V. V.'s Eyes

by Henry Sydnor Harrison

He answered by a nod, and Hen continued:

"She never belonged in the Works, and she certainly never belonged to that fat woman with the beak I met in the hall. She's a changeling--that's it. Speaking of the Works, V.V., I had quite a long letter from Cally Heth this week."

"Oh!" said V.V. "Oh, yes!--from Miss Heth. How is she?"

Hen, who had been strolling about the tall chamber and peeking into the instrument cabinet, noted the young man's guarded tone; and she wondered how many times V.V. and her cousin Cally had met, and what part he had played in all that affair, and in general what these two thought of each other.

"Well, she's certainly in much better spirits than when I had the note from her in July. One thing, her answering my letters at all shows it. They're in Switzerland now, at the National House, Lucerne, and J. Forsythe Avery has, turned up, which is a pretty good sign of the times, I should say. He's a social barometer, you know,--the last man in the world to turn up where it would hurt his position, whatever it is. It wouldn't surprise me a bit to hear some fine day that Mr. Canning had sneaked back, too, now that the worst is over, and wasn't so very bad at that. There's a man I'd like to have five minutes' talk with," said Henrietta Cooney. "I think I'd give him something to put in his memory-book."

Hen, having her own theory of events, gave a defiant tug to her new sailor-hat. She considered that she looked very nice to-day, and she did. She, too, had been patronizing the midsummer sales, and beside the sailor, she had on a new linen skirt which she had got for $1.75, though the original price-mark was still on it and said $5.

"Cally," she continued, "wrote a good deal about her mother's being dropped from the officers of the Associated Charities. Well it's too bad, of course, but somebody's got to take the blow, V.V., and I imagine it's going about where it belongs. Serves her right, I say, for the sort of mother she's always been, doing her best to educate all the decent feeling out of Cally, and then trying to break her when she was doing the best thing she ever did in her life. In fact--I don't want to brag, but I expect the talk I've spread around town has had a good deal to do with the way things have gone. She married mother's brother and all that," said Hen, "but I detest and despise her and always have."

V.V. burst out laughing, and Hen observed: "Well, I'm glad I said that. It's the first smile I've seen from you this month."

She stood by the old secretary, looking down at him, and she thought what a hard life he had down here, and how his face looked too refined for this so practical world....

"Now, V.V., really," said she, "why can't you leave your work to this man Finnegan for just a week and pack your little bag and run down to Aunt Rose Hopwood's farmette--really? Tee Wee and Loo are there, and everybody'll be delighted to have you. In the open air all day, sleep ten hours every night, eat your blessed head off. No mosquitoes. No malaria--"