SWEET CLOVER

SWEET CLOVER

A ROMANCE OF THE WHITE CITY

BY

CLARA LOUISE BURNHAM

BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY The Riverside Press, Cambridge 1894

Copyright, 1894, BY CLARA LOUISE BURNHAM.

All rights reserved.

The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A. Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.

By Clara Louise Burnham

YOUNG MAIDS AND OLD. DEARLY BOUGHT. NO GENTLEMEN. A SANE LUNATIC. NEXT DOOR. THE MISTRESS OF BEECH KNOLL. MISS BAGG'S SECRETARY. DR. LATIMER. SWEET CLOVER. A Romance of the White City.

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. BOSTON AND NEW YORK.

CONTENTS.

CHAP.

Fair Harvard

Uncle Adolph's Letter

A Morning Drive

Clover's Announcement

Miss Berry's Visitors

The Unexpected Guest

On the Rail

The Telegram

A Christmas Visitor

Aunt Love's Intercession

The Dedication

Gorham Page's Commission

May Day

Clover's Invitation

The Court of Honor

A Massachusetts Celebration

The Bronze Baby

Clover's Diplomacy

The Ferris Wheel

The Midway Plaisance

Old Vienna

On the Lagoon

The Hotel Dance

Dress Parade

In the Peristyle

The New Year

SWEET CLOVER.

CHAPTER I.

FAIR HARVARD.

"Well, Jack," said Mr. Van Tassel, entering his son's room at Cambridge, "the deed is done. Behold you a full-fledged alumnus of glorious old Harvard!" The speaker grasped the young fellow's hand, his face expressing his pride and gratification.

"Yes, sir," answered the graduate, springing to his feet as he cordially returned his father's greeting, "full-fledged, but rather reluctant to try my wings, I must confess. It is hard to fly away from all this."

As he spoke, he glanced around the room, one of the most luxurious in historic Holworthy. Each familiar object seemed newly invested with pleasurable association. His eyes lingered upon a silver chafing-dish, resting amid a lot of congenial litter on a mantelpiece. Jack was accustomed to admit modestly that when it came to manoeuvring with a chafing-dish, he could not deny his own genius.

"You know it has been home to me for four years," he added half-apologetically, as he pushed forward the easiest chair for his father, who dropped into it.

"I know, I know," returned the latter, nodding. "I am glad college life has been such a satisfactory experience to you. I have felt the lack of it myself often. Well, yesterday was a glorious day," he continued, with a reminiscent smile. "Fine weather, fine people. As good a climax as you could have desired. Those exercises around the tree are very amusing," the smile broadening. "I give you my word I didn't know you in that scramble. I didn't know my own boy. You were the worst-looking tramp of them all to begin with, Jack, and at the end you were the most demoralized bundle of rags of the lot."

The speaker's hearty laugh rang out. It was a matter of course that Jack should have been superlative in any college undertaking; but now a pensive smile was the young man's only response to his father's mirth. To-day's reaction found him in a rather thoughtful and sentimental mood.

The Van Tassels had always been well-looking as a family. Richard Van Tassel was a handsome man of a florid thick-set type, and he admired this sole remaining child the more that his physique was so dissimilar to his own. Tall, slender, athletic, Jack stood unconscious of his father's scrutiny, which took in every detail of his appearance, from the wavy black hair scrupulously parted in the middle, to the feet planted apart on the thick rug. It was a delicate-featured, refined face that the young fellow had, a transparent face that betrayed feeling; that flushed with annoyance or radiated pleasure from brilliant brown eyes and perfect teeth. But now the eyes were shadowed; and when they caught the father's gaze after a half-minute's abstraction, Jack smiled with the gentle, winning expression which was his birthright, and had uncalculatingly won for him every favor he had ever asked.

"Pardon me. Did you speak? My wits are wool-gathering to-day."

Mr. Van Tassel ceased his silent satisfied survey, and picked up a book from a neighboring table. "I was about to ask you, what next?" he said.

"What next?"

"Yes; or perhaps I should say where next? I have business in Washington, regarding the World's Fair, which may detain me there some time. Are you with me?"

"No—a"— Jack appeared to rouse himself with an effort from his mental pictures. "The fact is, I've a lot of invitations that I should like to accept before I go back to Chicago."

"Very well. We will postpone talking plans, then, until that time comes. You are to go abroad for a year if you like, you know."

"Yes, thank you. I've a fancy that I would rather put off that trip awhile."

"Why so? A wedding journey in view later, perhaps?"

Jack did not appear to think this raillery required a specific answer. He smiled again, in the thoughtful mood so foreign to him.

Mr. Van Tassel, however, had been glad of an opening for the question. He listened with veiled eagerness for his son's reply, and was disappointed that none came.

When he spoke again, it was with new seriousness and a shade of embarrassment.

"You must have met many charming women, during the past four years, who are strangers to me," he said.

"Yes, I've met a lot of women," returned Jack with a patient sigh at this irrelevance. What were charming women to a man who was saying good-by to his crew!

"But old friends are best still?" persisted his father.

"Yes, no doubt," responded the other, vaguely courteous.

"You haven't forgotten the girls at home?" said Mr. Van Tassel.

"No,—no indeed," replied his son, shaking himself together with the realization that he was playing poorly the part of host to this kindest of fathers, for whom it was impossible in the nature of things to enter into the subjects which were uppermost in Jack's interest just now. "How"—with spasmodic eagerness—"how are they all?"

"Who? Anybody in particular?"

The young man stirred restlessly. This was persecution. "Oh no, my Hyde Park friends generally."

"There is no especial news, I believe. Mrs. Bryant fails very slowly, I think; but of course I do not dare hint such a thing to her devoted daughter."

"H'm. Aren't they all devoted?" asked Jack with waning vigor.

"Oh, Clover is the chief one. She is son and daughter both, in that family. All responsibility falls on her. A fine girl," said Mr. Van Tassel emphatically.

"A pretty one, too," returned his son, stifling a yawn. "Mildred is coming along, though. I thought she was after Clover pretty sharp, the last time I was at home. Growing to her hands and feet, you know, and all that."

"You will be glad to see Clover again," said Mr. Van Tassel tentatively.

"Yes, very glad to see them all," was the reply, delivered with conscientious heartiness.

"Not especially glad to see Clover?" continued Mr. Van Tassel; and now it was impossible even for the preoccupied graduate not to see that his father was, in his own words "driving at something."

He looked in surprise at the strong face thrown out against the dark blue cushions of the chair, and straight into the steady gaze of the gray eyes that had never looked unkindly on him. Before he could speak, the older man continued:—

"I had an idea that there was a boy and girl attachment between yourself and Clover Bryant,—a preference on your part, perhaps on hers"—

Mr. Van Tassel's face had never looked more attractive to his son than now. Its expression was so loving, so earnest, that Jack forebore to laugh, as he at first felt inclined to do.

His father did not appear to think this a laughing matter. Moreover his attitude gave promise of consent and sanction in case such compliance was called for.

"No, sir. You were mistaken," answered the young man respectfully. "There was never any sentiment there."

It was further mystifying to him that a shade of relief certainly passed over his father's face at this reply, and yet it might be explicable on the ground that although Mr. Van Tassel would not refuse his son's wishes, he was glad to find that there was no question of a union between his own family and one so poor and obscure as the Bryants.

"There might well have been a preference," was the grave answer. "Clover, young as she is, is a pearl among women. The Breckinridges have just gone abroad for a year, and Mrs. Breckinridge, before she left, told me that she had invited Clover to accompany them; but the girl refused to leave her mother and the children. Think of the way the Breckinridges will travel, and what it cost her to refuse!"

"Whew, that was rough! Clover is a brick," declared Jack, his eyes bright enough now with their accustomed interest in life. "It ought not to be allowed. Can't we do something? Get a trained nurse for Mrs. Bryant, and invite her and the children to our house for the year?"

Mr. Van Tassel smiled at this outburst. "We not only can't do anything," he returned, "but we mustn't say anything. Clover bound Mrs. Breckinridge to secrecy, because it would be such a grief to Mrs. Bryant to discover what her daughter had renounced for her."

"She's strong, Clover is," said Jack, with an admiring shake of the head. "I shall be glad to see her again."

Then he asked his father a question regarding business, and the subject of the Bryants was dropped.

CHAPTER II.

UNCLE ADOLPH'S LETTER.

Several weeks later, in the long, narrow back yard of one of a block of wooden houses in Chicago, a girl was hanging out clothes on a line. An occasional hot breeze blew the soft brown hair in stray locks across her forehead, and the sun beat down from the glowing sky on her unprotected head.

"Clover, Clover darling," called a weak voice from an open window, "you've been out there so long! Aren't you almost through? You will get a sunstroke. Do, at least, put on a hat."

The girl brushed her flying hair back with one hand. "I'm all right, mother," she called, her cheery tones contrasting pleasantly with the sad voice.

"She is doing too much. I know she is," murmured the feeble watcher within, keeping her yearning gaze on the lithe young figure. "Bless her brave heart!" The dim eyes filled.

The front door slamming broke in upon the mother's meditations, and another girl entered the shabby room where she sat. She was a tall, broad-shouldered young creature of seventeen, the face under her heavy, half-falling brown hair flushed with heat, health, and happiness. She seemed to fill the room as she skipped up to the white-haired figure and pressed the infantile curve of her peachy cheek against the pale face.

"Oh, I wish for the thousandth time that we could live nearer the lake," she said in hearty young tones. "Every block one comes inland, one feels the difference in heat. Where is Clover?"

"In the back yard, hanging out clothes," was the anxious response. "I'm afraid for her, Mildred. I wish you would take her a shade hat."

"Hanging out clothes!" repeated Mildred, amazed. "What in the world"—She did not wait to finish her sentence, but hastening into the hall seized a broad-rimmed hat hanging there and hurried to the back of the house. Running down the steps, the dancing light quite gone from her clear eyes, she approached her sister.

"What does this mean, Clover?" she exclaimed accusingly.

The elder, already highly colored, now looked uneasy. "You know Mrs. O'Rourke couldn't come to-day to do the washing," she answered.

"No, but she can come Wednesday," retorted the younger, placing the hat upon the sunny roughened hair of the head which was decidedly below her own in height.

"Don't stick the hat-pin into me," cried Clover, smiling up into the displeased eyes.

"I don't know but I will. Just look at your fingers, all white and parboiled!"

Clover clasped the offending hands behind her.

"What did you do it for?" asked the young girl severely. "Here I've been having the most elegant jouncy sail,—it is deliciously rough,—sitting at my ease on a cushion, while you've been working like this. It isn't a bit fair."

"All right. Help me to hang up the rest of these clothes, and I'll tell you why I did it."

Mildred snatched up a small blouse waist and a couple of clothespins. What was the use of cooling off on Lake Michigan if one must return to this? How the sun did broil down!

"Was Elsie with you?" asked Clover, as she pinioned the side of an apron to the line.

"Yes, and Frank too. Harry Billings took us all out."

"I'm afraid that the children will become something of a nuisance down at the boat-house. Of course with you it is different; but the others hang around and look wishful, and of course the young men are too good-natured not to ask them. As for Frankie, he is such an amphibious little animal, we can't help his living down there."

"I only wish we all did live on the shore," grumbled Mildred. "I never shall be resigned to being so far from the lake."

"Oh, it is something to live in the country," rejoined Clover comfortingly, "and Hyde Park is pretty all through."

"Country! Hyde Park!" said Mildred scornfully. "You know it is all Chicago now."

"To be sure; but the annexation is a novelty yet, so no wonder I had forgotten. However, what's in a name?"

"Not much, perhaps," said Mildred, tired of reaching up in the hot sun, and inclined to be pessimistic, "but since we have moved into the middle of this dingy old block, we had better stop talking about living in the country. You haven't told me yet why you took this last caprice. We can't afford to go away and have a change in summer, I understand that; but surely there is a difference between stark and staring mad. There are more sensible forms of recreation than to do a family washing on an August day."

"I haven't done the biggest, hardest pieces, you see," said Clover gently. "There, this is the last. Now let us go over under our tree and talk a bit while we cool off." She turned toward the house and sent a reassuring kiss toward the figure seated in the window, and made a dumb show of applauding her own performance, smiling gayly as she clapped her hands.

"Sit down, Milly," she said, when they had reached the shade of the one tree their yard boasted; but as soon as they were seated, the elder girl fell silent, and clasping her hands behind her head looked up through the foliage of the ragged oak, slowly dying as all its brothers and sisters do in this region, pining for the old prairie isolation.

Mildred fanned herself with her hat, and regarded her sister half crossly, half curiously.

"I hate to talk over bothers with you, Milly," said the latter at last; "but I do have a lot of bothers lately."

Mildred wondered if it were imagination that she saw tears, gather in the other's eyes. If they were tears, they were well trained to obedience. Clover sank still farther back and lay upon the grass, and any moisture that had crept forth retreated to its source.

"Is mother any worse?" Mildred asked in a hushed voice.

"No; although she is no better, and any suffering she may endure is the hardest trial we can have to bear. Other perplexities are trying in proportion as they have relation to her, and all our perplexities must, in the end, bear upon her. How to conceal them is the study."

"What have you to conceal? What?" asked Mildred quickly, her large, childlike eyes full of wonder. "Mother knows, she has to, that we barely make both ends meet, and she thinks you are a perfect wonder, the way you manage. What is it, Clover? Is it Frank's education you are worrying about again? Goodness! Don't tell me you did the washing to save up money for that?" The speaker's eyes widened with surprise and disapproval.

Clover shook her head and smiled faintly.

"I've noticed lately that you aren't half so jolly as you used to be."

Clover sat up with such suddenness as to make Mildred start. "Has mother noticed it?" she demanded.

"No, not that I know of. You needn't look so tragical. I only mean you are ever so much more thoughtful and old-womanish just lately than you used to be. I'm sure I don't see why you should let yourself be bothered if we're all willing to live right down at the bottom of everything, and I don't make any fuss about wearing the same dress to school until the girls must think I've grown into it."

"You have been good, Milly, just as good as you can be"—

"Pshaw, I'm nothing to what you are for goodness. We all have to feel the pinch of poverty together," said Mildred with some grandiloquence; "and in a place like Hyde Park it is easier to bear than it might be in some other places. All the old settlers know what father was, and that his honor wasn't lost when the money was. Everybody we really care for has been friendly to us since he died. Just think, it is nine years now, and we do manage to have some good times," finished the girl, quite heroically she thought, since there were such a number of joys that she yearned for and had to behold hopelessly in the possession of her more fortunate companions. "Come now," she added insistently, "you are still guilty of that washing and not a word said to excuse yourself."

"Milly,"—the older girl looked into her sister's eyes with an expression full of loving trouble,—"I hate to tell you, but Uncle Adolph's allowance hasn't come this month."

"It is a little late, that is all," said Mildred, but her face fell and her heart began to beat unpleasantly.

"No," very sadly, "he has written mother that it will not come any more. Fortunately I opened the letter as usual, and I have not shown it to mother. She thinks it is only delayed."

"But he owed the money to father," said Mildred vehemently. "It was not charity to us, it was a debt."

"Yes, but he simply says that on account of losses he will not be able to let us have any more money, and we cannot force him."

"Mr. Van Tassel could. Have you told him? He is so very kind to us."

"Yes, he is very kind; but there is nothing he could do about this."

"What shall we do?" asked Mildred blankly.

"That is what I have been asking myself for days past."

"That is why you did the washing!" said the younger slowly and with awe, as though this thought did indeed bring home a realizing sense of the situation. "We are awfully—miserably poor," she added in a panic.

"Hush! Not so loud," warned her sister.

"I shall have to leave school and help you do the housework, and Frank can never have any education at all," declared Mildred despairingly.

"He will have to get a position in some store as a cash boy. Mr. Van Tassel will probably help him that much," she finished dismally.

"Hush! Don't keep bringing Mr. Van Tassel into it," said Clover nervously. "I can't bear the thought of begging anybody for anything, even influence."

"Then you have thought of something," exclaimed Mildred eagerly.

"No, I haven't, I haven't," rejoined the other hastily. "Oh, Milly, forgive me." Her tone and gesture as she put one hand to her face and quickly extended the other to her sister touched the latter with great surprise. Mildred took the hand and squeezed it between her own.

"Forgive you, you old darling," she said, tears springing to her eyes. "What for, I wonder? Because you have three children to bring up and work for when you are only twenty? or because you, the prettiest girl in Hyde Park, have wizzled up all your poor fingers washing for us? What is it? Oh, Clover dear!"

For Clover was crying in a hasty, furtive fashion, stifling her sobs, and drying her eyes with light touches, fearing to make the lids redder.

"Because I couldn't keep it from you, Milly. You see it doesn't do any good for me to bother you except to relieve me a little."

"And isn't that something?" with anxious affection. "Why, you make me as vain as a peacock. I didn't know I counted a bit. I thought you had to have somebody old, like mother or Mr. Van Tassel, to get any comfort out of them."

"Now of course you feel as I do, Mildred," said the older sister, her quick self-control regained. "Nothing is any matter but to keep this from mother."

"Well, I don't see how we're going to do it for any length of time."

Clover bit her lip. "But as long as we can, we will."

"Of course. Why, poor mother would be crushed!" Then with a change of tone, "Here she comes this minute, Clover Bryant!"

"And my eyes are so red!"

"Better not come out here, mother dear," cried Mildred, rising precipitately and advancing to meet her. "The—the clothes are so damp, you'll—you'll take cold; and the sun is so hot, you'll be—be"—

The mother, with her delicate face smiling beneath the prematurely white hair, placed her arm around the tall girl as she met her, and together they advanced, Mildred most reluctantly, to where Clover sat smiling and striving to look indifferent.

"Have you come out to hear the jays scold?" asked the latter. "There is one up there now. Let me hang the hammock for you." She sprang to her feet.

Mrs. Bryant, without relinquishing her hold on Mildred, put the other arm around her eldest daughter.

Clover flushed violently. There was a look in her mother's loving eyes, the hint of a smile on her lips, which the girl recognized. It was a certain exalted expression of the dear lined face which her children had seen before, and it always meant rising to an emergency. The girl's heart contracted painfully.

The wet clothing on the lines flapped spasmodically behind the trio. Unsteady board fences enclosed the narrow heated area. The poverty-stricken tree stretched its gaunt, ill-clothed arms aloft, and the blue-jay's harsh, jeering note added one more petty discomfort to the surroundings.

"My dear little girls," said the gentle voice with unusual tenderness.

The sisters only regarded their mother in an apprehensive silence.

"I went to your room for something, Clover, and I found my letter from Uncle Adolph. I have just been reading it. Don't regret it. I had to know."

CHAPTER III.

A MORNING DRIVE.

In a city like Chicago, where events occur with phenomenal rapidity, two or three years make great changes in a neighborhood. Hyde Park, which long hung back like a rebellious child loath to yield its independence, had at last placed its reluctant hand in that of the mother city; but with the suburb's growing population there had already come a new state of affairs. It was no longer the case that everybody in Hyde Park knew everybody else. Those families who made homes there when but two trains ran daily to and from town, felt, on the rare and rarer occasions of meeting one another in a stranger crowd, the drawing of a tie tender as that of kinship.

Mrs. Bryant belonged to this pioneer set, and so did Mr. Van Tassel. To those residents who had danced with them "long before the fire" at the parties in the old Hyde Park hotel, this was reason sufficient why the wealthy widower should manifest a continued interest in the friend of his young manhood and her fatherless children. Those long-finished polkas in the long-destroyed hostelry on the lake shore, where scattered neighbors once met with the unconventional jollity of family reunion, had left behind them a green memory in some hearts.

Florence Badger had been a fair little bud at those gatherings, and of course Richard Van Tassel, her gay young partner, was not likely to forget either her or his chum, Lewis Bryant, whom she afterward married. The children of the two families had gone to school together and carried the intimacy on to the next generation; and when Mr. Van Tassel's wife and daughter had been taken from him, more potent to comfort than any other soul had been the gentle invalid, the friend of his youth, whose lines for many years had fallen in hard places.

So, small wonder that the fine house on the lake shore and the shabby home on the back street had kept up an interchange of civilities. These had been chiefly carried on by the young people until Jack had gone to college. After that it was to the Bryants that Richard Van Tassel liked best to carry his boy's letters, and talk over his haps and mishaps, secure of sympathy.

Of late he had not been blind to the fact that the shabby home was growing shabbier, but it was not an easy matter to bestow gifts here. This very spring he had remarked that Clover's eyes looked too large, and that they rested with greater anxiety on her feeble mother. He had even hinted to Mrs. Bryant a trip up into Wisconsin or across the lake; but she had parried the potential offer with gentle firmness.

Many a drive around the parks and boulevards did the invalid take with her daughters in the glistening Van Tassel equipage, greatly to the wonder of certain Hyde Parkers whose experience did not date back to "before the fire."

The owner of the horses was away, that they knew. Jack Van Tassel graduated from Harvard this June, and his father had gone East for the great occasion. Now it was early August, and he had not returned. "It was so lovely of him," many said, "to give poor people like the Bryants the use of his carriage while he was away. A real charity. Not many men would be so thoughtful."

These neighbors wondered if the freedom of the fine equipage extended to the freedom of the house; but this they could not discover, for the Bryants were not talkers unless surrounded by old friends. Hard experience had taught even the young people reserve. Nevertheless it might have been a gratification to these curious ones to know that the Bryants had never taken liberties at the Van Tassel mansion. It had even been interdicted always to the girls by their careful mother to accept a general invitation to sit on the piazzas and rest, when they came home from the sailing expeditions their souls loved.

The house was fascinatingly near the water, and the level lawns about it cool with a fine mossy greenness. The hammocks and rocking chairs on the spacious piazzas gave alluring invitations to recline and study the ever-changing coloring of the illimitable fresh-water sea; and the elm-trees—not even on the boulevards were there such respectable elm-trees as had here been coaxed to endure the harshness of bleak lake-winds.

This being the case, it was hard, Clover and Mildred used to think, and their little sister thought so still, that unless Jack happened to be on hand to give them a specific invitation, they must pass this unused luxury by, and trudge around the corner up the sunny main street, and so on to the sandy roughness of the unpaved avenue they called home. Still they never thought of rebelling. The rule was as fixed as those of the Medes and Persians, and it must be a right one because mother made it.

On the very day that Clover, hard pressed by thoughts that ran in a discouraging circle, disfigured her pretty hands by doing the family washing, Mr. Van Tassel returned to Chicago.

On the following morning the sun was reflected brightly from the wheels of his buggy as he drove a pair of well-groomed horses to the Bryant house. Elsie Bryant, a girl of fourteen, saw him as he drew up before the wooden walk. With a little exclamation of delight she ran down the flight of steps to greet him.

Mr. Van Tassel gathered the reins into one hand and reached the other down to the child.

"How are you all, Elsie? Mother about the same? Oh, I'm sorry for the headache. Is Clover at home? Will you tell her I have a business errand to do this morning, and very much want her company on my drive? Tell her she must indulge me. I can't let her off. I'll come in later to see Mrs. Bryant."

"Lucky Clover," thought Elsie as she ran obediently up the steps. "I just wish he had asked me."

And lucky Clover thought herself when she received the message. She was so tired of her own depressing thoughts! The fresh air and the sight of the kind familiar face would do her good.

When Mr. Van Tassel saw her run down the steps in her blue gown a few minutes later, he descended from the buggy with middle-aged deliberation.

"Welcome back," said Clover, trying to speak cheerily. It seemed to her that misfortune must have set an ugly visible mark upon her.

"Thank you for that. Thank you for coming," said Mr. Van Tassel, looking at her as their hands met as though he saw nothing unlovely. He assisted her into the buggy, and following, started the horses.

"Did Jack come with you?"

"No. I thought that I might find him here. He expected to arrive about now."

"Proud, happy Jack, I suppose," said the girl smiling.

"Rather a homesick Jack I fear he will be for a little while, unless he has recovered already. You know the young man has a way of recovering from depression."

"Jack and depression! What an impossible connection of ideas," laughed Clover. It seemed wonderful to herself that she could laugh. It was so long since she had. Three days is an interminable term of misery when one is twenty. They were bowling swiftly along Drexel Boulevard, beside the rich foliage and flower-beds of the landscape gardener; the air was clear and cool, and driving was quite a different thing when Mr. Van Tassel held the reins in this light vehicle, from the same exercise by favor of his solemn coachman, in the heavy and gorgeous carriage driven at a rate suited to Mrs. Bryant's sensitive condition.

Up Oakwood to Michigan Boulevard they sped, and soon the buggy stopped before one of the splendid stone mansions on that avenue.

"I shall be but one minute," said Mr. Van Tassel as he dismounted, and he kept his word. When Clover saw the brevity of the message given to the servant who answered his ring at the door, a faint wonder passed through her mind that Mr. Van Tassel had thought fit to bring it in person.

She was not inclined to quarrel with the fact, however, and when her escort returned and the heads of the spirited horses were turned back to the south, she inhaled a long breath of satisfaction.

"You have not found pleasanter weather than this where you have been, I am sure," she said.

"No," he answered, "nor pleasanter circumstances. I have thought of you a good many times though, Clover, and wished you might be with me."

He turned and looked into her eyes as he spoke, the innocent blue eyes that returned his gaze fully. Her pretty lips parted in her interest. "That was very good of you," she said sincerely. "I would like to go to every interesting place, so I am sure I should have echoed your wish. Where was it? At the seashore?"

"A part of the time,—yes."

"I wonder if I shall ever go East," exclaimed the girl with a sigh. "New York, Boston, Philadelphia, I should like them to be something beside names to me,—but what an idea!" She broke off with a short laugh. Her thoughts had indeed, like unruly steeds, kicked over the traces by which they had been harnessed to carry her by a safe road out of a perplexing labyrinth.

"Not an absurd idea at all," said her companion quietly.

"Our lake looks very like the ocean, I suppose," she continued, after an involuntary sigh.

"Not very much. I don't say it is not as beautiful," replied Mr. Van Tassel loyally, "but the electric blues and translucent greens of Lake Michigan have little in common with the deep, strong indigo, or bottle-green, of old Ocean. There is as much variance in their complexions as in their voices; as much difference between the sweep of the fresh-water surf and the boom of the ocean's tide, as between the tones of a tenor and a bass voice."

"But, Mr. Van Tassel, think of the lake storms!" returned Clover, her Chicago spirit piqued. "I've stood on the lake shore many a time when I could lean my full weight against the wind and be supported; and how does the boom of the breakers, hammering the piers on those nights, sound at your house?"

Mr. Van Tassel smiled. "Well," he answered, "we will say like a tenore robusto in full force. But there again comes in the difference in disposition. When Lake Michigan becomes angry, it flies into a white rage in a few minutes, and as soon as the spell is over calms down into comparative placidity; while the ocean, slow to wrath, relaxes but gradually, storming on with splendid fury under a dazzling sun."

"A difference greatly in favor of the lake, I should say," returned Clover.

"Ah, but think of the terrors of Michigan's caprices. Smiling, even seeming to dream in a happy reverie one minute, rocking its little sailboats softly on its breast like a gentle mother, all at once with appalling suddenness it flies into a passion, and while the fit is on works havoc that inflicts long years of misery, though the very next hour may find it dimpling again in gay carelessness of calamity. Not so with the ocean. The sailor relies on its steady winds, and the honest signs it hangs in the heavens for all to read, giving fair warning of approaching danger."

"Why, Mr. Van Tassel! As if you didn't know that our sky hangs out signs too, only, as Jack says, one must be brought up right on the lake to understand them. I had no idea you were such a poet, and so disloyal."

As the girl made her warm protest, her companion threw back his head and gave the hearty laugh that his friends liked to hear.

They had sped down Grand Boulevard, through Washington Park, and now entered the Midway Plaisance.

What that name suggested to Chicagoans up to a short time ago was the loneliest, most rural drive of their park system. It even wound through the woods at one point, making the refreshing variety of a curve in the city of straight lines.

On this morning of the summer of '89, when Mr. Van Tassel's horses turned into the broad avenue, their hoofs rang out in unbroken stillness. Not another vehicle or human being was in sight. Birds glided noiselessly among the trees that lined each side of the driveway. Grassy fields stretched away in level, tranquil monotony in all directions. It was the Midway Plaisance: but with no dull rhythmic beat of drum to be the first greeting of each new arrival, no shadowing forth of the scenes in the near future, when this unknown plot of ground should become the rendezvous and rallying place of the civilized, half-civilized, and savage nations of the earth.

It was the Midway Plaisance. What's in a name? The words now signify to millions a babel of tongues, a baffling concatenation of noises and odors, a dizzying throng of sensations and emotions, a wondrous collection of novel sights. Yet, a little while ago it was the Midway Plaisance, and Richard Van Tassel chose to drive through it with this young girl because he wished for solitude, and he could find no more secluded and unfrequented spot.

"You must be introduced to the charms of the sea before you decide on the question of my loyalty," he said.

"That will never be, I fear," she answered soberly.

"Never is a long time. Hope for the best," said her companion cheerily.

"I do try to, but I haven't Jack's cork-like disposition." A sadness had crept into the girl's tone in spite of herself.

"She is thinking of Mrs. Breckinridge's invitation," decided Van Tassel.

"Your day will come. Every man and woman has his opportunity," he suggested.

"I hope you are right," answered Clover rather dispiritedly.

Her companion looked around at her tenderly, but her large eyes were gazing between the horses' heads. "My poor little girl," he said, and at his tone Clover glanced at him in surprise. "Is the mother not so well?" he asked. "Something depresses you."

"I do not think she is worse," answered the girl slowly, but her eyes moistened, and she looked away.

"I understand. It is hard for you to be the head of the family. You will grow old before your time."

Clover became afraid that she should cry. She looked resolutely at the antics of a gopher on the fence.

"I have been growing young ever since we started," she answered lightly at last. "I did feel haggard with age early this morning."

She might have added, and at every hour of the night; for her novel problems would not let her sleep.

"I hope you mean to tell me your troubles always," said Mr. Van Tassel.

"That is very good of you," returned the girl, turning her head and giving her companion a faint April smile, "and very tempting too. Even though I am nearly certain that you cannot help me, I am weak enough to wish to talk to you of what I must repress at home."

"I am glad to hear that," returned the other gravely, "gladder than I can express."

So Clover told him of her uncle's debt to Mr. Bryant, of the small allowance he had consequently made her mother, and of the fact of its cessation; and while she still talked, their swift horses left the Midway Plaisance and entered Jackson Park, quiet and refreshing at this hour of the morning. The broad green field in its centre was studded with haystacks whose perfume filled the air. Robins, thrushes, and catbirds lurked in the quiet groves, and swans sailed majestically on the lakelets where soon the Eskimo canoes would be equally at home.

Adjoining the field of new-mown hay, ducks paddled along the still green banks of another sheet of water, as contentedly as later in the same spot their brothers would swim in the shadow of the white columns of a treasure-house of painting and sculpture.

Mr. Van Tassel drove his horses through the site of future State buildings, down past the pavilion which afterward the people of Iowa beautified with their ingenious decorations. Here, close to its gray stones, he drew rein, and watched with his companion the gentle waves break upon the sea wall.

Clover's recital had drawn to a close, and now that it was over she became for the first time embarrassed in the silence that followed, and doubtful of her own wisdom in having accepted the relief of speech. Her companion was her mother's best and oldest friend. He had urged her to confide in him. His present silence was doubtless owing to a deep consideration as to how he might be helpful to her; but he was a rich man. Clover had not thought of that till now. Her only hope, so far as her vague thoughts were formulated, had been that he might communicate with Uncle Adolph more effectively than she herself. Her cheeks grew slowly, richly crimson. He turned, and she dreaded what he might be going to say. When her timid eyes found his kind gaze, he extended his hand to her.

"Do you trust me entirely, Clover?" he asked.

She was mystified, but as he evidently wished for her hand she placed it in his.

"Yes, I—I"—she began incoherently, possessed by the suspicion that she had been indelicate, and torn between the keen feeling of her mother's needs and her repugnance to receiving a gift she might seem to have requested.

"Don't be afraid, dear," he continued very kindly and quietly. "If we are both honest, we shall not hurt each other. You have been frank. Now it is my turn."

CHAPTER IV.

CLOVER'S ANNOUNCEMENT.

The next day Jack Van Tassel came home. The first warning the Bryants had of his arrival was in hearing the familiar whistle of a scrap from Carmen, which was Jack's particular call.

Only Clover and her mother were at home, Mildred having chaperoned the younger children to a lawn party in the neighborhood.

"It is Jack!" cried Clover before the footstep had reached the steps. She looked hopefully at her mother, who returned the significant gaze.

"He wouldn't whistle," continued the girl with soft eagerness, "if he weren't—if he weren't the same old Jack."

"I hardly feel equal to seeing him to-day," said Mrs. Bryant tremulously.

"You shall not, dear," was the hurried response, as Clover ran downstairs from her mother's room where they had been sitting. She threw open the house door.

"Clover herself," exclaimed the visitor, laughing with pleasure, and wringing her offered hand with painful cordiality.

"I'm glad you've come at last," she answered; "and you don't look sorry."

"Not a bit of it," was the breezy answer. "Where are Mrs. Bryant and Mildred, and the small fry? I want to see everybody."

"The girls and Frank will be inconsolable to miss your first call, but they've gone to a children's party; and mother, I am sorry to say, isn't able to see any one to-day." While the girl spoke, her eyes alternately met Jack's with a sort of wistful gladness, and then fell away. Her face expressed the relief she felt to be thus standing and talking in friendly, easy fashion with her old schoolmate.

"But come in and sit down," she added. "You did not come home at Christmas, so we have a whole year's talking to do."

"Let us talk in the boat, Clover. Sorry Mrs. Bryant isn't well. I'll call again when she can see me. It is just right for a sail. Don't you want to come?"

"Yes, indeed," returned the girl heartily. "I have had only one sail this summer. Let me go and get my hat, and say good-by to mother."

She ran upstairs and presently returned. Not a trace of yesterday's care appeared in her countenance as the two started out gayly on the road they had often traveled together.

Hyde Park still bore traces of being a country village. The young people walked through fields of sweet clover and goldenrod, where now massive hotels and blocks of granite and glass uprear. Chatting and laughing, they hastened on toward the boat-house.

"It is pleasant to be back, I declare," said Jack heartily, looking with affection over the billowy water, striped with greens and blues, which had been his boyhood's playground. "Father says old friends are best, and I believe he is right."

"Is he coming with us, this afternoon?" asked Clover half shyly.

"Why no," replied her companion, looking at her with undisguised astonishment. "You don't mean to say father has developed a taste for sailing while I have been off at the seat of learning?"

"He always liked it very well, didn't he?"

"Why, I believe he always preferred driving. I told Michael to put the Flirt in the water. Yes, there she is. Now for an old timer, Clover; the wind is superb."

The girl followed the speaker out upon the pier, and, resting her hand lightly in the one he offered, stepped into the boat. Jack followed, and they moved slowly along the little harbor and out through the narrow opening between pier and breakwater, which has ushered so many boating parties into the joys of a brisk voyage, and will do so no more forever.

Jack set the sail, and they began to move swiftly southward. The breeze was strong, and had already raised waves over which the boat sprang, striking a billow before she cut it, with a splash which echoed in the heart with a thousand invigorating memories. It was going to be what Mildred called a "jouncy" sail, and Clover, leaning back amid the boat's cushions, would have been supremely content could her mind have been set at rest upon one point.

Jack, unconscious of her reservation, bared his head and, holding the tiller with one hand, waved the other toward his companion. "Now I am at home," he declared.

Clover smiled and nodded in silence. She regarded him with less complacence than she had felt half an hour before. It was passing strange to feel a little shy and uncomfortable as she looked at Jack,—not to be able to chaff him concerning the little mustache that was a new acquisition, and which scarcely shaded his mouth.

The Flirt's white wings bore them past the dark pines on the shore, past the sea-wall of the pleasant park, and the canal which fed its little lakelets. Then on, past sandy beach and wild wood where the children picked flowers in early summer, past sloughs where adventurous boys skated in winter,—a deserted, unpromising, monotonously level bit of country, surely, to be chosen as a cynosure for the eyes of all nations; to be destined to become "the dazzling focus of a world's activity."

Clover, as she gazed, saw only her old playground. No vision came to her of a white city, lovely and unsubstantial as though fashioned from the clouds of heaven, and holy because the offering of the best of men's hearts and brains. No such foreshadowing came to blot out and lift her above her personal hopes and fears. She was recalled from absently viewing the landscape by Jack's cheery voice.

"Shall we put about?" he asked.

"Yes, we might as well," she replied, and as she lowered her head the boom swung over.

"I hope you won't get wet," he continued apologetically, for the spray was flying high and higher. "This wind is growing to be too much of a good thing. You must excuse my preoccupation, but I'm trying not to let you be drenched."

"Oh, never mind me," replied Clover. "You know you always said I was almost as good as a boy. I'm not going to lose my reputation on account of a few pints of water, I assure you."

"If I had only put in a reef," said Jack regretfully, "and you had your waterproof."

But the lake was growing boisterous and the facts remained that they had neither reef nor waterproof.

"I suppose we shall have to go in, but this is fine, Clover."

"Indeed it is; and does it really bring you to the conclusion that there is no place like home? I am interested, for you see I don't know any place but home."

"Is that a fact?" Van Tassel glanced at his companion with a recollection of what his father had told him of her relinquished European trip.

"Yes, I am narrow to the last degree. I have never been out of my native State."

Jack eyed the girl with admiring compassion.

"You've never even seen a hill, Clover."

"Never,—excepting the one in Lincoln Park."

Jack laughed. "Which was carted there in wagons," he added.

"The things I've never done, and never seen, would fill a large volume," went on the girl, her soft hair, golden in the sunlight, blowing into a halo around her forehead, as she leaned on her elbow among the cushions; "but then I'm not sure I shouldn't be as homesick, if I went away, as May Frisbie was last summer. Do you remember, while she was in Switzerland, she wrote home: 'For real scenery give me Illinois!' Ah, here is some Lake Michigan!" for a dancing noisy wave had leaped above the gunwale, a few spoonfuls vaulting saucily into the girl's lap.

"Pardon me, Clover. It is too bad; but we will be inside in a minute. Sorry we had to be cut short in our career."

"Never mind, we've sailed while we sailed,—not dawdled along."

"And you will come with me again soon, I hope."

White-crested billows pursued them to the narrow opening in the breakwater, as, wind-buffeted, the little craft entered the harbor.

When they landed, Jack left the boat-house janitor to take down his sails, Clover put on her hat, and they walked up to the road together.

"All this time and not a word of congratulation," began Jack gayly, as they started toward home.

Clover met his eyes with a quick, glad turn of her head, relieved from the suspicion that had been filling her with apprehension; and impulsively she put out her hand.

Her companion clasped it. "Well, better late than never," he said.

"I am so glad!" she returned, low and excitedly, "I was afraid you didn't know it,—that perhaps your father hadn't told you of our engagement."

"What! You engaged, Clover?" returned Jack in great astonishment, pausing in his walk. "Why, of course I didn't know it." He shook her passive hand again, and started on. "I haven't had a chance for any talk with father yet, for when I dropped in at the office, this morning, he had some old duffer with him. I only meant just now to fish for congratulations for myself, that my grind is over. I've been receiving a lot of them lately, you know. Excuse the egotism. Now I understand why you have seemed to have something on your mind this afternoon. I do congratulate him most heartily, whoever he is. He's a happy man. Do I know him?"

Jack saw his companion turn pale to her lips, as he asked the question, and her eyes amazed him by their piteous wistfulness as she raised them to his.

"I have made a great—a great mistake to speak," she returned faintly, "but I thought from what you said—and I hoped so you would not object! He is," eagerly, "oh, he is happy, Jack. It is your father."

The young man stared blankly into the white face, then his own turned red. Through all the tan of seashore sun she could see the color rise, and as the affectionate interest that had shone from his expressive eyes gave place to a violent revulsion of feeling, it seemed to her that a physical coldness crept around her heart.

"This is news to me," he said in a voice she did not know. "I—I wouldn't have believed it of you, Clover."

The girl winced. The contempt of her old playfellow was the severest blow she had ever had to bear. She walked fast under the stress of feeling, and her companion kept pace with her.

"This is why she refused the Breckinridge invitation," thought Van Tassel hotly. "My poor, generous, blind father."

They kept silence for half a block, then Clover spoke again, recovered calmness in her pale face.

"Your father said that if we were honest with each other, we should not do wrong," she said clearly, "and we have been very honest. He loves me. He wants to take all my cares upon himself. Nearly all our means of subsistence has recently been taken from us, and I was bewildered and helpless when Mr. Van Tassel came to me with his love and generosity."

"An irresistible temptation, no doubt," replied Jack dryly.

"It was a great temptation. I have the future of three children in my care, with all my inexperience; but the keenest pang in my helplessness was mother's condition."

"You are honest; if you were equally so with my father, I do not wonder it occurred to his great heart to do as he has done."

The hot blood flew to Clover's cheeks. "You are wrong to insult me," she said, controlling herself with heroic effort, for her hurt youth longed to seek relief in flight instead of waiting to parley. "You will soon know that Mr. Van Tassel loves me; and—and"—suddenly turning suppliant, "when he told me so, and represented all that he could do for me if I would consent to marry him, why should I have refused? I did not know it would make you so angry, Jack, and," with eager explanation, "I do not care for anybody."

Her companion gave a short laugh. "A nice lookout for my father," he said curtly.

"You will not understand—you will not approve!" she said passionately, in a low voice that began to tremble. They were nearing her home now. "It is hard for you; perhaps it is wrong to you. So far as my own happiness goes, I could give it all up for your sake, for your rights are to be considered. Ah, there is mother in the window. She sees you, Jack!"

The white head behind the window-pane inclined, and Van Tassel mechanically lifted his hat.

"Do you see the peaceful look in her face?" went on the girl's unsteady voice. "She has only looked like that since yesterday. No," with new strength, and no supplication in her manner as she unconsciously drew herself up, "I will not waver. Say what you please to me. Think what you will of me; I can have but one thought, I must have but one, and that is—mother!"

Van Tassel lifted his hat once more, as to a stranger.

"Not one friendly word?" she asked desperately, her breath coming fast.

"What do you want?" asked the other. "That I should wish you prosperity?"

"You surely do not wish me ill, Jack?"

"You have just declared your intention not to consider me. What can my wishes be to you? My only course is to efface myself," and without another word of farewell Van Tassel bowed, and, turning on his heel, hurried away up the street.

CHAPTER V.

MISS BERRY'S VISITORS.

Miss Lovina Berry stood on the stone doorstep of her square, white house early one evening soon after the scene narrated in the last chapter. The elm growing in her yard would have put to shame those so carefully tended in front of the Van Tassel mansion a thousand miles away, and more of the noble trees stood outside the white picket fence and shaded the country road.

The flowers in her carefully weeded garden were homely and wholesome, like her own placid face, as she stood, elbows in her hands, regarding the neighbor who was in the act of departing from her hospitable roof.

"You're sure 't won't inconvenience you a mite, Loviny?" asked the latter, folding a brown paper parcel beneath her shawl as her anxious upturned face met Miss Berry's benevolent gaze. "You won't need the pattern this week?"

"No, I sha'n't need it this week," answered Lovina pleasantly; then, as the other started off contentedly toward the little white gate, she added in an equable, unvexed undertone: "but if I want it any time within two months I shall have to come after it, that I know. There ain't anybody slacker 'n you be, Ann Getchell, from one end o' Pearfield to the other." Miss Berry continued to watch contemplatively the woman whom she had characterized with such passionless severity, and suddenly she saw her stoop.

"Your posies do smell so good, Loviny," Miss Getchell called back. "I s'pose you don't care if I take some old man?"

Miss Berry smiled, and stepping deliberately off the stone advanced toward her guest. "Take any old man you can get, Ann. I wouldn't lay a straw in your way."

"That's an old joke, Loviny," returned the other with a sniff, breaking a piece of the feathery stuff with its pungent sweet odor, while her hostess with generous hand gathered the best the garden afforded, and tying the nosegay with a bit of striped grass, bestowed it upon the visitor, who buried her nose in its depths.

"You're just as much of an old maid as I be, you know," added Miss Getchell with an upward look.

"Just exactly, Ann. I don't know but more; more set in that direction, as it were."

Miss Lovina's lips twitched a little as she rested her arms on the gate after her guest had gone out, but all her neighbors had reason to know that the milk of human kindness became cream in her case, and Ann Getchell had too often benefited by its richness to feel less than content now. Indeed, as she turned a curve in the country road and hugged closer her brown paper parcel, she soliloquized with much satisfaction:—

"I wasn't sure she'd let me have it. Loviny always does set so much store by what Mis' Page sends her, and that dollman has got a style to it that I hain't seen anywhere else. I can get it out o' my old gray poplin, I'm next to certain. Them spots don't show hardly at all on the other side—Why, Mr. Gorham!" The spinster started back with a short, shrill screech. "What a turn you did give me! Why," clutching the left side of her dress waist, "I'm all of a tremble. You riz up so unexpected from behind that rock that I—law! I can't hardly stand up."

The young man who had thus rudely interrupted an absorbing sunset dream looked upon the ostentatiously perturbed speaker with some trouble in his absent gaze.

"Pardon me, Miss Getchell. The evening is so beautiful, I had thrown myself down in the grass there to listen to the thrushes, and that moment happened to decide I must be moving. I did not hear your soft tread approaching."

Over Miss Ann's agitated countenance there stole a gratified expression. This reference to her soft tread had a pleasing sound. It was characteristic of this young man to appear to compliment when no proceeding was further from his thoughts. More worldly-wise and charming women than Miss Getchell had been similarly misled by him. Nature in mischievous mood had added to his muscular physique the features of a hero of romance, and launched him, a practical joke, upon society.

The little woman tilted her thin head to one side with an arch air, and lifted her sharp-nosed face toward his pensive eyes.

"Ain't it a coincidence I should 'a' met up with you just now? I've got a pattern under my arm this minute that your sister'n law sent Loviny Berry. I didn't know as you was in town."

Her companion was anxious to pass on; but sense of duty forbade. He had startled Miss Ann. It would be uncivil to leave her abruptly.

"I have but just arrived. I've come down for a flying visit to Miss Berry."

"Jus' so. I've jus' come from there, as I said. You hain't been down in years, have you?"

"It is a long time for me to stay away from Pearfield. Good"—

"Loviny didn't say a word about expectin' you," said Miss Ann curiously. "Do you still like lawyerin'?"

"Yes, I like it. Good evening, Miss Getchell." He lifted his hat; then as though compunction prompted the act, he advanced a step and shook Miss Ann's limp hand. He was recalling that she had been kind to him in a past when the quality of apples was not material, and the fruit on her gnarly little trees had seemed desirable.

"Good evenin'," she answered. "Come and see me if you're stayin' long enough."

"Thank you. I return to Boston almost immediately."

The young man pursued his way, relieved to be free again to give all his attention to the soft summer sky where the light was fading; to the bird-notes which were becoming disconnected and dreamy; to the scents which rose gratefully from willows, and the thorny luxuriance of vines that rioted over the stone wall at the roadside.

Miss Berry was still lingering at her gate when he approached the house. She dropped her hands from her elbows and grasped the pickets of the fence at sight of the face under the lifted hat.

"Why, Mr. Gorham!" she exclaimed, and opened the gate, her countenance alight with pleased surprise. "I was just thinkin' about you this minute, as I was standin' here."

"Naturally. I was a coming event, and I cast my shadow before."

The visitor shook the plump offered hand with no abstraction now in his eyes, and his teeth gleamed beneath his mustache. "I've no doubt I can tell what you were thinking about, too."

"Like enough. I s'pose lawyers know everything. Come into the house," said Miss Lovina hospitably.

"Not yet. It is far too pleasant here. Where is that old settee that used to be under the oriole elm? Why, there it is, of course, only pushed to the other side," and the speaker started for the desired haven.

"Come back, come back, Gorham Page. Don't you wade through the wet grass!" exclaimed Miss Berry imperatively.

Her visitor turned around, laughing. "That sounds natural, Aunt Love," he said.

"Well, perhaps it does," replied the other in half-laughing apology; "but haven't you learned good sense yet? The dew's a-fallin', and that grass ought to been mowed last week."

"Do you remember when I used to mow it for you?"

"I remember when you used to promise to," rejoined Miss Berry, the corners of her mouth still twitching. "Look here. I ain't goin' under that elm to set with my feet in the water."

"All right," replied Page, succumbing with a sigh, and casting a glance toward the graceful branches of the tallest elm, behind which the new moon glimmered in a primrose sky. "What an evening!" he ejaculated.

"'M; dewy though," returned Miss Berry.

"I do like those old trees," said her guest slowly, continuing to gaze.

"So do the mosquitoes," replied Miss Berry inflexibly. "Come up on to the stoop."

Page, with a smile of amusement, followed his hostess to the piazza, where she ensconced him in one rocking chair, and herself in another.

"Do the orioles still hold possession of that elm?"

"Yes."

"I'm glad of that. The rest of the world may change, and must; but I'm jealous of a hair's breadth of change in Pearfield."

"Well, I don't know. The hang-birds squabble a good deal," remarked Miss Lovina impartially.

Her guest laughed again. The fact being that very few things in life moved him to laughter, he was enjoying himself hugely.

"You are too practical; too unsentimental, Aunt Love," he asserted argumentatively.

"Too unsentimental, hey?" responded Miss Berry, folding her hands over the white apron that protected her striped gingham gown. "That's pretty good from you. What does it mean? Have you repented o' your singular ways, and been fallin' in love?"

"Oh, yes," responded the other, more seriously; then added simply, as though stating an undeniable fact, "I am always falling in love."

"Then why don't you get married?" asked Miss Lovina bluntly. "I haven't heard a thing about you in so long, I didn't know but what you was married, only I hadn't received any cake. I didn't believe you'd forget me."

"No," said Page. "If I could be as loyal to any girl as I am to you, Aunt Love, I should certainly ask her if she would have me."

"But if you fall in love?" asked Miss Berry, perplexed.

"The trouble is I don't stay in love," explained Page with simple sincerity. "I can't help forgetting about the young lady in a little while. It really makes me blue sometimes. Now this summer at Bar Harbor I met a girl who was remarkably pleasant. Pretty, clever, a good talker. Her tastes and mine coincided. My mind was full of her when I left the place."

"Have you heard from her since?" asked Miss Berry with interest. This certainly sounded encouraging.

"Oh yes. I have sent her candy and flowers and books from time to time," responded Page, beginning to look serious and abstracted.

"Then you write to each other?"

"Yes, oh yes, we do—yes. Come to think of it, though," Page gave a short uncomfortable laugh, "I believe I never answered her last letter. I've forgotten. I must look it up when I get back to town, if I can remember it. Aunt Love," brightening, "are those scalloped cookies still in the tin box?"

"Child! You haven't had any supper!" Miss Berry sprang to her feet with astonishing celerity, her plumpness considered.

The guest also rose. "Yes I have, but I want a cookie."

"Then I'll get it for you."

"No, no; that would spoil everything." Page took his hostess by her plump, comfortable arms and forced her back into her seat.

"There ain't a bit o' light in there," remarked Miss Berry resignedly.

"That was the condition of things when my aim for the cookies used to be most unerring," returned the visitor, disappearing into the house.

He returned shortly, carrying in one hand a cookie which already had lost from its side a generous semicircle, and in the other a round, deep tin box which he placed at an impartial distance between his own chair and Miss Lovina's.

"Those are not my usual cookies," stated the latter, meditatively regarding the box as her guest settled himself with a sigh of content.

Page smiled. "That's all right," he answered. "You know they never were."

"Now I deny it, Gorham Page," rejoined Miss Berry warmly. "I was never one to make excuses all the time, and you can't say I was; not truthfully you can't."

"These are exactly right, anyway," returned the other calmly. "There never was a cookie outside this house that tasted as good."

"Oh now, that's silly, Mr. Gorham," returned Miss Berry with a pleased smile.

"No, it is sound sense. I feel old, and tired of things very often. If I could only get hold of one of these at such moments, I should be young again in a minute, with an appetite for everything. If you should some day receive a telegram asking for a cookie, you may know that I need to be rejuvenated, and mail me one at once."

"Have you forgotten my currant wine?" asked Miss Berry radiantly.

"Well, I guess not! But you never let me know where you kept that."

His hostess laughed. "No sir, indeed I didn't. You set where you are, and I'll fetch it out."

She was as good as her word, and in a short time a little table stood at Page's elbow, and upon it a bottle and two glasses.

"I am sure I'm a big boy now," he laughed, as he poured the wine, "since you trust me with this. I well remember the half glasses you used to give me as a treat. How many summers did we come here, Aunt Love?"

"Pretty near every year after you was ten years old till you went to college."

A little silence fell between them, for it was that summer before Page's collegiate life began that his mother bade him a last good-by upstairs in this very house, in the low-ceiled chamber where the branches of the oriole elm cast their shadow.

"How's your cousin Jack? I wonder if he remembers Pearfield too," continued Miss Berry.

"Indeed he does. He graduated from Harvard this year, and of course I attended the Commencement. He asked for you, and I told him I didn't know half as much about you as I ought to; so when your business letter reached me last week, I determined to answer it in person, and I hope you will pardon what was unbusinesslike delay, for I could not arrange to come at once."

"I feel as though I"—Miss Berry was beginning diffidently, when a small dark whirlwind rattled the tin cake box, jostled the table, and leaped frantically against Miss Lovina's arm, upsetting some drops of wine upon the clean white apron.

"Get out! get down! Your paws are dirty!" she exclaimed, emphasizing her unflattering protests with slaps at the panting, bounding, shaggy terrier, who at last seated himself for an instant on his stump of a tail, before rising to take a minute survey of the visitor's pantaloons.

"Oh, you nuisance!" apostrophized Miss Lovina, wiping up the wine drops with her handkerchief. "He's been to get the cow with Obed. He goes every night, and he always races home like a mad thing, just as though it had come over him up in the pastur' that p'raps I'd give him the slip and go off somewheres without him. No sir, don't you touch that cookie box!" for the terrier's eyes were gleaming through the mat of hair, and his mobile nose worked hungrily, first toward Page's hand, and then toward the base of supplies.

"H'm! He evidently knows those cookies, and agrees with my estimate of them," said the young man, breaking a piece and offering it to the dog as he returned alertly from Miss Berry's vigorous push. The creature swallowed the morsel, and at each mouthful Page took thereafter, became convulsed throughout his rough body, then planted his four feet firmly and expectantly, and emitted a little bark. "This is an innovation," continued the guest. "Pearfield does move, it seems, after all."

"Oh, well," sighed Miss Lovina, lifting the cookie box to a safe perch on the table, "it's none o' my doin'. Since the last season you spent here I haven't made it any reg'lar thing to keep summer boarders; but last year a lady was here with her children, and nurse, and this dog. They had him new for a plaything for the children, and they was too little to like him. He's the livest thing, Blitzen is, that ever walked, anyway. No, I ain't talkin' to you. Keep down! And he scared the children with his wild ways. The upshot of it was, they all went off and left him on my hands. Mrs. Siddall said it was so much trouble to travel with him that if he bothered me I might give him away to somebody in the village. Humph! That was all very well to say. I've given him to four folks already."

Page smiled and gave the dog another mouthful. "Wise Blitzen. He knows which side his bread is buttered on," was his comment.

"He wouldn't stay tied up, nor shut up, no more 'n a witch," continued Miss Berry, "and every time he'd come back, he looked rougher than the last time; and when he'd catch sight o' me, he'd act foolish and actually laugh. It's a fact. He'd grin till he showed every tooth in his head. Of course I gave in at last. I had to. He's a knowin' critter," sighed Miss Lovina; "he knows everything on earth only just that I don't want him. He's set out to deny that, and he'll stick to it."

"He seems to be a fine dog of his kind," said Page.

"Yes. They said he cost a lot o' money," returned Miss Berry, regarding the terrier dubiously. "I did think though, first off, that I should never get to tell quick which was which end of him. He hasn't got tail enough to wag, and he's so rough and queer he's given me a start many a time barkin' in the direction I didn't expect. What were we talkin' about when Blitzen broke in?"

"I was asking pardon for my delay in responding about your business matter. I told you when I met you at the gate that I knew you were thinking, as you stood there, that it was strange that I should be neglectful of you."

"Well, I wasn't. I was wonderin' if I'd done the right thing to bother you about the matter anyway."

"Decidedly you did. It is a problem I can solve for you with very little trouble, I'm sure, if you will show me the papers you spoke of. I have robbed the tin box shamefully and the light has gone; supposing we go into the house and talk the matter over. My time in Pearfield is limited. I sail for Germany next Saturday, and I have considerable to do between now and then."

"Well, if you ain't clever to me," said Miss Berry gratefully, as she rose and led the way into the house, while Page followed with the impedimenta of box and bottle, and the further embarrassment of Blitzen, who writhed ingeniously about his legs, evidently intending to make clear his adherence to one who could command cake at such an astonishing time and place.

CHAPTER VI.

THE UNEXPECTED GUEST.

Miss Berry's legal question was at last disposed of. Page carefully mapped out a plan of action for her, and explained each detail with painstaking kindness.

"You are clever to me, Mr. Gorham," she repeated gratefully, when all was made clear. "Now I want to pay you exactly as any of your clients would," she added, in a business-like tone.

"You can't," he answered, throwing himself back in his chair, "for they don't any of them make such cookies as you do."

"Now please don't joke," she begged, half-laughing. "You've had the cookies already."

"Of course, just a retaining fee as it were. Blitzen and I want some more before I go to bed."

"But such an obligation," pleaded Miss Berry.

"Such a pleasure, Aunt Love," rejoined her lawyer. "Now, to change the subject, what is Pearfield's opinion about the World's Fair? Where do you think it ought to be held?"

"I don't know enough about the different cities to say," returned Miss Berry. "I see by the papers some o' the Western cities think they have as good a right as anybody. Chicago is after it. Such an idea! As though folks want to have to traipse way across the country to see the Fair. I don't know much about public questions," continued Miss Lovina, complacently smoothing her apron, "but I know enough to see that there ain't any sense in that notion, and reasonable folks won't listen to it; not but what Chicago's a good deal of a city, I s'pose."

"Chicagoans have that idea," answered Page, smiling. "I have a friend who recently returned from Europe; and he says that one day in the boat's music-room he found on the table a book purporting to portray only Chicago and its suburbs. There were pictures in it of Niagara Falls and the Yellowstone Park."

"Do tell!" exclaimed Miss Berry, laughing. "Well, where do you want the Fair to be, Mr. Gorham?"

"Oh, I feel as though New York were the proper place. I think it is the general feeling that it would be a risk to trust a matter like that to Chicago. There has been a very clever cartoon published recently in New York, showing our principal cities represented as pretty women standing in a semicircle around Uncle Sam waiting to see which shall receive a bouquet which he holds in his hands labeled 'World's Fair,'—that is, they are all pretty women except Chicago, who is a half-grown, scrawny girl, arrayed in an evening gown covered with a pattern of little pigs. She has huge diamonds blazing in her breast and ears, her thin arms are bare, and the hands she wildly stretches out to Uncle Sam wear white kid gloves with one button at the wrist. Her mouth is wide open, and she is evidently vociferously demanding the prize, while New York, a beautiful society girl, gazes at her with well-bred scorn. For my own part, I think New York may overdo the nonchalant business, and if she does, the energetic maiden stands a good chance to gain her end."

"How do you suppose your cousin Jack likes to have his city made such game of?" asked Miss Lovina.

"Oh, I fancy Jack has learned by this time to view the Garden City from a Bostonian standpoint. I don't know what his views are on the subject of the Fair. I have seen very little of him the last years."

"You are liable to make up for it in the year to come," said a new voice suddenly.

Blitzen had already run growling toward a window, and now barked furiously as Jack Van Tassel walked into the room and Miss Lovina and her guest sprang to their feet.

"Forgive the intrusion," added the new-comer, in the handshaking that ensued. "I looked through the window and saw you sitting here so comfortably, I thought it a pity to make you the trouble of coming to the door. Aunt Love, how are you? You didn't expect to see me here, Gorham?"

"Where have you dropped from? You were in Chicago day before yesterday," rejoined his cousin.

"I don't deny it. Thank you, Aunt Love. I used to like this rocking chair when my feet wouldn't touch the floor as I sat in it. What do I see? If there isn't the cookie box!"

"Yes, and you're in great luck to come as soon as you have, for I was just meditating another onslaught upon it."

"Well, if you two great boys ain't as bad as you ever were!" exclaimed Miss Berry in high delight, as she hastened to bring forth the currant wine again for the delectation of her new guest.

"Perhaps you will explain yourself," remarked Page curiously, hospitably reaching out the tin box and meanwhile making attempts to hold Blitzen off with his foot; an effort which met the success attendant on similar treatment of quicksilver.

"Why, I've come to see Aunt Love," responded Jack. "Why shouldn't I?"

Miss Berry looked at his brilliant, graceful face and figure admiringly. "Why not, indeed?" she said, laughing. "I was always good to you, wasn't I, Mr. Jack?"

"Too good. Far too good. I remember everything."

"That is all very well; but why did you bid me a long farewell a week ago, and then turn around and come back again?" persisted Page.

Jack tossed off a glass of wine. "Better than ever!" he exclaimed, sending Miss Berry one of the caressing, admiring looks which warmed any feminine heart toward which they were directed. Then he turned to his cousin. "Because, my dear Gorham, I have repented of my rejection of your offer, and after I've talked over old times sufficiently with Aunt Love, it is my intention to accompany you to Germany. Do you accept my apology?"

"Good enough," commented Page briefly, but with evident satisfaction. "Your decision must have been sudden, though. What was the matter? Did Chicago grate upon your æsthetic sense in her scramble for the Fair?"

"She isn't scrambling, that I know of. She doesn't need to. She'll get the Fair all right. Any one can see with half an eye that Chicago is the only place for it,—the foreordained place."

Page laughed quietly and skeptically, and there followed one of the arguments of which every American citizen knows the pros and cons.

That night Miss Berry put her unexpected guests into two bedrooms which communicated. When her last good wishes for their comfort had been expressed and good-nights said, the two men looked at each other as they listened to her retreating footsteps.

"Of course," said Page, "if the explanation you gave me downstairs is all you care to say, I'm satisfied."

The brightness had faded from Van Tassel's face. He looked moody and worn.

"No, I meant to tell you, of course," he answered, seating himself on the side of the bed. "I found when I reached home that father had assumed charge of an orphan asylum, and I thought I should be better off out of the way."

"What do you mean?"

"Exactly what I say. He is going to marry the eldest member, in order to facilitate matters."

"Uncle Richard is going to marry again, and you have quarreled with him?"

Jack shook his head quickly. "I don't quarrel with father," he replied briefly.

Page sat down in a blue chintz armchair by the window and pushed open the blind; then recollecting that one of Aunt Love's last warnings had been not to do so on account of mosquitoes, he closed it again.

"Uncle Richard has been a widower for fifteen years," he said. "He is scarcely over fifty years old. Aren't you unreasonable to resent his marrying?"

Van Tassel, his sombre eyes fixed on the palm-leaves in the ingrain carpet, emitted an inarticulate sound.

"What more appropriate," continued his cousin, "than that he should select a widow, even supposing she has children. He has plenty of money. I can see how it would make you feel sore and change your home feeling at first; but Uncle Richard has such a level head, you may be certain that the lady is such a one as you will like after a time."

Jack gave a short, unmirthful laugh. "The lady hasn't any children. What a pity you can't see her! She is a little girl who went to school with me at home; and she has an invalid mother, some younger sisters, and a brother on her hands."

Page raised his heavy eyebrows and gave a soft whistle.

"As they have nothing in the world, they have roped father in."

"That's bad!" admitted the older man with some sympathetic disgust. "Then you have quarreled with Uncle Richard, for of course you attempted to dissuade him."

"Not at all. I arrived home to find the engagement a fixed fact and all the parties satisfied. What was there to be done?"

"You didn't come away without saying anything?"

"No, no. I wouldn't do that, and I believe that in place of anything else to be proud of, I shall always be proud of having had some self-control in that last interview with father. I knew all the time, hot and angry as I was, that if I said to him what I felt, I should repent of hurting him all my life. He is the noblest man, the best father, that ever lived." The speaker's eyes grew bright, and Page believed it was with moisture.

"I'm glad to hear you say that," he rejoined heartily. "You are right, I know. Uncle Richard is one man in a thousand, and it would be easy enough to believe that even a young girl might feel a deep and romantic attachment for him."

Van Tassel shook his head. "You are all off again. Say all you like in praise of father, but"—

"But why be prejudiced?" suggested Page hopefully. "This Miss—Miss"—

"Bryant."

"Why should you, on the circumstantial evidence of her family's need, decide that she is only mercenary? Perhaps she loves"—

"And perhaps she doesn't," interrupted Jack impatiently. "She says she doesn't."

"What?"

"Yes, Clover is a very honest girl, and she was good enough to inform me of the neutral state of her affections."

"Well, well! I must say Uncle Richard is beginning to puzzle me. He has seen this girl grow up. Is she so irresistibly beautiful?"

"What an idea! No. My father puzzles me too, I assure you, but I must believe he loves her, and in the face of that, Gorham," Van Tassel looked up with strong feeling in face and voice, "that dear old fellow made sure that he wouldn't be interfering with me before he spoke to her. He came to me just before leaving Cambridge, and asked me if I cared for her. Of course I didn't suspect anything. It seemed only a consistent carrying out of the desire he has always had to anticipate my every wish. He urged nothing, but persisted gently till he discovered what he was after; and I tell you it touches me—in the light of present circumstances it touches me to think about it. He would have given up his wishes; no one would ever have been allowed to suspect them, had they conflicted with mine." The speaker rose, crossed the room, and stood with his back to his cousin, while he regarded the antlered cows in a framed sampler executed by Miss Lovina's mother.

"No wonder you are glad that you said nothing offensive at parting," remarked Page.

"Yes," replied Jack, turning back. "I have been in twenty different minds since taking the train for Boston, as to whether I do right or wrong to go to Europe now. Very few words passed between father and me about it. I had some hours to think before meeting him, after learning what he had done, and I merely told him that Clover had told me of their engagement. He looked right at me and he understands me pretty well. 'Does it displease you, Jack?' he asked. 'It surprises me, sir,' I answered, 'and it makes me feel that while matters are in the transition state which is coming, I might perhaps as well put in that year abroad you spoke of.' He was silent for a minute, and I knew that, try as I might, I couldn't mislead him much as to my feelings, so I braced up and spoke as naturally as I could, about how deeply I desired his happiness, and said that if my staying at home would conduce to it, I would stay. He thought a minute more, and then he said as quietly as he always says everything, 'You had better go, Jack.'"

The speaker paid one more visit to the sampler with its angular green trees.

After a minute Page broke the silence: "I believe you have decided wisely. I believe you had better come with me."

CHAPTER VII.

ON THE RAIL.

The following week the two sailed for Germany; but when home-coming time for Page arrived, his cousin did not accompany him. Mr. Van Tassel had married the month after his son left, and although his affectionate letters held out an invariable welcome, they made it easy for Jack to stay amid the novel scenes which allured him. Gorham Page, therefore, was alone when he reëntered Boston, one day in the following August. The sister-in-law with whom he made his home was, he knew, at the seashore, and after a brief visit to her deserted flat, and a hasty repacking, he took a cab for the Boston and Maine depot.

He was rather late for his train, and he boarded it to find it crowded. Passing from one car to another in vain search for a seat, he descried, standing in an aisle, a tall young girl, who attracted his attention at once, by reason of her superb figure fashionably clothed in plainest black, and the annoyance on her fresh face. She held a satchel in her hand, and was vainly endeavoring to appear indifferent, after a heated appeal to a badgered conductor who had apparently sought relief from a suffering public in deafness.

When Page, who was slightly short-sighted, approached near enough to discern the impatient golden lights in her hazel eyes, and the underlip caught beneath her teeth, he took in the situation, and gave one more searching glance around the crowded day-car; the parlor car he had already discovered to be hopeless.

"This is very uncomfortable," he said, addressing the girl and raising his hat. "I have not quite despaired of finding a seat. Won't you follow me?"

"I have been all through," she answered, but she followed him.

The next car was packed with equal solidity; but Page moved forward, and on the platform was motioned away by a brakeman.

"Back, please. Next car's a sleeper. Takin' it to Portland. No passengers."

"Is it locked?" asked Page, pushing by.

"No, 't ain't locked, but"—

Page interrupted the slow drawl decidedly, and put aside the detaining hand. "Oh, well, people can't stand, you know," and with an encouraging look around at the damsel in distress, who followed him with alacrity, he opened the door of the Pullman, and ushered her into the luxurious empty car.

"Thank you so much," said the girl gratefully, as she took possession of one section and her benefactor seated himself across the way.

One by one a dozen other passengers came in and availed themselves of this unexpected privilege, and the pessimistic conductor contented himself by collecting fifty cents from each individual.

Page had an eye for beauty, and as his position made it possible to do so undetected, he regarded his neighbor appreciatively. The world is full of pretty girls, thank heaven, but this one was unusual inasmuch as she was built on such large lines as to make approval a matter of taste. Page did approve. He mentally called her a young Juno as he regarded her flat back and fine shoulders, her clear healthy skin and the Cupid's bow of her upper lip. Her thick brown hair was uncrimped and smoothly brushed toward the coil at the back of her head. She was what is called in the parlance of the day a tailor-made girl, and her physique suggested rowing and tennis.

Page thought this, and wished he had an excuse to speak with her. The fact that he had happened to do her a slight favor made this more than usually impossible, so after a while he abandoned his regard of her piquant profile, in favor of the landscape from his own window.

About now the conversation between two men in the section behind this fin de siècle maiden became loud enough to take half the car into their confidence. They were discussing the incongruous situation of the World's Fair; for in the previous April Uncle Sam had yielded, and thrown his bouquet to that one of his daughters which, according to the cartoonist, had clamored and importuned the loudest. The crude, unformed, ill-bred creature now had this treasure in her keeping, and the righteous indignation and despair of those two New Hampshire men filled the car. What could be expected but national disgrace? What was the matter with the powers at Washington that they had not in some way averted such a disaster? A good many people thought it a joke; these gentlemen could see nothing amusing in having our country held up to ridicule.

As the discussion waxed and waned, Page listened to it perforce, at first indifferently, then with more interest as he discovered that it was affecting his fair neighbor. He could see her cheek grow hot, could see that she held herself with greater rigidity. She bit her lip from time to time, and once she moved her head slowly around as if inclined to glance at the noisy talkers; but half way her deep luminous eyes shot their golden lightning straight into Page's, and recovering herself she turned back and looked ahead again.

The sunshine had begun to pour in at her window, and she suddenly seized the blind to pull it down. It fitted tightly after the manner of its kind, and her first effort was not successful. It was probably not a case for assistance, as the young woman looked as though her muscle would be equal to considerable strain, but Page spontaneously left his seat.

"Allow me," he said, and drew the blind down.

The girl thanked him rather severely. Page's shipboard experience of comparative informality with strangers was fresh upon him. He spoke on the impulse of the moment, feeling sure that the severity was not intended for him.

"Wouldn't you prefer to change seats with me? Perhaps you would be less annoyed there by conversation as well as sunlight."

"You heard something of it, then," the girl exclaimed; "but I think they have said all the ignorant, stupid things they can think of."

"I saw that the remarks were troubling you," said Page, seating himself opposite in her section. "The Garden City has one champion, I'm sure."

"Dear, generous Chicago!" ejaculated the girl, and her youthful wrath was very entertaining to her neighbor. "It is the best thing that ever happened to the country that we are to have the Fair. Perhaps," with interest, "you are a Chicagoan?"

Page was obliged to deny this with a novel reluctance which amused him.

The girl gave the slightest toss of her head. "I suppose the Eastern people think we enjoy the prospect of being jostled, and crowded, and having our streets torn up and our city extended, and all our comfort taken away for two years while we live in a perfect Pandemonium. No. We do not enjoy it, but we do it as our duty because we know that we can and shall do it well. It is not best to trust such an enterprise to an old, slow town."

Page regarded the speaker with curiosity and interest. She spoke softly but emphatically in a contralto voice, and did not look at him, but beyond him. It occurred to her companion that with her superb vitality and unconscious audacity she might be a truer type of the triumphant young city than that shown in the cleverly insulting picture which had so tickled his imagination.

"I see you take a strong interest in the matter," he remarked.

"Yes. My sister's husband has been busy about it from the first; so I have heard much concerning the subject; but then all Chicagoans are interested. It is their way."

The evident pride with which the girl referred to this "way" caused Page to declare meekly, as a means of raising himself in her estimation, that he had relatives in Chicago.

"That will be very pleasant for you in '93," she returned, with a slight smile which made her face bewitching.

"I have been spending the last year with a Chicago cousin in Germany," continued Page. "He has taken a warm interest in every phase of the discussion."

"Naturally," returned the girl; then having relieved her surcharged heart she apparently recollected that she was prolonging an interview with a strange man, and leaning back in her seat she took a copy of "Life" from her satchel. Fine streaks of sunshine sifted across the sheet.

"Won't you accept that shady seat?" asked Page.

"Thank you, no. I am only going as far as R——-."

"That is my destination, too. You might as well be comfortable."

The girl looked up again with some interest.

"Are you going to R——-? Then I shall ask you to be kind enough to direct me to the Ocean House. I am afraid that there has been a misunderstanding, and that Mrs. Page—that the friend whom I am going to visit does not expect me this morning."

The young man regarded her with a new expectancy. "I am going to the Ocean House also, and, by another coincidence, to see a Mrs. Page. She is my sister."

His neighbor returned his gaze at first with surprise, then a demure spirit of mischief danced in her eyes. It had a brief struggle with cautious propriety, but it conquered. Caution usually did make a losing fight in the case of this young lady.

"I wonder if you can be Gorham," she said slowly, and Page flushed to his temples under the fascination of his own name.

"I am," he laughed.

"I know a lot about you," declared the girl quietly, and her companion thought the dip in her upper lip when she smiled the prettiest thing he had ever seen.