meal times; then remorse would seize her and the next day she wouldn’t touch her books, but would work to the point of exhaustion cleaning the house. When she did bend her mind to such humble tasks she far surpassed Minnie. She was quick, thoroughgoing, altogether competent, and, when she wasn’t cross, she was a delight to the others, gay, endearing, irresistible.

They couldn’t understand, couldn’t see how her ardent spirit suffered. Her ambition, still so vague that she was not able to express it, was unintelligible to them. Sometimes she would confess to Minnie that she wanted to marry an explorer.

“Or someone like that. Someone awfully famous and yet not stuffy. Not anyone who sits down and works.”

And perhaps that same day she would say vehemently that she didn’t care a bit about getting married, ever. She wanted to be something on her own account. There wasn’t much chance now that she could be a doctor, but there were plenty of other things, useful and interesting.

Minnie often asked to be informed of the object of all the studying her sister did.

“I don’t know, exactly,” Frances would tell her, “only it’s some comfort to think I’m not slipping back.”

II

Minnie fitted into that life as if she had been made for it. Serious, anxious, good-tempered, she followed her grandmother about, helping her, deeply interested in the daily work. She was not very clever or skilful, but she supplied the lack of these by a great willingness. She did not suffer from any passion for perfection; she was satisfied if she could “get through” what was essential.

She assumed responsibilities. She took it upon herself to get up first and get the breakfast. Frances used to watch her, springing out of bed in the half-darkness directly the alarm clock rang, and beginning to dress without wasting time even to stretch.

And not only was she invaluable within doors, but almost at once she had taken charge of the decrepit old mare lingering on in a filthy old barn. This had formerly been Thomas Washington’s duty, but Minnie assured her grandmother that this arrangement was extravagant and that Thomas was rough. In a very few days she had learned from him all the essentials in the care of Bess, and herself assumed the work.

She had a passionate, an exaggerated love for animals; compassion rather than love; for every dumb creature she saw she felt a distressing pity and, of course, being Minnie, an anxious sense of responsibility. She was forever worried by the thought that some beast was being ill-used. She even went so far as to follow carters to make sure they weren’t cruel. She had repeated disagreements with her grandmother because the old lady wouldn’t allow Michael to usurp her chair.

Michael and the other cats had at once become her special property. She put them into the cellar at night and first thing in the morning would unbolt the door and let them out, welcoming them with a smile maternal and solicitous. They were always waiting near the door, and would come jostling in at once, uttering impatient little cries, and looking up at her with luminous and plaintive eyes. She would bend over the worn and unlovely Spotty, mother of uncounted drowned kittens, with kindly sympathy; her young son Teddy, who was still silly and charming, she treated with indulgence; but for old Michael she had a manner at once motherly and propitiating. Michael, truculent old blackguard, his thick, short coat striped like a tiger, arrogant and complacent as an old pirate chief! He never showed any affection, but a sort of shameless allegiance, knowing that from her came all his benefits. She was really very happy in this life....

III

Providence was always on Minnie’s side, and Providence, it would seem, was set firmly against Frankie’s worldly ambition to leave Brownsville Landing.

The poor old lady fell ill; not at all suddenly, simply one day she asked Minnie to stop at the doctor’s on her way home from the village and, if possible, fetch him with her. He came, and remained shut up with the old lady a long time. When he came out of her room, he saw neither of the girls; he had to waste his valuable time seeking them. Minnie he discovered at last in the barn, preparing the old horse for her journey back with him, and she was so concerned about this, so insistent that the doctor should perfectly understand Bess’s delicacy and nervousness, that she forgot to ask about her grandmother.

“She won’t pass a milk waggon,” she explained. “You’ll have to get out and lead her by if you happen to meet one. She’s....”

“I’ll look after your horse,” said the doctor. “It’s only a matter of six miles. I’ll send my man back with her as soon as he’s back from the blacksmith’s with my own. And now that your mind’s easy on that score, perhaps you’ll be interested to hear that your grandmother’s in a bad state.”

“Oh, what’s the matter!” she cried.

“We’ll bring her round; don’t worry,” he replied evasively, “but it won’t be in a week, or in a month. She needs care and nursing. And you’ll have to see that she doesn’t go down the stairs,” he added. “She’s not to leave that floor for the present.”

Minnie stopped long enough to see how he handled Bess, over that awful rut near the gate; then she flew upstairs.

“Grandma!” she entreated, “do tell me what’s wrong!”

But the old lady refused to discuss it.

“Don’t fret, child,” she said. “I’ll do very well.”

“But it worries me so dreadfully not to know.”

The old lady remained firm. Some obscure sense of pride informed her that it was not fitting and proper to discuss the physical body with one’s grandchild. She would only admit that her heart was not as strong as it might be....

She didn’t seem particularly ill; she sat propped up in bed, knitting, quite cheerful. It did not occur to Minnie that the poor old thing was worn out, that the organism which had worked without ceasing for seventy-five years was in need of rest—eternal rest.

She knocked vigorously on the bedroom door, which Frances insisted upon keeping locked. Frances let her in with a very bad grace, which she ignored.

“Now!” she said. “Now, we’re in for it. Poor Grandma’s sick and the doctor won’t allow her to go downstairs for months.”

They discussed it soberly, Frankie lying flat on the bed, her hands under her head, Minnie sitting beside her.

“We’ll simply have to do the best we can,” said Minnie.

Frances agreed.

“It’s dreadful for her,” she said, “when she’s always been so active.”

IV

Minnie at once instituted a new régime, under which her grandmother received the best possible care. She waited on her devotedly, spent all her scant leisure with her; was, as usual, faultless.

At least, that was how she appeared to her sister. Frankie honestly could not see a fault in her. Except that she was sometimes a bit too diplomatic, too anxious to keep things pleasant. That is, she didn’t always tell the truth—exactly.... She was not at all abashed if she were found out; she had always the same reply.

“I thought it was for the best.”

The long, long days went by, all alike. At five o’clock the alarm clock rang. Minnie jumped up and closed the window, and lighted the lamp on the bureau while Frances, pretending to be asleep, lay watching her. The lamp-light made a little bright spot in the big shadowy room, showing Minnie like an actress in the spotlight, only quite without self-consciousness, dressing herself quickly, wishing only to be neat.

“I wish I weren’t a bit vain,” she would reflect. “Minnie’s so wonderful!”

Then Minnie would go groping her way along the black corridor, stopping always outside the old lady’s door to listen to her breathing, and, after that, there was always a long interval of silence, before she could be heard, coming up the stairs, slowly and carefully, with the tray.

She always opened the door of the darkened room quietly, so that she shouldn’t startle her grandmother, in spite of the fact that she invariably found the old lady wide awake. Then she went at once about the hated business of admitting a little light into the room with as little fresh air as possible. She had first to pull up the shade, which never would roll properly but had to be jerked up and down a number of times, then to unlock the window and prop it up with a stick while she struggled with the rusty catches and flung open the shutters. She set the tray by the bedside with the unvarying question:

“How are you this morning, Grandma?” with a sort of professional cheerfulness. “Did you have a good night?”

“Very poor, my dear,” the old lady would usually reply.

Minnie would say that she was very sorry, and after asking if there were anything else needed, would go on her way, not really at all sorry or disturbed. She had no idea what a “poor night” meant; she had never experienced one, never tried to imagine one. All her grandmother’s ailments were remote, vague and without interest for her. Her sole concern was to do her duty.

This done, she proceeded to wake Frances, and while she was dressing, got ready their own breakfast in the kitchen. Frances usually found her preparing an economical mixture of condensed milk and water for the cats, with old Michael standing at her side, looking up into her face, his pink mouth opening in a silent cry. The milk properly warmed, each animal bent its sleek little head over its familiar saucer, lapping steadily; now and then Michael looked up, licked his chops and seemed about to speak, then thought better of it and went on drinking.

Minnie was not good company at breakfast time; she was too much preoccupied with plans for the day. She had the obnoxious air of a very busy person trying to be polite. Immediately she had finished she hurried off to the stable, or to the cottage of Thomas Washington across the road, or about some other of her varied undertakings.

Thomas Washington was a highly respectable Negro who had begun life as “hired man” for their grandfather, but who had got on very well and was now a small farmer on his own account. He was always willing to assist Minnie with expert advice, but nothing further, unless it were to be suitably recompensed. Thrift had made him independent and comfortable; thrift he worshipped and practised, and it forbade him to do anything for nothing. The gratitude of a penniless Defoe was of no value to him, he didn’t care for it. Nevertheless he was of the greatest use to Minnie, because he knew how to do everything and she being so very “handy” was able to learn from his explanations. From the bedroom window Frances used to see her talking to him over his gate, or watching him as he illustrated some point of carpentry with grave gestures, and come tramping home again, in her shapeless old hat and a big apron, to work with noble cheerfulness.

Not for anything on earth would she have admitted that this cheerfulness was genuine, that it sprang from her satisfaction at finding work within her power, for the first time. At school, at home with Frances, she had, in spite of her naïve conceit, always been more or less conscious of inferiority, of being surpassed. Resolutely she covered this new satisfaction with a veil of martyrdom, made it a sort of reproach. She would never, never admit enjoying anything. Perhaps at the bottom of her queer little soul she was aware that the things she truly enjoyed were not altogether admirable—perhaps her spirit was appalled before her mind. Provided, of course, that she possessed a spirit.

Mysteries forever unsolvable, these greedy, hypocritical, obtuse little beings. Stupid, without sympathy, they none the less leave their impress on the whole world. They force us to believe that their blind and ruinous maternal passion—a perverted instinct—is a sacred and mystic thing; they hold up to us their animal jealousy of one man as “love”; complacently they reveal this little beast, which one loves with rage and disgust, and cannot resist, and they call it Woman. And perhaps it is. Perhaps those others, with hearts, with brains, with souls, are not true women, only the freaks of nature....

CHAPTER FIVE

I

Minnie turned in at the gate, or rather, the gate posts, for there had been no gates for years.

“I got a cold supper ready before I left,” she said. “Everything’s on the table. Don’t wait for me, Frankie; you must be terribly tired and hungry.”

Frances was touched.

“Minnie!” she said, “Really, you’re an angel!”

Minnie smiled indulgently.

“Silly old Frankie!” she said.

Indulgence was all that Frankie could obtain. In vain she talked of the good she could do them, of how she would be able to help them as she got on better, of the value of the experience to be gained in Mr. Petersen’s office. Minnie and her grandmother persisted in regarding this work of hers as a rather selfish frivolity; they humoured her, but they were grieved. Frankie was made to see that Minnie had chosen the better and the harder part, that she at least held inexorably to duty. They passed an evening not at all pleasant. The gulf between them was becoming more and more evident. Things were never quite the same again, after that first day at Mr. Petersen’s.

II

Unknown to the old lady, who would have been deeply shocked, Frankie and Minnie were in the parlour the next Sunday afternoon sewing, putting the final touches to a dress which Frankie was to wear in the office next day. When, suddenly, as she happened to look up, Minnie saw Mr. Petersen riding up the drive, on his splendid horse, and wearing his breeches and leggins and a quite new coat.

“Frankie!” she cried, in horror. “He’s coming in! Hide the sewing, quick!”

“He wouldn’t care,” Frankie objected, but nevertheless she obeyed, and every trace of their activity had vanished by the time Minnie admitted him.

“Might I see Mrs. Defoe?” he asked.

Minnie explained that she wasn’t able to come downstairs.

“So I’ve heard. But it’s a business matter. Perhaps she’d let me go up.”

She did; they watched him mounting the stairs, which creaked and shook under his heavy tread.

“What can he want?” asked Frances, nervously. “Oh, Minnie, I hope and pray it’s nothing about my not going on!”

“I don’t see what else it can be,” said Minnie, consolingly.

But she was soon enlightened. Mr. Petersen came tramping down again after twenty minutes’ talk and announced that Mrs. Defoe would like to see Miss Minnie.

The old lady was rather agitated.

“Dear! Dear!” she whispered. “The man’s arranged a second mortgage on the east field, so that I can pay off part of that first mortgage Mr. Bascom is so rude about. I don’t understand it very well, but I must say he’s very considerate—very considerate. Dear me! You’ll have to be civil to him, pet. Ask him to sit down and give him a piece of the fruit cake.”

She found him standing in the hall, talking to Frankie, and when she invited him into the parlour, he accepted cheerfully.

“Get Mr. Petersen a piece of cake, Frankie,” said Minnie. She couldn’t bring herself to wait on him.

He was polite, he was clean and well-dressed, he said nothing that could offend her, and yet she was grossly offended, merely by the sight of him, sitting there, in the Defoe parlour, holding his straw hat in his great red hands. Couldn’t he realise?

The fact of his being a Swede was enough. She had a very vague idea where and what Sweden was, knew nothing at all about its people, its history, its music, its literature. She considered all Scandinavians “low.” There was no appeal from that.

Unconscious of his lowness, Mr. Petersen talked on pleasantly, told them what was going on in the town, and all the bits of news he thought they might like to hear. He was actuated by a great good-will toward both of the girls, and a peculiar interest in Minnie. He had thought of her often since that first meeting.

He stopped a long time. When he had gone, Frankie began to laugh.

“Minnie!” she cried. “Did you notice? He really looks awfully like old Michael.”

Minnie refused to smile.

“I think he’s a horrid, presumptuous man,” she said. “I call it a shame that we have to put up with him.”

“Nonsense,” Frankie interrupted her, “it’s he who puts up with us. A darn good thing for us he does! I like him!”

Minnie was destined to see him often. As the old lady had requested, with great dignity, he called regularly every month and was conducted upstairs. She felt pretty sure that he didn’t get his rent, all of it, at any rate, but it didn’t affect him. He was as kind, as cheerful as ever, and always willing to make any repairs that were needed.

It didn’t occur to her for some time that she was the object of “attentions” on his part. She knew that he liked to chat with her, and now and then he brought her fruit from his garden. But she didn’t think, she couldn’t think, that he “meant anything.” With the gulf there was between a Defoe and a Petersen!

It was Frankie who first mentioned it.

“Do you know,” she said, “I think Mr. Petersen’s gone on you, Minnie.”

“Don’t be so vulgar!” Minnie reproved her.

“He’s always asking about you,” Frankie went on. “Oh, he is, Minnie, I know it!”

Quite true; he was. He saw Frankie every day, and was yet proof against her beauty and her happy courage; his heart never beat the quicker for her. He liked her very much, and respected her, and was courteous and kind and friendly toward her, but she had no appeal for him. In Minnie he saw every quality he most admired in a woman. He was happy to sit and look at her, always with an apron on, going about her business in her terribly serious way. He thought her kind, gentle and sympathetic, he thought her thrifty and capable, he admired her fine dark eyes and her matronly figure. He even fancied that she was peculiarly intelligent, because she always listened attentively to him, and was so silent, so mysterious herself. He noticed, too, how her grandmother doted on her, and how Frances looked up to her. He was, in his cautious way, always studying her, until he thought he understood her. While, as a matter of fact, he misunderstood her completely, in every way, like the others.

She was the quietest and the stupidest person in the house, and she ruled both the others; she was the least scrupulous, and they exalted her “goodness”; she did nothing well, and continually they praised her for her wonderful housekeeping. Enigma; extraordinary Minnie, quintessence of womanliness—in Heaven’s name, who is to sit in judgment on you?

III

In the autumn the old lady was permitted to go downstairs once a day, and on the first of these occasions, Mr. Petersen came with a gift of fruit which he had bought in New York. Frances had told him of the old lady’s improvement and he wanted, so he said, to congratulate her. He came as usual on his horse, and Mrs. Defoe, who was sitting by the parlour window, was the first to see him. She frowned.

“Silly nonsense!” she said, half aloud. “A carpenter, capering round the country like a fine gentleman!”

(A carpenter she had decided to consider him.)

He came in; his face and hands looked redder than ever, and he was frankly wiping his forehead with a huge handkerchief.

“Well!” he said cheerfully, “I’m very glad to see you so much better, Mrs. Defoe.”

“Thank you, Mr. Petersen,” she replied, demurely.

“We’re likely to have a mild winter, I believe,” he went on, “from all indications——”

He rose as Minnie came in, grave, like one interrupted in the midst of important work, but mindful of the duties of hospitality.

“I was saying,” he resumed, in his singing drawl, “I think we’ll have a fine, mild winter. I was working in my garden on Sunday——”

“On Sunday!” cried the old lady.

“That’s the only day I have time,” he explained.

“But—— Well, I have my little notions.... Very old-fashioned, I dare say.... You’re not a member of Our church, Mr. Petersen? I don’t remember ever having seen you there.”

He shook his head.

“A Lutheran?”

“No.”

“A—Catholic?”

“I am a Freethinker,” he said gravely.

This was the final straw; Minnie and the old lady stared at him in open disapproval.

“I think maybe on the other side we are not so—religious,” he said.

Mrs. Defoe had long been convinced of that, as she was of their immorality in general, but she was genuinely shocked that, under her roof, in the very room where the minister had sat not a week ago, in the very presence of her Bible and her prayer books, he should openly and without shame proclaim himself a Freethinker! Neither he nor Minnie had any idea what that word implied for her, with what horror and repulsion she had heard her husband speak of Tom Paine. She made some sort of excuse and, supported by Minnie, disappeared into the kitchen.

“I’ll sit here,” she whispered, “until that man’s gone.”

Mr. Petersen remained, happy and undisturbed, talking on and on, while Minnie listened with her usual polite attention, giving no hint of her burning anxiety to get on with her work. She scarcely heard a word; no matter what he was saying, she was thinking, “Oh, dear! Eleven o’clock and Grandma’s bed isn’t made yet!” That was of so much more importance and interest than anything he could say.

He went away, imagining that he had ingratiated himself with them both, by his present of fruit, and by his agreeable conversation; he didn’t suspect that there was now another and still blacker mark against him.

He had only one friend in that household, and that was Frances. Before she had been working a week in his office, she realised something of his quality and as time went on she grew enthusiastic.

“He’s a fine man,” she told her sister. “He’d make a wonderful husband. He has the disposition of an angel, really. He’s so honest, too. Everyone respects him.”

“I wouldn’t marry him if I were starving,” said Minnie, “that common, vulgar carpenter!”

“He’s not common and he’s not vulgar and he’s not a carpenter. I wish you could see his house.”

“I never shall,” said Minnie.

Frances often went there to fetch books for him when he was busy in his office. He lived in the town, in a solid old brick house which he had remodelled and greatly improved, with a respectable Swede and his wife to attend to his wants. Everything very orderly, very simple, very comfortable, a hundred times more civilised than the Defoe home. He had his garden, which gave him a great deal of pleasure, and an excellent little library of Scandinavian and English books, law books, novels, plays, a number of books on Socialism and economics. He read a great deal, in a laborious sort of way, slowly going through page after page and taking the ideas into his own head, to be examined there. His chief interest was Socialism; he could be—and often was—quite eloquent on that topic.

He was rather lonely in Brownsville Landing. He had found no one who was interested in his kind of Socialism, which was something more than discontent and jealousy; he found no one who had read what he had read on the subject; he was not able to interest himself in pool or poker, the popular recreations. Without being unduly vain, he believed himself to be considerably superior to the average inhabitant of the village. Even to the Defoes, as far as intellect and experience were concerned. He actually thought that he might be a good match for Minnie.

Frances thought so too. She read his books with more and more respect and liked to hear him talk. She insisted upon quoting him to Minnie. She liked his plain and fine manner of living, she honoured his virtues.

“Minnie, you’re an idiot,” she said, bluntly. “You couldn’t do better. If you’d come out of the middle ages and really look at him——”

“I don’t pretend to be a modern woman,” said Minnie, virtuously.

CHAPTER SIX

I

A year and a half went by, and nothing changed. Minnie was the same serious little drudge, Frankie went on with her work in Mr. Petersen’s office; he too was quite the same. The old lady was uncomplainingly busy. And the “affair,” also, between Minnie and Mr. Petersen had progressed not at all. Minnie had so willed it; she knew quite well how to check her very prudent suitor.

Everything was going just as she wished. She was used now to Frankie’s being away all day; she rather liked it, it gave her a freer hand. She thought of nothing but the daily routine and never tired of it. She would sit with her grandmother and discuss for hours the advisability and the possibility of a new preserving kettle, or whether they should send the rags to be woven into a rug, or whether Thomas Washington had been unfair about the tomatoes. She liked to tell Frankie that she worried about the future, but she really never did. She was remarkably contented. No great effort was required of her; she wasn’t expected to read, or to keep up-to-date; even to trouble about clothes. She could work along in a sort of pleasant daze, just as she wished, praised by everyone for whatever she did, her numerous omissions and failures unknown. The animals were an unfailing happiness to her; she had her grandmother to talk to, and Frankie in the evening, and there was always the gratifying sense of Mr. Petersen’s admiration in the background. Everything going so smoothly, so beautifully, until once more Frankie spoiled it all.

She came home one evening in a fever of excitement. The librarian in the Carnegie Branch—a nice, jolly girl who extolled Mr. Petersen and liked Frankie—had told her of a position in New York.

“She was offered it, but it wouldn’t suit her, so she recommended me. She says she’s sure I could fill it. Wasn’t it nice of her?”

Minnie said nothing.

“It’s an authoress; she wants a secretary. She doesn’t care so much about experience or training, but she wants someone presentable—of good family.”

That was emphasised to appease Minnie.

“It’s thirty dollars a month, free and clear. I’d send you half.”

Minnie looked coldly at her.

“I suppose you’d be only too glad to go,” she said.

“Of course not,” said Frankie, and dropped the subject for the time. Only in her heart longed and longed for that wonderful job, that new, entrancing life in the city.

Of course she got it. That goes without saying. She was twenty-two, and passionately desirous. Of course she got it! But after what a struggle!

At first she renounced the plan utterly. It was selfish. She went to bed, lay by Minnie’s side, weeping quietly for a long time in the dark, longing and longing. Then she grew desperate. She must go! She couldn’t give up such an opportunity. The next day she wrote to the authoress and presently had a letter asking her to call. So she was obliged to tell them.

There was a dreadful scene. They even wept. She was amazed by her own ruthless firmness; she had never imagined she could so trample on these two beloved creatures. She tried, poor girl, to explain something of her own fiery restlessness and vigour, her need for more life. But to no purpose; they saw nothing but her wish and determination to leave them. She ended, as one usually does, by losing her temper, and shut herself in the bedroom, trembling with anger.

“Do they expect me to bury myself here?” she thought. “Just to stop here, forever and ever? It’s all very well for Grandma, she’s seventy-five, and it’s all right for Minnie. A little old maid like her! But me—— I won’t!”

She temporised, fully resolved to hurt them this once, and then to load them with benefits, when her wonderful future should begin.

Daylight faded; the old room grew quite dark, the pallid yellow in the west turned grey, then inky. Her lamp was downstairs, and not for anything would she have gone after it. She drew a rocking chair up to the window and sat there looking out over the melancholy wide fields stretching to the mountains. One of those immeasurably solemn and majestic moods came over her: the night breeze blew on her face, sighing through the pine trees; her spirit was not on earth. High resolves, divine unselfishness, fired her; she wanted to help everyone, not only Minnie and her grandmother, but every single human soul. She felt urged to a mighty destiny....

Then the mood ebbed, and left her chilled and lonely. She could hear Minnie in the kitchen directly beneath her; her pleasant voice talking to Michael; sometimes a cough from the old lady. Like a knife her love pierced her, love for everything safe, familiar and homely.

In another minute she would have rushed down the stairs to fling her arms round her sister, to tell her she would not, could not, ever leave her. But at that moment the door opened and Minnie entered, lamp in hand; her eyes were red, her plain face rather pale.

“Frankie,” she said, and setting down the lamp, caught her sister in a tight embrace.

“Frankie,” she went on, “I’ve been talking it over with Grandma.... And we’re both willing—for you to go——”

She could keep her tears back no longer; they wept together on each other’s shoulders.

Minnie was the first to look up and dry her eyes.

“Now come downstairs, dear,” she said, “I’ve made delicious cornmeal gems for your supper.”

II

It was a bitter loss to Minnie. She drove Frankie to the station that last day with her heart like lead. And though she had voluntarily let her go, and said good-by to her steadily and cheerfully, her very real affection for her sister was hurt beyond remedy. She never again felt quite the same toward her, never lost that faint resentment; always remembered that Frances had wanted to go off and leave her, alone and lonely.

The house was dreadful when she re-entered it. She cried all day as she did her work, and went to sleep in miserable solitude. Oh, but she missed Frankie, the brilliant, the lovely, the ardent! And the more she missed her, the more deeply did she feel the wrong Frankie had done her.

Life had become unsupportable. She thought all the time of some way in which she could change it, a way which should, of course, satisfy her conscience.

For Minnie’s was a conscience which imperiously required satisfaction. She had always to feel sure that she was “doing right.” However, as she was always certain that all her aims were beyond reproach, her conscience never refused to sanction whatever means she employed in arriving at them.

She was more than a Jesuit. She did not so much believe that bad means were justified by a worthy end; she was simply convinced that no means used by her were, or could possibly be, bad.

Remorse and regret were unknown to her. And defeat, too, she had not as yet encountered. From her earliest years she had known how to get her own way. Either a serious manner made any request seem reasonable, or, if this failed, thoughtful consideration had always showed her a way to victory.

And yet, for all her crookedness and her muddle-headedness, and her fierce and ridiculous ruthlessness, wasn’t there something about Minnie that was really sublime? When you look at her whole life, in all its preposterousness, can you really say whether or not she was good? Or bad? Or perhaps was not either good or bad, but elemental and innocent, even in harm, like a force of nature?

She bent her mind now upon her problem, surveyed her situation from every angle. Useless to deny that she considered Mr. Petersen. She turned him over and over in her mind, and, not without deep study, rejected him. He absolutely would not do. She couldn’t be Mrs. Petersen. Although he had never asked her, never mentioned the subject at all.

She was quite determined to marry someone, though, and to marry soon. She couldn’t see any other end to her miseries and her loneliness. She realised that under the present circumstances she was not at all likely to meet anyone marriageable; she could not, like Frankie, roam the world to find a man; she had to use more subtle and more difficult means. And, actually, alone and unaided, the indomitable little thing thought of a way——

III

It was difficult to find a pretext for getting into the village that day. It was not her regular day, nothing was really needed, and no mail expected. Her grandmother was a little annoyed at such obstinacy.

“I can’t see,” she protested, “why on earth you want to go gadding off again to-day, with so much to be done.”

“I’ve seen to everything,” Minnie answered, and it was true.

“You’ll have to go in on Saturday,” the old lady reminded her.

“I need the wire,” said Minnie, calmly. (Chicken wire being the pretext.)

The old lady argued that she could wait. Minnie wished to know what was to be gained by waiting: she had any number of excellent reasons for not waiting. In the end she went out to harness Bess, with secret triumph, knowing that she had disarmed all her grandmother’s suspicions, and wouldn’t need to make explanations when she returned home.

She drove off in the buggy, sitting very straight, with a full sense of her dignity as a young lady of fine old family. It never occurred to her that she was in the least ridiculous. She was not physically vain, but she did consider herself impressive, aristocratic, and it would have been a cruel shock to her to know that the cultured spinster, Miss Vanderhof, used to laugh when she saw her driving by, and say to her mother, “There goes Miss Quixote!”

Penniless and proud Minnie was, but farther than that the simile would not hold. No one less likely than she to tilt against windmills, no one less sympathetic toward a lost cause.

She was engrossed in the management of the silly old horse, scanning the road for anything that might disturb its absurd old nerves, sternly resolved that it shouldn’t over-exert itself. She was convinced that she had a most high-strung, mettlesome animal to handle.

At last she reached the village and drove regally along the Main Street, bowing right and left to the tradespeople, almost all of them her grandmother’s creditors.

She stopped in front of the up-to-date office building, leaving Bess in charge of a reliable little boy in spectacles, personally known to her, then she climbed the stairs and knocked on Mr. Petersen’s door.

He was delighted to see her, drew forward a chair and sat down opposite her with a pleasant smile.

“It’s something new to see you here,” he said. “The first time, isn’t it?”

Minnie said it was.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she said appealingly, hesitatingly, “I know I shouldn’t take up your time, but—I don’t know anyone else I could possibly ask——”

“I’m only too happy,” he assured her. “What can I do?”

“Your advice,” she said. “I—things aren’t going—very well.... I wanted to put this in a New York paper. But I didn’t know which was the best, the most—respectable. If you think it’s.... Would you just please look at it?”

She had taken a piece of paper from her shabby little purse and now handed it to him. He read it, read it again, and his face grew scarlet.

“Young gentleman would receive board and practical instruction in farming in refined family. Beautiful location. Moderate terms. Apply X——”

“But——” he faltered, “I don’t ... do you mean ... you would teach farming, Miss Minnie?”

“Yes,” she said, calmly. “I could always ask Thomas Washington about things I didn’t know, when they came up. His truck farm is quite a model, you know.”

Mr. Petersen was suffering horribly; he felt that he could not keep a straight face much longer.

“But—you see ...” he said. “People don’t do that much—in these days. There are—you know—any number of agricultural colleges——”

“Yes,” said Minnie, scornfully. “That’s all very well. But practical experience is what anyone needs. You can’t learn farming out of books.”

Mr. Petersen tried to convince her that students at agricultural colleges didn’t occupy themselves exclusively with books, but he failed. She plainly considered all such institutions ridiculous and unpractical. He did convince her, however, that other people would very likely have the same silly notions as he had, and that it would be difficult, to say the least, for her to secure a pupil.

“Then suppose I simply advertise for a boarder?” she said.

Mr. Petersen was silent for some time, torn between a desire to placate Minnie, and a strong dislike for making a fool of himself. Suppose she were able to say afterward, “Well, you didn’t say anything against it. I consulted you!” No! He couldn’t; he had to be honest.

“The trouble is, nowadays people expect so much,” he said, with a distressed frown. “All sorts of conveniences. Bathroom, hot water, gas or electricity. I don’t believe—unless of course you were willing to make very low terms—and in that case you wouldn’t attract the sort of person you’d care to have in the house.”

“I’d have to take what I could get,” said Minnie.

Their points of view were so astonishingly different. Mr. Petersen wished to convey politely to her the idea that no sane person would dream of coming to board in a desolate old farm without even the classic advantages of fresh milk and “scenery.” And Minnie wondered that he couldn’t see the extraordinary and fascinating results which might follow the introduction of a strange man into their household. He might be an old man, who would naturally die and leave her all his money, or a young one who would marry her. She even thought, with irrational delight, of the possibility of an artist, or a poet.... Why wouldn’t the man understand that she didn’t care whether or not she made money from the venture? The essential thing was, that something should happen.

“And with the winter coming on,” said Mr. Petersen.

“I should think,” said Minnie, stiffly, “that there’d be plenty of people who would enjoy a nice, old-fashioned country winter.”

“An old person,” she added. “He might enjoy Grandpa’s library.”

This was absolutely too much for Mr. Petersen. He could no longer restrain himself; he burst into a tremendous laugh. He had a vision of a wretched old man, shivering in their frigid parlour, absorbed in that desolating accumulation of old hymn books, old volumes of sermons, bound volumes of long dead and forgotten magazines, and sickly old novels. By the time he had controlled his mirth, he had mortally and eternally offended Minnie. She rose.

“Thank you very much,” she said, with a polite smile. “It’s very good of you to advise me. I’ll think over all you’ve said.”

“Just a minute!” he cried in alarm. “Please!... Miss Minnie ... if it’s a question of—earning a—little pocket money—why don’t you consider a position in an office?”

A long silence.

“In my office, for instance? If you’d like your sister’s place——”

“No, thank you; I couldn’t leave Grandma,” she answered.

And went out, burning with resentment against him. He knew it; as she drove off he watched her from the window with a sigh of regret. Her pitiful ignorance, her enterprise, her obstinacy, touched him profoundly. His heart positively ached for her.

Alas, Mr. Petersen! By reason of his compassion, forever lost!

CHAPTER SEVEN

I

Behold Minnie, a week or so later, harnessing Bess, this time for a mission authorised and altogether blameless. She was going to the station to meet Frankie, who was coming home for a week-end.

For days she and her grandmother had been making preparations, partly from an affectionate wish to please Frankie, and partly from a desire to impress her with their own importance and progressiveness. They had both an unspoken but perfectly understood feeling that it would be intolerable for her to say or to think that everything was unchanged since she had left. The old lady was specially proud of a pile of copies of a weekly magazine which she had audaciously subscribed for, seduced by a nice young agent.

As for Minnie, she had something up her sleeve which she knew would astonish and amaze, and utterly kill any news Frankie might bring. She whistled as she worked in the stable with a slightly malicious delight in anticipating the shock. Although she was terribly nervous, too. She had not yet had occasion to try her strength, and she was afraid that they—the practical, experienced wage-earning Frankie, and the quite incomprehensible old lady, might crush her. She was bound and determined to win, but she wasn’t altogether sure....

She drove off in her usual majestic fashion, agreeably conscious of a new hat. In order that she might compete upon equal terms with Frankie, her grandmother had presented it to her, bought with money withheld from Heaven knows how many creditors. A triumphal progress through the town, and she came up the gravel drive to the station with something faintly resembling a trot. There, however, she was forced to descend, and hold the old mare by the bridle, patting her nose, trying with intense seriousness to soothe her. She couldn’t bear to see her start and tremble, with that distressing rolling of her brown eyes, at the first sound of the engine’s whistle. She had suggested that Frances should walk as far as the drug-store, so that Bess could wait there, out of sight of the trains that so disturbed her, but Frances wrote back with some spirit that she did not intend to lug a heavy bag four blocks for the sake of a silly old horse. She threatened to hire a hack, and rather than suffer that affront to the Defoe pride, Minnie was ready to make great concessions.

She was too much taken up with the horse to see her sister at first, and Frances had an oddly illuminating view of her, an impersonal view. It seemed to her that she had never before looked at Minnie without Minnie’s looking back at her; this was not the Minnie familiar to her as her own reflection in the glass, but a stranger, a solemn, swarthy little woman, very countrified, inclined to plumpness, looking older than her years. She felt terribly sorry for her, hurried to her in affectionate remorse for having so seen her.

Minnie greeted her with her very agreeable smile.

“Frankie, you look splendid!” she said warmly.

So she did. She had a new tweed suit and a quite plain hat, correct, well-chosen things that suited her tall strong figure and permitted attention to fly at once to her gay, brilliant face. Oh, there was some foundation for the Defoe pride! Minnie, in her mind, saluted her sister as a princess, the vindication of the family. She felt not the slightest envy; that was not one of her faults. Or was it that she was too well satisfied with her own quite different allure?

They drove through the Main Street again and past the up-to-date brick building, and, as she hoped, Frances asked her:

“How’s old Petersen these days?”

“All right,” Minnie answered, and was able to tell her several quite satisfactory things he had said on his last visit. He was a poor enough swain, but he was better than none, and the lovely Frankie had none! She listened with interest.

“I’m sure he means something!” she said.

Minnie admitted that she thought so too.

“But of course I don’t encourage him,” she said. “Imagine his even thinking of such a thing—a man of his class!”

“That’s all nonsense,” said Frances, bluntly. “I think he’s splendid. And he’s well read and intelligent—— If you like him——”

“Well, I don’t. Anyway, I’ve got other plans,” said Minnie. “I’ll tell you after supper.”

Frances didn’t ask what these plans were, didn’t show any special interest in them, never for an instant suspected their radical and disturbing character. She did not even notice that Minnie was unusually preoccupied.

She hastened into the house to embrace her grandmother and to make and answer all the traditional enquiries; then looked about her with a peculiar emotion that was almost pain. She loved the old place, in a way; looked toward it while absent as her home and sure refuge, dreamed of it often with longing, but with devout thankfulness that she was no longer imprisoned in it. The memory of the two years she had suffered there was ineradicable.

Minnie and her grandmother seemed to her pitiful, small and shabby. She wanted ardently to help them and to change and improve them. She tried to keep this benevolence out of her manner, but it was always there, and they felt it.

She told them that she hoped soon to be able to send money home regularly.

“I’m going to study shorthand,” she told them, “and then I’ll be able to earn much more.”

She saw their faces, unconvinced, not even much interested, and her enthusiasm waned. She would have to prove her good intentions to them.

II

Supper was over, and the dishes washed and put away. It was rather later than usual, on account of Frankie’s talkativeness, and the old lady announced that she was going “right straight to bed.” To her great surprise, Minnie stopped her.

“Please, Grandma,” she said, “I want to talk to you for a minute. Frankie too. Please come into the parlour.”

They followed her and waited while she lighted the blue china lamp on the centre table; then, at her request, they sat down. The occasion, as she intended it should, had taken on a solemn and important air; she faced them, flushed, serious, dogged.

“Grandma,” she began, “I’ve been thinking a great deal.... I don’t think we ought to go on like this.... Frankie and I aren’t children now, you know.... I think—we ought to know how things stand.”

The old lady looked at her but said nothing; she was waiting for a more definite challenge. She got it at once.

“I mean,” said Minnie, stoutly, “what have we got to live on?”

“What’s this!” cried the old lady tartly.

“I know we’re in debt. People are getting—horrid. They don’t want your—our trade. Really, Grandma, you ought to talk things over with Frankie and me.”

The old lady was almost unable to speak.

“I never!” she repeated, again and again, “I never! At my time of life ... talking things over with two girls of your age!”

“We only want to help,” said Minnie, ingeniously including her sister.

“I’ve got on pretty well for seventy-five years without your assistance,” said the old lady.

“Well,” observed Minnie, “it’s not what I call getting on. Grandma, we’ve got to have some sort of method. I ... do please let us know—what there is?”

“Really, Grandma, I do think it would be better,” Frankie interposed, “Minnie’s a wonderful manager, and I’m sure she could help you ever so much.”

“Two children! It’s outrageous! I’ve managed....”

“Grandma,” Minnie interrupted solemnly, “Mr. Simms spoke to me.”

This was a telling blow; the old lady winced under it.

“He was in a very bad temper,” Minnie went on, “and he said to me, in the rudest way, ‘How many years longer is this bill going to run, anyway?’”

Frances was distressed by the idea of debts.

“Oh, dear!” she cried, “That’s too bad! Do let’s talk it over, Grandma dear, and see what can be done.”

But Minnie met with an obstinacy inflexible as her own. Not one detail could they extract from the old lady. She took refuge in bitter reproach.

“I’ve worked for you both, day in and day out, for more than two years,” she said, “and whatever money I’ve spent was my own. I’m not accountable to anyone for it.” And she called them undutiful, ungrateful, unkind.

“Very well, then,” said Minnie at last, “if you’re going to take it that way ... if you refuse to—to co-operate, Grandma, then I’ll have to accept an offer I had of a position in an office.”

“What office?” Frankie asked, with interest.

“Mr. Petersen’s. He says I can have your place. I’ll go down to the village to-morrow and find a girl to stay with Grandma while I’m away.”

Now, both Frances and Minnie knew that, on account of her liability to those mysterious “attacks,” it wouldn’t do to leave the old lady alone, and they wouldn’t have done so under any circumstances, but she, poor old soul, terrified before their confident youth, not knowing what resources they had, felt them to be capable of everything. She pictured herself, solitary again, ill perhaps, with a strange servant prowling about, prying into everything, pilfering, undoubtedly setting the house on fire....

It was a most painful scene; she broke down, cried, surrendered. Minnie, although with tears in her eyes, saw her opportunity and pressed her point.

“Grandma dear,” she said, “tell us just what you have, and we’ll arrange some way to manage.”

The old lady confessed resentfully to a sole income of twenty-five dollars a month. They were incredulous.

“But in that case,” said Frances, “you must.... Why, there must be....”

“About how much do you suppose—we—owe?” asked Minnie.

This question the old lady couldn’t answer, because she actually did not know. She had never attempted to calculate; it was a topic she did not care to think about. She mentioned a number of tradespeople who had been “very nice”; in fact, she deluded herself into the belief they enjoyed serving a Defoe. They were, she assured the girls, perfectly willing to wait. Wait for Heaven knows what!

“Mr. Petersen, too, I suppose,” Minnie asked with a frown, “I suppose we owe him money?”

“Dear me, child, he’s only too pleased to have someone living here. He told me so himself. He couldn’t rent this place to anyone else; he’d simply have to pay a caretaker.”