Fate, who, as Doctor Vardaman's favourite classic assures us, calls, equal-footed, upon carpenters and kings, must surely have laid a directing hand on the old gentleman's shoulder that morning; not yet were his adventures over, even when he reached his own door. The Lexington and Amherst Street car crawled with him laboriously as far as the corner of Amherst and Richmond, where he must disembark and trudge the remaining five blocks of board sidewalk to number 201. The trolley whisks you out there in five minutes now. Not long ago I saw in somebody's back yard, a back yard of the proletariat, next door to a tenement, one of these dilapidated old horse-cars, pygmy ancestor of a race of giants, thrown aside, weather-worn, ancient as the palæolithic period, serving as a play-house for the proletarian youngsters. The windows were all out of it, even the purple glass lights overhead; but you might dimly discern the legend: "No. 5. Lexington and Amherst. No. 5." along its battered sides. The thing was as romantic as a derelict galleon; sentimental melancholy possessed me as I looked at it; all my youth rode in that decrepit chariot, if not with comfort, at least with tolerable satisfaction. Will the rising generation treasure so picturesque a memory? I think not. In cold weather there was a layer of straw, doubtful-tinted, breathing strange odours, in the bottom of it, thoughtfully provided by the street-car company to protect its patrons' feet. It was lit by two oil lamps, in two niches, fortified by wire-work, one at either end of the car. These vehicles were banded about the body with a wide stripe in various colours to distinguish the various lines, an amazingly ingenious idea if people had only been able to see after dark, like cats; and, as the spectrum had been exhausted by the time the builders got around to the Lexington and Amherst line, they designated these cars, in a creditable burst of originality, by a sash of black-and-red squares, like the Rob Roy plaid. Immediately arose some genius with an equally fertile invention and baptised them "the checker-board cars," a title which they wore to the end. There was one very steep hill at the foot whereof it was the custom to hitch on an extra team of mules; I know of no more gallant spectacle than that furnished by a quadriga of mules nobly breasting Wade Street hill, with a checker-board car plunging in the rear. When it got off the track, as not infrequently happened, all the male passengers got out and helped push it back. We were firmly persuaded that this was rapid transit! Yet spare your merriment, youth of to-day; impartial Fate is waiting for your admired institutions, too, your Twentieth Century Flyers, your automobiles, your seven-league-boots. In twenty-five years, how will your sons and daughters deride you; with what longing, with what amused tenderness, will you not look back to these kind, simple days!
Doctor Vardaman, then, with Destiny stalking viewless at his side, swung off the checker-board car, and began the homeward walk. Some way ahead of him he saw a figure diminished by distance, plodding through his yard toward the kitchen door; and as he drew nearer, two more figures emerged from his front porch. The doctor recognised Bob Carson, and in the over-tall, lankily-graceful young woman, Mazie Pallinder, in an extremely modish tan-coloured cloth coat with dark brown plush collar and pocket flaps. Mazie's sleeves were about as tight as Bob's trousers—that is to say, they were as tight as human skill could make them, or human arms and legs endure. Thus were we clad in the eighties.
"Oh, hello, Doctor," said Bob, dropping Mazie's hand—I suppose he had been fastening her glove—and addressing the old gentleman with unusual vivacity and a notable increase of colour. "Ah—we—we've just been getting Huddesley to hear us our parts—in 'Mrs. Tankerville,' you know."
"I hope you have mastered yours," said Doctor Vardaman, without a smile. Bob's part, as he and everyone else knew, might have been omitted altogether without materially damaging the performance; he was a footman in "Mrs. Tankerville," and his lines were hardly more than "Yes, sir," and "No, sir," stated at the proper intervals. He got redder than ever under the doctor's grave survey, and affected to be busy knocking invisible mud from his boot heel with his cane as they stood by the gate. Mazie did not blush—for the best of reasons. Her face was too carefully arranged to permit of it. And, besides, what was there to blush about? Bob changed colour almost whenever she looked at him; but then Bob was a quiet and rather shy youth.
"Huddesley's simply fine!" she said with enthusiasm. "I asked him how he came to know so much about the stage, and he says he was dresser for an actor once when he was right young, and used to be behind the scenes a lot. Come home and take lunch with us, won't you, Doctor?"
"I can't very well to-day. I was just about to ask you to stay here. Huddesley, you can get us up something, can't you?"
"Bit of 'am and a glass of porter, sir," said Huddesley deferentially, holding the door open. "Beg parding, Doctor Vardaman, sir, but Mrs. Maginnis is 'ere with your wash."
"I guess we'd better not stop so long's I've got so much company in the house," said Mazie. "Good-bye, Doctor; you'll come up this evening, anyway?" And as they walked away, the doctor heard Bob say, "Isn't Huddesley immense, though? 'Bit of 'am and a glass of porter.' Sounds just like Dickens, don't it?"
The doctor, still squired by unseen Fortune, went upstairs to his bedroom—and there, it may be presumed, the goddess left him, having executed her appointed task. Mrs. Maginnis awaited him, and Huddesley was already laying the doctor's shirts out of the basket. The laundress generally performed this rite herself, but to-day she stood watching the man with an oddly flustered manner, twisting the fringes of her old shawl between her fingers. Her bonnet, that feathered and beribboned structure indigenous to washerwomen, had worked askew a little; her face, with its premature wrinkles, its sunken mouth, was flushed with exercise or excitement. The doctor, observant as all physicians from lifelong habit, looked at her in some surprise. It crossed his mind that at some prehistorically distant time, when Mrs. Maginnis was a fresh barefoot girl, running the green swards of Connemara, she might have been pretty; her Irish blue eyes, faded with years, with toil, with sickness, with care, were quite bright to-day. A kind of tremulous happiness, an anxious joy, irradiated her; she was like a child to whom one should have given a new toy, scarcely daring to be glad yet in its possession.