NATALIE PAGE

BY

KATHARINE HAVILAND TAYLOR

AUTHOR OF

“YELLOW SOAP,” “TONY,” “STANLEY JOHNS’ WIFE,”

ETC.

HODDER AND STOUGHTON

LIMITED LONDON

Copyright, 1921, by

George W. Jacobs and Company.

MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY

BILLING AND SONS, LTD., GUILDFORD AND ESHER

DEDICATION

TO

VERY DEAR “AUNT EVA”

(Mrs. O. F. HOFFMAN)

Chapter I--How it Began

I think it is strange how the scenes surrounding big events stay in your memory. And sometimes with years they become more clear than the happening which impressed them. I know this, because I remember a big four-posted bed, and a lot of people around it--crying. And then I remember someone lifting me up to kiss the woman who was on the bed, but I do not remember how she looked, and she was my mother. She died at that time, and now I only recall the crying people and the big four-posted bed, and thinking it funny that a bed should wear petticoats. It had a valance on it, you see, and I evidently had not noticed it before.

Just in that same way I remember coming to live with Uncle Frank Randolph, who is my mother’s brother. And all I remember about that is whiskers (they were miles long, I was sure!) and the fact that it was raining. And now--somehow--when I think of home and saying good-bye to it, all I can see is swirling yellow leaves and the dust and peanut shells and bags that were flying in the wind around the station.

But I must start this story properly. It really all began the day I rode a bicycle down the Court-house steps on a bet. At that time I saw nothing wrong in doing this, and to be frank I was quite proud that I could do it, for there are fifteen of those steps, and they’re quite steep. After I did it I went over to the drug store with Willy Jepson and had a soda, and then we rode down to the ball field, and I pitched nine innings for the Red Socks, after which I thought I’d go home. I usually went home, when I had a funny hollow feel under my belt. And Uncle Frank didn’t mind my not being on time for meals, so it didn’t matter. But when I got in that night I knew something had happened.

In the first place, Uncle Frank wasn’t reading any of his bug books (Uncle Frank is very famous for his bug knowledge, as you probably know--some people even calling him the “Second Fabre”), nor did he have on two pairs of glasses. In fact, he was acting entirely unnatural and quite as people of his age do when they are preparing to be disagreeable.

“Ho hum! Where have you been?” he asked, as I sat down at the table.

“Down at the flats,” I answered. “Pitched nine innings against Corkey McGowan’s Gang, and we licked ’em.” And then, feeling some pride, I reached for the spiced peaches and chocolate cake and began to satisfy my craving for food.

“Don’t you”--he began, hesitated, fumbled for words, and then went on--“ah--like the--ah--gentler pursuit of maidens?”

I said I didn’t.

“Ho hum!” he said. And he wagged his head several times, which means he is perplexed.

“How old are you?” he asked next.

I told him I was sixteen (I do every two or three days), and then I asked him to pass the strawberry preserve, because I found that I was still hungry. He did, and then he asked me whether I had eaten any meat. I had always depended upon his absent-mindedness, and I was surprised to see him so obviously upset and, truth to be told, also a little annoyed; for I knew that my life would be one series of explanations, if he began to notice.

I told him that I hadn’t felt the need for anything but chocolate cake and preserves, but he wagged his head again and then he drew forth a letter, and I knew by the shade and the address which was engraved on the envelope that it was from Aunt Penelope Randolph James, who lives in New York.

“Penelope,” said Uncle Frank, “intimated as much--where is it?--ho hum--oh, here we are,” and then he read aloud this:

“ ‘With your erratic habits, my dear, she is probably growing up like a young Indian, and I dare say she eats whatever she pleases, and does whatever she likes.’ ”

I said: “Why shouldn’t I?” And then, “Will you please pass the cake?” for I realized that Uncle Frank was absorbed. He passed it to me as he turned the page, and went on with: “ ‘Obviously, she must have two or three years in a good school, and one here, after her coming out. I think she will be happy with Evelyn and Amy, and we will love having her. I want to know her, to have a few years of her, and a chance to do whatsoever I can--because of Nelly.’ ”

And after that Uncle Frank stooped and stared down at the letter. “Nelly” was the name of my mother, and everyone who knew her loved her a great deal; so much, in fact, that they can’t speak of her easily. I always wish, and so much, that it was hard for me to speak of her. But, as I said before, I can only remember the big four-posted bed and the crying people. And I never did think that was quite fair, for as I look on girls with mothers I realize I have missed a great deal. I do think that I at least might have been allowed to have a few years of mine. But--that attitude doesn’t help me. In this world you have to make up your mind to lots that isn’t happy. For, if it IS, all your complaints won’t change it.

But--to get on. I was not impressed with my aunt’s letter. I knew I wouldn’t have a good time with my cousin Evelyn, because I wear her old clothes sometimes, and by their architecture I realize that our tastes are not in common. They are very flossy. Usually she chooses the kind of colour that soils when you shin up a tree, and they have lots of buttons on them that sort of catch when you take any mild exercise, such as sliding down a barn roof on your stomach (there are some ideal barns for that in this section), and once, when I went down the spouting from the Jepsons’ third floor (we were playing hide-and-seek), I got hung up by a button three feet from the ground and had to scream for someone to loosen me, and was consequently “It;” beside which I might have been killed if it had been higher and the button had not held. This is all mixed, but English is not my strong point. I like gym. work best of any study, and do best in it.

Then, beside that, I have a photograph of Evelyn, and I realized from it that we wouldn’t mean much to one another; also I have never got along very well with girls.

So I said: “But I feel that my education is finished.”

My uncle didn’t think so, and he tried not to smile, which I think is a very impolite habit of older people. I’d rather they would really smile at you any time.

I went on. I said, and heatedly, I must admit: “I can say the multiplication table up to the twelves, and what more can you ask?” And just to prove it I did, up to “twelve times twelve is one hundred and fifty-nine;” but even then he didn’t look convinced.

“There are other things,” he said. I asked what, but he wasn’t concrete.

“I love life as it is,” I said, and none too steadily. I couldn’t bear to think of leaving Queensburg and Virginia! But uncle had got up and was puttering around near the bay window, where a bookcase stands, and so I knew he didn’t hear me. I tried once more to attract his attention, but he was looking at a lot of coloured plates of the antennæ of some sort of rare beetle, and I had to give up. But after I had eaten another piece of cake and a little more preserve, I got up. I picked up the dishes and went to the kitchen with them, for I always clear the table for Mrs. Bradly, who is Uncle Frank’s housekeeper.

She was washing lettuce and splattering a good deal of water.

“Bradly-dear,” I said, “do you know about this letter?”

“Set,” she said, and waved toward a stool which stood before the back window. I settled on it and looked out in the garden, which is a shabby but dear place. The hollyhocks were beginning to sag, I remember, and sprawled every way; and the zinnias positively blazed colour in the first taupe shadows of the dusk. . . . It was pretty, and it made you feel still, as if you wanted to close your eyes halfway and smile just a little; but it made you feel sad. . . . I don’t understand that feeling, but sometimes I have it. . . . Mrs. Bradly never had it, for I asked her. But I think my mother would have understood it. . . . Pretty things make it, and some kinds of music, and I don’t know whether anything else does or not, but those are the only things that have made me have it. . . . I don’t imagine uncle ever felt it. One day I asked him.

“Uncle Frank,” I said, “do you ever feel sort of sad, and awfully happy, when it’s just hazy, soft-dark outdoors and the crickets squeak and everything seems cosy and yet sort of lonesome, and you feel sort of contented and yet--miserable, the way you do after you’ve eaten a big Thanksgiving dinner----”

“Crickets?” he said, looking over his glasses. “Dinner? . . . Ho hum!” And then he went and got some engravings that he bought in France, of some sort of cricket who was eating her husband! They do it, quite a lot of them. And although that does seem cruel, they are very bright and intelligent in more ways than just that. Their husbands weren’t useful and so they ate them, which is more than some women do. This is mixed, but as I said, gym. work is where I star.

But of course I knew from that that he had never felt that poetic longing, or whatever it is, that I felt that night when Mrs. Bradly was washing lettuce and I asked her about the letter.

“High time,” she said, after I spoke, “that you was sent off! I can’t do a thing with yuh! . . . Playin’ ball, a great girl like you!”

“Oh, Bradly-dear!” I said. I hated displeasing her. But she did not soften.

“Well, I’ll stop!” I said, after a deep drawn breath. I sighed, because playing ball means a great deal in my life.

Bradly-dear sniffed and flopped the lettuce terribly.

“I didn’t play at Parsons,” I went on. She didn’t reply.

“I wanted to frightfully,” I said. “It is quite an honour, Bradly-dear, to pitch on a business men’s team. And they had to let Mr. Horner do it, and he has a glass eye and let three men sneak in to third, because he couldn’t see out of the glass one.”

I had wanted to play ball in Parsons. It is a town some ten miles’ distance where all the trains stop. They claim that it has ten thousand inhabitants, which, of course, makes it a city. . . . The reason I didn’t play was because the minister, Mr. Diggs, called and asked uncle not to let me. I don’t know why religious people are so often disagreeable. Bradly-dear spoke again, and witheringly.

“Fine life for the daughter of Nelly Randolph,” she said, “to set here and rot! . . . The place is all right for your uncle--laws, he could mash his bugs and put ’em on paper anywhere--but for a girl----” Again she sniffed.

“But I love it,” I protested. “This sort of a life is all I want----”

“Your mother,” she went on, “spoke French and was a lady. She could enter a room and talk high-falutin and entertain anybody. She could wave a fan--and you”--she faced me and waved the lettuce quite as if that were an ostrich plumed fan and she a court lady--“and you,” she repeated, “you can wave a baseball bat, but enter a room? Why, you slide your feet under every rug that isn’t glued down, and you tangle up in all the cheers, and you say ‘Hello’ when you should say ‘Howdy,’ and--well, it ain’t no ways fittin’ or proper that you should stay here and act like you was training for to be Ringling’s star performer!”

I didn’t reply. There wasn’t anything to say. For all that Bradly-dear had said was true. I am very awkward--but--I like being so.

“Your mother,” she said, slowly and solemnly, “would ‘a’ wanted you to be learned right and proper manners----”

I stood up.

“All right, Bradly-dear,” I said, “if you really think she would--and Uncle Frank thinks I should----” And then I stopped speaking. I had never felt so miserable.

I went out in the garden, and Willy Jepson yelled over from the kitchen roof where he was mending a fish line.

“Come over and play catch,” he howled.

“Don’t believe I can,” I said, sort of stiffly, I guess.

“Why not?” he yelled.

“I’m not going to tell the whole town!” I answered, and after that he slid down, by way of a grape arbour, and came over to stand near the fence.

“Why not?” he repeated.

“My last game of ball is played,” I said. “It seems--I am too old for it, or something. They--they don’t want me to. At least not in big games, and I couldn’t indulge as an amateur.”

“My gosh,” he said, “that’s fierce!”

I nodded. I almost never cry--in fact, I don’t cry any oftener than Willy Jepson does, but I was near it then, so I looked down at the hedge and broke twigs.

“Why,” he went on, “it’s fierce! You have the making of a big leaguer--that is, if you’d been a man--I say, it’s fierce. Your drop curves----” He paused, and that pause meant a lot.

“Just because you’re a girl?” he asked. I admitted it. I had to.

“That’s fierce!” he said again. His kindness helped me a great deal. And his commendation was not a light thing, for Willy does the best spit balls in our county. They are really dreams of poetic beauty and almost never fail him. I looked up and said: “Thank you.”

And again he said: “My gosh, Nat, that’s fierce!” And I did feel cheered up. Then I heard uncle’s voice--calling me--and I went in. I found him mounting a black beetle.

“No more----” he began, and then looked perplexed. He scratched his head and dislocated one pair of his glasses, and I supplied, “ball.”

“Why, yes,” he said, “that was it.” And then: “You are to go to your aunt’s the last of this month. . . . Mrs. Bradly thinks she can get your clothes ready by that time. . . . We will miss you, my child. . . . Let me see. . . . Ho hum! Long feelers and hard back--page nine hundred and twenty-seven.” I left him to his bugs.

I went to the kitchen, but I only stood in the door for a moment, and then I backed away, for Mrs. Bradly was crying--awfully hard--her face buried in the roller towel. And I knew it was because I was going away. . . . I felt that way too, but I never cry, so I went up to my room and got out my fishing tackle and tried to make a fly for a shallow, shady stream out of some gray and green silk and a grasshopper wing. . . . But it didn’t divert me much. . . . I didn’t think I could exist very long in real civilization. I knew I didn’t want to. All the loveliness that I felt earlier in the evening was gone, and all that was left was an ache, a dull, sodden, gray, growing-larger-all-the-time ache. . . . You see, I cared awfully for outdoors and the sports that keep you there. They were all I really knew of life. . . . And my New York relatives live in an apartment.

“I will be bored,” I thought, “and miserably, horribly unhappy!” But--whatever else I was--I was not bored! Oh, my soul, no! Not for one instant! Sometimes it was almost ghastly, that mystery which gripped and held us all, and even now I tremble to think of phases of it; but it gave more in the end than it took, which is the curious way of much pain and discomfort. When I think that--but I mustn’t begin now. For that part comes much later.

Chapter II--Good-byes

The next few weeks were so crowded that the events which came in them have a kaleidoscopic flavour. Everyone called on me, and everyone gave me advice. The calls, the advice, the shrill of the locusts, the way the sunlight looked in the garden, and the braid which Mrs. Bradly insisted must be put on my new dresses, all tangled. I can’t think of one thing without having something else, that came in that time, creep in. I suppose it was because I was so hurried that nothing was sorted. It all simply sunk in my mind together as I rushed; and, of course, there was no calm between, in which one’s consciousness builds fences, or tethers a thought in its proper pasture. My going away acted like a big egg-beater on everything that happened then; everything was too well mixed and--flavoured with tears.

Mrs. Bradly wept over everything, including my favourite things to eat, which she cooked for every meal.

“Corn fritters,” she’d say, and then begin to catch her breath. “Won’t be so long now that I can make ’em for you. . . . Thought you’d relish ’em. . . .” And then she’d go out in the wood-shed, pretending that she needed a little kindling to hurry the fire. But I knew she didn’t. And it made me feel awfully. I think I was never quite so unhappy as then, when everyone was so kind to me. But I didn’t cry, because that isn’t the way I show unhappiness. Hurts make a hard, heavy load which roosts on my heart and does something to my lungs. They want to take long breaths, but feel squeezed. Sometimes I think this sort of misery is really more uncomfortable than tears, but at least no one can see whether your heart has a red nose, and of course outside tears leave traces. There are advantages.

Willy Jepson seemed to understand how I felt, more than anyone else, which was surprising. He sat with me a good deal in the garden, while I sewed on braid. I was not interested in the braid, nor sewing it on, but Mrs. Bradly made me put yards on everything. She said: “Yuh gotta look swell in New York. Take this here and put three rows above the hem.” And--for the first time in my life, I sewed. We put narrow ribbon velvet on my thin things, and lace wherever it could be attached. When I had to rip it off, I did almost cry; and not because of the work, but because dear Bradly thought it was so fine. I can’t quite explain, and I haven’t time here. But when people whom you love think things are beautiful, you don’t like to destroy them.

“Whatcha doing that for?” Willy asked one afternoon. We were sitting in the arbour. I told him Mrs. Bradly thought you had to be trimmed a lot in New York.

“Well, it is,” he said, looking at my skirt a little doubtfully, “and it doesn’t look like you.”

That annoyed me because I’d pricked my fingers a lot.

“It’s got to,” I said. “I’m going to wear it.”

“You’ll have it ripped off in two days,” he replied. “I know you. You’ll shin up something, or slide down something, and that stuff’ll trail behind you for blocks.”

“What’ll I slide down in New York?” I asked resentfully.

“Oh,” he answered, “there are fire-escapes.” I sniffed at that. I never dreamed I ever would--but of course that time I didn’t know what was coming. After that we were quiet. I sewed hard, and Willy looked at me. I felt him, as you do, and wondered whether I was losing my petticoat or anything. When he spoke he did something noble, which I shall never forget.

“Look here, Nat,” he said, after a cough.

“I can’t,” I answered. “I have nine more yards of this stuff to lam on. It goes around the sleeves too.”

“Well,” he said, and his voice was very gruff, “it’s this way; if you get too darned homesick you can always come back and marry me.”

I appreciated that. I really did, although it was not my idea of a romantic proposal. My reading taste most closely embraces Alger, but I have read a few love stories, and Willy didn’t act at all like the man in “The Rosary.” But Evelyn says that men never do act like books. She has had several proposals. She says they look sort of scared, and as if they wished they hadn’t begun it, and usually stutter a little, beside gulping. But, as I said, before criticizing Willy’s technique, I was grateful, for I thought if nothing else turned up I could marry Willy before I became an old maid. No woman really wants to be one; she only says so after SHE IS.

“Don’t you tell any of the fellows!” said Willy, after a few moments.

I said I wouldn’t. Then I thanked him and said I might call his bluff when I was about twenty-two or so. . . . That memory is closely wrapped in braid and a blue-and-pink plaid dress. Aunt Penelope gave that one to the janitor’s daughter.

Willy’s offer was a help, for Uncle Frank had told me that I must try to stay in New York with Aunt Penelope for the three years, anyway. He explained about the locusts and how they went through stages, and he thought it would take about three years for my country shell to slip off and be replaced by the new one, which New York would grow underneath. It seemed Aunt Penelope has a country place, but uncle was afraid it was not very wild (it is at Southampton), and she wants me to go there with her. When I heard that I wasn’t to come home at all, I almost expired.

“But anyone needs a vacation,” I said, sort of shakily. “If I can’t climb trees or go bare-foot at least once a summer, I shall die. . . .” But Uncle Frank had forgotten me, and got up to hunt a picture of a variety of the praying mantis, which he found climbing a tree. It did not cheer me.

I said: “I wish I was one!”

And he said, “Rare specimen, rare specimen, ho hum!” and again went to poring over his books.

Those weeks passed. In them I found that I cared a lot about many people whom I had almost avoided before I knew I was to go away. Even old Mr. Diggs, who growls and used to complain of me so often (I occasionally broke a window in his house; it stands near the diamond which is nearest school), stopped me and gave me a mouth-organ he had had when he was a boy. I appreciated it, for I knew it meant lots to him, if it wasn’t exactly useful to me. When I showed it to Mrs. Bradly, she said, “Swell thing to play on in New York!” and really laughed. . . . But afterward she went to the wood-shed--to get kindling, and I knew she was thinking of the New York part of her joke. Aunt Hetty James knitted me a bridge jacket, and she used to come regularly to talk with uncle about my ways. And five other women, whom I hadn’t thought liked me much, made me bridge jackets too, but they were all different colours--I mean the jackets, not the women. I had seventeen pin-cushions given me, and nine boudoir caps. Jim Hooker, who is the town disgrace (but with whom I often fished, meeting him a little way out, on the Chanceford Pike; he can cast better than anyone I ever saw), gave me a collection of flies that were wonderful. And Willy Jepson gave me a box of lavender correspondence cards, which I thought beautiful before I had become acclimatized to New York. They had pink edges and gold N’s on them.

To be brief, everyone was kind to me, and it made my throat feel stuffy. It was honestly a relief to go, for I knew it had to come, and the feeling of its coming was like that pressure that going to the dentist’s to-morrow lays on your spirit. And at last the day did come, and I went.

The morning of that day, I went out in the garden and looked at it carefully. I thought that perhaps I could pack the way it looked in my heart, as I had Uncle Frank’s face, and Bradly-dear’s fat figure, just dimly indented at the waistline with her starchy, blue-checked apron. . . . And so I walked around a little while. August had made it sag, but it was lovely; grass was sprouting between the red bricks of the walk, the picket fence was leaning and, being grayed from sun and the rain, made a lovely background for the late flowers and the dusty foliage.

Across the fence was the spot where Willy Jepson taught me to pitch, and on the small platform outside the back door was the hook where they used to tie me when I was a tiny girl and ran away so much. . . . Everything was familiar, and because of that very dear. . . . And because I knew it and had lived in that house, loved, and been loved by the people of that house, it was home.

Willy Jepson got up early that morning. He came out in the back yard carrying a cruller in one hand and four plums in the other.

“Heavy rain last night,” he said. “Breakfast isn’t ready yet. Thought I’d take a bite to carry me on till Liza gets up. Got packed?”

I said I had.

“Send me a line sometimes,” he said, between bites. “And what I said about marrying me goes. I’ll let you, if you can’t stand it in New York, although a woman hampers a man.”

I didn’t think that was a happy manner of putting it, and said so.

“Oh, shucks!” he replied. “Don’t expect slush from me. I’m not anxious to get married. I say so frankly. A woman hurts a man’s career, but considering your drop curves and sense, I’m willing to help you out if you need, really need, helping.” Then he went on eating his plums. “I like you,” he continued after several chews; “it isn’t as if I didn’t.” And he didn’t look at me, so I knew he wasn’t as averse to marrying me as he seemed. I’ve known Willy for a long time and so I understood quite a lot he didn’t say.

“I don’t think I shall trouble you,” I said, “although I am grateful, and it is nice to think that there is somewhere where you can go, if your family won’t receive you before your education is finished.”

Willy nodded and went on chewing.

And then Bradly-dear called, and I knew that breakfast was ready.

“Good-bye, Willy,” I said.

“Coming down to the station,” he said, and very gruffly.

I said, “All right,” and went toward the house. When I reached the porch I looked back, and I knew that Willy felt badly, for Willy wasn’t chewing.

Chapter III--Mrs. Crane’s Story

As I said before, almost all I remember about going away is the leaves, bags, dust, and peanut shells which whirled in the wind around the station platform. A great many people came down to see me off, which was dear of them, considering that my conduct has not always been exemplary. And they all kissed me and said that they hoped New York would be pleasant and that I wouldn’t be lonesome, and a few of them, women, said that they hoped it would tame me down, which I did not entirely enjoy.

Even the minister came down, and he put me out of the choir last year because I let mice loose in the middle of Miss Hooker’s solo, which she finished from the top of the organ, in a squawk (Willy Jepson dared me to), and it was especially nice of the minister to come down, I thought.

Uncle Frank coughed a lot and blamed it on the dust, but I think he was feeling badly because I was going away. “Ho hum,” he said, “dust pretty bad, pretty bad! I have here----” And then he pulled out a little box in which he’d mounted a little beetle, which stays in the ground three years and then comes out and acquires lovely shiny wings and flies, beside making a real song with its hind legs. He said he hoped I would understand the implied lesson, and he meant that I was to dig hard at knowledge for three years, not that I was to attempt noises with my hind legs. He said when things looked hard I was to look at that little insect who so patiently waited for wings and worked so hard to get them and to be ready to float and make attractive tunes. And I said I would keep it on my bureau next to the china cat with a hollow back for matches that Bradly-dear gave me.

And then there was a great deal of kissing; Uncle Frank ho-hummed some and coughed, Bradly-dear frankly wept, Willy Jepson reminded me that I could lean on him, if I had to, leaves swirled madly as the train pulled in and made a real breeze around the station, and--I started.

I carried five bouquets which had been presented, an umbrella, a suitcase, and a shirt-waist box which held all those things which the trunk wouldn’t hold, beside a basket of Miss Hooker’s sheep-nose apples. I have often eaten them, but she never gave me any before. I was ever so grateful. Her orchard is walled and guarded by a dog, and getting her apples is really difficult. We used to do it by dropping a packing-box over the dog and then adding bricks, to be sure that he’d stay, but that is another story. The gift of those apples really touched me, but they didn’t taste as good. I can understand how self-made men feel about their fortunes. It is perfectly natural to enjoy something that you steal under adverse circumstances. It sort of makes you feel clever, which feeling everyone enjoys.

But to get on. I was to go to Doctor Crane’s for the night. His wife was a great friend of my mother’s, and has always written me more or less regularly, beside sending me things at Christmas-time. And, although it is hard for me to meet strangers, I really looked forward to going there. And it was lovely.

I arrived in Baltimore at eight that night, and I was never so frightened. In the first place, I had never been in a large city before, and the crowd was dense. And then--I am used to being near people I know, and I hadn’t spoken a word to anyone beside the conductor all day. I began to feel terribly lonely.

So, after I had got to the waiting-room with the help of a porter, I stood and waited, feeling intensely miserable. And--when I heard, “Miss Natalie Page?” in a nice man’s voice, I said, “Thank you ever so much, God----” (inside) for I was beginning to wonder what I should do if I wasn’t met. I didn’t feel as if I could go out and take a taxi as I had been told to. For I was sure I wouldn’t know a taxi from any other kind of a car, although Miss Hooker said they had flags on them.

Well, it was Doctor Crane, and he has a real smile.

“Yes,” he went on, “it is Miss Natalie Page, and some baggage,” and we both laughed. Then he got a porter, had my things put in his small car, and we started.

“I think Mrs. Crane has a little supper waiting,” he said very cheerfully (I am sure he somehow knew that I felt timid and a little alone), “for I heard her ordering patty-cases and French pastries this morning. I don’t suppose you like them?”

I said I was sure I would.

Then he asked about uncle and my trip, and whether I’d ever been in a city before, and I answered him, trying ever so hard not to be frightened by the great crowds that ran right in front of cars at the crossings. I was quite sure we could kill someone, but we didn’t.

“Nervous?” asked Doctor Crane as we turned up into a quieter street which went past the Walters’ Art Gallery (Doctor Crane told me what it was). I said I wasn’t exactly, but that I expected to see someone killed in the mob through which we had threaded.

He laughed and replied that he didn’t have to do it with a Ford--because he was a doctor. And then we rode quite a distance, although it didn’t seem so, for I was interested, and at last we stopped before a lovely old white house. A little girl of about thirteen stood on the door-step, and as we neared I heard her call: “Mother, she’s come! They’re here! Mother!” And then she stopped yelling into the house and ran down to open the door of the car for me.

“I am Mary Elinor Crane,” she said shyly, but she smiled so genuinely that I liked her right away.

“Yes,” said the Doctor, “the only girl we have left, and if she marries there’ll be a massacre around here!”

And then Mrs. Crane came to the door, and I forgot Mary Elinor and the Doctor. She kissed me and said, “Why, my dear little girl!” and I felt as if I had always known her. “Just like your mother,” she went on, “just like Nelly Randolph--the prettiest girl in the Green Spring Valley!” And I saw that her eyes were too bright, and swimming. And then she changed the subject abruptly and said: “Come in, dear. . . . You must be tired. . . . Ted, have Lucky take those bags up to the blue room”--Lucky was the darkest little coon I ever saw--“and,” she went on, “Mary Elinor, you take Miss Natalie upstairs and see that she has clean towels and has a nice chance to brush up, and then come down to supper.”

“Come on,” said Mary Elinor, as she slipped her arm through mine. And we went up some splendid broad, winding stairs which led to a great upstairs hall. It was the loveliest house I’d ever seen. I could only gasp.

There were dark old pictures in beautifully wide, gently mellowed gilt frames, and funny old-fashioned pieces of furniture standing here and there. I particularly noticed one, and Mary Elinor told me it was a frame on which people of our great-great-grandmother’s time did embroidery. . . . And on the floor were rag rugs, in the prettiest colours. They belonged with the old mahogany. I don’t know about periods or anything like that, but I could feel that they fitted.

As we went along, Mary Elinor talked ever so fast. She said that they had always been poor, since people almost never paid the Doctor unless they were awfully sick and wanted him to come again--and most always they were only really sick once. But she said that they had an aunt who gave them a lot of money and that now they were comfortable and had ice-cream as often as three times a week, and two cars, one of which her mother ran. And she has two sisters, and a brother who was visiting then and was going to college. And that little girl is the aunt of two children! A boy and a girl. She said her sister Barbara almost named her baby after her, but it happened to be a boy, and of course a name like Mary Elinor was out of the question. She told me quite a lot as I washed up, and said she wished I would stay, as she missed her sisters and brother and would like to have me around. I thought it was dear of her, and then, as I was ready and awfully hungry, we went downstairs.

And there--I began to understand that it was not all history, geography, French, English, and mathematics that I was to learn in New York. I began to see what I never had seen--or could see--in our little village. That is--the prettier way of living. For even Miss Hooker’s table never looked like Mrs. Crane’s. And Miss Hooker went to the World’s Fair, studied singing in Washington in 1895, and has been as far West as Chicago.

It was lovely. I did wish that Uncle Frank and Bradly-dear could see it! There was a lunch set on it, and the way the table gleamed between the lace edges was beautiful. . . . There were candles with pink shades, and in a high glass basket late autumn roses. . . . Then there were tiny baskets of nuts and candies. . . . I could only look.

I said, “I think that is beautiful, Mrs. Crane!” and she said, “Dear child!” which wasn’t exactly an answer, but which satisfied me. . . . Then we ate, and the things were very good. I did enjoy myself.

They laughed and talked a lot, and we had such a good time. Mrs. Crane and Mr. Crane seem to talk by looking, too, which is queer--and yet, I suppose if you’ve been in the same house with a person for a great many years, and loved them lots, you would understand every little flicker that makes a change in expression, just as I understand what sort of a fly fish will want--from a look at the light and the depth of the water, and the sort of wings the insects have that hover above. . . . Sometimes I think that everything in the world is observation, that that is the only education. And that education perhaps, after all, only tries to make you do that.

I was deeply impressed by the French pastries. Of course, I had never had them before, because almost everyone in Queensburg does their own baking, and there isn’t any bakery nearer than Parsons, and that deals in nothing more involved than macaroons. I asked Mrs. Crane whether she thought that I could get them in New York, and she said I could. I was ever so glad, for I think that if you are very homesick you can be diverted as well by cheerful things to go inside as by cheerful surroundings. I told them so.

Mary Elinor agreed with me.

“Eating,” she said, “is underrated. It has a great deal to do with the set of your spirits (mother, I would love having another pastry--the brown one was a complete disappointment, and I only ate it to save it), and when I grow up and am a doctor I am going to advocate complete freedom in gratifying appetite.”

“Better advocate complete freedom in engulfing soda mints,” advised Doctor Crane. “Most people need ’em, even while eating with care.”

Mary Elinor didn’t answer. She was too much occupied with the pink pastry. When she did speak, she announced something which excited me. “Natalie,” she said, “mother’s going to give you a present to-night, something that is really yours and ever so valuable because of historic association, and I am so anxious to see you get it. For it is really yours, your moth----”

But her mother interrupted with “That’ll do, Chicky,” and she didn’t finish. And then an old coloured woman came in with little cups of coffee for Doctor and Mrs. Crane, and chocolate with whipped cream on top for Mary Elinor and me. We walked a little longer, went in a yellow room and played the victrola, and then I said good-night, and Mary Elinor and I went up.

After I had got undressed and was in bed, Mrs. Crane tapped on my door.

“Dearie,” she said, “may I come in?”

I sat up and said, “Oh, please do,” just as Mary Elinor, from way down the corridor, screamed a request to come over too.

Mrs. Crane asked if she might, and I said I’d love having her, so she did. When she came along, Mrs. Crane said: “Get in with Natalie--if she doesn’t mind. Daddy hasn’t any time to fuss with colds now, and this is a long story----” And then, as Mary Elinor got under the covers, Mrs. Crane opened a square box which was covered in yellow satin (a satin which had once been white), and held it so I could see a beautiful bracelet inside.

“This, my dear,” she said, “was your mother’s, and her father gave it to me a short time after she died. . . . Isn’t it lovely?” She held out the box, and very carefully I picked it up. . . . It was a wonderful thing of soft, dull gold, and the sort that they wore at that time--broad and firm looking. . . . I had a queer feeling to think that it had been around my mother’s arm, and I ran my fingers around the inside of it. . . . Then Mrs. Crane leaned over and clasped it on my arm and kissed me. And I was awfully afraid I was going to cry, but I didn’t. I find if you swallow two or three times, very hard, when tears are near, that you can divert them.

“Well,” said Mrs. Crane as she sat down on a little rocking-chair that stood near the bed, “that has a history. A great history. It belonged to Madam Jumel. . . . She married Aaron Burr, you know, when she was an old woman and he was seventy-eight. Nice rosy age for romance, wasn’t it?”

I was glad to have something at which to laugh.

“Yes,” she went on, “that was her bracelet. It happened that one of your great-great-grandmothers sailed for Bordeaux on the same ship in which Madam Jumel took passage. Madam Jumel was then travelling under the name of the widow of the Vice-President of the United States (although she divorced Aaron Burr after they had been married for less than a year), and a very grand lady indeed she thought herself to be. She had letters to write to French nobility, letters which she wished to send from Bordeaux, announcing her arrival; but her French was faulty, and she found the task of writing them extreme, and the result far from her personal satisfaction. So--your great-great-grandmother, being a person of education and the nicest sort of French, helped her.

“One noon, Madam Jumel waited for her at the entrance to the dining-saloon, and as your relative approached said: ‘Pardon, madam, but I heard you conversing in the most elegant and genteel French (I could not help but overhear it), and I wondered whether you would be so good as to offer me your assistance. My letters to royalty’--and history says she waved a hand most airily--‘are things that must be just so, as you can understand. . . . I am proud that crowned heads bow to me, but laws, my dear, it is a pest!’

“And the long and the short of it is that she was helped, and by your great-great-grandmother, Natalie. . . . After the letters had been corrected and little niceties were added, Madam Jumel expressed deep gratitude. . . . ‘Thank you a million times, dear friend,’ she said, in very quaintly broken French. And then, taking this bracelet from her arm, added: ‘No doubt one day, when I am dead (but not forgotten), the bracelet which I retain, the companion to this, will be displayed. . . . They will say it belonged to the widow of Burr (my dear, he was a wretch!), but this one, which I give you, and you must accept (I will have no noes!) your descendants will display as having belonged to your friend--a friend who was helped by a friend. Let me clasp it, please. Ah, there we are, and well it looks upon your arm, although it has not the round fairness of mine.’ And--that is the story.”

I looked down at the bracelet.

“Did my mother wear it?” I asked.

Mrs. Crane’s face changed curiously, and then she said she had--but not often.

“But she did?” I questioned further. “Really did?”

“Yes, dear,” she responded.

“There’s a picture in the Jumel mansion,” she went on, after a few moments, “which you will doubtless see. It shows Madam Jumel wearing the companion to this bracelet. The painting was done in Rome, the last time she went abroad, which was the time your great-great-grandmamma met her. In it she is sitting between her niece and nephew--the nephew who afterward, angered at her, threw an ink-well at his aunt’s face in the painting, missed it, and left a scar above his own head.”

“Wasn’t that frightful!” I said. (I was thinking of the aim, more than the motive.) “He must have been a rotten pitch.” But Mrs. Crane thought I meant his anger was wrong.

“It was,” she said, “and yet--old Madam Jumel was a queer piece. She adopted children who, one by one, all left her. She was a lonely old woman and one pities her--but, Natalie--the world gives back what you put in it. And usually when people are lonely, they have been cruel.”

“I suppose so,” I said. “What was the matter with him? Didn’t he ever play ball?”

Mrs. Crane didn’t know, but went on with:

“You’ll be interested in the Jumel Mansion, because of your bracelet. . . . And in Madam Jumel. Her husband, Aaron Burr, killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel; and Alexander Hamilton’s son, who was Alexander Hamilton, Junior, was her lawyer, even during the time when she was Mrs. Burr. . . . Wasn’t that strange? . . . There are lots of queer things about her, and more about her influence----” Again Mrs. Crane’s face changed (I wondered what made it), and she looked at the bracelet.

Then, after a little more talk, she kissed me, ordered Mary Elinor off, and put out the light. . . . When I was alone I put the bracelet under my pillow and kept my hand on it. I loved feeling it. It was nice to think that my mother had worn it, if only for a few times. . . . I lay awake thinking of it for a long time; and I am sure it must have been away past eleven when I at last slept. Before I did I thought of Uncle Frank and Mrs. Bradly. I wasn’t worried about Uncle Frank, for he always has bugs. But I did hope that Bradly-dear wasn’t crying. . . . When I thought she might be, I was miserable again--and then I found the bracelet to be a comfort. I put my hand on the inside of it, for Mrs. Crane did say my mother wore it sometimes. And it seems queer, but it helped lots--lots!

Chapter IV--What Mary Elinor told Me

The next morning I got up quite early, and Mrs. Crane, who did too, helped me to assemble my things. She loaned me a suitcase for the bridge jackets and my pin-cushions (which would not go in the trunk!), and then, taking a few of the best flowers from each bouquet, made them into a small one, which she pinned on me with a lovely little gold-headed pin, which she called a “violet pin.” And all the time we worked together she talked most comfortingly.

“If everything seems right different at first, dear,” she said, as she folded up my nightie and bath-robe, “don’t worry. . . . Things have a way of smoothing out, you know. And you’ll accommodate yourself. I suppose you’re used to being outdoors?”

I responded that I was.

“Then,” she said, and very cheerfully, “think of the walks you can take in New York! The things you can see! The most beautiful buildings, and parks, and dear knows what all, honey! Why, you’ll have a beautiful time!”

“I sort of hope,” I confided, “that I can get to one of the big league games.” It was hard for me to speak of it, because I did so want to go, and I was afraid it wouldn’t be suitable or something. For, almost invariably, things that are pleasant are not proper to do. I’ve always noticed it.

But Mrs. Crane thought my uncle would take me if I told him how much I cared about going.

“Do you?” I said, and ever so earnestly, for it meant a great deal to me.

“I don’t see how he could help it,” she answered; and then, after kissing me, she told me to hurry on with my dressing and come down to breakfast. And I did. As I did my hair (which was, at that time, a very simple operation, and involved three licks of the comb and one rubber strap), I thought of Mrs. Crane, and I did wish I could stay with her, for I began to see that my clothes did look strange, and I knew that she would help me to fix them without laughing at me or them. Bradly-dear had had them made so that I was too aware of them, and so that no one else could overlook them. It is hard to explain, but the trimmings and the dresses didn’t mix, and the braid drew attention to the dresses, and the dresses drew attention to the braid, which was not all moored on the level. I anchored a good deal of it myself, and I can tell you that it is far easier to pitch against a left-handed batter than to put on a yard of serpentine braid, beside being a great deal more interesting.

Just as I had got my dress on and was trying to hook it under the arm, someone tapped, and after my “Come in,” I found it was Mary Elinor. “Bill’s home,” she said first. “He just got in. He’s glad he’s going to meet you. He likes baseball too. I have something to tell you, but I don’t just know how. It is a delicate thing to say and requires womanly tact, of which I have not much, since father whips us if we tell fibs. That kind of an upbringing is an awful handicap.”

She sat down after this, and began to plait her handkerchief.

“If you feel as if you ought to say it,” I said, “go to it. I won’t mind.” And she did.

“It’s about the bracelet,” she said. “Mother doesn’t believe in such things, but Aunt Eliza (she’s our cook) knows all about them, and she says that probably the ghost of the first owner has put a ‘hant’ on it. . . .”

“I don’t believe in such stuff,” I answered. “You know how niggers are.”

“I know,” Mary Elinor answered, “but--well, look here, your own mother thought so.”

“Thought what?” I asked, and quickly. I was getting excited, and I wanted her to come to the point.

“Thought Madam Jumel didn’t want anyone to wear her bracelet, and made them unhappy--in some queer way--if they did. Everyone who wears that bracelet has awful things happen to ’em!”

“What?” I asked. I sat down on the foot of the bed.

“Well, mother said your mother said that because she wore it the first time your father kissed her, he died with pneumonia before he’d ever seen you. She said that made it.”

“I don’t believe it,” I asserted. I was annoyed. It didn’t sound like Mrs. Crane. Mary Elinor bridled, and her eyes snapped.

“Then don’t,” she said. “I only thought someone ought to tell you, before something frightful happened to you. And I don’t lie, Miss Natalie Page. You can ask my father, because he taught me not to and----”

“I know you don’t,” I answered, “and I’m sorry I said that.” And then I decided I’d better hear the story. Beside, I wanted to. So I told her to tell me all about what she knew of it, and she did.

It seems they have a room which they call “the winter room,” and this contains a cosy little alcove, lighted by a high window, which is remote and an ideal reading spot. And one day after Mrs. Crane got Uncle Frank’s letter, the letter about my coming, Mary Elinor happened to be there, reading. It was a book she had read before, and of course she knew what happened next, and so she wasn’t especially interested, and what her mother and father said sort of floated in her consciousness and rooted, she said, before she realized that she was listening. Then, since they hadn’t known she was there, she decided not to enlighten them. She knew that they would be shocked by her presence, and she assured me that she always tried to be considerate. And, she reasoned further, that since she had heard so much, almost involuntarily, there was no use stuffing up her ears, and beside, she was interested.

It was interesting, but I didn’t believe it--then.

“Ted,” Mrs. Crane had said (Doctor Crane’s first name is Theodore), “I want to give Natalie Page that bracelet, but--you know poor Nelly’s foolish fear of it bothers me.”

“Nonsense!” Doctor Crane answered, and Mary Elinor said she knew he was smoking, by the tight way he spoke.

“I suppose it is,” Mrs. Crane said, “isn’t it?”

“Why, of course it is. . . . Nothing the matter with that bracelet. My dear, how could it affect anything? . . . And as for poor Carter Page’s pneumonia” (Carter Page was my father, and he was an Admiral in the Navy), “he went off with that because of a severe climatic change, a bad sailing, and a weak heart. And of course Nelly was upset both physically and mentally by that.”

“But before,” said Mrs. Crane. “You know her little sister--the one who was killed in that Carrol County Hunt--thrown from a horse--well, she’d borrowed this bracelet and wore it that day.”

“My dear,” said Doctor Crane, “that’s simply coincidence. And it certainly proves nothing. . . . I think Nelly’s daughter ought to have it, because of its historic value, and I wouldn’t be bothered for a second by those imaginings.”

Then Mary Elinor heard him scratch a match and relight his pipe. She said that it was really interesting the way she could tell what was going on without seeing it. It was like movies for the blind.

“Suppose,” said Mrs. Crane, “there is something in that sort of thing (although, of course, there isn’t) and I did give this child something that would----”

Then Doctor Crane asked if she needed a tonic, which is his way of saying that people are cross, or crazy, or nervous.

Mrs. Crane laughed.

“Ted,” she said, “I know I am crazy, but when I remember it----” And then Mary Elinor said her voice became soft as she told this story. . . . I had heard it, but never told this way. And here it is:

I was born while my father was cruising the Pacific. Each day he had hoped to be able to come home, but orders were against him and, like all sailors, he had to abide by those and not by the dictates of his heart. And so--I grew for three months, and then one day my mother heard that father was to come home and would probably be in port within three or four weeks. Mrs. Crane’s description of that was lovely. And she could describe it, for my mother then lived in the Green Spring Valley with grandpapa, and Mrs. Crane went there often, taking Alix, Barbara, and William. Mary Elinor wasn’t, at that time.

“Excitement, Ted!” said Mrs. Crane. “I wish you might have seen it. . . . But you remember how I told of it----”

“A little.”

“Well, Nelly was the happiest little person I’ve ever seen, and simply delighted over the beautiful baby she had waiting to show her husband. Each day little Natalie (who really was a sweet child) was dressed in her best and ready for display. For Nelly couldn’t realize that three weeks at least must elapse before her big husband could come home to her. And she herself, pretty as ever, would wail: ‘Dear, do you think I’m as pretty as I was? Carter always thought me pretty, you know. . . . Do you?’ And then, quickly: ‘But if he doesn’t there’s the baby--and she is a beauty!’ . . .”

“Always was a coquette,” said Doctor Crane.

“Yes,” admitted Mrs. Crane. “Nelly knew her husband was wild about her. They really loved each other too much--the other would have been easier if they had been a bit closer to normal caring----”

And then came what I have always known, and been saddened by. For my poor little mother, after getting me all ready for my daddy, and herself all ready for him, too--both of us in our prettiest things--had a wire. And in this she heard that he was dead. And when she heard that she took off the bracelet (I did not know this part of the story) and flung it far from her. And then she fainted. And she never cried at all. Which I can understand.

Well, a few months went on, and, although they said I cared a great deal for her, she didn’t seem to care for anything--even me. And quite naturally, she began to be ill. I suppose that there was nothing left for which life was worth the living. . . . A big mammy took care of me, and my grandpapa loved me a lot, but I am sure, even then, that I wanted my mother most. . . . One day, perhaps six or eight months after my father’s death, my mother asked for the Jumel bracelet. And when they brought it to her (with a dent in the side, which had come from her throwing it) she smiled. . . . “I’m going to take it to its jealous owner, Chloe,” she said to my mammy. . . . “Or at least--I will take it where no one else can wear it--and where Madam Jumel will not mind its being worn.” And then again she smiled.

And when she died she had it on her arm, and of course she had meant that she was to be buried in it. But Chloe, my mammy, would not have that. She did not believe in carrying unhappiness to the other world, and, like a great many of her race, believed that you could take things with you--if they went in your coffin. Which is, of course, silly. For all you really take is love, and the whitest part of your soul. I am sure all jealousies, and hurts and little things stay here, and I like to believe so. . . . But to get on, old Chloe told my grandfather, and he, a broken-hearted old man, took it off. And then he kissed my mother’s arm, at the spot where the bracelet had made a mark, and he said: “It’s all right now, my little girl, isn’t it? It’s all right now!” For he hoped she was very happy. And then he went off and sat down on the porch, his head sagging down on his chest and in his hands the Jumel bracelet. . . .

There were three years which followed, three years in which nothing happened. And then, my grandfather began to lose money. I remember that time, although I was only three and a half. I remember his holding me very tight and pressing his face against my chest; and I remember that I always hugged him and said, “Granddad--dear,” for Chloe, who taught me everything, had said: “Your granddaddy done gotta have a lotta love, honey chile. He done gotta, for he’s lost a lotta love--a powerful lot! . . . .” For two of his daughters and his wife had all gone--within eight years.

And I did love him.

I remember also how, when they brought him in, bleeding, and with his eyes wide open but sightless, how I felt, how I screamed, and how even Chloe could not stop me. . . . Little by little he had lost money. And the small sums had worried him, and he had tried to catch them back with the big ones. And somehow, after a little time of this--there were no big ones. And then--one day in hunting season they found my dear grandfather by a stile, where they thought he had fallen and accidentally discharged his gun, which is, of course, possible. Anyway--he had evidently lain there for a good many hours, and he had bled to death.

And they found the Jumel bracelet in his pocket--flattened and bent. Looking as if someone had stepped on it, ground it into the earth, and--believed the story!

Chloe took charge of it, and Mrs. Crane saw it when she came out to take charge of me until I should go to Uncle Frank’s. And Mrs. Crane took the bracelet, because she thought no one of our family would want to see it, since even Uncle Frank seemed to believe in the ill omens it carried. She had it straightened and made whole again, and sometimes wore it; but not often, since she cared deeply for my mother, and the memories it gave her hurt. And so the bracelet was kept until I got it.

Doctor Crane asked about Aunt Penelope, and how she would feel about it, but Mrs. Crane said she had never believed a word of the tale. She was my mother’s much older half-sister--my grandfather first married a Northern woman, and after she died my mother’s mother.

“It won’t bother Penelope,” said Mrs. Crane. And she laughed. And then, Mary Elinor said, she added: “I wonder how Natalie will get on there, Ted? I imagine that there is a good deal of worldliness and thought of form. I do hope it will be all right, for if she is like her mother she is a dear!”

Chapter V--New York and My New Home

I had a very happy time with the Cranes, and, although Mary Elinor’s story upset me a little (in spite of my then not believing it), I was cheered by the time I left, and entirely myself.

Mrs. Crane told me to go play ball with William, after breakfast. She said I was foolish to drop it entirely and that she knew Mrs. Bradly would want me to play if she realized what good exercise it was. And Doctor Crane said he would write her. So I played, and after William let go of two hot ones and said “Ouch!” before he could suppress it, I felt better.

Doctor Crane rooted--for me, and it was all very happy. And I did so want to stay! He and Mary Elinor sat on grapefruit crates and yelled; Mrs. Crane came to the door now and again; Lucky, the awfully black little nigger, climbed up on the laundry roof, and every once in a while old Aunt Eliza would look out the window and laugh so that she shook all over.

“Doan that beat all?” she’d say. “An’ Mistah William droppin’ them balls!” And then she’d laugh again, and William did too, although he couldn’t have enjoyed having me come out on top. But they are all that way. They really don’t mind discomfort, if other people are happy, they are so kind!

We scored by making each other drop and miss balls, but of course the aim had to be square. The method was the thing. And just as Doctor Crane was yelling, “Good grounder, Nat! Now sock him with a warm baby!” Mrs. Crane opened the door and said: “Ted, you’ve got to start. . . . It’s almost half-past. . . .” And I had to put on my hat. I hated to. I just wish I could have stayed there and had my education applied!

They all went to the station with me except Mrs. Crane, and Mary Elinor bought me a little box of mints, and William gave me a glass baseball bat filled with tiny candies, for a joke. Then Doctor Crane bought me several magazines, some of which were full of baseball stories, talked to the porter about me (Doctor Crane somehow got through the gates), and I was off.

And all the way to New York I was cheered by the way the Cranes had said good-bye to me. Mrs. Crane was lovely and, with Mary Elinor, made me promise to come again; and Doctor Crane wrote down just what I was to do if I wasn’t met, beside being awfully good to me, and William said I could play ball.

I thought about them a lot; about my new bracelet, and about New York.

I had dinner on the train, which in the North they call lunch, and got on very well. It wasn’t difficult, because you wrote down what you wanted, and I knew exactly what that was. I ordered lobster, which I had never tasted, ice-cream, cake, a cream puff, and chocolate with whipped cream on top of it. A gentleman who sat opposite me gasped and said: “Oh, my!” Then he asked me if I was tired of life. He seemed impressed with my order, but I don’t know why. He got zwiebach (he told me what it was) and soft-boiled eggs and milk. And after he finished lunch he offered me some pepsin tablets. He took several, but I refused. And he said perhaps I was wise, for, he said, he didn’t know what one little tablet could do against that line-up. Then he asked me if there were any ostriches among my ancestors. He was selling automobile tyres, and called the waiter George, and seemed to know him very well. And he told me all about his indigestion, as his eyes roved over my order. “As for eating a mess like that----” he said, and then ended with, “Oh, my----” but I cannot quote him entirely, for it was terrible. It is that word which goes in church, but which becomes swearing when a man says it in talking to the umpire. I suppose this man was in pain. . . . After that we talked of baseball, and he knew Hans Wagner and had known him since the beginning of his career, when he played in the Oil League in Western Pennsylvania.

Of course I was interested. I lingered over my cream puff, ice-cream, and cake, and he lingered over his milk. He said he’d look me up in New York, and I was awfully grateful, and I said I was sure my aunt would love to have him come to supper. To which he replied, “Me for it, kid,” which sounded a little queer to me, even then. I did not know, at that time, that you are not supposed to talk to people to whom you have not been presented, or who have not been presented to you. I learned that later. But that belongs in another part of this story.

We reached New York when it was just growing dark, and never in all my life will I forget the look of it, the dazzling lit-Christmas-trees look of the tall, bright buildings, and the hurrying, bright-faced crowds. Everyone seemed in a hurry, and some people actually ran, and especially as they crossed Fifth Avenue, where we drove for some distance.

My uncle’s chauffeur met me, and he did not seem very sociable (I had not learned that you mustn’t talk to them, at that time), and after I asked him how he was and whether my aunt and uncle were well and whether they had had summer colds or hay fever, which is the way we start acquaintance in Queensburg, I stopped talking and looked. And I never saw so much to see before. It is wonderful. It took all my dreams of fairyland and made them look like a miffed ball. I looked up, and began to see why they picture the Reuben type with their mouths ajar. It is natural to let your chin droop from surprise.

“Are we almost there?” I asked, after we’d gone about a million blocks.

Jackson replied, “Not yet, miss,” and stared straight ahead.

And I said: “Well, isn’t this a long way!”

And he said: “Yes, miss.”

After that I did some more looking. . . . The dusk had fallen, and it made a lovely haze around the tops of the buildings, and looking down the side streets one could see only millions of motor head-lights, and nothing but those. And the women were so beautifully dressed! Some of them, in the passing motors, leaned way back and looked tired, but beautifully so. . . . Not as the women do around Queensburg. When they are tired they wear calico wrappers, and their backs get stooped, and usually there is a baby clinging to their skirts. . . . But here it is different. I can’t say why. The women’s eyes are narrowed as if they wanted to look tired. And they are so pretty. “Jackson,” I said, “I never saw such beautiful complexions”--no, I said, “Mr. Jackson,” then. And he said: “Yes, miss.”

Well, after a great way of this we reached a quieter section, and here, in front of a very tall, brownstone building, Jackson alighted, and I followed. A girl, whom I knew to be Evelyn, came out of a doorway, and said, “Why, what made you ride up with Jackson?” and then she turned her cheek for my kiss. And I can’t yet understand what there was about that which made me feel so hollow and cold inside.

Then she said: “Come in, and we’ll go up. I don’t think mother’s in, but she will be soon. . . . I hope your trip was pleasant?”

I replied that it was. But I don’t think she heard what I said, for we had stepped in an elevator and she was busy smiling at a man who leaned on a heavy cane.

“Charming day, Mr. Kempwood,” she said. “You’ve been motoring?”

He said he had.

“I have too, a bit,” said Evelyn, “but I was kept in most of this afternoon by a wild bout of auction. And--I took the prize!” She showed it to him. It was a beautiful thing, a little enamelled box on a gold chain, and in it was a powder-puff, pink powder, and a place for coins. Even I was impressed with it, and at that time I knew little beside what the proper balance of a bat should be. I began to feel worse and to swallow hard. The man looked at me in a quizzical way, his eyes narrowed, and little wrinkles showing at the corners of them. Then he said good-night and got off.

“Mr. Samuel Kempwood,” said Evelyn, as we went on (she said this in a low tone so that the elevator man shouldn’t hear), “has the apartment on the third floor. Wonderful collection of ivories, and is the most thrillingly romantic person. . . . Ah, here we are!” And then we stepped out.

Well, I don’t know what I had expected, but I know I had not expected a flat, I mean apartment, like this. It is wonderful. In the first place, it takes up the whole floor of that great big building, and doesn’t seem at all crowded. I had expected folding beds and having to put your hat on the piano and eat off a card-table, but it isn’t that way.

When we got off we stepped into a little outer hall, and Evelyn rang. Then a maid opened the door, and we went in without speaking to her. After she took Evelyn’s furs, Evelyn said: “Is my mother in, Jane?”

And the maid answered with: “Not yet, Miss Evelyn.”

After that Evelyn said, “You had your dinner on the train?” and I said I had. She didn’t say anything about supper, and of course I didn’t understand at that time. But I began to feel frightfully hollow under my belt. I stood this a little while, and at last I said: “Could I have a cup of tea? I don’t like to make any trouble--but----”

“Tea?” she echoed, and raised her eyebrows as if she were ever so surprised, and then added: “Of course.”

And she rang a bell. “I didn’t get any supper,” I explained, “because I thought you’d be waiting it here for me.”

“I thought you meant you’d had your evening meal,” she said quickly. “It is called dinner here. You will avoid confusion if you remember that. Jane, please see that some dinner is put on for Miss Natalie. She has not dined.” Jane bowed and left, and I began to feel even more hollow, and this time it was my heart that felt that way too. Evelyn moved around humming. She had been reading a great deal of mail and casually commenting on it as she read, like this: “Tuesday. . . . Um, I don’t--know. . . . And does Mrs. Stanwood think I would accept her invitation? . . .” And then she would hum something else. She shakes her voice a great deal when she sings. She forgot me even more than she had, and I did feel so alone.

When Jane at last came back, Evelyn looked up and spoke. “Really,” she said, “you must excuse me. . . . I didn’t mean to neglect you, but I had to get through my mail; you know how it is, of course. . . . Do you want to brush up before you eat? Frightful of me to forget to ask you.”

I said all I wanted was to eat, and then Jane said, “This way, please,” and I followed, sort of tiptoeing because everything seemed so very grand, and it all made me seem even shabbier than I was.

The dining-room is all panelled in some sort of dark wood, and has beautifully upholstered dark furniture in it. Silver gleamed from a long sideboard, which hasn’t one mirror in it (they all have mirrors on them in Queensburg), and a Jap served things. I liked him; he smiled at me.

There were roses and lilies of the valley in a great silver bowl which stood in the centre of the table, and I liked those better than anything. And when I looked at them my eyes filled. And I guess the Jap man saw it, for he took out a rose and several sprays of lilies of the valley and laid them by my place and said, “Like flowers. . . . Always pretty,” and I said: “Can I really have them?” And he smiled at me again.

And then he got food, and gave me the right fork, after I had used up the wrong one on the wrong thing to eat it with, which is mixed, but as I said, gym. work is where I do well.

After I had got through, and the Jap had given me a bowl of water with a flower floating in it (it confused me then) and was asking me whether I wanted coffee here or in the drawing-room, Amy, my cousin who is nearest my age, came in.

“My dear,” she said, “I simply hated not being here to receive you, but it was my dancing-class afternoon, and afterward I went to dinner with a friend. I couldn’t in decency refuse her. I hope your trip was pleasant? . . . Do let us go in where we can talk comfortably. . . . (Ito, coffee in the drawing-room, please.) Mother isn’t in, is she? . . . Poor mother, so rushed! . . . But everyone is. We love having you, Natalie!” And then she slid her arm through mine and squeezed my hand. And I loved her from that minute on. For--although we are very different, and she sometimes seems affected to me, she is kind. And you can overlook anything if people are that.

Evelyn is not. When you humiliate her, she hurts you to pay it back. I know that. . . . After the first half-hour of Evelyn, I learned my first big lesson from New York. And that wasn’t calling dinner supper; it was that kindness and making other people feel happy is the most important thing in life, and the thing that counts most truly and deeply. I try hard not to err in this now, for I know how it feels to have people do it.

When we reached the drawing-room, we found Evelyn had left. She is twenty-one and “out,” and she goes to parties a great deal. Amy sat talking about her and her beaux (she didn’t call them that), and her engagements, and I sat trying to look as if I cared a great deal about what Amy said, but thinking of Uncle Frank, Bradly-dear, and of Willy Jepson. That night I was quite sure that Willy Jepson would have a wife before he was eighteen! But he didn’t. However, that comes later.

At about ten Amy asked whether I’d like to go to bed, and I admitted that I was tired, and so she showed me to the most beautiful little room near hers, with a bathroom which she and Evelyn and I were to use.

“Absurd little room we had to give you, dear,” she said, “but I suppose you can make out. If you need anything, the button is by the door, and the electrics turn on here. Anything I can get you?”

I thanked her and said no, and then she wished me happy dreams and left.

Alone--I looked around. It was the most beautiful bedroom I had ever seen, but that did not help me. There was a dressing-table with three mirrors to it, and long mirrors in all the doors. There was a table by the bed, with a telephone on it, under a little lady’s fluffy skirts. And there was a light on this table too, with a pink shade from which roses artistically drooped. There were books by this, and a flashlight. . . . I never dreamed then that I would use that flashlight as I did later. . . . The walls were of brocade, in a rose shade, and the furniture was gray, with baskets of roses painted on it. And there was a sort of a lounge on which you could sit up, but lie down, if you understand, and deep, cretonne-covered chairs. When you opened the cupboard door the cupboard lit up, and there were hangers inside, and it was scented. I went around touching things very timidly and looking. And, as I said before, it was the most beautiful bedroom I ever saw, and at that time frankly awed me; but--it showed how little things count. For I wanted my own, bare-floored little bedroom with no decoration except two fish-nets and a mounted eagle, and which held nothing but a straight-backed chair, a bed, and a bureau with a wavery mirror. . . . I wanted it terribly. . . . I wanted to hear Uncle Frank “Ho hum” and to have Mrs. Bradly scold me, when all the time she was loving me--inside. I wanted to hear Willy Jepson whistle and yell: “Come on, Nat! Let’s go fishing!” I wanted home!

But I swallowed hard and began to unpack. When I found the china cat I held him awfully close between my hands, and then--when I found the bug that stays in the ground three years, I stood up.

“I’ve got to,” I said unsteadily, “for Uncle Frank and my mother. I’ve got to--and--I will!”

And then I set those things on the bureau and began to undress. I looked at them a lot as I did. And after I was ready for bed I said my prayers awfully hard, the way you do when things go wrong and it is nice to remember that there is someone who will do His best to right fouls, if you need it. And then I turned off the lights and got in bed. I couldn’t sleep. So after quite a while I got up and fumbled around to find the Jumel bracelet, Bradly-dear’s cat, and the bug. And I put them all on the table by my bed, and then, after I’d touched them now and again, I slipped into dreams.

And I dreamed that Uncle Frank said: “Ho hum, ho hum! She’s a pretty nice little bug!”

Chapter VI--The Second Bracelet

The whole mystery really began the next afternoon. But I must begin by telling of what happened in the morning. I got up and met my aunt. She sent for me, and I went to her room, where she, dressed in a beautiful négligé, was eating her breakfast.

She looked a little tired and white, but she didn’t let herself seem so when she talked.

“My dear child,” she said, “we are so happy to have you here. Sit down--not there, dear; that’s a frock I’ve had sent up on approval, and one doesn’t like to crush them more than so much. . . . I was so sorry I couldn’t meet you last night, but I was persuaded to stay down-town and go to see something light with a group of friends. . . . So seldom have an evening free. . . . Not that blouse, Jane! . . . Now let me see you, Natalie. Stand up.”

I did so, and she said, “Hum----” in a lingering, speculative way. I didn’t feel very comfortable.

“Well, we must go shopping,” she said with a sigh. “Jane, go ask Miss Evelyn to be kind enough to come here a moment----”

Jane vanished, and my aunt went on looking me over.

“Some gray mixture for your day frocks, I think,” she said at length. “With your gray eyes--yes, gray. And we’ll look at something soft in rose and in pink for evening. . . . Lovely hair you have, dear. Like your mother’s. But it looks more like New Orleans than Virginia. I wonder whether there was Creole blood in your mother’s mother’s family?”

I said I didn’t know, and then Evelyn came in. She spoke to me pleasantly, although carelessly, and then to her mother. The way she spoke to her was not pleasant. “What is it?” she almost whined. “I was right in the middle of notes, mother!”

“I wanted you to telephone Mrs. Lethridge-Guth; tell her I’m indisposed--can’t play this morning. . . . This child will have to have some clothes. . . .”

Evelyn looked at me.

“She most certainly will!” she admitted. “I should think some of that braid could come off before you go out----”

Aunt Penelope nodded, got a scissors, and I slipped from my frock. Then I sat down and began to rip off the braid which I had so painfully attached.

“My dear child,” Evelyn broke out, after a look at my arm, “where did you get that? Have you been in my things?”

I hated that last, and I suppose I showed it, for I know my head went up, and I answered coldly.

“That,” I said, “is the Jumel bracelet, and it is mine. It belonged to my mother.”

“Almost forgotten it,” said Aunt Penelope; “let’s see the thing. . . .” I slipped it off and handed it to her.

“Evelyn’s father had one like this made for her,” said Aunt Penelope. “He had Tiffany send a man up to the Jumel Mansion and make drawings of the mate of this, which is in a case by the painting. I think Eve is a little annoyed at your having the real one while hers is a copy.” And Aunt Penelope looked shrewdly at Evelyn and laughed a little.

“How silly of you, mother!” said Evelyn hotly. “I’m nothing of the sort!” And then she spoke of the dent in mine, and handed it back to me. You could see she thought mine was very unimportant. After that, she asked some fretful questions about what she should say at the telephone and left.

“A little out of sorts,” said my aunt, as Jane came back with her street things; “late hours, you know. . . . We’ll have to get you something that you can put on immediately, for there is a friend of your mother’s coming in to tea, whom you must see--dear old soul. Not that one, Jane. . . . Mercy, my girl, can I never teach you--no, the gray----”

After my aunt had dressed for forty-five minutes, she was at last ready to start, and we did. But we didn’t go down to the shopping district by motor, for aunt said that took too long, so we walked a little way and then went in the subway, which was hot, and that made everyone look sleepy and yawn. Aunt Penelope bought me a great many things, and enough underclothes to change every day! They were very pretty. And I must say I did enjoy trying on the soft things I was to wear in the house at night. There was a white crêpe de chine, with a broad yellow sash and hand-embroidered scallops done in yellow around the collar. The woman who sold us things, who had a beautiful voice, and who was very polite and complimentary, said: “Beautiful with her hair and skin. The two are a rare combination.”

And my aunt said: “Yes, let me see that gray, with the rose girdle----”

And she bought that too. And then she bought a rose-coloured dress which was untrimmed except for broad collars and cuffs of scrim, and a plain heavy white dress, untrimmed except for buttons and stitching. And she bought stockings to match all these. She selected shoes for me, skirts for me, morning frocks, as she called them, a motor-coat, a suit, and several hats, all of which were very plain, and a squashy black tam made of lovely soft velvet. I could only gasp. Oh, yes--I almost forgot. She bought brushes and combs for me too, and a little tiny brush to brush my eyebrows with! I almost fainted. And all that took us quite a while, of course. We had lunch in the store, but I didn’t enjoy it much, because my aunt selected it, and naturally it was nourishing, which always detracts from the interest of food.