The Black Pearl

by Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

She smiled, a faint, secretive smile of triumph. Ah, so he recognized that. She had made him feel and admit that she was one of the few great dancers.

Then, she, too, sighed. "If only," she said, forgetful of him and following out her train of thought aloud, "if only when I get what I want, I wouldn't always want something else! Did you ever feel if you could just be free, really free, you wouldn't want anything else in the world?"

"How could any one be more free than you are?" he laughed down at her.

"I know, I know," she agreed, still speaking wistfully, "but I'd like to be free of myself; myself is so strange, and there's so many of me." Then the veil of her instinctive reticence fell over her again and she began to talk of her recent attempts to get about on snow-shoes, José and Hugh having been her instructors, so far. Harry immediately offered his services, and she accepted them, agreeing to go out with him the next morning.

And as they talked José glanced at them from time to time, a touch of malicious laughter in his odd glancing eyes; there were few things that escaped José.

That evening, after Seagreave had gone home, when José and Gallito and Mrs. Thomas and Mrs. Nitschkan had sat late over their cards, Gallito had risen after a final game, mended the fire, poured himself a glass of cognac, lighted another cigarette and, stretching himself in an easy-chair, entered into one of those confidential talks which he occasionally permitted himself with his chosen cronies. The earlier part of the evening José and Pearl had danced for a time together, and then Pearl had danced for a time alone and in a manner to please even her father's critical taste. Now, in commenting on this, he remarked:

"You see the change in my daughter. She is now cheerful, obedient and industrious. When she came she was none of those things. She is, you see, a good girl at heart, but her mother had almost ruined her. If men but had the time they should always bring up the children of the family. It is only in that way that they can ever be a credit to one."

Mrs. Thomas, who had been bending over the stove brewing a pot of coffee which she and Mrs. Nitschkan drank at all hours of the day and night, raised herself at the utterance of these revolutionary sentiments and looked at Gallito in grieved and bewildered surprise; but Mrs. Nitschkan, who had been pouring cream into the cup of steaming coffee which José had just handed to her, first took a long draught and then remarked with cool impartiality:

"The trouble with you, Gallito, is that you can't bear for nobody, man, woman, child or devil, to get ahead of you. I guess I know somep'n' about the bringin' up of young ones myself."

Here Mrs. Thomas sighed and shook her head with that exasperated incomprehension which all women displayed when the subject of Mrs. Nitschkan's children came up for discussion. Educators discourse much upon the proper environment and training of the young of the human species, but theories aside, practical results seem rather in favor of casting the bantling on the rocks. For, in spite of Mrs. Nitschkan's joyous lack of responsibility, her daughters had grown up the antitheses of herself, thoroughly feminine little creatures, already famous for those womanly accomplishments for which their mother had ever shown a marked distaste, while the sons were steady, hard-working, reputable young fellows, always to be depended upon by their employers.