"Personal. Miss Peggy Talbert, Eastridge. (Kindness of Miss Alice Talbert.)"

"What shall I do with it?" I asked, controlling my agitation.

"Deliver it to her, if you please, as quickly as possible. I thought of everything else. I never thought of this."

"Never thought of--"

"That she might not have got it."

"Now then, Mr. Goward," I ventured, still speaking very gently, "do you mind telling me what you took that 5.40 train for?"

"Why, because I didn't get an answer from the letter!" exclaimed Harry, raising his voice for the first time. "A man doesn't write a letter such as that more than once in a lifetime. It was a very important letter.

I told her everything. I explained everything. I felt I ought to have a hearing. If she wanted to throw me over (I don't deny she had the right to) I would rather she had taken some other way than--than to ignore such a letter. I waited for an answer to that letter until quarter-past five. I just caught the 5.40 train and went to my aunt's house, the one--you know my uncle died the other day--I have been there ever since.

By-the-way, Mrs. Price, if anything else comes up, and if you have any messages for me, I shall be greatly obliged if you will take my address."

He handed me his card with an up-town street and number, and I snapped it into the inner pocket of my wallet.

"Do you think," demanded Harry Goward, outright, "that she will ever forgive me, REALLY forgive me?"

"That is for you to find out," I answered, smiling comfortably; for I could not possibly have Harry think that any of us--even an unpopular elder sister--could be there to fling Peggy at the young man's head.

"That is between you and Peggy."

"When shall you get home with that letter?" demanded Harry.

"Ask my husband. At a guess, I should say tomorrow."

"Perhaps I had better wait until she has read the letter," mused the boy. "Don't you think so, Mrs. Price?"

"I don't think anything about it. I will not take any responsibility about it. I have got the letter officially addressed, and there my errand ends."

"You see, I want to do the best thing," urged Harry Goward. "And so much has happened since I wrote that letter--and when you come to think that she has never read it--"

"I will mail it to her," I said, suddenly. "I will enclose it with a line and get it off by special delivery this noon."

"It might not reach her," suggested Harry, pessimistically. "Everything seems to go wrong in this affair."

"Would you prefer to send it yourself?" I asked.

Harry Goward shook his head.

"I would rather wait till she has read it. I feel, under the circ.u.mstances, that I owe that to her."

Now, at that critical moment, a wide figure darkened the entrance of the writing-room, and, plumping down solidly at another table, spread out a fat, ring-laden hand and began to write a laborious letter. It was the lady with the three chins. But the girl with the poodle did not put in an appearance. I learned afterward that the dog rule of "The Happy Family" admitted of no permits.

Harry Goward and I parted abruptly but pleasantly, and he earnestly requested the privilege of being permitted to call upon me to-morrow morning.

I mailed the letter to Peggy by special delivery, and just now I asked Tom if he didn't think it was wise.

"I can tell you better, my dear, day after tomorrow," he replied. And that was all I could get out of him.

"The Happy Family."--It is day after tomorrow, and Tom and I are going to take the noon train home. Our purpose, or at least my purpose, to this effect has been confirmed, if not created, by the following circ.u.mstances:

Yesterday, a few hours after I had parted from Harry Goward in the blue writing-room of "The Happy Family," Tom received from father a telegram which ran like this:

"Off for Washington--that Gooch business. Shall take Peggy. Child needs change. Will stop over from Colonial Express and lunch Happy Family.

Explicitly request no outsider present. Can't have appearance of false position. Shall take her directly out of New York, after luncheon. Cyrus Talbert."

Torn between filial duty and sisterly affection, I sat twirling this telegram between my troubled fingers. Tom had dashed it there and blown off somewhere, leaving me, as he usually does, to make my own decisions.

Should I tell Harry? Should I not tell Harry? Was it my right? Was it not his due? I vibrated between these inexorable questions, but, like the pendulum I was, I struck no answer anywhere. I had half made up my mind to let matters take their own course. If Goward should happen to call on me when Peggy, flying through New York beneath her father's stalwart wing, alighted for the instant at "The Happy Family"--was I to blame? Could _I_ be held responsible? It struck me that I could not. On the other hand, father could not be more determined than I that Peggy should not be put into the apparent position of pursuing an irresolute, however repentant, lover.... I was still debating the question as conscientiously and philosophically as I knew how, when the bell-boy brought me a note despatched by a district messenger, and therefore const.i.tutionally delayed upon the way.

The letter was from my little sister's fiance, and briefly said:

"My dear Mrs. Price,--I cannot tell you how I thank you for your sisterly sympathy and womanly good sense. You have cleared away a lot of fog out of my mind. I don't feel that I can wait an unnecessary hour before I see Peggy. I should like to be with her as soon as the letter is. If you will allow me to postpone my appointment with yourself, I shall start for Eastridge by the first train I can catch to-day.

"Gratefully yours,

"Henry T. Goward."

IX. THE MOTHER, by Edith Wyatt

I am sure that I shall surprise no mother of a large family when I say that this hour is the first one I have spent alone for thirty years. I count it, alone. For while I am driving back in the runabout along the six miles of leafy road between the hospital and Eastridge with mother beside me, she is sound asleep under the protection of her little hinged black sunshade, still held upright. She will sleep until we are at home; and, after our anxious morning at the hospital, I am most grateful to the fortune sending me this lucid interval, not only for thinking over what has occurred in the last three days, but also for trying to focus clearly for myself what has happened in the last week, since Elizabeth went on the 5.40 to New York; since Charles followed Elizabeth; since Maria, under Dr. Denbigh's mysteriously required escort, followed Charles; since Tom followed Maria; and since Cyrus, with my dear girl, followed Tom.

On the warm afternoon before Elizabeth left, as I walked past her open door, with Lena, and carrying an egg-nog to Peggy, I could not avoid hearing down the whole length of the hall a conversation carried on in clear, absorbed tones, between my sister and Alice.

"Did I understand you to say," said Elizabeth, in an a.s.sumption of indifference too elaborate, I think, to deceive even her niece, "that this Mr. Wilde you mention is now living in New York?"

"Oh yes. He conducts all the art-cla.s.ses at the Crafts Settlement. He encouraged Lorraine's sisters in their wonderful work. I would love to go into it myself."

Lorraine's sisters and her circle once entertained me at tea in their establishment when I visited Charles before his marriage, in New York.

They are extremely kind young women, ladies in every respect, who have a workshop called "At the Sign of the Three-legged Stool." They seem to be carpenters, as nearly as I can tell. They wear fillets and bright, loose clothes; and they make very rough-hewn burnt-wood footstools and odd settees with pieces of gla.s.s set about in them. It is all very puzzling.

When Charles showed me a candlestick one of the young ladies had made, and talked to me about the decoration and the line, I could see that it was very gracefully designed and nicely put together. But when he noticed that in the wish to be perfectly open-minded to his point of view I was looking very attentively at a queer, uneven wrought-iron brooch with two little pendant polished granite rocks, he only laughed and put his hand on my shawl a minute and brought me more tea.

So that I could understand something of what Alice was mentioning as she went on: "You know Lorraine says that, though not the most PROMINENT, Lyman Wilde is the most RADICAL and TEMPERAMENTAL leader in the great handicraft development in this country. Even most of the persons in favor of it consider that he goes too far. She says, for instance, he is so opposed to machines of all sorts that he thinks it would be better to abolish printing and return to script. He has started what they call a little movement of the kind now, and is training two young scriveners."

Elizabeth was shaking her head reflectively as I pa.s.sed the door, and saying: "Ah--no compromise. And always, ALWAYS the love of beauty." And I heard her advising Alice never, never to be one of the foolish women and men who hurt themselves by dreaming of beauty or happiness in their narrow little lives; repeating sagely that this dream was even worse for the women than for the men; and asked whether Alice supposed the Crafts Settlement address wouldn't probably be in the New York telephone-book.

Alice seemed to be spending a very gratifying afternoon.

My sister Elizabeth's strongest instinct from her early youth has been the pa.s.sion inspiring the famous Captain Parklebury Todd, so often quoted by Alice and Billy: "I do not think I ever knew a character so given to creating a sensation. Or p'r'aps I should in justice say, to what, in an Adelphi play, is known as situation." Never has she gratified her taste in this respect more fully than she did--as I believe quite accidentally and on the inspiration of these words with Alice--in taking the evening train to New York with Mr. Goward.

Twenty or thirty people at the station saw them starting away together, each attempting to avoid recognition, each in the pretence of avoiding the other, each with excited manners. So that, as both Peggy and Elizabeth have been born and brought up here; as, during Mr. Goward's conspicuous absence and silence, during Peggy's illness, and all our trying uncertainties and hers, in the last weeks, my sister had widely flung to town talk many tacit insinuations concerning the character of Mr. Goward's interest in herself; as none of the twenty or thirty people were mute beyond their kind; and as Elizabeth's nature has never inspired high neighborly confidence--before night a rumor had spread like the wind that Margaret Talbert's lover had eloped with her aunt.

Billy heard the other children talking of this news and hushing themselves when he came up. Tom learned of the occurrence by a telephone, and, after supper, told Cyrus and myself; Maria was informed of it by telephone through an old friend who thought Maria should know of what every one was saying. Lorraine, walking to the office to meet Charles, was overtaken on the street by Mrs. Temple, greatly concerned for us and for Peggy, and learned the strange story from our sympathetic neighbor, to repeat it to Charles. At ten o'clock there was only one person in the house, perhaps in Eastridge, who was ignorant of our daughter's singular fortune. That person was our dear girl herself.

Since my own intelligence of the report I had not left her alone with anybody else for a moment; and now I was standing in the hall watching her start safely up-stairs, when to our surprise the front-door latch clicked suddenly; she turned on the stairs; the door opened, and we both faced Charles. From the first still glances he and I gave each other he knew she hadn't heard. Then he said quietly that he had wished to see Peggy for a moment before she went to sleep. He bade me a very confiding and responsible good-night, and went out with her to the garden where they used to play constantly together when they were children.