“Four people from away off have written to thank her, any way,” exulted Dinah.

“People like your father I suppose.”

Dinah sprang up and began to rattle the cups and saucers; she could not bear the look in Tessa’s eyes another second.

“Dinah, I can’t talk if you make so much noise. You are very rude.”

“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” cried Dinah, standing still with two cups in her hands. “It’s great fun! Nan Gerard refused Mr. John Gesner while she was here.”

“I don’t believe it,” exclaimed Mrs Wadsworth. “Those brothers are worth nearly a million.”

“Naughty Nan didn’t care.”

“She’ll jump out of the frying-pan into the fire, then; for the Townes, mother and son, are not worth a quarter of it.”

“What does she care? Mr. Lewis Gesner is a gentleman, and he knows something.”

“He said once that I was only a little doll,” said Mrs. Wadsworth. “I never liked him afterward.”

“I like him,” said Dinah; “he doesn’t flirt with the girls; he always talks to the old ladies.”

“What are you going to do to-day, Tessa?” inquired Mrs. Wadsworth, ignoring Dinah’s remark.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she answered, “and don’t care” was the unspoken addition.

There was one thing she was sure to do. On her way to the ten o’clock mail she would take a moment with Miss Jewett for a word, a look; for something to set her heart to beating to a cheerier tune. Ten minutes before mail time she found Miss Jewett as busy as a bee.

“Oh, Tessa,” glancing up from her desk, “I knew you would come. I had a good crying spell on my twenty-fifth birthday and I’ve looked through clear eyes ever since. I wish for you that your second quarter may be as full of hard work as mine.”

Tessa felt as if the sun were shining warm again. At the office she received her birthday present; the one thing that she most wished for; if ever birthday face were in a glow and birthday heart set to dancing, hers were when her fingers held the check for one hundred and sixty-eight dollars and fifty cents, and when her eyes ran through the brief, friendly letter, with its two lines of praise.

“I am taken with your book. It gives me a humbling-down feeling. I hardly know why.”

“Oh, it’s too good! it’s too good,” she cried, with her head close to Miss Jewett’s at the desk over the large day-book. “I was feeling as if nobody cared, and now he wants another book. As good as this, he says.”

Tessa lived in fairy-land for the next two hours. No, she lived in Dunellen on a happy birthday.

“Well! well! well!” exclaimed her father, taking off his spectacles to wipe his eyes, “this is what I call fine. So this is what you grew pale over last winter,” he added, looking down into a face as rosy and wide awake as a child’s waking out of sleep.

“What shall you do with so much money?”

“Spend it, of course. I have spent it already a hundred times.”

“You must return receipt and reply to the letter.”

“I had forgotten that.”

“You will find every thing on my desk. Write your name on the back of the check and I will give you the money.”

“I don’t want to do that. I want to take it into the bank and surprise Gus with it. His face will be worth another check.”

She wrote her name upon the check, her father standing beside her. Theresa L. Wadsworth. He was very proud of this name among his three girls.

“And you expect to do this thing again?”

“I do. Many times. All I want is a nook and a lead pencil.”

“Daughter, I would like something else better.”

“I wouldn’t. Nothing else. I shall not change my mind even for a knight in helmet and helmet feather.”

Mr. Hammerton’s face was worth another check; he looked down at her from his high stool in a grave, paternal fashion. She remained decorously silent.

“How women do like to spend money,” he said. “At six o’clock you will not have a penny left.”

“How can I? Father is to have a farm in Mayfield, mother is to go to Europe, and Dine is to have diamond ear-rings!”

“And I?”

“I will buy you a month to go fishing! And myself brains enough to write a better book. Isn’t it comical for me to get more for my book than Milton got for Paradise Lost?”

Tessa laughed as she counted her money at tea-time; there was a twenty dollar bill and seventy-five cents! But in her mother’s chamber stood a suite of black-walnut with marble tops, in one of Dine’s drawers, materials for a black and white striped silk, on the sitting-room table a copy of Shakespeare in three Turkey morocco volumes, for her father; she had also sent a gold thimble to Sue Greyson, several volumes of Ruskin to Mr. Hammerton, Barnes on Job to Miss Jewett, and had purchased a ream of foolscap, a pint of ink, a pair of gloves, and The Scarlet Letter for herself!

“Is there any thing left in the world that you want?” her father asked.

“Yes, but twenty dollars will not buy it,” she replied, thinking of Dr. Lake’s anxious face as she had seen it that day.

At night, alone in the darkness, there were a few tears that no one would ever know about. Her joy in her accepted work was nothing to Ralph Towne. He did not know about her book and if he knew—would he care?

VIII.—A NOTE OUT OF TUNE.

They crossed the street to the planks. She slipped her arm through his, and as he took the fingers on his arm with a warm grasp, she said; “I never want any lover but you, my dear old father.”

“Nonsense, child! Only girls who have had a heart-break say such things to their old fathers, and your heart is as good as new, I am sure. Tessa, I want to see you married before I die.”

“May you live till you see me married,” she answered merrily. “What an old mummy you will be!”

“I have been thinking of something that I want to say to you. I am an old man and I am not young for my age—”

“Now, father.”

“I may live a hundred years, of course, and grow heartier each year, and like the ‘frisky old girl,’ die at the age of one hundred and ten, and ‘die by a fall from a cherry-tree then,’ but, still there’s a chance that I may not. And now, Daughter Tessa”—his voice became as grave as her eyes, “I want you to promise me that you will always take care of your poor little mother; poor little mother! You are never sharp to her like saucy Dine, and she rests in you like an acorn in an acorn cup, although she would be the last to confess it.”

“I promise to do my best,” Tessa said very earnestly.

“But that is only a part of it. Promise me that if she wishes to marry again, and her choice be one that you approve—”

“Approve!”

“Approve,” he repeated, “that you will not hinder but rather further it, and keep Dine from making her unhappy about it.”

“I will not promise. You shall not die,” she cried passionately. “How can you talk so and break my heart?”

“Dr. Watts says that we all begin to die as soon as we are born, so I have had to do it pretty thoroughly; but he was a theologian and not a medical man. Have you promised?”

“Yes, sir,” speaking very quietly, “I have promised.”

With her hand upon his arm, they kept even step for ten silent minutes.

“Are you writing again?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then you must walk every day.”

“Oh, I do, rain or shine. I am going down the road this afternoon to look at the wheat fields and the oat fields and to see the boys and girls dropping corn!”

“And to wish that you were a little girl dropping corn?”

“No, indeed,” she said earnestly and solemnly. “I like my own life better than any life I ever knew in a book or out of a book.”

“When I count up my mercies I’ll remember that.”

She was dwelling upon those words of her father late that afternoon as she sauntered homeward with her hands full of wild flowers and grasses.

“Mystic, will you ride with me?”

A feeling of warmth and of tenderness ever crept into her heart at the sound of this voice.

She loved Dr. Lake.

“No, sir, thank you; I am out for a walk and when I walk I never ride.”

“But I want to talk to you—to tell you something.” She stepped nearer and stood at the carriage wheel; his voice was sharp and his white temples hollow. “Sue has refused me,” he began with a laugh. “I proposed last night, and what do you think she said? ‘Why, Dr. Lake, you are poor, and you smell of medicine.’”

“They are both true,” she said, not conscious of what reply she was making.

“Yes,” he answered bitterly, “they are both true and will be true until the end of time. Don’t you think that you could reason with her and change her mind; you have influence.” He laid his gloved hand on the hand that rested on the wheel. “It will kill me, Mystic, if she doesn’t marry me.”

So weak, so pitiful! She could have cried. And all for love of flighty Sue Greyson!

“I was sure that she would accept me. She has done every thing but accept me. I did not know that a woman would permit a man to take her day after day into his arms and kiss her unless she intended to marry him. Would you permit that?” he asked.

“You know that I would not,” she answered proudly; “but Sue doesn’t know any better; all she cares for is the ‘fun’ of the moment.”

“I have been hoping so long; since Towne went away; I can’t bear this.”

“There is as much strength for you as for any of us,” she said gently.

“But I am too weak to hold it.”

And he looked too weak to hold it. She could not lift her full eyes. “I am so sorry,” was all she could speak.

“There isn’t any thing worth living for anyway; I, for one, am not thankful for my ‘creation.’ I wish I was dead and buried and out of sight forever. Sue Greyson has another offer to whisper to all Dunellen. I would not stay here, I would go back to that wretched hospital, but my engagement with her father extends through another year. Well, you won’t ride home with me?”

“Not to-day, I want to be out in this air.”

“And you don’t want to be shut in here with my growling. I don’t blame you; I’d run away from myself if I could. I’ll kill half Dunellen and all Mayfield with overdoses before another night, and then take a big dose myself. Say, Mystic, you are posted in these things, where would be the harm?”

“Take it and see.”

“Not yet awhile. I am not sure of many things, but I am sure that a man’s life in this world will stare in his face in the next. And my life has not been fit even for your eyes.”

Homely, shabby, old, worn, excited, with a sharp ring in his voice and a stoop in his shoulders. What was there in him to touch Sue Greyson? Where was the first point of sympathy?

Tessa could have taken him into her arms and cared for him as she would have cared for a child.

“I have just seen an old man die; a good old man; he was over ninety; he prayed to the last; that is his lips moved and his old wife laid his hands together; he liked to clasp his hands when he prayed, she said. She put her ear down close to his mouth, but she could not distinguish the words. I was wishing that I could go in his place, and that he could take up my life and live it through for me. He would do better with it than I shall.”

“Is not that rather selfish?”

“Life is such a sham. I don’t believe in the transmigration of souls; I don’t want to come back and pull through another miserable existence.”

“I want you to stay this soul in this body; I do not want to lose you.”

“If every woman in the world were like you—”

“And every man were as tired and hungry as you—”

“What would he do?”

“He would hurry home to a good, hot dinner.”

“I have not eaten or drank since yesterday morning. Sue has a hot dinner waiting for me. She will sit with me while I eat, and tell me, perhaps, that she has had a letter from that fellow in Philadelphia, or that that well-preserved specimen of manhood, old John Gesner, has asked her to drive with him. Some flirtation of hers is sauce to every dish.”

“Poor Sue,” sighed Tessa.

“She might be happy if she would; I would take care of her.”

“Good-by,” squeezing his fingers through his glove. “Go home and eat.”

“Give me a good word before I go.”

“Wait.”

“Is that the best word you know?”

“It is good enough.”

“Well, good day, Mystic,” he said, lifting his hat.

She went back to the grassy wayside, thinking. What right had Sue Greyson’s light fingers to meddle with a life like Dr. Lake’s? They had not one taste in common. How could he find her attractive? She disliked every thing in which he was interested; it was true that she could sing, sing like one of the wild birds down in the woods, and he loved music.

She paused and stood leaning against the rails of a fence, and looked across the green acres of winter wheat; one day in September she had stood there watching the men as they were drilling the wheat; afterward she had seen the tender, green blades springing up in straight rows, and once she had seen the whole field green beneath a light snow. The wind moved her veil slightly, both hands were drooping as her elbows leaned upon the upper rail, her cheeks were tinged with the excitement of Dr. Lake’s words, and her eyes suffused with a mist that was too sorrowful to drop with tears. A quick step on the grass at her side did not startle her; she did not stir until a voice propounded gravely: “If a man should be born with two heads, on which forehead must he wear the phylactery?”

She turned with a laugh. “Gus, I would know that was you if I heard the voice and the question in the Great Desert.”

“Can’t you decide?”

“My thoughts were not nonsense.”

“Of course not, you were labelling and pigeon holing all that you have thought of since sunrise! I’ve been sitting on a stone waiting for your conference to end. Are you in the habit of meeting strange men and conversing with them.”

“Yes, I came out to meet you.”

“I only wish you did! I wish that you would make a stranger of me and be polite to me. It is nothing new for you to be wandering on a Saturday afternoon, and nothing new for you to find me.”

“I didn’t find you.”

“I intended to give you the honor of the discovery; now we will share the glory. Shall we go on?”

“I have been to my roots; do you know my roots? Do you know the corner above Old Place and the tiny stream?”

“I know every corner, and every root, and every stream. Shall I carry your flowers for you? I never can see why I should relieve a maiden of a burden when her avoirdupois equals mine. You will not give them to me? I have something to read to you—something of my own composing—I composed it in one brilliant wakeful moment—you will appreciate it.”

“I do not believe it.”

“Wait until you hear it. Lady Blue, are you going to be literary and never be married! Woe to the day when I taught you all you know.”

They went on, slowly, for she liked to talk to Mr. Hammerton. “Father said something like that this morning and it troubled me; why may I not do as I like best? Why should he care to see me married before he dies?”

“Why should he not?”

“Nonsense. I can take good care of myself; beside,” with a mischievous glance into his serious eyes, “I really don’t know whom to marry.”

“Oh, you could easily find some one. If all else fail, come to me, and if I am not too busy I will take you into consideration.”

“Thanks, good friend! But you will always be too busy. What have you to read to me?”

“Something that you will appreciate. I wrote it for you. Stay, sit down, while I read it.”

“I don’t want to. You can read and walk. The mother of Mrs. Hemans could read aloud while walking up hill.”

Mr. Hammerton’s voice was not pleasant to a stranger, but Tessa liked it because it belonged to him; it was a part of him like his big nose, his spectacles, and the tiny bald spot over which, every day, he carefully brushed his hair. The color in his cheeks was as pretty as a girl’s, and so was the delicate whiteness of his forehead; the bushy mustache, however, made amends for the complexion that he sometimes regretted; Tessa had once told him that his big nose, his mustache, and his awkwardness were all that kept him from being as pretty as his sister.

“I am not the mother of Mrs. Hemans.” He took a sheet of paper from his pocket-book, and showed her the poem written in his peculiarly plain, upright hand.

“Excuse my singing and I will read. You must not think of any thing else.”

“I will not.”

“You are walking too fast.”

She obediently took slower steps.

He cleared his throat and, holding the paper near his eyes, began to read. A shadow gathered in his listener’s eyes at the first four lines.

    “A  nightingale  made  a  mistake;
        She  sang  a  few  notes  out  of  tune,
    Her  heart  was  ready  to  break,
        And  she  hid  from  the  moon.
 
    “She  wrung  her  claws,  poor  thing,
        But  was  far  too  proud  to  speak;
    She  tucked  her  head  under  her  wing,
        And  pretended  to  be  asleep.
 
    “A  lark  arm  in  arm  with  a  thrush,
        Came  sauntering  up  to  the  place;
    The  nightingale  felt  herself  blush,
        Though  feathers  hid  her  face.
 
    “She  knew  they  had  heard  her  song,
        She  felt  them  snicker  and  sneer.
    She  thought  this  life  was  too  long,
        And  wished  she  could  skip  a  year.
 
    “‘O,  nightingale!’  cooed  a  dove,
        O,  nightingale,  what’s  the  use;
    You  bird  of  beauty  and  love,
        Why  behave  like  a  goose?
 
    “‘Don’t  skulk  away  from  our  sight,
        Like  a  common,  contemptible  fowl;
    You  bird  of  joy  and  delight,
        Why  behave  like  an  owl?
 
    “‘Only  think  of  all  you  have  done;
        Only  think  of  all  you  can  do;
    A  false  note  is  really  fun
        From  such  a  bird  as  you.
 
    “‘Lift  up  your  proud  little  crest:
        Open  your  musical  beak;
    Other  birds  have  to  do  their  best,
        You  need  only  to  speak.’
 
    “The  nightingale  shyly  took
        Her  head  from  under  her  wing,
    And  giving  the  dove  a  look,
        Straightway  began  to  sing.
 
    “There  was  never  a  bird  could  pass;
        The  night  was  divinely  calm;
    And  the  people  stood  on  the  grass,
        To  hear  that  wonderful  psalm!
 
    “The  nightingale  did  not  care,
        She  only  sang  to  the  skies;
    Her  song  ascended  there,
        And  there  she  fixed  her  eyes.

    “The  people  that  stood  below
        She  knew  but  little  about;
    And  this  story’s  a  moral,  I  know,
        If  you’ll  try  to  find  it  out.”

“How did you know that I need that?” she asked, taking it from his hand. “Who wrote it?”

“I did.”

“Don’t you know?”

“No. I don’t know. I copied it for you.”

“Thank you. I thank you very much. You could not have brought me any thing better.”

“I brought you a piece of news, too.”

“As good as the poem?”

“Nan Gerard thinks so. She is to be married and to live at Old Place; our castle in the air.”

“Old Place isn’t my castle in the air. Who told you?”

“A woman’s question. I never told a woman a secret yet that she did not reply, ‘Who told you?’ Mary Sherwood told me, of course. Do you congratulate Naughty Nan?”

“Must I?”

“It’s queer that I do not know that man. I have missed an introduction a thousand times. Do you congratulate her?”

“I am supposed to congratulate him. He is very lovable.”

“I thought that only women were that.”

“That’s an admission,” laughed Tessa, “you cross old bachelor.”

“You learned that from Dine.”

“No, I learned it from you.”

Tessa talked rapidly and lightly, perhaps, because she did not feel like talking at all.

Would he marry Nan Gerard? Why could she not be glad for Nan Gerard? Why must she be just a little sorry for herself? Why must it make a difference to her? Why must the weight of the flowers be too heavy for her hand, and why must she give them that toss over a fence across a field?

“Your pretty flowers,” expostulated Mr. Hammerton.

“I do not care for them; they were withering.”

“I have a thought; I wonder why it should come to me; I am wondering if you and I walk together here a year from to-day what we shall be talking about. My prophetic soul reveals to me that a year makes a difference sometimes.”

“I remember a year ago to-day,” she answered. “A year has made a difference.”

“Not to you or me?”

“To Nan Gerard?” she answered seriously.

“But that does not affect us.”

Did it not? A year ago to-day Ralph Towne had brought her some English violets, and she had pressed them and thrown a thought about him and about them into a poem. To-day had he taken violets to Nan Gerard?

“Lady Blue; you are absent-minded.”

“Am I? I was only labelling and pigeon-holing a thought; it is to be laid away to moulder with the dust of ages.”

“A thought that can not be spoken?”

“A thought that it was folly to think, and that would be worse than folly to speak.”

If he replied she did not hear; they sauntered on, she keeping the path and he walking on the grass.

A carriage passed, driving slowly. The two ladies within watched the pedestrians,—a fair-faced girl with thoughtful eyes, and a tall man with an intellectual face,—as if they were a part of the landscape of the spring.

    “‘In  the  spring  a  young  man’s  fancy—’”

laughingly quoted one of them.

“Will she accept or refuse him?” asked the other.

“If she do either it will be once and forever,” was the reply seriously given. “Did you notice her mouth? She has been very much troubled, but she can be made very glad.”

After the carriage had passed, Mr. Hammerton spoke, “I am glad we amused those people; they failed to decide whether or not we are lovers.”

“They have very little penetration, then,” said Tessa. “I am too languid and you are too unconscious.”

“There is nothing further to be said; you do not know what you have nipped in the bud.”

“I suppose we never know that.”

Dinah met them at the gate, her wind-blown curls and laughing eyes in striking contrast to the older face that had lost all its color. Tessa did not see that Mr. Hammerton’s eyes were studying the change in her face; she had no more care of the changes in her face with him than with Dinah.

“I’ll be in about eight,” he said to Dinah, as Tessa brushed past him to enter the gate.

Another thing that influenced impressible Tessa this day, was a talk at the tea-table. They were sitting around the tea-table cozily, the four people who, in her mother’s thought, constituted all Tessa’s world. Mr. Wadsworth in an easy position in his arm-chair was listening to his three girls and deciding that his little wife was really the handsomest and sprightliest woman that he had ever seen, that happy little Dine was as bewitching as she could well be, and that Tessa, the light of his eyes, was like no one else in all the world. Not that any stranger sitting in his arm-chair would have looked through his eyes, but he was an old man, disappointed in his life, and his three girls were all of earth and a part of heaven to him. They were all talking and he was satisfied to listen. “I believe that some girls are born without a mother’s heart,” Mrs. Wadsworth said in reply to a story of Dine’s about a young mother in Dunellen who had slapped her baby, saying that she hated it and was nothing but a slave to it! “Now, here’s Tessa. She has no motherliness. Only this morning Freddie Stone fell down near the gate and hurt his head; his screams were terrifying, but she went on working and let him scream. As I said it is all as girls are born.”

“Yes,” answered Tessa, in the deliberate way in which she had schooled herself to reply to her mother, “I know that your last assertion is true. There was a lady in school, a teacher of mathematics, she acknowledged that she did not love her own little girls as other mothers seemed to do. She stated it as she would have stated any fact in geometry; perhaps she thought that she was no more responsible for one than for the other. The mere fact of motherhood does not bring mother love within; any mother that does not give to her child a true idea of the mother-heart of God fails utterly in being a mother. She may be a nurse, a paid nurse, or a nurse upon compulsion; any hired nurse can wash a child’s face, can tie its sash and make pretty things for it to wear, and any nurse, who was never mother to a child, can teach it what God means when He says, ‘as a mother comforteth.’ Miss Jewett could not be happier in her Bible class girls if they were all her own children; she says so herself. Mary Sherwood said to her one day, ‘If my mother were like you, how different I should have been!’”

“Such a case is an exception,” returned Mrs. Wadsworth excitedly.

“Nineteen out of her twenty-three girls tell her their troubles when they would not tell their own mothers,” said Dinah. “She has twenty-three secret drawers to keep their secrets in.”

“She has time to listen to fol-de-rol. She advises them all to marry for some silly notion and let a good home slip, I’ve no doubt.”

“I expect that twenty-one of her girls have refused John Gesner,” laughed Mr. Wadsworth. “He will have to bribe Miss Jewett to let them alone.”

“Only twenty, father,” said Dine. “Tessa and Sue and I are waiting to do it.”

“I will make this house too uncomfortable for the one of you that does refuse him.”

“Mother! mother!” remonstrated Mr. Wadsworth gently.

“He’ll never have the honor,” said Dine. “Mr. Lewis Gesner is the gentleman; I have always admired him. Haven’t you, Tessa?”

“Yes; I like to shake hands with him; he has a trustworthy face.”

“So much for the mothers of Dunellen, Tessa; how about the fathers? Would the girls like to have Miss Jewett for a father, too?”

“Oh, the fathers have the bread-winning to do. If the mothers do not understand, we can not expect the fathers to understand. There was a girl at school who had had a hard home experience; she told me that she never repeated the second word of the Lord’s prayer; that she said instead: Our Lord, who art in heaven?”

“Oh, deary me! How dreadful!” cried Dinah, moving nearer the arm-chair and dropping her head on her father’s shoulder. “Didn’t she ever learn to say it?”

“Not while we were at school.”

“Tessa, you can talk,” said her mother.

“Yes,” said Tessa, humbly, “I can talk.”

“She was a very wicked girl,” continued Mrs. Wadsworth. “I don’t see how she dared; I should think that she would have been afraid of dying in her sleep as a judgment sent upon her.”

“Perhaps she did not repeat the prayer as a charm,” answered Tessa, in her clearest tones.

Dinah lifted her head to laugh.

“You upheld her, no doubt,” declared Mrs. Wadsworth.

“I sympathized with her as they who never had a pain can feel for the sick,” said Tessa, smiling into her father’s eyes.

“How did you talk to her?” asked Dine.

“What is talk? I only told her to wait and she would know.”

“It’s easy to talk,” said Mrs. Wadsworth uncomfortably. “You can talk an hour about sympathy, but you didn’t run out to Freddie Stone.”

“Why didn’t you?” inquired her father seriously.

Tessa laughed, while Dine answered.

“Mother was there talking as fast as she could talk, Bridget was there with a basin of water and a sponge, Mrs. Bird had run over, a carriage with two ladies, a coachman and a footman had stopped to look on, and oh, I was there too. He was somewhat bloody.”

“You are excused, daughter. Save your energies for a time of greater need.”

“Energies! Need!” tartly exclaimed Mrs. Wadsworth. “If she begins to be literary, she will care for nothing else.”

“I see no evidence of a lessening interest yet,” replied her father.

“Oh, I might know that you would encourage her. She might as well have the small-pox as far as her prospects go! A needle is a woman’s weapon.”

“You forget her tongue, mother,” suggested Dine. “Oh, Tessa, what is that about a needle; Mrs. Browning says it.”

Tessa repeated:

    “‘A  woman  takes  a  housewife  from  her  breast,
    And  plucks  the  delicatest  needle  out
    As  ’twere  a  rose,  and  pricks  you  carefully
    ’Neath  nails,  ’neath  eyelids,  in  your  nostrils,—say,
    A  beast  would  roar  so  tortured—but  a  man,
    A  human  creature,  must  not,  shall  not  flinch,
    No,  not  for  shame.’”

“Some woman wrote that when she’d have done better to be sewing for her husband, I’ll warrant,” commented Mrs. Wadsworth. Mr. Wadsworth looked grave.

“Oh she had a literary husband,” replied Tessa, mischievously. “A word that rhymed with supper would do instead of bread and butter; and he cared more for one of her poems than he did for his buttons.”

“Literary men don’t grow on every bush; and they don’t take to literary women, either,” said her mother.

“Mother, you forget the Howitts, William and Mary; what good, good times they have taking long walks and writing; like you and Gus, Tessa, and Mr. and Mrs. Browning—”

“You don’t find such people in Dunellen; we live in Dunellen. Gus will choose a woman that doesn’t care for books, and so will Mr. Towne, mark my words! And so will Felix Harrison, even if he is killing himself with study.”

“He is improving greatly,” said Mr. Wadsworth, pulling one of Dine’s long curls straight. “He is going away Monday to finish his studies.”

“I honor him,” said Tessa, flushing slightly.

“Don’t,” said Dine, “he sha’n’t have you, Tessa. Don’t honor him.”

“That’s all you and your father think of—keeping Tessa. She needs the wear and tear of married life to give her character.”

“It’s queer about that,” rejoined Tessa in a perplexed tone, playing with her napkin ring. “If such discipline be the best, why is any woman permitted to be without it? Why does not the fitting husband appear as soon as the girl begins to wish for him? In the East, where it is shameful for a girl not to be married at eleven, I have yet to learn that the wives are noted for strength or beauty of character.”

“You may talk,” said her mother, heatedly, “but two years hence you will dance in a brass kettle.”

“I hope that I shall work in it,” answered Tessa, coloring painfully, however. Whether her lips were touched with a slight contempt, or tremulous because she was very, very much hurt, Dinah could not decide; she was silent because she could not think of any thing sharp enough to reply; she never liked to be too saucy.

Mr. Wadsworth spoke in his genial voice: “It’s a beautiful thing, daughters, to help a good man live a good life.”

Dinah thought: “I would love to do such a beautiful thing.” Tessa was saying to herself, “Oh, what should I do if my father were to die!”

Mr. Wadsworth pushed back his chair, went around to his wife and kissed her. Tessa loved him for it.

“You have helped a good man, a good old man, haven’t you, fairy?” he said, smoothing the hair that was as pretty as Dinah’s.

“Yes,” answered his wife, and Tessa shivered from head to foot. “People all said that you were a different man after you were married.”

“I’m going over to Norah’s,” cried Dinah. “I told her that I would come to write our French together. And, oh, father! I forgot to tell you, Gus will be in about eight.”

“I don’t know that I care for chess; I can not concentrate my attention as I could a year ago.”

“Why do you run off if he is coming?” asked Mrs. Wadsworth.

“He comes too often to be attended to,” Dine answered. “Won’t you be around, Tessa?”

“Perhaps.”

Tessa had resolved to give the evening to writing letters, and was passing through the dining-room with a china candlestick in her hand, when her father, reading Shakespeare at the round table, on which stood a shaded lamp, detained her by catching at her dress.

“Set your light down, daughter, and stay a moment.”

With her hand upon his shoulder, she looked down over the page he was reading:

    “‘Heaven  doth  with  us  as  we  with  torches  do;
          Not  light  them  for  themselves—’”

she read aloud.

“I made my will to-day,” he said quietly; “that is, I changed it. Lewis Gesner and Gus Hammerton, my tried friends, were in the office at the time. If you ever need a friend, daughter, any thing done for you that Gus can not do—I count on him as the friend of my girls for life—go to Lewis Gesner.”

“I don’t want a friend; I have you.”

“If I should tell your mother about the will she would go into hysterics, and Dine would be sure that I am going to die; I have divided my little all equally among my three. That is, all but this house and garden, which I have given to my elder daughter, Theresa Louise. It is to be hers solely, without any gainsaying. Your mother will fume when the fact is made known to her, but I give it to you that my three girls may always have a roof, humble though it be, over their heads. The old man did not know how to make money, but he left them enough to be comfortable all their lives there was never any need that his wife should worry and work, or that his daughter should marry for a home. Very good record for the old man; eh, daughter?”

She laid her cheek against the bald forehead and put both arms around his neck.

“And, Tessa, child, your mother is half right about you; don’t have any notions about marriage; promise me that you will marry—for you will, some day—but for the one best reason.”

“What is that?” she asked roguishly. “How am I to know?”

“What do you think?”

“Because somebody needs me and I can do him good.”

“A Hottentot might urge that; you will find the reason in time. Don’t make an idol; that is your temperament.”

“I know it.”

“And above all things don’t sacrifice yourself; few men appreciate being done good to! I know men, they are terribly human. Gus Hammerton is a fine fellow.”

“He is terribly human,” she answered with a little laugh.

“Am I harsh towards your mother ever, do you think?” he asked in a changed tone.

“Why, no,” she exclaimed in surprise.

“I used to be. I tried to mould her. Don’t you ever try to mould any body; now run away to your work or to your book! Don’t sigh over me, I am ‘well and hearty.’ How short my life seems when I look back. Such dreams as I had. It’s all right, though.”

She could not run away, for the door-bell, in answer to a most decided pull, detained her; she opened it, expecting to see Mr. Hammerton, but to her surprise, and but slightly to her pleasure, Felix Harrison stood there in broad-shouldered health.

“Good evening,” she said with some bewilderment.

“Do I startle you?” he asked in the old gracious, winning manner. “May I come in?”

“I am very glad to see you. Will you walk into my parlor, Mr. Fly?”

The one tall candle in the china candlestick was the only light in the room. She set it upon the table, saying, “Excuse me, and I will bring a light, that we may the better look at each other. The light of other days is hardly sufficient.”

“It is enough for me,” he said, pushing the ottoman towards one of the low arm-chairs. “Sit down and I will take the ottoman. The parrot recognizes me.”

Her hand moved nervously on the arm of her chair; the hand was larger now than when it had spilled ink on his copy-book, larger even than when it had written her first, shy, proud, indignant refusal.

“You are not the tempest you used to be,” he said smiling after a survey of her face.

“Wasn’t I a tempest? I have outgrown my little breezes. In time I may become as gentle as a zephyr.”

“You always were gentle enough.”

“Not to you.”

“Not to me when I tormented you.”

“Probably I should not be gentle if I were tormented now.”

She had never decided to which of the five thousand shades of green Felix Harrison’s eyes belonged; they were certainly green; one of the English poets had green eyes, she wondered if they were like Felix Harrison’s. To-night they glittered as if they were no color at all. This face beside her was a spiritualized face; a strong mouth as sweet as a woman’s, a round benevolent chin; a low, square forehead; hair as light as her own; his side face as he turned at least five years younger than the full face; she had often laughed at his queer fashion of growing old and growing young. At times, in the years when they were more together than of late, he had changed so greatly that, after not having seen him for several days she had passed him in the street without recognition; these times had been in those indignant times after she had refused him; that they were more than indignant times to him she was made painfully aware by these changes in his rugged face.

“I have been thinking over those foolish times,” she said, breaking the silence. “I am glad that you came in to-night; I am in a mood for confessing my wrong-doings; I have said many quick words; you know you always had the talent for irritating me.”

“Yes, I always worried you.”

“You did not intend to,” she said hastily, watching the movement of his lips; “we did not understand, that is all. It takes longer than a summer and a winter for heart to answer to heart.”

“We have known each other many summers and many winters.”

“And now we are old, sensible, hard-working people; having given up all nonsense we are discovering the sense there is in sense.”

He turned his face with a listening look in his eyes.

“Did not some one come in? Shall we be disturbed?”

“Not unless we wish to be. It is only Mr. Hammerton, he is a great friend of father’s. He renews his youth in him.”

“Is he not your friend?”

How well she remembered his suspicious, exacting questions!

“He is my best friend,” she said proudly.

“I wish I was in heaven,” he said, his voice grown weak. “Every thing goes wrong with me; every thing has gone wrong all my life. Father is in a rage because I will not stay home; he offered me to-day the deed for two hundred acres as a bribe. I should be stronger to-day but that he worked my life out when I was a growing boy.”

“A country life is best for you. Your old homestead is the loveliest place around, with its deep eaves and dormer-windows and vines. That wide hall is one of my pleasant recollections, and the porch that looks into the garden, the blue hills away off, and the cool woods, the thrushes and the robins and the whip-poor-will at twilight; that solitary note sets me to crying, or it used to when I dreamed dreams and told them to Laura! I hope that Laura will love the place too well to leave it; it is my ideal of a home; much more than splendid Old Place is.”

“I will stay if you will come and live in it with me,” he said quietly.

“I like my own home better,” she answered as quietly. “Are you stronger than you were?”

“Much stronger. I have not had one of those attacks since March. Lake warns me; but I am twice the man that he is! How he coughed last winter! I haven’t any thing to live for, anyway.”

“It is very weak for you to say that.”

“Whose fault is it that I am so weak? Whose fault is it that my life is spoiled? You have spoiled every thing for me by playing fast and loose with me.”

“I never did that,” she answered indignantly. “You accuse me wrongfully.”

“Every time you speak to me or look at me you give me hope; an hour with you I live on for months. O, Tessa,” dropping his head in both hands, “I have loved you all my life.”

“I know it,” she said solemnly. “Can’t you be brave and bear it?”

“I am bearing it. I am bearing it and it is killing me. You never had the water ebb and flow, ebb and flow when you were dying of thirst. Women can not suffer; they are heartless, all their heart is used in causing men to suffer. A touch of your hand, the color in your cheek, a dropping of your eyes, talks to me and tells me a lie; and then you go up-stairs and kneel down to Him, who is the truth-maker! You are a covenant-breaker. You have looked at me scores of times as if you loved me; you have told me that you like to be with me; and when I come to you and ask you like a man to become my wife, you blush and falter, and answer like a woman—no. I beg your pardon—”

The tears stood in her eyes but would not fall.

“I did not come here to upbraid you. I did not start from home with the intention of coming; but I saw you through the window with your arms around your father’s neck and I thought, ‘Her heart is soft to-night; she will listen to me.’ I was drawn in, as you always draw me, against my better judgment. I shall not trouble you again; I am going away. Tessa,” suddenly snatching both hands, “if you are so sorry for me, why can’t you love me?”

“I don’t know,” not withdrawing her hands, “something hinders. I honor you. I admire you. Your love for me is a great rest to me; I want to wrap myself up in it and go to sleep; I do not want to give it up—no one else loves me, and I do want somebody to love me.”

“I will love you; only let me. Marry me and I will stay at home; I will do for you all that a human heart and two human hands can do; I will be to you all that you will help me to be.”

“But I do not want to marry you,” she said perplexed. “I should have to give up too much. I love my home and the people in it better than I love you.”

“I will not take you away; you shall have them all; you shall come to them and they shall come to you; remember that I have never loved any one but you—” the great tears were rolling down his cheeks. “I am not worth it; I am not worthy to speak to you, or even to hold your hands like this.” He broke down utterly, sobbing wearily and excitedly.

“Don’t, oh, don’t,” she cried hurriedly. “I may grow to love you if you want me to so much, and you are good and true, I can believe every word you say—not soon—in two or three years perhaps.”

His tears were on her hands, and he had loved her all her life; no one else loved her, no one else ever would love her like this; he was good and true, and she wanted some one to love her; she wanted to be sure of love somewhere and then to go to sleep. Her father should see her married before he died; her mother would never—

“You have promised,” he cried, in a thick voice. “You have promised and you never break your word.”

“I have promised and I never break my word; but you must not speak of it to any one, not even to Laura, and I will not tell father, or Gus, or Miss Jewett, or Dine; no one must guess it for one year—it is so sudden and strange! I couldn’t bear to hear it spoken of; and if you are very gentle and do not try to make me love you—you must not kiss me, or put your arms around me, you know I never did like that, and perhaps that is one reason why I never liked you before—you must let me alone, let love come of itself and grow of itself.”

“I will,” he uttered brokenly, and rose up trembling from head to foot. “May God bless you!—bless you!—bless you!”

It was better for him to leave her; the strain had been too great for both.

“I must be alone; I must go out under the stars and thank God.”

She lifted her face to his and kissed him. How unutterably glad and thankful she was in all her life afterward that she gave that kiss unasked.

“God bless you, my darling,” he said tenderly, “and He will bless you for this.”

Bewildered, not altogether unhappy, she sat alone while he went out under the stars.

Was this the end of all her girlhood’s dreams?

Only Felix Harrison! Must she pass all her life with him? Must her father and mother and Gus and Dine be not so much to her because Felix Harrison had become more—had become most? And Ralph Towne? Ought she to love Felix as she had loved him?

The hurried questions were answerless. She did not belong to herself; not any more to her father as she had belonged to him half an hour since with both her arms around his neck. Love constituted ownership, and she belonged to Felix through this mighty right of love; did he belong to her through the same divine right?

He was thanking God and so must she thank Him.

“Tessa,” called her father, “come here, daughter!”

With the candle in her hand, she stood in the door-way of the sitting-room. “Well,” she said.

“With whom were you closeted?” asked Mr. Hammerton, looking up from the chess-board.

The effort to speak in her usual tone lent to her voice a sharpness that startled herself.

“Felix Harrison.”

“Your old tormentor!” suggested Mr. Hammerton.

“Who ever called him that?” She came to the table, set the candlestick down and looked over the chess-board.

“She has refused him again,” mentally decided Mr. Hammerton, carefully moving his queen.

“I called you, daughter, because Gus withstood me out and out about ‘Heaven doth with us as we with torches do.’ Find it and let his obstinate eyes behold!”

She opened the volume, turning the leaves with fingers that trembled. “Truly enough,” she was thinking, “a year from to-day will find a difference.”

“Now I am going over for Dine,” she said, after Mr. Hammerton had acknowledged himself in the wrong.

“Permit me to accompany you,” he said. Even with Tessa Wadsworth, Gus Hammerton was often formal. They found Dinah bidding Norah good-by at Mr. Bird’s gate; they were laughing at nothing, as usual.

“Let us walk to the end of the planks,” suggested Mr. Hammerton. “On a night like this I could tramp till sunrise.” He drew Tessa’s arm through his, saying, “Now, Dine, take the other fin.”

The end of the planks touched a piece of woods; at the entrance of the wood stood an old building, windowless, doorless, chimneyless; the school children knew that it was haunted.

“We’re afraid,” laughed Dine; “the old hut looks ghostly.”

“It is ghostly, I will relate its history. Once upon a time, upon a dark night, so dark that I could not see the white horse upon which I rode—”

“Oh, that’s splendid,” cried Dinah, hanging contentedly upon his arm. “Listen, Tessa.”

But Tessa could not listen. She was feeling the peace that rested over the woods, the fields; that was enwrapping Old Place, and further down the dim road the low-eaved homestead that must thenceforth be home to her. There could be no more air-castles; her future was decided. She had turned the leaf and discovered a name that hitherto had meant so little: Felix Harrison. Not Ralph Towne; a year ago to-night it was English violets and Ralph Towne. The peace that brooded over all might be hers, if only she would be content.

At this moment,—while she was trying to be content, trying to believe that she could interpret the peace of the shining stars, and while she was hearing the sound of her companion’s words, a solemn, even tone that rolled on in unison with her thoughts,—two people far away were thinking of her; thinking of her, but not wishing and not daring to speak her name.

“I can not understand, Ralph. I was sure that we would bring Naughty Nan away with us.”

“Truly, mother, I would have pleased you, if I could.”

“You are too serious for her; with all her mischievous advances,—like a white kitten provokingly putting out its paw,—she was more than half afraid of you.”

“It does not hurt her to be afraid.”

“She is most bewitching.”

“Now, mother! But it is too late; she will understand by my parting words that I do not expect to see her soon again. In my mind is a memory that has kept me from loving that delicious Naughty Nan.”

“Is the memory a fancy?”

“No; it is too real for my ease of mind. If I were a poet, which I am not, I should think that her spirit haunted me.”

“Can you tell me no more of her? That daughter that I might have had!”

“I do not understand her: she is beyond me, she baffles me.”

“I read of a man once who loved a woman too well to marry any one else, and yet he did not love her well enough to marry her.”

“Was he a fool?”

“Answer the question for yourself. Are you a fool?”

“Yes, I am. I do not know my own mind. I should call another man a fool.”

“It may not be too late,” she gently urged.

“Too late for what?” he asked irritably.

“To be wise.”

In a few moments he spoke in an abrupt, changed tone—

“Mother! I have decided at last. I shall hang out my shingle in Dunellen. It is a picturesque little city, and the climate is as good for you as the south of France.”

“I am very glad,” she answered cordially. “You are a born physician, you are cool, you are quick, you are gentle; you can keep your feelings under perfect control. You are not quite a Stoic, but you will do very well for one.”

“But you will not be happy at Old Place without me.”

“Why should I be without you?”

“You have noticed that large, wide brick house on the opposite side of the Park from Miss Jewett’s? It has a garden and stable; it is just the house for us; you may have two rooms thrown into one for your sitting-room and any other changes that you please.”

“I remember it, I like the situation; there are English sparrows in the trees.”

“We will take that for the present. John Gesner owns it; he will make his own price if he sees that I want it, I suppose. I do want it. There are not many things that I desire more. You and I will have a green old age at Old Place.”

“You forget that I am thirty years older than you, my son.”

By accident, one day, Mrs. Towne had come across, in one of the drawers of her son’s writing-table, a large photograph of Tessa Wadsworth, a vignette, and she had gazed long upon her; the face was not beautiful, one would not even think of it as pretty, but it was fine, intellectual, sensitive, and sweet. In searching for an old letter not long before leaving home, she had discovered this picture, defaced and torn into several pieces.

“Ralph, you will not be angry with your white-headed old mother, but were you ever refused?”

“No,” he said, laughing. “A dozen women may have been ready to refuse me, but not one ever did.”

“Nor accepted you, either,” she continued, shrewdly.

He arose and began to pace the floor; after some turns of excited movement, he came to her and stood behind her chair. “I know that I have been accepted; I know that I asked when I did not intend to ask—that is—I was carried beyond myself; I asked when I did not know that I was asking.”

“What shall you do now?”

“I shall ask in reality; I shall confess myself in the wrong.”

“And she?”

“And she? She has the tenderest heart in the world. She has forgiven me long ago.”

“Do not trust her eyes and forget her lips,” warned his mother. “Love is slain sometimes.”

He resumed his walk with a less confident air. He had forgotten her lips.

Would Tessa have cared to hear this? Would she have forgotten Felix, his blessing and the quiet of the holy stars?

“Oh,” cried Dinah, with her little shout (she would not have been Dinah without that little shout), “Oh, Tessa, did you hear?”

“She is star-gazing,” said Mr. Hammerton.

“It isn’t a true story,” pleaded Dinah. “You didn’t really see him hanging by the rope and the woman looking on.”

“My young friend, it is an allegory; that is what you will drive some man to some day.”

“You know I won’t. What is the name of that bright star?”

“It isn’t a star, it’s a planet.”

“How do I know the difference?”

“Lady Blue knows.”

“Do you call her that because her eyes are so blue or because she is a blue-stocking?”

“She is not a blue-stocking; I will not allow it. It is for her eyes.”

“Gus,” said Dinah, “I can’t understand things.”

“What things?”

“Tennyson’s Dream of Fair Women.”

“I shouldn’t think you could. I have spent hours on it trying to make it out. You look up Marc Antony and Cleopatra—”

“As if I had to.”

“Well, look up the daughter of the warrior Gileadite, and fair Rosamond, and angered Eleanor, and Fulvia, and Joan of Arc.”

“And will you read it to us, and talk all about it?” cried Dinah in delight. “I like King Lear when father reads it, but I can’t understand Shakespeare; he is all conversations.”

Mr. Hammerton laughed, and patted her head. “I will bring you the stories that Charles and Mary Lamb gathered from Shakespeare.”

“Shall we turn?” asked Tessa, slipping her hand through his arm; he instantly imprisoned her fingers. Felix would be troubled and angry she knew, even at this clasp of an old friend’s hand. Jealousy was his one strong passion; he was jealous of the books she read, of the letters she received, of every word spoken to her that he did not hear; she wondered as her fingers drew themselves free, if he would ever become jealous of her prayers.

She drew a long breath as the weight of her bondage fell heavier and heavier; and then, he was so demonstrative, so lavish of his caresses, and her ideal of a lover was one who held himself aloof, who kept his hands and his lips to himself. She sighed more than once as she kept even pace with the others.

“Has the nightingale made a mistake?” asked Mr. Hammerton, as they were crossing to the gate.

“She only made one mistake. I wonder how many I can make if I do my best to make them.”

Dinah opened the gate; her father’s light streamed through the windows over the garden, down the path.

“Good night,” said Mr. Hammerton. “Oh, I just remember, what shall I do? I asked my cousin Mary to go to a lecture on Burns with me to-night, and I declare! I never thought of it until this minute.”

“Mary Sherwood will give it to you,” said Dinah. “I wonder what your wife will do with you.”

“A wife’s first duty is obedience,” he answered.

“I’d like to see the man I’d promise to obey,” said Dinah, quickly.

“I expect you would,” he said gravely.

Dine darted after him to box his ears, words being impotent, and Tessa went into the house. “I think I’ll pigeon-hole this day and then go to bed,” she said, a merry gleam crossing her eyes; “between my two walks on the planks to-day, I have lived half a lifetime. I hope Dr. Lake is asleep; I will never hurt Felix as he is hurt.”