It Pays to Smile

by Nina Wilcox Putnam

And in a way Peaches' words reassured me. After all one must eventually resign oneself to fate, and if one had the good sense to take fate by the horns and as Peaches would say "beat him to it"—why, so much the better. We could all settle down to watch her live happily enough ever after if her program worked out.

But would it? Despite her assurance I felt a faint misgiving. My dear father used always to say: "Never you girls marry until Mister Right comes along." And we were brought up to honor and obey our parents—with the result that at the respective ages of fifty and sixty we girls were still single. However, I digress.

In my youth, following the precepts of my father and seeking knowledge of the world through the medium of literature, I came upon the works of a lady of rank whose writings had for me the greatest fascination. As to what her actual name was I have to this day remained in ignorance, and her title, The Duchess, is all that I identify her by. But this estimable lady, while somewhat given to the recounting of scandalous episodes and the misfortunes peculiar to innocent maidens, had a wealth of descriptive power when she undertook the description of rich and aristocratic mansions or the interiors of castles of the less modest variety. But nothing ever recorded by her, not set forth for public inspection in the Boston Museum, could compare with the sumptuousness of Mr. Markheim's establishment.

I had been prepared for something very fine, but this gorgeous replica of a famous Italian villa built upon terraces, its lovely low white façades rising in a symmetrical group one above the other, the whole nestling into the budding verdure of the hillside, its formal gardens descending step by step almost to the broad sweep of the Hudson below, was a veritable dream-palace.

And the interior! Words almost fail me when I seek to describe it. Perhaps the most fitting thing I can say of it is that it was a home good enough for Peaches. Her great height, her gold-and-marble beauty, here found at last a fitting habitat. And then when I saw that little, comparatively speaking, Markheim man trotting about in front of her and giving her the place with a gesture as he displayed each treasure in turn, I felt sick and faint in my mind. And yet he was most kind and had never given me the least cause to criticize him, and certainly the house was enough to tempt any girl. I sighed, however, to think of the day when she would be married and living there.

"Mr. Markheim—Sebastian, I mean," I said—Mr. Pegg and I followed in the wake of the happy couple as they made the tour of the house—"Sebastian, this place looks as if you had dug up the rich heart of Italy and transplanted it to America!"

Sebastian laughed.

"You have the right idea, Miss Freedom! The right idea—yes!" he exclaimed with pride. "More than half my collection is Italian—and if I do so say myself, it has taken a lot of patience and trouble to gather it—not to speak of the cost in money. They have a strict law against taking objects of art out of their country, you know, and it's been nip and tuck getting hold of a lot of this stuff—smuggled of course. Oh, don't look so shocked! If it's genuine it's smuggled—at the Italian end. But one doesn't call attention to the fact except in the privacy of one's own family!"

"It sure is swell!" said Mr. Pegg.

Sebastian laughed again—a sound which never got him favor with me—and opened the door into the newest addition to the house—the library wing, which he had remodeled for the especial purpose of housing the Madonna of the Lamp.