Interrupted

"When did Louis go into town?"

"Several days ago. He has a way of disappearing suddenly, not giving the family an idea of where he is going or when he expects to return, and when he does get back he shows to any one who is not blind, that he has been pretty low down."

"They expect him back to-morrow?"

"Why, as to that, they have been expecting him ever since he went away. I heard Miss Alice say that he went unexpectedly, leaving word that he should probably be back to dinner."

"Harry, my boy, I am almost inclined to think that I ought to start out to-night, and try to look him up."

"To-night! Why, Uncle Harold, how could you? It would be midnight and after before you could reach the city, and then where would you go? The addresses that Miss Alice can give you must be respectable places, with closed doors to-night."

"That is true," Mr. Chessney answered, after a thoughtful pause; "it would be a wild kind of proceeding, apparently, with very little excuse; and yet I am someway impressed that it is the thing to do."

Alas for the Christian world which believes in theory, that there is a direct link between the seen and the unseen, by which the earnest soul can be told in what way to walk, and, in practice, thinks it must search out its own way! Mr. Chessney did not go out in search of his friend. He did not even ask his Master whether it was his will that the apparently "wild proceeding" should be attempted. He prayed, it is true; and he prayed for Louis Ansted, but only in a general way; and he retired to rest, saying within himself that directly after breakfast he would go into town and see what he could do.

Before he was awake the next morning, the piazza of the little country hotel, where he stopped, was filled with loungers who had something unusual and exciting to talk about. There were a dozen different stories, it is true; but out of them all the interested listener could glean certain things which were painfully likely to be facts. There had been a runaway—to that all parties agreed; and Louis Ansted had been in the carriage, and had been thrown; but whether he was killed, or only seriously hurt, or whether the horse had taken fright at the approaching train, or whether the driver had attempted to cross the railroad-track in the face of the train, or whether there had been any train at all, authorities differed. It was still early when Harry Matthews knocked at his uncle's door with the confused particles of story.

"And you don't know whether he is living, or not?" asked the startled uncle who was now making his toilet with all possible speed.

"No, I can't find out. Some of them say he was killed instantly, and others have it that he was only stunned, and has revived. It may be nothing but a scare. South Plains has so little excitement that it is apt to make as much as it can out of everything. Uncle Harold, I can't go up there and find out, for my train will be due in five minutes, and I must be at the telegraph office, you know."

"Yes; I will be down in less than five minutes, and will go immediately up there. I hope it is chiefly talk." Yet when he was left alone, he said aloud and mournfully: "If I had only followed my impressions last night!"

He had occasion to say it, or, at least, to think it often, in the days which followed. South Plains had not exaggerated, this time. Louis Ansted was not dead—at least, the heart was beating; but he lay a bruised, unconscious heap among the snowy draperies of his bed—his soiled and matted clothing, which as yet they had not dared remove, telling to the practiced eye a story of more than a mere runaway. The skillful doctor, who had already been summoned from the city, was silent as well as skillful. He issued his orders in as few words as possible, and kept his own counsel, until, left alone with Mr. Chessney for a moment, in answer to the question, "What does this stupor mean?" he shook his head.

"Hard to tell. It was on him before the accident, if that gives you any light."

It gave him bitter light, and made him groan in spirit over the fact that he had been tempted to go out in the night and hunt for his friend, and had not gone.

Later in the day, bits of the facts came to him. Louis Ansted had been alone; had hired a horse at the livery and started for home. "More under the influence of liquor than usual, perhaps," the reluctant hostler at the livery had admitted, "still, I thought he would get through all right." For the rest, the silent lips on the bed told no tales. He had been found, not very far from the railroad crossing, lying under a tree, and the horse had made his way back to the stables. Whether a train had frightened the animal, or whether being left to himself while the driver sank into a drunken sleep had caused his alarm, or how the accident had occurred, was left to conjecture.

His mother continually repeated the story—and succeeded in making herself believe it—that a vicious horse had been given him, who evidently became unmanageable at the sound of the locomotive; but some of the listeners went out and said that there was no train passing between the hours that the horse left the stables and returned there, and the doctor shrugged his shoulders and said nothing.

Then followed one of those periods of waiting and watching which some people know all about; the miseries of which can only be understood by having to live them. The trip to the Rocky Mountains was indefinitely postponed, and Harold Chessney, having made a journey to the city, and rearranged his business, returned to take his place among the watchers.

He was fully roused now; so were all the friends of the sufferer; his body was in danger. It was not at all difficult to make his mother understand this, and no means were left untried by which the frail shell might possibly be rescued from impending ruin.

In this way passed weeks, while the soul of the injured man hovered on the edge of another world. Gradually the excitement in the village calmed down, and everywhere outside of that house on the hill every-day life went on again. Mr. Chessney came and went, keeping a hand on his business interests where he must, but keeping the most of his thoughts and the most of his time waiting, in the hope that consciousness would return once more to the wreck on the bed. There was one other who watched and waited, too, though she could not now go to the house to inquire. She could pray; and this she did. Sometimes it seemed to her that every thought was a prayer for that periled soul. And often and often she, too, had to think:

"What if I had been more anxious, and earnest, and constant, while the body was comparatively in health—might not things possibly have been different?"

It was in the middle of the night, and Mr. Chessney sat alone with the sick man. There was nothing to do but wait, and he had prevailed upon other weary watchers to rest, and let him take his turn. So there was only himself to be startled by a low voice from one who had been for so many weeks speechless: "Harold, is it you?"

Great was the rejoicing in the troubled home the next morning. Louis was awake and conscious, knew them all, smiled feebly on his mother, and watched hungrily every movement of Mr. Chessney.

The worst was over; he would gain rapidly now. So the mother said, with eager voice and joyful eyes. Alice looked up questioningly when Mr. Chessney remained silent and grave, and as soon as opportunity came, asked her anxious question:

"Mr. Chessney, I can see that you do not share mamma's joy. Do you think the indications unfavorable?"

"I don't know, Miss Ansted. I am not a physician, only a nurse, and I hope I may be mistaken; but it is true that I am anxious."

And the doctor, when he came, expressed no surprise and no pleasure over the change.

"But then he is so utterly unimpressible!" said the mother, "one might almost as well have a marble statue for a physician."

Yet the statue worked faithfully and tirelessly, and, it must be confessed, hopelessly. To Mr. Chessney he would talk occasionally; and there came a day when that gentleman followed him out to the lawn.

"Doctor, what do you think?"

"That it is a charming morning."

"Doctor, is our patient gaining?"

"No."

"Is there hope that he will in time?"

"No."

"Do you mean that you have no hope of his recovery?"

"None at all; have not had from the first. Brains like his never recover from such treatment as they have received."

"But, doctor, this is very sudden. Do you mean he will lie there helpless for the rest of his life?"

"I don't think he will lie there three weeks longer, but he may; we are not infallible. I shall have to hasten this morning. Young Marshall came home in a drunken rage last night, and kicked his wife, and she is going to die, I think. I don't know what we doctors would do if this were not a free country, and liquor-sellers had not a right to kill by inches all the people they choose. This victim over whom you are watching is only one of many. That ought to comfort the friends, ought it not? Good-morning."

"I haven't told them," said Mr. Chessney, two hours later, speaking to Claire. He had come out to get a breath of the sweet morning air, and to give Claire the news. During the weeks past, he had been very thoughtful of her anxiety, and very careful that she should receive daily bulletins. "I have not told them, but I must. Miss Benedict, this is the hardest task a man ever has to do. How can I tell that mother that she has robbed herself of her son? She has steadily thwarted for two years every scheme that I devised to help him; and she did not know what she was about, either, poor mother!"

"Did you ever try to tell her?"

"Yes, and failed, as you did. Alice told me of your effort. But I ought to have tried again. I knew she was deceived. She thought me a fanatic, and I could have told her of scenes that would have made one of her. I shrank from it."

It was more than two weeks before she saw him again. During this time she twice received little twisted slips of paper, brought to her by the faithful Bud, and on them would be written a request that she would pray for a soul in peril. One long letter, blistered with tears, Alice wrote to her; the burden of it being the same; and this was all she knew of what was passing in the house on the hill. She had not entered it since that day when its mistress turned from her. Not that she would not quickly have done so, had occasion arisen, but there seemed no need to force herself on the poor mother.

"I shall never see him again," she told herself, sorrowfully, "and I have seen him so many times when I might have tried to help him, and did not!"

Then there came one brief, never-to-be-forgotten note, written hurriedly by Mr. Chessney:

"I believe that Louis rests in the Everlasting Arms."

One Saturday morning she was summoned to the parlor to see Mr. Chessney. He came forward quickly, with an anxious air, as of one having a request to make which he feared might not be granted.

"I have come for you," he said. "Louis wants to see you. I have been charged to bring you back with me, if possible. I wish I could save you from this ordeal. Do you shrink from it very much?"

"No," she said with quiet gravity. "Only as one shrinks from seeing errors that one is powerless to help. Why am I wanted, Mr. Chessney? What can I do!"

"I do not know. Louis wants you. He wishes to see you and his mother and his sister Alice together, and I shall have to add that he wants me to be present. I tried to spare you all this last, but he grew excited over it."

"I would quite as soon have you present," Claire said, with gentle wonder. She did not understand why it was supposed to be a time of special trial to her individually. If she could have heard Mrs. Ansted's voice in confidential talk with Mr. Chessney, she would have been enlightened.

"The girl is well enough, Mr. Chessney, and she has been of help to some of the lower classes here during the winter. I have nothing against her; on the contrary, I would like to shield her. The simple fact is that she has become too deeply interested in my son. It is not strange, I am sure, but it is sad; and that is why I do not wish Alice to have her here at this time. As a mother, it is my duty to shield the girl, though I must say she showed very little consideration for a mother's feelings when she talked with me." All this, and much more, which Mr. Chessney weighed, putting his nephew's views beside them, and came to the conclusion that there was an attachment between the two young people which had not been smiled upon by their elders.

Although Claire knew nothing of this, her appearance in the sick-room was attended with sufficient embarrassment. Mrs. Ansted received her with a sort of grave tolerance, as one who was humoring the whim of a sick man, and doing violence to her own sense of propriety thereby. But the change in Louis Ansted was so great, that, after the first moment, it held Claire's thoughts, to the exclusion of all trivial things.

He held toward her a thin and trembling hand, as he said:

"It was good in you to come. I have changed a great deal since that night you refused to ride with me, haven't I? Yes, I have changed since then. Has Harold told you that I have found help at last?"

"He has told me wonderful and blessed news of you," Claire said, taking the chair that Mr. Chessney brought to the bedside. "I do not need to tell you how glad I was to hear it."

"No, you don't; that is true. You have given ample proof that nothing which could happen to a friend of yours could rejoice you more. I wish I had met you earlier; it would have made a difference, a great difference in my life. I did not know that religion meant much of anything. Harold, here, was of your mind, but he seemed exceptional—a kind of fanatic; I could not keep within sight of him. The other people whom I knew intimately, seemed to have very little to do with their religion. I beg your pardon, mother, but that was the way it seemed to me. There are different degrees, I suppose."

"Louis, you are talking too much," here interposed Mr. Chessney, as he brought the medicine to administer; "your pulse is rising."

"Never mind, it won't hurt me. It is almost over now; you know that, Chessney, as well as I do. And I have something to say, that for the good of all parties concerned, must be said now. Mother, I want you to know one thing: from words which you let fall yesterday, I have discovered that you have a mistaken idea about one matter. I am going to die, and I am glad of it. I have gone so far down hill, that to climb back again, for one so awfully bruised as I am, would be hard, very hard; perhaps the Lord sees that it would be impossible, and so gives me this easy way. But, mother, before I go, I want to tell you something which will remove from your mind a false impression. I saw my danger some time ago, and struggled for a way of escape. It was a weak way that I chose; God would not let me build on it. I fancied that if I could have Claire Benedict for my wife, I could be a good and true man. I implored her to help me in this way, and she utterly and hopelessly refused.

"You know why I am telling you this, but she does not, and I ask her to forgive me."

CHAPTER XXVII.
THE SUMMER'S STORY.

After that the lamp of life burned lower and lower. He rallied again, two days afterward, and was locked in with his lawyer, and gave critical attention to business.

"I imagine that he made important changes in his will," Mr. Chessney said to Claire. "I do not know of what character, though I was called in as a witness. I hope he made special provision for his sister Alice. I think that she is likely to disappoint her parents in their schemes, and it might be greatly to her comfort to be independent, so far as property is concerned. But Louis kept his own counsel. His lawyer told me that he might be failing in body, but he had never seen him clearer in brain. So there will be no trouble about carrying out whatever he has planned."

"I did not know," Claire said, "that he had property to leave, independent of his parents."

"Oh, yes; a large estate, willed to him from his grandfather, absolutely in his own right. It is what has helped to ruin him."

"How good it would be if he could make his money undo, so far as money could, some of the mischief he has done."

"How could money undo it, my friend?"

"Oh, it couldn't. Still, it might relieve the misery which comes from want. I was thinking just then of poor little Mrs. Simpson and her fatherless baby. I have heard that her husband drank his first glass while in Louis Ansted's employ, and that Louis offered it to him, and he did not like to refuse for fear of giving offense. He died with the delirium tremens, and his wife sold her bedclothes and her shoes to buy food for him at the last. Perhaps she would rather starve than take money from poor Louis. Haven't I heard that he was connected with one of the distilleries?"

"Some of his property is invested in that way," Mr. Chessney answered, startled with the remembrance. "I had not thought of it. Poor Alice! I am afraid there is great trouble for her in whatever direction one looks. If Louis leaves his property to her, her father and mother will violently oppose what her intense temperance principles would advocate. I wish Louis had felt like talking these things over with me a little."

Well, the day came when they followed the ruined body to the grave. It rested in a costly coffin, and the funeral appointments were such as became large wealth and the habit of lavish expenditure.

Later, when the will was read, it appeared that the poor heart had taken counsel of One who makes no mistakes. He had done what he could to undo wrong. The income from valuable investments was large, and was left in trust to his sister Alice, to be used at her discretion in relieving the woes of those who had been brought low through the influence of intoxicants. As for the distillery from which half of his income was derived, its business was immediately to cease, its stock was to be destroyed, and its buildings to be made into tenement-houses for the poor.

"The poor boy was not in his right mind when he made such a will," the father said. "Why, it is a sinful waste; it is simply throwing thousands of dollars into the river."

"It is all the influence of that Benedict girl," the mother said, in bitterness of spirit.

But the will stood, and its directions were obeyed with all the promptness that the sister to whose trust the work was left, could force her lawyers. She seemed in feverish haste to have the work of destruction go on. And when her mother accused her of being hopelessly under the influence of "that Benedict girl," and having no mind of her own, her answer was:

"Mamma, you are mistaken. At last I am under the influence of One who has a right to own me, body and soul. Poor Louis found Him at last, and yielded to his power, and followed his direction, and it was through Claire Benedict's influence that he did; and, mamma, if he had known Claire Benedict a few years earlier, we should have him with us to-day. Mamma, the time has come for me to speak plainly. Religion has been nothing but a name to me until lately. I have not believed in its power. It is Claire Benedict who has shown me my mistake, and helped me to see Christ as a sufficient Saviour. I belong to him now for time and eternity, and, mamma, I will never marry a man who does not with his whole heart own Christ as his Master, and who is not as intense and fanatical on the temperance question as my brother became."

She had always been strong-willed. The mother had been wont to say, somewhat boastfully, that her oldest daughter resembled her in strength of purpose.

Human nature is a curious study. What Mrs. Ansted would do, had been a matter of extreme solicitude to several people. Mr. Chessney believed that she would make Alice's life miserable; that she would become Claire Benedict's enemy, and injure her if she could, and that she would withdraw her younger daughters from not only Claire's, but their eldest sister's influence, and from the church to which they had become attached.

"I do not mean that she will do this in revenge," he said to Claire, "or that she will really intend to injure anybody. She is one of those persons who can make herself believe that she is doing God's service by just such management as this. I am sorry for Alice and for the young girls. It gives me a sense of relief and joy to remember that Louis is forever safe from pitfalls, and yet sometimes I can not help wishing that he could have lived for a few months longer. He had great influence over his mother. She tried to manage him, and his indolent will allowed himself to be influenced in a wonderful manner, but when he did really rouse, he had great power over his mother."

Mrs. Ansted did none of the things which were feared. Instead, she turned suddenly, and with apparent loathing, from the life which she had heretofore lived. She sent for Claire one morning, greeted her with a burst of tears as her dear child, and declared that had she understood the feeling between Louis and herself nothing would have given her greater joy than to have welcomed her into the family.

Claire opened her mouth to protest and then closed it again. If this were the form of cross that she was to bear, it was peculiar, certainly; but why not bear it as well as any other? Of what use to explain again, what the son's own lips had told, that she had utterly refused the honor offered her—that she had never for a moment desired to be received into this family? If the bereaved mother had really succeeded in making herself believe such folly as this, why not let it pass—the grave had closed over the possibility of its ever being realized?

It was a strange part to play—to accept without outward protest the position of one who would have been a daughter of the house, to hear herself mentioned as Louis Ansted's intended wife; to ride, and walk, and talk with the mother, and help her make believe that she would not for the world have thwarted her son's desires; but Claire, after a few attempts at explanation, dropped the effort. The mother did not wish to believe the truth about this, or many other things, and therefore closed her eyes to them.

She wished also to impress herself and others with the belief that Louis had been in every respect an exemplary, and, indeed, a remarkable young man. She withdrew her connection with the church in town and united by letter with the one at South Plains; avowedly, because "dear Louis was interested in it more than in any other church in the world." She imagined plans that he might have had for the church, and called them his, and eagerly worked them out. She adopted the minister, and his wife and his children, because she had often heard Louis say that he would rather hear that man preach than to hear Doctor Archer; and once he told her that the minister's little girl had a very sweet face, and was a cunning little witch whom he liked to tease. She turned with something like disgust from the very name of VanMarter, protesting that "poor Louis had had a great deal to bear from their advances," and that she had no desire to cultivate their acquaintance further.

On all these strange changes in her mother Alice looked with bewilderment.

"She frightens me," she said to Claire one evening, "I don't know what to think. She contradicts every theory of life I ever heard her express. She attributes to Louis graces that he did not possess. She accuses people of injuring him, who really tried to help him, and she adopts as plans of his, things of which I know he had not even thought. I do not know my mother at all; and as I said, it frightens me. Is she losing her mind?"

Claire had no ready reply to these questionings, for she, too, was puzzled. But Mr. Chessney, as they walked slowly down from the house on the hill, discussing once more the strange change in the woman of the world, advanced a theory which Claire adopted, but which was hardly the one to explain to Alice.

"I think," said Mr. Chessney, "that she is hushing her conscience. It would like to speak loudly to her, and tell her that she is responsible for a ruined life, and she does not mean to listen to it. She is imagining a life she believes Louis might have lived, after the change that came to him on his sick-bed, and is making herself believe that he did live it, and that she was, and is, in hearty accord with it. It is a strange freak of the bewildering human mind, but unless I am mistaken, the woman will not find the peace in it that she is seeking. I think she will have to cry, 'God be merciful to me a sinner,' before her heart will find rest."

And then he added one sentence which set Claire's heart into a strange flutter:

"Claire, when I see the energy with which she carries out one of her imaginings, connected with you, I am very grateful that Louis insisted on my being present at that first interview between you and him, and that I heard the truth from his own lips, for the mother is succeeding in deceiving every one else."

"And I do not know how to help it," Claire said, with troubled voice. "It seems a strange thing to be living a falsehood; but when I try to explain to her, she puts me gently aside, and acts as though I had not spoken; and others have no right to question me about the truth of her theories."

"Except myself. Have I the right? Was it as emphatic a refusal as poor Louis understood it? Believe me, I am not asking merely to gratify idle curiosity."

"There never was anything in it, Mr. Chessney, and there never could have been."

The passage of all these and many other events not chronicled here, consumed the greater portion of the summer vacation. For Claire Benedict was letting the summer slip from her without going home. Sore had been the trial at first; but a few weeks before the term closed, opportunity had been offered her to teach a summer class of city pupils, at prices that were almost equal to her year's salary. What right had she, who wanted to bestow so many luxuries on her mother, to close her eyes to such an opportunity as this, merely because she was homesick for a sight of that mother's face? It had been hard to reconcile the sister, especially, to this new state of things. The gentle mother had long ago learned the lesson that what looked like manifest duty must not be tampered with, no matter how hard to bear; but the hot-hearted young sister refused to see anything in it except an added trial too great to be borne. Many letters had to be written before there was a final reluctant admission that two hundred dollars more to depend on, paltry sum though it was, would make a great difference with the mother's winter comforts. The letter in which poor Dora admitted this was blistered with tears; but the sacrifice was made, and the extra term had been well entered upon.

There was much outside of the class and the life being lived on the hill to occupy Claire's thoughts. I hope you do not suppose that the work on the part of "the girls" had been accomplished during a sort of "spasm," and that now they were ready to drop back into inaction. Nothing was farther from their thoughts. If you have imagined so, you have not understood how thoroughly some of them had sacrificed in order to do. We never forget that for which we sacrifice.

Besides, the habit of thinking first of the church, and the various causes which are the tributaries of the church, was formed. That the work was to go on, was demonstrated in many ways; not the least by the random remarks which came so naturally from the lips of the workers.

"Girls," had Ruth Jennings said, when they lingered one evening after prayer-meeting, "when we cushion these seats, we shall have to send somebody after the material who can carry the carpet and wall paper in his mind's eye. It will never do to have a false note put in here to jar this harmony."

"When we cushion the seats!" Claire heard it, and laughed softly. Who had said that the seats were ever to be cushioned? But she knew they would be, and that before very long.

On another evening, Mary Burton had said:

"Look here! don't you think our very next thing, or, at least, one of the next, ought to be a furnace? I don't like those stove pipes, if they are Russia. A furnace would heat more evenly, and with less dust, and Bud could manage a furnace as well as he can these stoves."

How naturally they talked about their future sacrifices! What would have utterly appalled them a few months before, were spoken of carelessly now as "next things."

Ruth Jennings readily assented to the necessity for a furnace, but added:

"I don't believe we shall have Bud for engineer. He wants to go to school, did you know it? And what is more, Mrs. Ansted intends to send him. Fanny told me about it last night. She says her mother thinks Louis intended that Bud should have an education, and she wants to carry out all his plans. I did not know that Louis Ansted ever had any such plans, did you?"

Then Nettie Burdick, after a thoughtful pause:

"Oh, well, girls, if we can't have Bud for engineer, perhaps we can have him to preach for us some day. He told me last night that if he lived he meant to preach; and I believe he will, and preach well, too. Just think of it: Bud a minister!"

CHAPTER XXVIII.
A FAMILY SECRET.

In all these ways the summer waned. And now changes of various kinds were pending. Harry Matthews was about closing his engagement with the telegraph company, to enter upon a secretaryship under his uncle—a position involving grave responsibilities and conscientious stewardship. What joy it was to remember that the new young man was equal to the trust. Bud was to be regularly entered as a pupil at the Academy, and his face was radiant. The Ansteds were to stay at South Plains all winter, and the girls were happy over the prospect of uniting with the little church at its coming communion. Mrs. Ansted had subscribed a hundred dollar addition to the minister's salary, and told the people that they ought to feel disgraced for not each giving doubly the original amount; that her son Louis, she felt sure, would have taken the matter up had he lived, and she could not rest until she saw it accomplished.

Meantime, there was more or less gossip in the town, of course, about affairs with which the people, if they had really stopped to think, had nothing to do. Among other things, there was wonderment as to why Harold Chessney came to South Plains so often. What business was there in this direction which could require so much attention? To be sure, he was one of the Directors of the railroad, but this branch of it had not heretofore been considered so important as to need constant looking after by its chief. Also there were some who thought it very strange that that Miss Benedict would receive so many attentions from him, when she was as good as Louis Ansted's widow! Of course that was so, for Mrs. Ansted herself had as good as said so dozens of times; and see how intimate she was with the entire family. Yes, they knew that Harold Chessney was a very particular friend of Louis Ansted; but they should think that would hardly account for such a degree of intimacy, when Louis had only been buried a few weeks.

Meantime, the central figures of this anxious talk went their busy ways, and seemed in no sense troubled by the tongues. Harold Chessney came often, and always visited the Ansteds and the Academy, and the intimacy between all parties seemed to increase instead of diminish.

It was about this time that Claire received an unusually lengthy letter from Dora; a letter over which she laughed much, and also shed some tears.

Dora had some family perplexities to ask advice about, and indulged rather more than was her wont over forebodings in regard to the coming winter. Then suddenly she launched into the main channel of her letter after this fashion:

"Oh, Claire, my dear, you are good! If I could be half like you, or even one third, it would be such a relief to mamma as well as to myself. But Claire (this next that I am going to say is mean, and small, and will serve to show you that I have a correct estimate of myself), I can not help thinking it would be much easier for me to be good if I were away off in South Plains, or North Mountains, or anywhere else than here, right around the corner from the old home. Do you have any conception of what a difference it makes to be around the corner from things, instead of being on the same street with them? I think it possible that I might throw myself intensely into plans for that North Mountain Church, you know, if I were there, and forget this one, and these people, and the old ways.

"Claire, part of the time I am pretty good; I am, indeed; but really and truly, it is hard. The girls try to be good, too, some of them. Occasionally I think if they did not try so hard, I could get along better. You see, they stop talking about things when I appear, for fear I will be hurt, and I am hurt; but it is because they think I will be foolish enough to care for what they have been saying. Do you understand that? It reads as though there were no sense in it; but I know what I mean. It is clothes, half of the time. Clothes are dreadful! I find I had no conception of their cost. Not that I am having any new ones. Don't be frightened, dear. I am not so lost to a sense of what has befallen us as such a proceeding would indicate. Why, even a pair of gloves is often beyond my means! Neither am I complaining. It is not the gloves; I am quite willing to go without them. If mamma could have the things which we used to consider necessities for her I would be willing to go bare-handed for the rest of my days.

"Well, what am I talking about? Let me see if I can put it into words. The girls, you know, are always arranging for this and that entertainment. I meet them oftener, now that you have insisted on my going back to the music class. To some of these entertainments I am invited, and to more of them I am not. I never go, on account of clothes and some other things.

"Imagine a party of girls gathered in the music-room or the hall, in full tide of talk about what they will wear, and how they will arrange their hair, and their ribbons, and all that sort of thing; and imagine a sudden silence settling over them because I have appeared in sight, as though I were a grim fairy before whom it was their misfortune to have to be forever silent about everything that was pretty, or cost money!

"Now I am going to make a confession, and I know it is just as silly as it can be, but sometimes I can not help rushing home, and running up to my room, and locking my door, and crying as though my heart would break.

"I am thoughtful, though, about choosing times and occasions for these outbreaks. I generally select an afternoon when mamma is out executing some of your numerous commissions; but even then I have to bathe my eyes for half an hour so that the poor, dear, sweet, patient woman will know nothing about it. I never do let her know, Claire. She thinks that I am good and happy, and occasionally she tells me that I am growing self-controlled like you, and then I feel like a hypocrite; but all the same, for her own good I don't enlighten her.

"Claire, dear, don't you suppose it is the silly parties to which I do not go which trouble me. I have not the slightest desire to go, and I don't think of them often; I don't, really. Well, that about having no desire, needs qualifying. I mean I would not have, if I could go; I mean I should like to be perfectly able to go if I chose, and then to choose to remain at home. Do you understand?

"If the girls would only be free and social, and talk with me as though nothing had happened, I should learn not to care. But it is so hard to always feel that people are saying: 'Hush! there she comes, poor thing, don't talk about it now, or we shall hurt her feelings!' I would rather have them drop me entirely, I believe, as Estelle Mitchell has done. She doesn't bow to me any more, even when we meet face to face; doesn't see me, you know, but she does even that politely. I don't know how she manages. Claire, do you remember the time papa signed that ten thousand dollar note for her father? Well, never mind. I am writing a silly and, a wicked letter. I haven't written so to you before, have I? I'll tell you what has stirred me so, lately, everybody is in a flutter about the house. Claire, it is sold. You know what house I mean; the dear old one on the avenue, every separate stone of which speaks of papa. That Mr. Chessney bought it, who spends half of his time abroad. There is a rumor that he is to be married some time—nobody seems to know just when—and bring his bride there to live. It is well for me that I shall not have a chance to move in her circle, for I feel almost certain that I should have to hate her a little.

"It is very absurd, of course, but the girls are actually beginning already to talk about the possible reception, though they don't even know who the prospective bride is. Some have located her in Chicago, and some in Europe. I can not discover that there is an absolute certainty about there being any bride, and yet some of the young ladies are planning what would be pretty and unique to wear.

"Estelle Mitchell is sure of being invited, because her brother Dick used to be quite intimately acquainted with one of the Chessney family; and Dora Benedict is sure of not being invited, because she is not intimately acquainted with anybody any more. I wonder who will have our rooms—our dear old rooms? Yes, that largest blot is a tear. I couldn't help it, and I haven't time to copy, and could not afford to waste the paper, if I had. I don't cry very often, but I was foolish enough to walk by the blessed old home this morning, and look up at the open window in papa's study!

"Oh, Claire, darling, I wish you could come home, if it is only for a little while, and we could go away from here. Don't you think mamma might be made comfortable in South Plains for the winter?

"Oh, that is foolish, I know; and you are a dear, brave, self-sacrificing sister, to give up your vacation and work away all summer to help support us. To-morrow I shall not care anything about this, only to be dreadfully ashamed that I sent you this wicked letter.

"I am going down now to make tea, and a bit of cream toast for mother, and I shall be as bright as a gold eagle, and hover around her like a moth-miller in the gaslight, and tell her all sorts of pleasant nothings, and never a word of the house, or the sale, or the possible new mistress for the old home. I am learning, dear, though from this letter you might not think it. But I live such a pent-up, every-day life that I have to say things to you once in a while, else what would become of me?"

Claire laughed a great deal over this letter, pitiful as the undertone in it must have been to a sympathetic heart. The tears came once or twice; but after all, the predominant feeling seemed to be amusement. It was not answered promptly; in fact, she waited three days; then came Mr. Chessney for one of his brief visits, and she read the letter aloud to him.

What Dora would have thought, could she have seen that proceeding, passes my imagination.

What would she have thought of human sympathy, could she have heard the bursts of laughter over parts of it; albeit Mr. Chessney did once or twice brush away a tear!

What would she have thought could she have heard the conversation which followed:

"Now, my dear Claire, I hope you are convinced of your hard-heartedness. Poor Dora ought not to have this strain kept on her during the autumn, especially when it is so utterly unnecessary.

"The house will be in complete order in a few weeks' time, and Dora's reception is just the thing. I can write to Phillips, and put every arrangement into his hands and we can appoint Dora manager-in-chief.

"Claire, I have a plan worth a dozen of yours. Let us have the mother and Dora here for a visit. They want to see the little church which they have helped to build. Nothing could be pleasanter. Then all your girls, and all your boys, could be present at the ceremony. Think what that would be for Bud! He would never forget it. Neither would this struggling minister; it would afford an excuse for doing for him just what we want to do. The law does not regulate the amount of marriage fees, you know."

Mr. Chessney was an eloquent pleader; and Dora's letter, it must be confessed, plead against the delay that Claire had thought was wise. Of course, she demurred; of course, she hinted at the plans that she had formed for getting ready; but the party on the opposite side had an answer for every argument. He was sure that the way to do would be to get ready afterward, when she would have leisure and his invaluable presence and advice, instead of being hampered with music-scholars, and he miles away, alone, waiting, and Dora waiting and suffering, and the mother thinking her sad thoughts. Happy surprises were all very well; they were delightful. He was entirely in sympathy with her desire to tell mamma and Dora the story of the new home in person, only he believed with all his heart that it would be cruel, and therefore wrong, to burden that young heart with the question of ways and means a moment longer than was necessary. As for Mrs. Foster, she could supply Claire's place quietly, and thereby make some poor music-teacher's heart unexpectedly glad.

Of course, Claire was overruled. She had really not one sensible reason to offer why she should remain exiled from mamma and Dora any longer.

There was a little feeling of pride, it is true, about the "getting ready afterward;" but as she looked it over carefully and prayerfully, it seemed, even to herself, a mean pride, unworthy of the woman who was to be Harold Chessney's wife.

Then there was a fascination in the thought of Dora planning for that reception—really being the one to invite whom she would among "the girls," instead of being the one left out in the cold.

Also it was pleasant to think what an event it would be to her girls, and to Bud; and her cheeks glowed over the thought of the marriage-fee that would find its way into the lean pocket-book of the overburdened minister.

I would like to tell you the whole story in detail: what Dora said when the letter came imploring her mother and herself to come to South Plains for a few weeks' visit; how the mother demurred on the ground of expense, and yet confessed that it made her heart beat wildly to think of getting her arms around Claire again.

"But I can not think what has become of the dear child's good sense," she would add, with a sigh. "Why, Dora dear, she did not come home, you know, because the trip would cost so much, and here she is planning for two of us to take it."

"Never mind, mamma," would Dora reply, for Dora was desperately determined on this trip to South Plains, "Claire has planned a way; and we shall save our food if we stay two weeks, and that will be something; and she has sent us the tickets, so the money is spent. Oh, mamma, let us go anyway."

And of course they went. Yes, I would delight to tell you all about it. What a sensation there was in South Plains, and how full the little church was, and how well Bud looked walking down the aisle as one of the ushers, and how people said the Ansteds certainly would not come, they would feel it a family insult, but how the Ansteds not only came, but took almost entire charge of everything.

Above all, I should like to have you look in with me at the parsonage, in the study, where the minister and his wife stopped to break the seal of that special envelope after it was all over; how he rubbed his eyes, and looked, and looked again, and turned pale, and said, huskily:

"There is some mistake here, Mary; he has given me the wrong paper."

And how she came and looked over his shoulder, and said:

"Why, it has your full name. How can there be a mistake?" And then she read, "Pay to Rev. Henry Ramsey, or order, one thousand dollars. —— ——."

Who ever heard of such a marriage-fee as that!

Oh, now, I have; there have been just such marriage-fees as that, really and truly. There had been such before Harold Chessney and Claire Benedict were married, and there will be such again. There are poor ministers and grand, rich men, and there will be, I presume, while the world stands. More things than some people dream of are going on in this world of ours.

There is one thing which it gives me great pleasure to record. There was a reception given in the old home. It was after mamma and Dora had been established for several days in their old rooms, and it was the evening after the arrival of the bride and groom, and Estelle Mitchell was invited to the reception. Not because her brother Dick had been intimate with one of the Chessneys, but because because—

"My brother Harold gave me liberty to invite whoever I pleased among my classmates, and it would give me pleasure to see you there."

Dora spoke truth. It really gave her great pleasure to see Estelle Mitchell at the wedding reception of the Chessneys, and to realize that she was her guest!

"Oh, you wicked, wicked Dora!" some of them said, when the excitement caused by the reception cards was at his height, "there you heard us talking about the new furniture, and wondering as to who was the bride, and you never gave us so much as a hint!"

Dora laughed, and kept her own counsel. She did not choose to tell them that during those trying days no hint of it had come to her. That was their pretty family secret, with which outsiders were not to intermeddle.

They agreed, every one of them, that Dora made a charming young hostess, and Estelle Mitchell said she was glad she was back in her old home, for she just fitted.

There are but two things which remain to tell you. One grew out of Ruth Jennings' farewell words to her beloved music-teacher, spoken while she was half-laughing, half-crying, and wholly heart-broken:

"But the organ does squeak horribly; you know it does; and it is always getting out of tune."

Mr. Chessney heard it, and during their wedding-trip he said to his wife:

"There is one thing I want you to help me select. I have not made my thank-offering yet to that blessed little church where I found you. It must have an organ that will keep in tune, and that will worthily commemorate the harmony that was begun there."

Imagine, please, for I shall not attempt to tell you, the delight, to say nothing of the unspeakable wonder, of the girls, and of the entire community, when the beautifully-finished, exquisitely-toned bit of mechanism was set up in the church.

Accompanying it were two organ stools, one for the church and one for Ruth Jennings' home; so she sits on dictionaries and Patent Office Reports no more.

The other item can be told more briefly. It is embodied in a sentence which the gentle mother spoke one morning at the breakfast-table:

"By the way, Claire, the committee about the Mission Band entertainment was here yesterday while you and Harold were out, to see if you would help them. I told them I thought you would."

The face of the bride flushed deeply, and a peculiarly tender light shone in her eyes as she said:

"How very strange that is! It is the same Band which was preparing for that exercise about which I told you. We were to have had it on the day in which papa was buried."

"It is the same exercise," Dora said, speaking gently. "The girls dropped it entirely, and could never persuade themselves to take hold of it again, until last week they voted to attempt it."

"You were only interrupted in your work, you see," Mr. Chessney said, smiling down on eyes that were filling with tears. "Interrupted, that you might set some wheels in motion that had been clogged; now you are called back to finish the other, and I am here to help you."