[I.]In Which Things Are Said of Diogenes and of a Lady With a Lantern[11]
[II.]In Which a Princess Serving Finds That the Motto of Kings Is Meaningless[21]
[III.]In Which the Crown Prince Enters Upon His Own[36]
[IV.]In Which Three Kings Come to Crossroads[51]
[V.]In Which Peggy Takes the Center of the Stage[62]
[VI.]In Which a Gray Plush Pussy Cat Supplies a Theme[77]
[VII.]In Which Geoffrey Writes of Soldiers and Their Souls[91]
[VIII.]In Which a Green-Eyed Monster Grips Eve[111]
[IX.]In Which Anne, Passing a Shop, Turns In[136]
[X.]In Which a Blind Beggar and a Butterfly Go To a Ball[149]
[XI.]In Which Brinsley Speaks of the Way to Win a Woman[160]
[XII.]In Which Eve Usurps an Ancient Masculine Privilege[178]
[XIII.]In Which Geoffrey Plays Cave Man[196]
[XIV.]In Which There Is Much Said of Marriage and of Giving in Marriage[210]
[XV.]In Which Anne Asks and Jimmie Answers[226]
[XVI.]In Which Pan Pipes to the Stars[239]
[XVII.]In Which Fear Walks in a Storm[256]
[XVIII.]In Which We Hear Once More of a Sandalwood Fan[274]
[XIX.]In Which Christmas Comes to Crossroads[284]
[XX.]In Which a Dresden-China Shepherdess and a Country Mouse Meet on Common Ground[298]
[XXI.]In Which St. Michael Hears a Call[314]
[XXII.]In Which Anne Weighs the People of Two Worlds[333]
[XXIII.]In Which Richard Rides Alone[347]
[XXIV.]In Which St. Michael Finds Love in a Garden[361]

Mistress Anne

CHAPTER I

In Which Things Are Said of Diogenes and of a Lady With a Lantern.

The second day of the New Year came on Saturday. The holiday atmosphere had thus been extended over the week-end. The Christmas wreaths still hung in the windows, and there had been an added day of feasting. Holidays always brought people from town who ate with sharp appetites.

It was mostly men who came, men who fished and men who hunted. In the long low house by the river one found good meals and good beds, warm fires in winter and a wide porch in summer. There were few luxuries, but it pleased certain wise Old Gentlemen to take their sport simply, and to take pride in the simplicity. They considered the magnificence of modern camps and clubs vulgar, and as savoring somewhat of riches newly acquired; and they experienced an almost æsthetic satisfaction in the contrast between the rough cleanliness of certain little lodges along the Chesapeake and its tributary tide-water streams, and the elegance of the Charles Street mansions which they had, for the moment, left behind.

It was these Old Gentlemen who, in khaki and tweed, each in its proper season, came to Peter Bower's, and ate the food which Peter's wife cooked for them. They went out in the morning fresh and radiant, and returned at night, tired but still radiant, to sit by the fire or on the porch, and, in jovial content, to tell of the delights of earlier days and of what sport had been before the invasion of the Philistines.