What Can She Do?

by Edward Payson Roe

"I want you to find me books, and papers also, if there are any, that tell how to raise fruit," she said to him one day.

"What a funny request! I should as soon expect you would ask for instruction how to drive four-in-hand."

"Nothing of that style, henceforth. I must learn something useful now. Only the rich can afford to be good-for-nothing, and we are not rich now."

"For which I am very sorry," said Gus, with some feeling.

"Thank you. Such disinterested sympathy is beautiful," said Edith dryly.

Gus looked a little red and awkward, but hastened to say, "I will hunt up what you wish, and bring it as soon as possible."

"Four are very good. That is all at present," said Edith, in a tone that made Gus feel that it was indeed all that it was in his power to do for her at that time, and he went away with a dim perception that he was scarcely more than her errand boy. It made him very uncomfortable. Though he wished her to understand he could not marry her now, he wished her to sigh a little after him. Gus's vanity rather resented that, instead of pining for him, she should with a little quiet satire set him to work. He had never read a romance that ended so queerly. He had expected that they might have a little tender scene over the inexorable fate that parted them, give and take a memento, gasp, appeal to the moon, and see each other's face no more, she going to the work and poverty that he could never stoop to from the innate refinement and elegance of his being, and he to hunt up the heiress to whom he would give the honor of maintaining him in his true sphere.

But his little melodrama was entirely spoiled by her matter-of-fact way, and what was worse still he felt in her presence as if he did not amount to much, and that she knew it; and yet, like the poor moth that singes its wings around the lamp, he could not keep away.

The prominent trait of Gus's character, as of so many others in our luxurious age of self-pleasing, was weakness; and yet one must be insane with vanity to be at ease if he can do nothing resolutely and dare nothing great. He is a cripple, and, if not a fool, knows it.

During the eventful month that followed Mr. Allen's death, Mrs. Allen and her daughters led what seemed to them a very strange life. While in one sense it was real and intensely painful, in another the experiences were so new and strange that it all seemed an unreal dream, a distressing nightmare of trouble and danger, from which they might awaken to their old life.