The Red House....................................................................................................................................................1

CONVENTIONALLY our lifestory ended in a shower of rice at the church door, amid the

scent of white flowers, with a flutter of white favors all about us. We left behind us those relatives whose

presence had been so little desired by us during our brief courtship, and a highheeled white satin slipper

struck the back of the brougham as we drove off. It was like a parting slap on the shoulder from our old

lifethe old life which we left so gayly, eager to fulfil the destiny set as the end of our wooing's fairy story,

And now all that was six months ago; and instead of attending to that destiny, the fairy princess

and her unworthy prince were plunged over head and ears in their first quarreltheir first serious

quarrelabout the real and earnest things of life; for the other little quarrels about matters of sentiment and

the affections really did not count. They were only play and makebelieve; still, they had got our hands in, so

that when we really differed seriously we both knew exactly how to behavewe had played at quarrels so

often. This quarrel was very serious, because it was about my shavingbrush and Chloe's handkerchiefcase.

There was a cupboard with a windowChloe called it my dressingroom, and, at first, I humored her pretty

fancy about it, and pretended that I could really see to shave in a glass that faced the window, although my

shoulders, as I stood, cut off all light. But even then I used really to shave at Chloe's mirror after she had gone

down to make the tea and boil the eggsonly I kept my shaving things in the embroidered vestments which

my wife's affection provided and her fingers worked, and these lived in the "dressingroom." But the

subterfuge presently seemed unworthy, and I found myself, in the ardor of a truthful nature, leaving my soapy

brush on her toilettable. Chloe called this untidiness, and worse, and urged that I had a dressingroom. Then

On this memorable morning I had set up the pretty ivory shavingbrush, clean and pleasant with

its white crown of lather, among her hairbrushes. Chloe came up just then to ask me whether I would have

two or three eggs. Her entrance startled me. I cut myself slightly, but infuriatingly, and knocked the brush

down. It fell on Chloe's handkerchiefcasepink satin, painted with rose and cupids, a present. Chloe

"It's no use," she went on. "I spend all my time trying to keep the house nice, and you're always

putting things down on things. You put your hateful fountainpen down on the new drawnlinen tablecentre

only yesterday, and it's made a great ink mark. Yes, you didwhen you were writing the check for the

"But they're not trifles," said Chloe. "They're just the little things that make all the difference

"And other places. Breakfast will be quite spoiled. You're frightfully late. And I don't think this

Now that I knew what my wife was so cross about, I might, perhapsbut I didn't. My chin was

I said, "Please don't wait breakfast for me, and began to brush my hair with a dignified aloofness.

When I was ready I went down to breakfast. Chloe was reading the papera thing she never

does. She poured out my tea and gave it to me without a glance. Thanking her coldly, I helped myself to

It was with the second letter that the shock came. I read the letter twice. And I looked round our

little diningroomit was about ten feet by nineand I sighed. For I knewsurely if inexplicablythat

the dove of peace which had folded its wings there had spread them on a flight from which it would, perhaps,

never return. I had quarrelled with my wifeabout a shavingbrush; but that episode had now shrunk to less

than nothing in the presence of the new, the wonderful danger that threatened our home. I looked at the neat

breakfasttable, bright with our weddingpresentscruetstands, butterdishes, and silverplated

teaspoons. I looked at the row of shelves over the mantelpiece, where the more attractive of our crockery

stood displayed; at the corner cupboard, picked up for a song in Great Portland Street, and fitted with a lock

inexorably guarding the marmalade, the loaf sugar, the sardines, the bottled beer, and such like costly items. I

looked at Chloe, mutinously reading the paperin a white muslin blouse which had been green, with white

flowers on it, when we bought it together in the Lewisham High Street for twopence three farthings the yard,

and which to my mind was all the prettier for the theft, by soap and water, of its original hue and design. I

looked at the remains of the haddock on the dish, the two eggs in the eggstandanother weddingpresent.

I sighed again and stirred my tea. I could see that Chloe was making a heroic resolve to overcome

"Then so am I!" she cried. And suddenly the first quarrel found itself over. Presently we went on

with the breakfast. To be more accurate, we began. But my thoughts refused to bury themselves in the

beefsteakpudding which Chloe unfolded as a brilliant dinner prospect, and I sighed once more.

"What is the matter now? Have you forgotten that you're not cross any more, and you're never

going to be againoris the haddock really like she said?" Chloe asked, making horseshoes in her pretty

forehead, as she always does when life presents to her any problem not immediately soluble in a laugh or a

joke. "Is it another bill? Never mind! I'll ask them to wait. You'll get the check for that detective story on

Monday, if the editor has a thread of conscience left, and I'll go up to town tomorrow and draw the money

"It's not a bill, madam," I said, "and Moses can send his money by post. Tomorrow we have

another errand. Today, alas! I must finish my article for the Weekly Wilderness."

"Allow me," I said, "the melancholy pleasure of communicating its contents. If you have quite

"Don't be a pig, Len," she said. "I'm not a baby, to have bad news broken to me."

"Yes," I said, firmly. "Hitherto we've worked for our living and earned it. Now we are degraded

from the ranks of the noble army of workers. My uncle James has died, and he has left us a hundred a year

and a house. Our independence goneit's a cruel blow! We'll ride over and see it tomorrow as ever is."

I am not sure that Chloe did not weep for joy. Though as a rule, one knows, that sort of weeping

is only done in books. You see, we really had worked so very, very hard. However much in love one may be,

one does not like to work ten hours a day. Though two may not grudge it as the price of life together. I wrote,

Chloe illustratedwe worked hardhardhard, and earned enough to keep body and soul and the two of

us together in our microscopic house. "The Bandbox" we called it, but on its gatepost it called itself Ross

Villa. And nowa hundred a year, and a housesuch a house. It came back to me out of my youth, a

monument of comfortable affluence, with vineries and pineries, and pits and frames, cleanshaved lawns and

trim orchards, yew avenues, box edgings, stabling and coachhouses and pigsties and henneries. Chloe and I

clung together in an ecstasy, till "the girl" came in to clear away breakfast. I never saw anything more

dramatic than the way in which she indicated, as she bore out the empty dish, that her opinion of the haddock

My article for the Weekly Wilderness got itself written somehow, but with difficulty, for Chloe,

demoralized by our good fortune, interrupted me at every sentencea thing we have carefully trained each

"Has it a garden?" she asked, suddenly, stopping in front of me with a compelling wave of her

"Of sorts," I said; "but don't talk, my dearest child. You lost me an epigram then."

"I am so sorrybutsince you are interrupteddear, dearer, dearest Len, tell me in six words,

"It's not red at allat least only one wing of it. It's a big yellow housestands all alone in fields.

Has a great alarmbell and, I believe, a ghost. Now be quiet or I shall slap you. Tomorrow we'll see it."

But the interruption ruined a delightful sentence, conceived in a spirit of the most delicate irony,

and dealing with the late deplorable action of the London water companiesand again I experienced that

premonition of unrest. Never again, I felt certain, should I be able to be sure of a clear morning's work. I

made allowances for my wife. I was not, I feel certain, unjust or unreasonable, but I saw that while the house

and the money were new topics, she could not be expected to preserve on them the hours of silence which my

writing exacted. And by the time the topics were stale, the beautiful habit of letting each other alone during

workinghours would have been broken forever. I laid down my fountainpen to make these reflections. I

heard Chloe pulling out drawers and opening cupboards in our room overhead. Yet before I could snatch up

"Oh, you're not doing anything. Then I sha'n't interrupt you if I just ask whether there's a

"I don't know," I said, beginning to write very fast, and not sufficiently grateful, I fear, for her

indifference to the money as compared with the house. "Why don't you settle down to your work? This is the

"II don't think I'll work today," she said, guiltily. "I'm looking over some things. But I won't

But she was back again in less than half an hour with a question about larders burning on her lips,

and my article degenerated from the clear, sustained logical argument which it meant to be, to a piece of

patchworkof patchwork ill fitted. I became desperate, and avenged my poor broken article by telling

Chloe anything rather than the truth about my uncle's old house. In the end this disingenuousness was paid

for to the uttermost. If I had prepared her, if I had had the intelligence to overpaint, even, the charms of that

old housebut I was firm, firm to the point of spitefulness. "A yellow brick house, as ugly as a lunatic

asylum, standing alone in the fields, bearing an alarmbell and a ghostly reputation." This was the most she

My piece of patchwork got its last stitches put in sooner than I expected. I put it in its envelope,

All the wardrobe drawers were pulled out. Chloe was sitting on the floor amid a heap of

stuffsa roll of chintz which her mother had given her for covers to our drawingroom furniture, if ever we

had any; some bits of velvet, soft reds and greens, that we had bought together at Liberty's sale; and she was

snipping and tearing at a muslin and lace gowna gown I had always admired. I remember she wore it to

breakfast the day after our wedding. I felt as though my tenderest memories were being unpicked, stitch by

"What on earth" I said. She looked up with a flush of excitement on her little face.

"Oh, Len, look here. Don't you think these velvets would cover some cushions very nicely? And

the chintz would make lovely long curtains, and I thought I could get at least four short blinds out of this

My blood actually ran cold. I sat down suddenly on the clothesbasket. Chloe was not too

"You know it won't bear your weight," she said. "Look here. I shall put the lace like that, and like

She got up, scattering muslin and velvet, and began to turn over a corner drawer. I found a

"It's impossible. Why, of course we must let it. It ought to bring us in a couple of hundred a year."

"My dear, my dear," I said, "this is very terrible. Is it possible that after so short a time I find you

longing to leave the Bandboxour own little Bandboxthe pride and joy of our hearts?"

"Don't tease," she said, "just when I was so pleased, too! You don't know how I hate the people

next door, Len. Oh, fancy having no one next door! I'd live in a barn on those terms."

I talked to her in a thoroughly reasonable way, and she presently promised that she also would be

reasonable. She agreed that we must let the house. Also she insisted that as I had finished my work, we

should go at once and look at it. I in my turn agreed. It was while I was lacing my boots that she said, sighing:

Even then I might have put up an arm to ward off the blow fate was aiming at me, but my

In the hour when afternoon ends and evening begins, we set out to see the Red House. We rode

our bicycles, of course. Poor as we were, we could yet command, on the hire system, machines which, at any

rate, in their first youth, might have been the desire of princes. Once we had passed the dusty avenue of little

villas (wherein our Bandbox, the corner house, squeezed in between two more portly brethren, is of all the

most unworthy), and had done the three miles of respectable semidetachedness which form on this side of

town the outer fringe of London's loathly suburbs, our way lay through green lanes where hawthorns were

"Oh, Len," Chloe sighed, reining in her shining steed to gaze wistfully on the trim green of the

scattered suburban pleasaunces, "if we could only live out hereaway from the washing and the

"I wish so, too," I said, briskly. It was merely a polite acquiescence in her aspiration, but it was

noted. I, blind mole, noted nothing. The most explicit warnings pass us by unheeded; it is only after the doom

We climbed the hill and passed through the long, sunny village street, clamorous now with

beanfeasters and superior private pleasure parties in wagonettes drawn up in front of the "Spotted Dog" and

"The Chequers" and the "Castle Hotel," for was it not Saturday, and the village but a bare ten miles from

Charing Cross? Then came the sharp turn to the left, the delicious downward rush through hawthornscented

air, the black bar of shadow from the railway bridge, a red cottage, a red wall, tall chestnuttrees, pyramids of

"This is it," I said, and Chloe brought down the brake in that reckless way of hers, and sprang to

the ground. The sunblistered, old, green gate swung long and wide on loud, red, rusty hinges as we led our

beasts in. We left them under the biggest of the chestnuttrees, and walked up the wide, mossgrown drive to

where the front door, fortified by heavy stone pillars, seemed to defy us, the besiegers.

"Is this really it?" asked Chloe, in a whisper. And well might she ask. The yellow brick on which

in my talk I had laid so much stress was hidden almostat any rate transformed, transfiguredby a

network of great leaves and red buds; creepers covered itall but. And at the side there were jasmine that

in July nights would be starry and scented, and wistaria, purpleflowered and yellowleaved over its thick,

gnarled boughs, and ivy; and at the back, where the shaky green veranda is overhung by the perilous charm of

the white balcony, Virginiacreepers and climbing roses grew in a thorny maze. The moat was there, girdling

the old lawnswhere once the Elizabethan manor stoodwith a belt of silver, a sad swan and a leaky boat

keeping each other company. Yellow laburnums trailed their long hair in the water, and sweet lilacbushes

swayed to look at their pretty plumes reflected in it. To right and left stretched the green tangled mysteries of

We stepped back onto the bridge that crosses the moat, and looked up at the tall house. Before the

ivy dressed it, it must have been very ugly. I suspect my uncle of having had that ivy clipped to its last leaf

every spring; and he must have had the house scraped and "pointed" pretty often. How otherwise account for

the yellow brick hideousness that glared at me through the mist of the years lying between me and my

The Red House is square, and very tall, but it has two large, low, long wings ending in four

Chloe assented, feverishly: "Oh yes, of course, ever so much. But can't we get in?"

We couldn't, because I had forgotten to call at the plumber's in the village for the key.

"But I'll go back for it," I said, "onlyI didn't think of itthe shop's sure to be shut. It's

"Then we won't waste time," said Chloe, firmly. "Let's be burglars. Break a pane of glass, and

We went round the house and round the house, like the snow in the riddle; but every window had

"Stupid, sleepy thing," she said, "we must wake it up. Can't you climb up to the balcony and get

"Shutters again," I said. "My worthy uncle believed in them. Now I come to think of it, he had

shutters to every window, and a patent fastening for each, and all different. But"

I was looking at the thick, twisted stems of the ivy that clung to the wall of the low left wing.

"There used to be an appleroom with a window opening on the leads. In happier days"

"Noearlier! I have climbed up the ivy in my time. But I dare say the appleroom is locked. But

"Very well," she said, meekly. And I went up the ivy. It was as easy as going up a ladder; but I

own that as I stepped onto the leads I did not expect to hear my wife's voice just below my feet, saying,

She had climbed up the ivy behind me. I said nothing till I had pulled her up to stand safely

"You wicked," I said. "Suppose you had slipped? You might have broken that little, silly neck of

As I was out of my cradle twentytwo years ago, and that was three years before she was even in

"Did you really think I should allow you to see an inch of even the appleroom without me?" she

It was. I broke one of the cobwebby panes, and opened the window, but, of course, it was barred.

"Idiot that I amI remember nowI used to creep through. I've grown since then. It's no good.

The bottom of the window was level with the leads. She twisted her skirt round her ankles as she

"You can hold on to my arm if you like till I feel the floor. Oh, don't be silly. I must."

"Right. Let go," and the next moment she was laughing at me out of the dark window.

She disappeared. The little door shook to her withdrawal of the rustlocked bolts. I bent my head

We went down the little, dark, rickety staircase. At the bottom was a door. Locked.

"Go back a few steps," I said, for my blood was up now, and, besides, the door did not feel very

"Broad shoulders are useful sometimes," she said, when the door had given way to the pressure

of mine, and we found ourselves standing in the great, dark kitchen, where the thin, dusty shafts of yellow

We had down those shutters, and looked out through the dingy windows on the moat.

"Oh, Len, what a place!" she said, and kissed me again. "Just look at the roastingjack, and the

rack for guns, and the hooks in the roof to hang hams and thingsand, ohthere's a great baconrack. It is

We explored the pantry and the servants' hall, the little bedrooms above, and then along the

flagged passage to the great hall, tiled with white and red marble, with the oak staircase winding up out of it.

We explored the livingrooms that led from it, and before we had climbed the first flight of stairs

to the great drawingroom, my wife was breathless with enthusiasm. She kissed me in every room"for

luck," as she explainedand when at last even the great attics held nothing concealed from us, I calculated

"It ought to let for a good bit," I said, thoughtfully, when at last I had replaced all the shutters,

"It'll want some doing up, won't it?" said Chloe. "That's a very dangerous hole in the staircase.

We went. The old garden had always been beautiful to me, even in the days when I used secretly

to eat gooseberries there, and plums, and peaches in an unripe state; and it was beautiful now, even as I

remembered it, only now its trees and bushes were incredibly grownmoss cushioned its paths. Its

fountains were dry and weed grown, and its sundial was covered with briony and woody nightshade. I put

aside the green trails to show Chloe the motto, Horas numero nisi serenas ("I chronicle only the sunny

"There now, you see," she said. "We must live here! We simply must. Only sunny hours!"

"My dear, it's madness. We can't live here. We can let it for two hundred pounds a year."

"And we could never keep up the garden. It would take three men all their time."

"I am; it's you who aren't; and if I did I don't care. It's what I've wanted all my life. Oh, Len, you

"If you're so keen on the place we might live in one of the cottages." There were four on the

"After that heresy," I said, "I shall take you home. My darling lunatic, come away. The Red

Chloe mounted in silence, and in silence we rode away. In the village I stopped at the

plumber'she is also a builder and a house agent, and though it was Saturday, he was, after all, at

Chloe said nothing, but stood beside me pale with the strain of her inward protest.

"How could you?" she said, presently. "When shall we ever have such a chance again? That

glorious green garden, and the orchard, all pinky and white, and the drawingroomit must be forty feet

longand the cottages, and the stillroom, and the dear, darling, little appleroom. The whole place is like a

picture out of Silas Marner. I'm sure that long, low room where you have to go down two steps was called the

white parlor. It's like all the houses I've ever dreamed of. And after I've kissed you in every room for luck,

too, and everything! Oh, Len, you don't really love me, or you'd let me live there!"

"You certainly put a great strain on my love, madam," I said, "when you cry for the moon in this

disgraceful manner on the king's highroad. Cheer up! Perhaps you'll feel saner in the morning. If not, we'll

"Well, you'll never let it," she said, riding faster and faster in her indignation. "That's one

comfort! If you do, I shall never believe in anything again. It's the most beautiful place in the worldand it's

What spells she worked I don't know, nor how she worked them. But, curiously enough, no one

did take the house. City gentleman after city gentleman approached and retreated after a parley, that always

ended in suggestions for repairs to the tune of from four to five hundred pounds. At first each new applicant

was to me an object of interest, and to Chloe an object of jealous detestation. But as time wore on, and each

new candidate told the same unflattering tale of the shocking state of repairs at the Red House, the hour came

when at the accustomed formula I merely smiled. But Chloe laughed, a laugh of triumph and delight.

We used to ride over there every day to see if the house was let, and it never was; and more and

more flowers came out in the gardenold, small sweet tulips and forgetmenots and heartsease, and the

The 27th of May is her birthday. It is also the anniversary of the day on which I first met her. So

that when, on that day, she held her hand up to look at her new turquoises, and said, "It is a lovely ring, and

you're a dear, reckless, extravagant millionaire, and I love you; but oh, Len, I wish you'd give me the Red

"Very well," I said, "you shall have the moon, since you won't give up crying for it. But don't

"Oh, you darling!" she cried. "But I knew all the time you wouldif I only kept on"

"Now, don't growl when I'm so happy," she said. "We shall never have any horrid rent to pay

again. We are just being economical, that's all. We can't afford to keep a great house eat ing its head off in

"If I give you the Red House for a dear little birthday present, I must insist on being allowed to

And so it was decided. The blow I had dreaded had fallen. My own hands had guided it. On the

6th of June we were to take possession of an immense mansion, standing in its own grounds, replete with

every possible inconvenience. Chloe dropped her work and sewed curtains all day. I had never known her so

happy. And indeed, now that the die was cast, I myself felt that our new experiment had in it at least all the

"Ah," said Chloe, "I knew you hid a kindly heart under that mask of indifference. Interesting? Oh,

my dear boy, you haven't the faintest idea of the interesting things that are going to happen to us at the Red

Nor had she. Had either of us even faintly imagined a tenth part of what was to befall us in that

house And yet I don't know. Chloe says now that she would have left the safe shelter of the Bandbox just

the same. And Iwell, as you see, if Chloe only "keeps all on," I am foolish enough for anything.

"YOU look like a historical picture," Chloe said. "What'shisname weeping over the ruins of

"I am weeping, over the ruins of my happy home," I replied, as I sat on a packingcase and

stirred with my boottoe a tangle of brown paper, string, dust, and empty bottles on the diningroom floor.

"That's just what I say. This adorable Bandbox of ours contained my heart's one treasure, and

"If you mean me," she said, briskly, "your treasure is not going to be kept in a Bandbox any

"Historic associations and other delights," she interrupted. "And not quite unfurnished, either.

Poor, dear boywas it unhappy at the nasty flitting, then? And was it like a cat, and did it hate to leave its

own house? It shall have its paws butteredits boots, I meanthe minute we get into the new house!"

She came and sat beside me on the packingcase, and I absently put my arm round her.

"Allow me a moment for natural regrets," I said. "It is not fair to distract my mind with undue

influence when I'm watching the dark waters of time close over the wreck of that good ship, the Bandbox."

"That's fine writing," she said, contemptuously. "Talk sensibly, there's a good boy."

Acquiescing, I pinched her ears softly. What my wife terms sensible conversation is unworthy to

The Bandbox lay before us, so to speak, in little bits. All the curtains were down, and all the

pictures. The crockery was packed up, so were the weddingpresents. The saucepans and kettles sat in a

forlorn group on the sittingroom floor. Our comfortable beds were now nothing but rolls of striped ticking

and long, iron bandslying about where one could best trip over them. The wallpapers, which had looked

so bright and pleasant with our books and pictures on them, now showed, in patches of aggressively unfaded

color, the outlines of the shelves and frames that had hung against them. The fire that had boiled our

As we sat awaiting the arrival of our greengrocer, who had undertaken to "move" us, I pointed

The greengrocer had promised to come at nine o'clock. That was why we had got up in the

middle of the night, and finished our packing before eight o'clock. It was now past ten.

"He has thought better of it," said I. "He is a farseeing man, and a kindly. He knows it cannot be

for our real good to leave our Bandbox. Let's set to work and put all the things back in their places!"

"Here he is," said Chloe, jumping off the packingcase at the squeaking sound which ever

preludes any weak effort on the part of the Bandbox doorknocker. "Oh, Len," she whispered, in awestruck

tones, "it isn't the men! I can see through the doorglass, and it's a lady, and look at me!"

"Life hardly offers a dearer pleasure!" said I, and indeed, in her white gown and blue pinafore,

with her brown hair loose and ruffled, she made so pretty a picture that I could not help thinking how a really

hightoned greengrocer might well have refused base coin as the price of "moving" us, counting himself

"I'll go, if you like," I said, and went. Chloe hid herself behind the kitchen door, where the

"Only, indeed!" Miss Riseborough echoed. "Oh, here you are! What on earth's all this? A spring

"So I am. At least I was last week, and shall be again next. I've just run over for a few days on

business, and I slipped away to the Bandbox to rest my eyes with a look at the turtledoves. But they don't

"Oh!" said my wife, again. "Sit downnonot on thatit's crocks and newspapersand the

"I've yards to tell you, only I thought you were in that horrid Italy, and I've been too busy to

Then the whole story came outof Chloe's folly and of my madness. Yolande listened intently,

her bright, gray eyes taking in Chloe's transports, and my all too moderate enthusiasm, as well as the

"You poor, dear things," she said. "I wish I wasn't going back to Italy tomorrow. I should like to

"Oh yes, but you can't wound me with your sneers. I own I love to have a finger in my neighbors'

pies, and the more I love my neighbor, the more I long to infest her house on bakingdays. But look here, I

wish you'd do me a good turn. If your house is that awful size, you will certainly have a couple of spare

"Well, I've let my flat, unfurnished. Could you, would you, can you, will you be angels enough to

take in my poor, homeless furniture, and give it board and lodging and the comforts of a home for a month or

Of course we would, gladly, and we said so. And then we talkedalways of the Red House.

"You'll have a good deal of fun for your money in your new house," Yolande said, at last, "but,

oh, you make me feel as if you were the Babes in the Wood and I were the wicked uncle. I do wish I could

stay and help you, but I've three pupils waiting in Florence with their mouths wide open, and a mere

temporary chaperon guarding them, and I must scurry back to fill those gaping beaks with fat plums of

learning. It's a dreadful trade, a crammer'salmost as bad as the samphiregatherers'."

"Wish the pie luck, anyhow," said I, drawing the cork of the gingerale, "though you can't have

your fingers in it this time. But I dare say there'll be a bit of cold pie left for you when you come back." So

And to Chloe's toast, "Here's to the wicked uncleI mean the fairy godmother," we emptied the

Then Yolande said goodbye, and pinned her hat on to her bright hair. At the door she turned to

furniturewarehouse people always let them get mothy, and give the piano a cold in its head. You might hang

up the pictures, if you don't mind the trouble; they've all got cords, and they keep better hung up, like meat or

game, you know. And furniture keeps best when it's being used. You'll sit on my chairs now and then, for the

sake of the absent, won't you? My settle would go awfully well with your gatetable, and my oak press

would do in those 'marble halls' you were talking about. I must rush, or miss my train. Goodbye. I'll send the

"Oh, Len, isn't she a darling? Just because she saw how our Bandboxful of furniture would rattle

about in that big house like a peanut in a cocoanut shell, to lend us all hers! She is a darling."

"She is," I admitted, "and her hair is the real Venetian red. But you'll miss the furniture horribly

"Don't grumble," said Chloe. "We shall have all her lovely things for months and months, and by

the time she comes back we shall have made some money to buy things. I'm going to work like a nigger

directly we get settled. And so must you. Oh, here are the men at last. Two hours late!"

Our fatfaced maidservant, who had rigidly refused during the whole morning to assist us in the

least, on the ground that she "had her packing to see to," now descended the stairs, bearing her whole

"Come in, please," said Chloe, to our remover. "You'd better take these oak boxes first. They're

"I wants chesties of drawerses," said the man, hoarsely, "all the chesties of drawerses you've got,

"We haven't a piano, here," said Chloe, and Charley seemed at once to form the lowest opinion of

us. He was a thickset ruffian with a red and angry eye. He was one of the four helpers engaged by the

greengrocer to "move" us. His clothes and those of his friends smelled strange and stuffy, as though they

had been smeared with putty and mutton fat, and locked away for years in a cupboard full of pickled onions

and yellow soap and mice. The clothes of the unskilled laborer always have this strange scent. It lingers about

everything they touch in passing through a house, and after days its freshness is still unimpaired. But I never

knew any scent so overpowering as that which clung to the clothes of Charley and his mates. They strayed

loudly up the uncarpeted stairs, urgent in their insistence on "chesties of drawerses," and Chloe would have

followed them, but Harriet came forward with, "Please, 'm, could I speak to you for a moment?"

"Please, I should wish to leave at the end of my month. Mother says the place ain't fit for me. The

"Mother don't 'old with movings," resumed Harriet, "and she says the 'ouse is too large and the

"Very well; you can go into the kitchen and wait till we're ready to start," said Chloe, with dignity.

But when the fatfaced traitress had stumped away down the little passage, Chloe dragged me

into the dismantled diningroom and flung her arms round my neck. This was not, I knew, affection. It was

"She's a pig," said my wife, with tears in her voice. "Her month's up in a week. She might have

told us before. And I'm sure we've been kind to her. I gave her that green moreen petticoat, and some

stockings and collars and things, only yesterday. And the petticoat was as good as new."

"I'll have satisfaction for that outrage, at any rate. A moreen petticoatand green, too!" I cried.

"She must be a stranger to all the higher emotions of our fallen nature. Cheer up, my darling, we'll get another

"We couldn't have a worse," said she. "Oh, they've broken something. I heard it smash. I do hope

It was only our best lookingglass, the same in which I had rebelliously dared to shave. "Never

mind," I said. "They'll have to replace it, and Charley will be unlucky for seven years. That's one comfort."

It was almost our only one. Reckless as a herd of pigs in midflight, yet slow as an army of lame

snails, Charley and his confederates packed our Bandboxful of furniture into the dark van that smelled of

matting and straw and quarterday. They broke an "occasional" table, and the door of the corner cupboard,

and they smashed on the doorstep the great jar of pickled walnuts which my motherinlaw had told me

would last us a year. But it was Harriet who, sulkily obeying my order to make herself useful, went to the top

of the house to fetch two highly colored texts from the walls of her bedroom, and, returning, fell over the

best toilet set, smashing the jug and the soapdish lid! It was rather a nice set, too, dark green, that Yolande

had brought from Italy, and, by us, here, totally irreplaceable. I sent Harriet into the back kitchen then.

When the last of our "sticks" had been dragged from the house, and the van had been half

unpacked to recover my coat and hat, zealously hidden under the diningroom table in the van's centre, and

when the forlorn party of chairs and bookcases had been removed from the pavement and once more

envanned, we added Harriet, speechless with sulky displeasure, to the vanload; and as we watched them

We set up our bicycles ready, and blew up the tires. Then we went all over the little house, "to

say goodbye to it," my wife said. Her face was quite sad now. It was in that horrid little dressingroom that

"I didn't think I should be sorry. But I am. Dear little Bandboxwe've been very happy here,

haven't we? Oh, do say you think we shall be just as happy there. You do, don't you?"

A narrator cannot be expected to chronicle all his replies. My answer satisfied Chloe, anyhow,

"I hope the next people who live in you will be kind to you," said Chloe, "and keep you clean,

We rode away, turning at the corner for one more last look at our Bandbox. Its bare windows

blinked forlornly at us in the June sunlight like the eyes of a deserted orphan. We rode on in silence.

We passed our furniture about half a mile from the Bandbox. And we had been keeping our

tempers for more than two hours in the spacious emptiness of the Red House before the rattle of harness and

Charley and his minions made a hollow pretence of putting the furniture in its place. They did put

the bedsteads together, insecurely, and in the wrong rooms; and they set up "chesties of drawerses" against

walls. The oak chests they carried to the attic, and the best steel fireirons were discovered, weeks later, in

the cellar. But almost everythingsaucepans, crockery, coalscuttles, books, hearthrugs, stairrods,

fenderswas dumped on the floors of the hall, the kitchen, and the diningroom. I remember that I had to

move half a ton of mixed valuables to find the teakettle, when, after two hours of breathless energy, we

heard the van's retreating wheels, and were moved towards the kitchen by one common longingfor tea.

Chloe got the tea, and I cleared it away. Harriet reluctantly consented to wash up the teathings.

"But," she added, and it really was like a blow in the wind, "I must get away before dark. No, it

ain't no manner of use talking. There's ghosts in this 'ouse, and I wouldn't sleep under this 'ere roof, not for

"Mother always said to me, 'Don't you never lay your 'ead on your pillow in a 'ouse where there's

ghosts, or you'll see 'em walksafe as eggs. It runs in our family,' says she; 'my mother's second cousin see a

calf without a 'ead walkin' on the churchyard wall, as plain as the nose on your face,' says she. And I can't

go agin my own mother, so if it's convenient to you, sir, I'll leave as soon as I've dried the teathings."

"If it's convenient!" said Chloe. And then we both began to laugh. That saved the situation,

besides making Harriet uncomfortable. We let her go, because we could not help it, and we set out our

supperit was tinned salmon and breadon a sheet of newspaper, because we couldn't find any

And we washed our hands with mottled soap, because the brown Windsor soap had hidden itself

away somewhere. And we dried them on Chloe's apron, because the towels were mislaid. And we made some

cocoa, because the gingerale could not, at the moment, be found. It never was found, bytheway. The

search for lamps being fruitless, we walked together to the village in the cool, pale evening, and, returning

with a pound of candles in a blue paper, it seemed natural to wander round the shadowy gardens, slowly

wrapping themselves in the blue veil of the summer night. The stars came out, one by one, and a little moon

that had been like a cloudy ghost through the gold of the afternoon seemed to wash her face with liquid light,

and set to work shining in bright earnest. The house seemed very chill, very dark, very silent, as we let

ourselves in. The most energetic search and half a box of wax vestas failed to find us a single candlestick.

At last we set up our candles by melting the ends and sticking them in teasaucers. Then I broke

up a packingcase and made a fire in our room. By a fortunate accident, Chloe, looking for her brush and

I looked round on the unspeakable confusionthe whole Bandboxful of our effects emptied out,

The birds woke us in the morning; such an orchestra as I had never even imagined. Sleep seemed

fled forever. It was I who went down to light the fire for breakfast. It was good to fling back the shutters and

windowsashes, and to lean out through the drifted net of green jasmine leaves and taste the fresh sweets of

Presently Chloe came and leaned beside me. The whole world seemed blue and green and gold;

the trees and the grass sparkling in the dewy sunshine, and on the bright turf the long, black, tree shadows.

"I never saw shadows like these," Chloe breathed; "they're quite different to the evening ones.

And there's no one next door! Oh, it is very good!" The birds sang, the sun shone softly, the swan in the moat

spread wide wings, preening his white feathers. A purple haze covered the hills. It was indeed "very good."

"We must always get up at halfpast four," Chloe said. "I had no idea anything could be so

I thought of them, and I knew that very soon we should once more be numbered among that

But I said nothing. We cleared away the breakfast and made our room tidy, and every now and

then she would stop to clap her handsonce there were two flatirons and a duster in themand to say:

"Oh, isn't it perfect? Isn't it amusing and interesting and thrilling, and everything anything can

We arranged a scheme of disentanglement, and applied it to our goods. Chloe dived into the mass

and came up with treasures, which under her directions I bore to the situations she indicated. But many things

seemed homeless, and the command, "Oh, I don't knowanywhereon the kitchentable," grew so

frequent that the kitchentable groaned beneath its load, and even the tall dressers showed signs of repletion.

But we got one room clearthe white parlor, Chloe called it. It was really half panelled in

oakpainted, of course, by some vandal middleVictorian handbut still charming, with its carved

garlands and flourishes, its high mantelpiece and odd corners. We swept it; we put down our best carpet and

hearthrug; we brought in our oak gatetable and our polished beechwood chairs with the rush seats, and the

corner cupboard, and the little bowlegged oak sideboard; we put some green Flemish pots on the

mantelpiece. Chloe ran out and came back with half a dozen late tulips, and when she had set them on the

table in a jar of Chinese willowpattern (handwork, none of your transfers), why, then we had a "room

ready," a refuge, as Chloe said. We also carted the remaining chaos into the kitchen.

"Because I give that up," she said; "we can't get that clear for ages." So pictures and curtains, and

all the things that take time to their fixing, were carried away. And the swept hall looked large and beautiful,

especially when we had cleaned the red and white of the marble inlaid floor with a wet broom and a pail of

As I rubbed the broom vigorously over a discolored square of the marble, I was suddenly

conscious of a guilty feeling. Analyzed, the sensation frightened me. I was becoming interested in these

details. And I had not once thought about my work, though tomorrow was the day for my article in the

Weekly Wilderness. It had never even entered my head to dream that I could ever be interested in cleaning a

floor. Yet here I was calling joyously to Chloe, deep in a packingcase in the kitchen:

"It won't be when it's dry," she said, "but I've found the corkscrew and the lamps. One of them is

wrong way up and full of paraffine. At least it was. It's anywhere you like now."

The very thought appalled me, and the fact that it did so appalled me still more deeply.

I pointed out that a shavingbrush is useful for other purposes than for putting down on things,

And then Yolande's furniture suddenly loomed at our gates. We had wholly forgotten it. The

white parlor had to be reorganized to accommodate her oak settle. The piano we boldly ordered into the

drawingroom, where it lived out long days of lonely grandeur. Her furniture was really

charmingChippendale chairs and a Sheraton bureau, pictures by the dozen and lovely crocks by the score.

The men who moved her things had linen jackets, and they were not scented like Charley. They actually put

things where we wanted them. We stood by in humble amazement. But when they asked where they should

hang the pictures, we looked at each other, almost speechless with wonder and gratitude. They hung the

pictures, they asked for a broom, and, if ours had not been wet, they would have swept up the dust their

careful feet had not been able to help bringing in. They dusted the furni ture, and asked if there was

anything else they could do. I said there was not, and felt in my pocket for silver, far more than I could

"Oh yes! How kind of you! Do please ask every one you know if they know of a servant. We

And that very evening a trim young woman came "about the situation," accepted it, went off to

fetch her box, and never returned. Perhaps she saw the ghost as she went out. We never knew.

Next day I sat down with my typewriter in the parlor. Chloe went to London to ransack the

registryoffices, so that there was no one to do housework. Therefore, when I had done my articleit was

on "The Pleasures of Home," I rememberI tidied the place up a little. Happening to find the blackleading

apparatus in the breadpan, I tried my hand at polishing the parlorgrate. It is much less easy than one would

suppose, and I barked my knuckles against the bars. Then I cleaned some windows. I knew, from Cranford,

that this was done with newspapers. The middles of the panes were easy, the corners inaccessible and

irritating. Then I got tea ready and filled the lamps. I experienced all the sensations of an explorer in an

unknown and ravishing country. All this was new and extraordinarily fascinating. I chopped wood and filled

a box with it, ready for the morning. I also chopped my finger, and decided that I had done enough

housework for the moment. Then I remembered my article. I had forgotten to post it, and the post was gone

when I got to the village. I had to walk to Blackheath to catch the late mailfour miles there and back.

"We've been here hours," she said. "How could you go off like that? This is Ellenshe is

I could see in Ellen's eye that she was not so sure of this. When Ellen saw the kitchen, with its

indescribable complications of domestic matter, she blenched, and I knew the worst. We all turned to,

however, and tidied the kitchen superfically, arranged Ellen's bedroom, assisted her to prepare supper, went

to bed worn out, and came down in the morning to find Ellen gone. She was not wholly bad; she had some

kind impulses. She had lighted the fire and put on the kettle before leaving. But we were a little late that

morning, and all the water had boiled away. When I filled the kettle at the tap it cracked, and Chloe said it

was always the way, and snatched the kettle out of my hand, and boiled the water for tea in a saucepan that

had had cabbage in it. So, after breakfast, I insisted on a turn in the quiet, sunny garden, and she grew calmer.

"Yes," I owned, "but I blackleaded the parlorgrate yesterday, and I did several other things that

"And now I'm going to scold us, pussy. It was entirely my fault that we left the Bandbox, but I

hope you'll forgive me, and let's make the best of it. And we mustn't take things too seriously. What does it

all matter? Through life, my precious pussykitten, the best weapon is laughter. Let us agree to laugh at

"I know you are. Now we're going to sit down on this dear, old stone bench under the red

maytree, and, if you're good, I'll tell you things. We won't try to get a servant again till the kitchen's straight.

And we'll shut up all the rooms except the kitchen, and we'll move our bedroom things into one of the

downstairs rooms, so as not to have to use the stairs at all. And the little room that opens out of the kitchen

we'll put two tables in, and do our work therefor we must work, you know. And we'll take it in turns to do

the housework, and the other shall work. And when it's all straight we'll get a treasure of a maid, and all live

happy ever after! Now you're going to sit here quietly, and I'm going to fetch the Inland Voyage, and read

We did all these things, and gradually some sort of order evolved itself from chaos, and the scent

Then we had a rapid succession of unsuitable servants; five, I think, were honest, the sixth went

Then we got a woman from the village to come in by the day. She worked fairly well, but she

All this time we had never had a moment for gardening, and Chloe's dream of growing our own

vegetables was being swiftly hidden by the weeds of oblivion. There were flowers in plenty, though, now.

Hundreds of roses, red and white and yellow. Thousands of pink roses. Canterburybells, red daisyflowers,

lupins, columbines, and giant larkspurs. Chloe kept the house a flowery bower. I cleaned the boots and the

knives, and whistled at my work. It was when half the neck of mutton got into that covered basket and,

ostrichlike, left its tail sticking out, that I told Mrs. Coombe that we must part. She asked for no explanation;

I gave none. We parted without unnecessary words. That day it began to raina thunderstorm first, then

slow, steady, pelting rain for hours and hours. We sat over the kitchen fire that evening and told ghost stories

till I saw my wife beginning to cast glances over her shoulder to where the darker shadows lurked in the

corners of the great, blackraftered kitchen. Then I lit twelve candles, set then on the mantelpiece, and made

"You must wake up," she said, in a terrified whisper; "there's some one in the houseoror

"It's likeit's as if some one had been killed and there was blood dripping onto the floor. Oh,

listen, and do strike a light! I'm afraid to put my arm out for the matches. It is like blood, dripping! Listen!"

I HAD held my breath to listen to the drip, driploud in itself and hollow in its echo through the

"It can't be," I said; "there's no one in the house to kill any one elseand no one to be killed,

"A ghost, you mean?" I said, cheerfully. "Not it! I expect some tramp's got in and upset a

I had always resolved that in no straits would I ever, barefooted, face a burglar. Think of the

"But there is no poker up here," Chloe said. "You know we never could find the bedroom

One of the ugliest of our wedding presents, the umbrella with the rockamethyst handle the size

"I think it would crack a nut, if need were," said I"even the most hardened nut of the most

"How can you?" said Chloe. She was creeping into her dressinggown. "Now, thenI'll carry

"If we are to surprise any enterprising professional, we sha'n't do it with a candle," said I. "Now,

We opened the door slowly and softly, and very softly and slowly crept along the dark passage

At the stairfoot we stood still and listened. Not a sound but the dripdripdripping. It seemed to

"I can't," she whispered, and struck a match. Her hands trembled so that she could hardly light

I flung open the door of the white parlor, while Chloe stood with her back to the wall, hiding her

I took two steps into the darkness. Then I laughed aloud and put down the candle on the table.

I put it up as I spoke, and, catching Chloe's hand, drew her under it. The drops splashed on the

umbrella heavily from the ceiling above. Chloe and I looked in each other's eyes and laughed.

"Yesonly!" said I. The floor was an inch deep in water, and from the ceiling it was falling, in

We dressed hastily and lit the candles in the tall, old brass candlesticks on the whiteparlor

mantelpiece. It took us some little time to find places, where these could stand without prompt

Then, barefooted both, with my trousers tucked up, and Chloe's skirts kilted to the knee, we did

We carried all our books out into the hall, and stood them up on their edges, with their leaves

open, to dry. We carried out our furniturethe settle, and the gatetable, and the rushbottomed beechwood

chairs. We took down the wet curtains and hung them on the baconrack in the kitchen. "I do wish we kept a

pig," said Chloe, in parenthesis. "Fancy sides of bacon swinging here, instead of wet, floppy, droppy

curtains!" It was a night's work. When the gray of the dawn showed us, through rainwrinkled

windowpanes, the green tangle of our garden, all beaten down to one dripping desolation, with a gray sky

"This has been an adventurous night. It is a ghastly morning. Do people who have been up all

night have breakfast? Tea, for instance? You are wet as any mermaid, and twice as pretty. But water's not

She had caught at the rope of bright hair that hung below her waist, and was wringing the water

out of it. Her bare feet were pink and rosy in the mixed radiance of dawn and candlelight. Her striped

redandwhite skirts gave her a sort of coquettish smartness, as of a Parisienne at Trouville. She held out her

"Come with your mermaid," she said; "come and light a fire of driftwood in her ocean cave."

She led me through the kitchen to the little room where we worked. A fire burned red and

glowing; on her drawingtable, white damask covered, were bread, butter, teathings. The brass kettle sang

"The ghost must have done this," said I. "You said you'd make it run errands, but I never thought

"But I did, you see," said Chloe. "I taught itlittle odd minutes when you were carrying buckets

and sticking up damp books on their poor tails, so that you shouldn't notice what I was doing. Isn't it a clever

"Aren't I a noble wife? Aren't you proud of me? Don't you love me very, very, very?" said she.

"Not exactly," said I, holding her in one arm and making the tea with the other. "Respect,

admiration for your talentslook out, you nearly had the teapot over!but love! Don't be exactingand

don't shake my arm, or I shall scald us both. Go and get something dry on, and I'll cut some sandwiches."

"Yes, I've got to go out and see what there is on the roof, as soon as it's light enough to see to put

up a ladder. Madam, withdraw, and take five drops of eucalyptus oil on a piece of sugar."

It was rather a pleasant breakfast, though the drip, drip, drip went on merrily all the time.

"Len, I'm afraid it's very wrong, but I've rather enjoyed myself. I seem to like things to happen.

"It is," said I, "but I do, too. And it is wickeda morbid craving for excitement, even at the

expense of a cherished librarythe cream of our country's literature. Now put on your macker, and we'll go

The roof of the white parlor is one of the leaded spaces on the wings of the Red House. It has a

parapet at back and front. These formed a sort of tank; all the wastepipes were stuffed up with leaves and

twigs, and I pulled a black, sodden starlings' nest out of one of them. The rain came down pitilessly. I looked

about me. I knew that, below, the flood in the white parlor must be momently gaining in depth and intensity.

"Chloe," I said, "this is no time to be tender of bricks and mortar. Go and fetch the bassbroom,

I found it, after some search, in the pantry. I had taken it there myself, I remember, in the avowed

belief that it, and it only, could serve to break into the first gooseberry pie of Chloe's making. I brought it up

onto the roof, and with it smashed away the bricks and cement till I had a twofoot embrasure in the back

parapet. Then I paused. A moment's silence full of concentrated reflection broke as I said, "Wife of my heart,

Then we went to find the spade. With it we dug clay from the banks of one of the little streams

which feed our moat. I transported it in the wheelbarrow, always through the rain, to the scene of action, and

we raised it to the roof by a cord and the wastepaper basket. With it I built a dam round my embrasure. Then

Then I knocked over the last three inches at the bottom of my embrasure. The water from within

my dam rushed out down the face of the housebehind the dam lay the tank of water, but my dam held firm.

"And now a broomhandle, soul of my soulor, I'll tell you what, that garden rake we've never

I spliced the dustpan's handle at right an gles to the handle of the rake, and laid this last across

the embrasure. The parapet held its ends securely, and the dustpan, face downward, projected itself out

through the opening. I made all fast with clay and then called Chloe to come up the stepladder and share

with me the triumphant moment when my dam should be broken down and my new dustpancumrake

watershoot come into play. One's wife should share one's joys as well as one's sorrows, I said.

The ingenious contrivance, which I thrilled to have found myself capable of devising, acted

perfectly. I kicked my dam to pieces, and the imprisoned water behind rushed impetuously through the

embrasure, and, directed by the trusty dustpan, fell in a cataract a yard and a half from the house, to

meander away harmlessly along the gravel path. I helped the flowing tide with the bassbroom, and all the

while the rain splashed and spun and sputtered on mackintosh and bared heads. When the leads held but half

an inch of water I strengthened the dustpan and rake with clay, and we went indoors.

The white parlor was unspeakably wetbut the water no longer dripped from the roof.

We mopped again, dried and dressed, and did our ordinary housework. Then the sun came out.

We took cushions and rugs onto the balcony, and fell asleep. We slept till late in the afternoon. Then I went

to fetch a plumber. He came, many days later, cleared the wastepipes, and sent me in a bill for �2

The second was made by the inspector of the water company. He compelled us to put in new

patent taps all over the house. This cost �7 9s. 3d.; and when a grandmaternal government came down on us

about the question of sinks and overflowpipesChloe, in my absence, had the misfortune to cringe before

"It isn't that, but everything's so large," she said. "Why, it takes me two hours to do the flowers,

"We must go flowerless, Chloe, or seek the refuge of the neighboring workhouse. Now, in the

Remorselessly I pursued my advantage, for Chloe seemed to be in a yielding mood.

"In the Bandbox" I began, but she caught me by the shoulders and shook me and took the

"In the Bandbox," she said, "I worked and you worked. And now we don't either of us work a bit

more than we can help. And I know why it is, toowe've both found out how interesting other things are.

You'd rather chop wood or clean the boots than write your nasty, dull articles and stories, and I'd rather put up

shelves and arrange flowers than draw silly pictures of idiotic people for imbecile magazines. We're both

demoralized bywhat do you call it?the joy of life. I hate work. I wish it was dead!"

She hesitated, then: "No," she cried, defiantly, "it isn't. Work is what you hate doing, and have to

"My gentle playfellow, we must workeither here, in our own Red House, or in the yellow brick

mansion provided by a tender country for its more obvious failures. The Red House or the Unionwhich is

"Chloe, Chloe," I said, "I speak more in sorrow than in anger. In the Bandboxyes, I insist on

my right to mention that hallowed spot as often as I chooseyou went to town twice a week to wring

remunerative orders for illustrations from the flinty hearts of editors. You have often explained to me that to

be on the spot is the thing. The work is given to the people who look after it. How often have you been to

London since my birthday? Onceand that was the day when you went to the registryoffice and brought

"I know it, but I am a practical reformer. Reforms personally attended to. Brush my frockcoat,

please, if you have any idea where it is, and my high hat, if you can find it. I am going to town this afternoon.

In my absence I expect you to finish your illustration for the Lady's Battalionthe one where the duchess is

dis charging her butler for shaving in the boudoir, and leaving his shavingbrush on the marble

"You're not nice. You know it is a humble companion refusing a duke's offer of marriage. He

does look like a footman, I know; her arm is all wrong, and his legs are hideously out of drawing. Legs are so

difficult to do, especially in clothes. We never had models in trousers at the Slade School"

"Ah, these artschools!" I said. "Now find that frockcoat, my Michaela Angelica, and speed the

"I think I saw it once in the dresser drawer," she said, dreamily. "If you'd seen it you'd have put it

away. Len, talking of shavingbrushes, how is it I used to be so tidy in the Bandbox, and you not, and now

"Well," I answered, "when two people are moderately fond of each other they do teach each other

"And you've redeemed me, or are redeeming. When we've quite converted each other we can

begin again and change back. But the coat, and the hat. I must shave, and there's only just time to catch the

11.32. For the sake of our home, for the sake of our future, for the peace of our domestic existence, Chloe, do

The hat was all right, but the coat was full of creases. It was not in the dresser drawer, after all,

but on the bottom shelf of the oak sideboard, and I had to iron it before I could dream of putting it on. Chloe

told me how to do it, but she owned that I did it far better than she could have done it herself. My best boots

were mislaid, too, as it happened, and, before I had discovered them in a corner of the bare drawingroom, I

had missed the 11.32. I went up by the 12.40, however, and in the train I wondered to myself how it was that

Chloe, who in the Bandbox had kept all in so neat an array, was now growing more untidy than I in my most

reckless moods had ever been. It was a problem, and I bent myself to it as the train whirled me through green

pastures outlined with elmtrees and hawthorn hedges, then through villas, red and selfconsciously trim,

with their neat gardens, geraniumflushed, calceolariagildedneat as a prize map at a firstclass

highschool. The problem did not resolve itself. It was not till the train was rushing through a wilderness of

yellow brick houses, all alike, all sootbegrimed, all standing, with their bits of blackened garden, their

stunted flowers, their carefully trained snippets of creeper, for lives full of the courageous struggle of man's

innate love of beauty against the iron of environment, the crippling of the accident of birth, the handicap of

hereditary submission to the undeserved darkening of life, that I began to see the answer to my question.

In our first homethe Bandbox, the little nest that had held us at our first matingChloe had

struggled to reproduce, and had reproduced, on a microscopic scale, and with the aid of a woman servant

more or less tractable, the habits and methods learned in her mother's house in Bedford. There were rules, and

she followed them. I for my part had met the new rules as part of a new and delightful comedy, wherein my

wife was heroine. At the same time I had felt no urgent need for altering the habits of years spent in

chambers, at the mercy of an uncomplaining and systematically dishonest laundress. But when the

BandboxI paid it the tribute of a perfunctory sigh, even in my railwaycarriage solitudewhen the dear

Bandbox was left behind, and we entered the Red House, we entered, too, on a new lifea primitive

existence where law was not. The rules Chloe had learned in Bedford as to the duties of servants and the

routine of domestic life were now inapplicable, since we had no servant, and consequently no recognized

routine. We were in the position of folk cast upon a desert island (I mean an uninhabited one, but the

phraseology, as the instinct, of boyhood survives). And here we had suddenly changed parts. The chart of

custom by which Chloe had steered in Bandbox days had been reft from her. She had nothing left but

delightful, genuine impulses towards beautythe arrangement of flowers, the fixing of shelves, and the

deep, eternal instinct to satisfy the cravings of hunger in herself and hersme. I, on the other hand, being

face to face with a new problem, met it, man fashion, with a new solution. I perceived that order alone could

make our life in the Red House possible. As the train steamed over the bridge one practical conclusion came

I saw several editors, received a commission to write a series of articles on foreign politics, and a

short story of strong domestic interest. Then I stood at the corner by the Mansion House in a meditation so

deep as to provoke the amused and contemptuous scrutiny of my fellows, and at last, just as a small boy was

murmuring at my elbow, "Makin' up your mind whether you'll be primeminister or not? Well, take your

time, sir; it's worth thinkin' over," I hailed a 'bus and was borne away by it. I went straight to Mrs. May's

registryoffice in Tottenham Court Road. The ladies who attended to my needs seemed to me to have the

most perfect manners in the world. So well did they act for me that in half an hour I had engaged an amiable

"Now look here," I said to her, "you mustn't expect our house to be like any one else's. We're not

in the least like any one else. We live in a very large house"her plump face fell"but we only use a few

rooms. Your mistress will help you a bit, and you can go out one evening a week and every Sunday, and you

can have your friends to see you any evening"her face brightened"but no young men, unless they come

by twossee? My wife and I will both help you, and if you help us we shall all be perfectly jolly. What do

I could see the smile Mrs. May was trying to conceal, and I felt a tremor of doubt. Perhaps, after

all, it did not do to treat servants as though they were of the same flesh and blood as one's self.

The girl hesitated, looked doubtfully at me, I smiled at her in my best manner, and she smiled

So that was settled. I felt the warm point of triumph which punctuates the career of the born

"Monday, then," said I; "and send your box by Carter Paterson." And with that I left well alone,

I had to wait half an hour for a train. On the platform was the usual dingy, mixed crowd of clerks,

typewriting girls, art students, and City men, and among them, her red hair shining at me down the length of

the gloomy platform, a woman's figure that I knew. Her dainty dress of muslin, sown with little bunches of

violets, her charming hat, her perfect gloves and shoesthese alone might not have thrust her identity on me.

Thank Heaven, more than one Englishwoman wears pretty muslin gowns and picturehats, and has gloves

and shoes that fit her. It was the set of her shoulders, the poise of her head, the modest, graceful

selfpossession of her attitude that made me bold to step behind her, and, without even a sight of her face, to

murmur over her shoulder and into the prettiest earalmostin the world, "Yolande!"

She turned in a flash, and her face came to me in that dull place like a gleam of sunlight in a

"How unexpected you are," I said, "and how very, very like the most beautiful kind of French

"I was going down to see Chloeand you. I have got a bag somewhere," she said. "I am pretty,

"The chief, just now. You don't think old clothes rhyme necessarily with old friends. There's just

time for a cup of teacome. And then for the Red House. We shall find Chloe in rags, clearing out the

scullery. You don't knowor rather you do, perfectly wellwhat a sight for sore eyes you'll be to her."

"Chloe!" I cried, with proper severity, "have you done that drawing of the footman and the

She looked at me with that disarming blink of soft lashes for the sake of which the harshest of

"I've been cleaning out the kitchen," she said"it's lovely now. Yolande, come and take your

things off. He'll make the tea and set the table. He's quite domestic nowaren't you, Benedick?"

"Yes, Beatrice," I said; "and there's a large black on your respectable earthe right one."

"The better to slap you with!" she cried, the action rhyming with the word, and fled.

She came down to tea all white muslin and lace and pink ribbons. "It's Yolande's fault," she said.

deprecatingly. "I hate being smart myself. It's so unsuitable to our position. Don't look at me like that!"

Throughout tea I could look at nothing else. Yolande is a witch. How else could she have known

that in these weeks of happy, hard work I had vaguely missed something, somehow, and had never guessed

till now that it was my wife's beauty, so unadorned, and still so dear, that had fretted me with the unconscious

The evening was a festival. Yolande played Chopin to us in the dim, empty drawingroom, and if

I did hold my wife's hand the while, Yolande did not mind, for she was used to us. Chloe showed us the

duchess and footman drawing, and indeed the duchess's arm was hopelessly wrong, and the footman's legs

things to weep over. We drank gingerale, always with us the outward expression of hilarity, and, as the

evening waned, sang comic songs. When Yolande had gone to bed, in the room got ready for the servants

"Madam," said I, "why did you never tell me how pretty you looked in pink ribbons?"

"I didn't think you cared for ribbons," she said; "besides, it's all Yolande's fault."

Chloe looked at me. "You may," she said. "I don't think she'd like it, but you may. Only don't do

"What, Chloe in pink ribbons jealous of Yolande in violet muslin? I might as well be jealous of

"And aren't you?" said she. "You would be, if you were a really nice husband. But I'll tell

Yolande you said she was like a crossingsweeper. And she wouldn't let you kiss her, anyway!"

"If she did it would only be to please me! And if you did it would only be to tease me. No, you

can't tease me!" She paused, then"And, Len," she said, "Yolande's too dear to have silly jokes made about

"And you're too dear," I said, with my face against the pink ribbons, "to be teased, even if I could

compass it. Besides, madam, I have been guilty of a crimeworse, an error in taste. I might be a

hairdresser's apprentice chaffing his sweetheart of the drapery department. Forgive meI am a little mad

"Len," she said, "how awful it would have been if I had married any one else. There is no one

else who understands everything. But why did you? You never made jokes about kissing other people before!"

"It is detestable," I said, "and it's no excuse to repeat that it was only because I am so happy. And

Now what made me talk that nonsense? And suppose Chloe had laughed at it or, on the other

hand, had taken it seriously, where should we have been? Now, Heaven be praised for the gift of

understanding. If Chloe had done, had looked, anything but what she did do and lookBut Chloe is Chloe,

Yolande stayed with us three days. The rainbow delights of our new house seemed newly dyed

when we displayed them to her appreciative eyes. And I felt a new impulse to work, now that Chloe had

some one to bear her company as she gathered flowers, rearranged furniture, or struggled, face all aglow,

I wrote half my "story of strong domestic interest," and then stuck fast. There was a scene where

the hero, on the point of marriage with a respectable and admired heiress, the friend of childhood's hour, sees,

as he walks up the church to his bridal, the face of his old love, whom he had thought dead. This scene

wanted something besides smartness. It wanted fire, passion, delicacy of handling, strength of grasp. And

these qualities, strange to say, eluded me. I told my woes, and received from Chloe and Yolande sympathy,

On that third moonlight evening, when we sat out on the grass, round the sundial, and Yolande

sang Spanish and Pyrenean songs to the tinkle of Chloe's guitar, I almost seemed to surprise in myself the

force to grapple with that scene and get the better of it; but when they had gone to bed and I sat face to face

with my typewriter, the force shrivelled to a very agony of conscious incompetence. I wrote three abject

"I'll come again in a fortnight if you'll have me," she said, "but now I must put on my soberest

frock and a hat that would make you weep, and interview parents who want to provide their girls with a

We went up to the little country station, bareheaded, ungloved, to the scandal of the porters and

the stationmaster, and waved our farewells as the train bore her away. Chloe's clean handkerchief had a

great hole in it, which she never noticed till too late, and then we went back, she to housework, and I to my

The story was finished. I read the pages rapidly. The story was good, very good. All the fire and

passion and force I had longed for and had known to be necessary were here. The story began tamely, and

"It must have been the ghost," she said. Then she blinked at me with long lashes, and laughed.

"The ghost be it!" I said, but I read in her laughing eyes the word that sprang to my own

OF course we have our own little stereotyped code of honor and morality, laid by on the shelf,

ready for use, and in it we read vaguely that one may not put one's name to another's work, or make money

by another's success. Had any one offered to finish for me the story to which I should put my name, I had

refused, though the offer had been made by Rudyard Kipling himself. But when a ghost finishes your story,

what's to be done? As Chloe said, "What else did the ghost do it for?" She added that of course I must send it

in. And indeed it seemed to me that the matter was at least arguable. Yet I could not bring myself to sign my

Chloe made horseshoes in her forehead, and professed herself unable to understand my hesitation.

"If the ghost chose to finish your silly old story," she said, "you may be sure it wants to see itself

"Perhaps the ghost is modest, and would rather not venture to face the public over its own

signature till it's more sure of its talents. Yesthat must be it. It's a mutual benefit. The ghost wants to see

itself printed. You wanted your story finished. There's no obligation either way."

"Suppose we ask Yolande?" said I. Chloe laughed. And I wrote to Yolande that evening. Chloe

wrote, tooabout a pattern for a fichu, I believeand we posted the letters in the village. When we came

home we found an unattractive workingman slouching by our gate. As we approached, he touched his hat

"About these 'ere cottages of yourn, now," said he, "was you thinkin' of lettin' e'er a one of 'em?"

"Because if you was," said my visitor, rubbing a stubbly chin reflectively, "you and me might hit

on a bargain betwixt us. My missus an' me we're alookin' out for a bit of a cottage, so I don't deceive you,

My tenantaspirant inspired me with little admiration and less confidence, but Chloe pinched my

"But if we let you have the cottage we should expect you to keep the cottage garden tidy."

"Gardening's all I care for, out of workin'hours," said the man, eagerly, "and my missus, she's

"I'll think of it," said I, severely noncommittal, and feigning insensibility as Chloe's fingers

At the word "want" a shadow of a grin passed under the reflective hand that stroked the stubble.

"Two shillings a week was about what we thought an honest rent," was the answer.

"That wouldn't do at all," said my wife. "Why, the smallest cottage has four rooms. We couldn't

This alacritous acceptance of the raised figure should have warned usI, indeed, did perceive

that the man wanted the cottage enough to pay the four shillings for it. But Chloe said:

"Very well. Three and six a weekthat's nine pounds two a year. When do you want to come

"Our time's up next Saturday, miss," said the man, "and we could get our bits of sticks moved

then. It's a stiffish rent, miss, is nine pun two a year, but there's the garden. I am dead nuts on a bit of garden."

"On Saturday, then," said Chloe, and our new tenant left us. I was full of doubts and distrusts,

which I turned to impart to Chloe; but as our gate slammed behind us she threw her arms round my neck in a

"Oh, Len! How splendid! Didn't I do the arithmetic beautifully? Why did we never think of

letting the cottages before? We'll let all the othersthree and sixpence eachand the big onesought to

"Time!" she answered, promptly. "Now I sha'n't feel so wicked if I waste a whole day on

pottering. Why don't you write an ode or a sonnet or something, about pottering? It's the most glorious thing

in the world. And this man is going to pay me to potter while he lays bricks. Noble, splendid creature!"

"This man," I said, "exactly; we don't even know his name, we haven't a hint of his address. And

who are welandowners, truly, but born potterers, and lacking the education accorded to those born to the

purple of landlordismwho are we that we should ask a bricklayer's laborer for references?"

"Oh, dear!" said she. "I never thought of that! Never mindwe can ask him for them on

But on Saturday it was too late. We learned, indeed, during the course of the day, our tenant's

name, and it was Prosser, than which no surname claims a larger share of my personal abhorrence; but where

was the use of asking for references when the moving had been effected during the hours immediately

following the dawn, when our afterbreakfast expedition to the cottage showed us the "bits of sticks" already

dumped down on the cottagegarden flowerbeds, and a slatternly drab of a woman carrying them slowly in?

"Not, I fear, the most desirable of tenants," I murmured, as we delicately withdrew. "The

"Oh, don't be so harsh," said my wife; "remember what our furniture looked likeall dusty and

forlorn and friendlesswhen it sat outside the Bandbox waiting for the vans. And as for the woman, you

"I remember just how you looked," I said. And indeed I did. "My dear, Yolande was absolutely

right. We are perfect Babes in the Wood. We have let our cottage to the ideally undesirable tenant. I don't for

a moment believe that he is a bricklayer's laborer! More likely a counterfeitcoiner's journeymanor

perhaps a masterthief. He is ideally undesirable, you are impetuous, and I am weakly yielding. You and I

together deserve to be sat on by a Board. Why can't we turn ourselves into a limited company and be run,

"We must try to arrange it," she answered, gayly. "And now cheer upthe Prossers will be better

when they get straight. That girl's coming todayI must get her room ready. You might just clean the front

doorstepit's done with hearthstone, just like the kitchen hearth. It is enough to discourage any girl to

come to a house wrapped in a mantle of decay, with green mould on the doorstep. Then afterwards we'll do

It was with but half a heart that I collected pail, hearthstone, and houseflannel. I had to take a

scrubbingbrush to the green mould, and I wondered why the favorite implement gave me so little joy as I

wielded it. The sudden arrival of the new maid's box, by Carter Paterson, enlightened me. I found myself now

working with vigor and enthusiasm. Since she really was coming! I knew then that I had never believed she

would come, and it had seemed futile to spread milkwhite over the doorstep, just for Chloe and me, whose

eyes its blotted gray and moss green had always delighted. Now I finished the doorstep con amore, and

hastened to the kitchen where Chloe and a hammer were busy together. I scrubbed the dressers and the table

and the deal shelf that pulls out under the window. Chloe is always wise enough to feed energy with

"You do scrub beautifully," she said. "I believe you think the brush is nobler than the pen."

She had nailed up a deep flounce of green and red chintz along the chimneypiece, and another

above the windows. A cushion to match nestled in the shabby Windsor armchair we had recently picked up

"Isn't it pretty? Isn't it cosey, and oldfashioned, and farmhousy? If this doesn't make her stay,

nothing will! I'll get the hearthrug out of our bedroom. You won't mind, will you? And do put your

instrument awaythere's no more scrubbing, and she'll be here directly. Do you think we could bear to let

her have two of the brass candlesticks out of the white parlor for this mantelpiece?"

"No," I said, firmly; "there are limits. But put up the caketinsI polished them the other day."

The caketins were a shining crown to the splendor of the chintz flounce. Our crockery, well

spread out upon the two large dressers, made a brave show. Our bedroom hearthrug, also woven of reds and

greens, showed up the beauty of the chintz flounce, which in its turn, by its neat newness, added lustre and

importance to the hearthrug. It was indeed a beautiful picture a poem, even, set to music by the singing of

the new kitchen kettle, and I did not grudge the sacrifice of the parlor tablecloth to the completion of that

We had our lunch in a very great hurry, so as to get the plates washed up before our new servant

came. By two o'clock all was ready. Ever since the joyous day when in my wellironed frockcoat I had

gone forth and engaged a servant, Chloe had ventured, day by day, on more and more daring preparations for

the maid's arrival, and Chloe had dragged me with her. We had cleaned the white parlorwhen we had a

servant we could afford to sit in a parlor. We had laid down a rug or two on the redandwhite marble of the

hall, and hung two or three old prints on the dull brown of its walls. We sat out some oak chairs and the old

elm kneadingtrough in it by way of furniture. We had put up dimity curtains in the new maid's bedroom:

Chloe insisted on these, not because she admired the material, but because "dimity" is such a nice wordthe

born sister of lavender, and tall presses, and wellscrubbed boards, and patchwork quilts. We had a

patchwork quiltthe gift of a gaunt greataunt of mineand we sacrificed it to the fitness of things, and

let it live with the dimity curtains. Chloe adorned the dimitycovered dress ingtable with a smart, new

pincushion with blue bows, and set a blue jug of pink roses on the broad windowsill. Our servant's

"Nonsense! it's only conventionally correct. All good girls' rooms in books are like thisif

they're servants; if they're young ladies it is muslin instead of dimity. And the pincushion is sometimes

"I hope the roses aren't just the touch too much," I said; "we mustn't spoil her."

"We are that," said Chloe, "and it's better to recognize frankly that concealment is impossible. No

one could live with us a month and not see how silly we are. It's better not to try to break things to people. Let

her know the worst at once. If she doesn't have to waste her mental energies on finding out our follies, she

may use them to perceive our virtues. I sometimes can't help thinking that we really are rather nice."

No courtier expecting a visit from his sovereign ever waited the monarch's advent with half the

anxious embarrassment that was ours as, I in flannels and Chloe in soft muslin, we sat in the wicker chairs by

the front porch, with our books and our workbasket, in an atmosphere of elegant leisure, ayant l'air de rien,

At halfpast three the white smoke of the down train clouded the blue above our willowtrees.

"If I faint, don't be surprised. But you must pretend to be! Don't let her think fainting's a habit of

mine. All the other servants came to us and they went, and there it was. But this is a crisisan epoch."

"That's because you feel that she's going to stay," I said; "her personality is influencing yours, as

"How can you talk nonsense at a solemn moment like this? Nodon't come with me. I'll face the

It was an anxious time. I could not read, and I was trying to go on with Chloe's duster hemming

"She's a dear," said my wife, "and so are you. And I was quite right about the roses and the

pincushion. When I took her into the bedroom she looked quite blank, and then she said:

"'This is the spare room, I suppose, mum.' And I said, 'No, it's yours.' And she just said, 'Well' and

sniffed at the roses. And she came down almost directly. Oh, what beautiful things clean caps and aprons are!

And she's getting the tea, Len. And she likes the kitchen. And she said it was like their kitchen at home. I do

She was. Chloe and I had simplified our lives, as people always do when their own hands supply

their wants. Mary accepted Chloe's assistance for two days, and then gently but firmly declined further help.

"Why," she said, "I could do the work here with one hand behind me! You go along, mum, and

play the pianna, and mess about with the flowers, or make your pretty pictures."

The change in our lives was like the change from a stormy night in midocean to the

midsummer calm of a daisied meadow. The house was always neat and clean, and yet there was time for

everything. I wrote now, sometimes we went to town when we wanted to go, orders grew, and prosperity

seemed, like the rainbow, to be waiting for us at the end of the next field. It was a happy breathingspace.

Yolande wrote, fully endorsing Chloe's view, and insisting that the ghost would certainly not have been silly

enough to write half a story unless it had wanted to see it in print, and recommending us to leave the galleys

conveniently lying about in the more hauntedlooking parts of the Red House, so that the ghost might, if it

pleased, correct its own proofs. So we sent off the story, and the editor wrote to me. I got his letter at

"Fortune smiles at last," said I. "Here's to the ghost!" and I drank its health in boiling tea.

"Dear sir," it said, "your story, 'The Return,' to hand. It is quite satisfactory, and if you care to

supply a series of six, in the same style, we could, I think, find room for them in the magazine during next

year." The editor said something vague but pleasant about terms, and added that he was faithfully mine, and

"It is my name at the foot," I said. "This piece of luck has happened to me! It ought to have been

"In the same style," said Chloe, getting up from the teatray and coming behind me to pull my

ears in sheer gladness of heart. "Are you going to imitate the ghost's style, Len?"

"Of course you write much better than the ghost," she said, hastily; "but he does say the same

"I have written stories beforeand I can do it again, I suppose," said I. "I only happened to get

stuck with that story. I should have finished it all right if the ghost hadn't interfered. I wish to goodness she'd

"What!" I said, "take part with a nasty, stuckup ghost against your own husbandso talented,

yet so modest? If I am to have a rival, let it be flesh and blood, and not a ghost whose head I cannot punch,

"Well, then," she said, trying to balance a teaspoon on the milkjug, "I think the ghost only meant

to be kind, and I don't like to hear you speak as if you thought it had no business to interfere."

She flashed a quick glance at me. "Yes," she said, "I see you see. Here's luck to the six stories!"

It was in the morning after one of Mary's evenings out that she came to Chloe and said:

"Well, mum," said Mary, "I think it's no more but right that you should know it."

Mary replied: "Why, their goingson! I see him last night, as I come in, as drunk as drunk, lying

"No, sir, not him, but everything else you can think of. But I won't say not a word more, sir; but

it's not respectable, and I thought you ought to know, sir. You're that innocent, sir, if you'll excuse me saying

so. I know you won't believe no harm of any one till you have caught 'em at it. You just go and look, sir,

Chloe and I walked down the garden path, hand in hand, in agitated silence. Not till we were safe

hidden under the twisted quincetree did we dare to look at each other. Then we sat down in the long grass

"And the worst of it is it's true," Chloe said. "You are innocent. Nodon't be offended. I'm

afraid I am, too. We are Babes in the Wood, Len, just as Yolande said, and Mary has the sense to see it."

"Yes, I know you said so, and I know it's my fault; but other things are yours. You are innocent.

Don't deny it. Oh, Len, we ought to be living in a villa, and paying proper little calls, and giving proper little

dinners, and decorating our dinnertable with proper little cut flowers in proper little cutglass vases; and

when we dined alone the fishmonger would send in two proper little whitings with their proper little tails in

their mouths; and we should have roast chicken, and it would be minced the next day, and everything would

go by dull, beautiful, proper little clockwork; and you would say what a good manager I was, because we

neither of us should have any idea what good management really meant. We're failures, Len. We haven't the

"You're not succeeding. They don't talk like that. I knew an American once. He was the nicest"

"Because he was rich, and it's my destiny to ruin a poor man. Len, I wish I wasn't such an idiot!"

"Or that I wasn't. That would do just as well. But don't let's weep about it yet. Perhaps Mary

exaggerated. Our tenant may merely have been in a fit. No known system of manorial management can avert

Outside the red wall of our garden is a strip of ground bounded by a hawthorn hedge, and at the

end of this stand the two cottages. We passed along the winding shrubberywalkby reason of its darkness

the only path of our garden whereon the weeds were not breasthighand so, pushing through the

tallstanding weeds, dock and nettle, sowthistle and cowparsley, of the cottage garden, to the square of

ground that stands between our two cottages and the road. Here were no juicy, green, upstanding weeds,

graceful in their arrogant victory over flowers and fruits. The green weeds were trampled down to a damp,

yellow, sodden mass, sordid and evilsmelling. Old meatcans, sardinetins, broken boots, decayed brooms,

and battered saucepans were strewn around, "like flowers at a festival." Dirty rags festooned the faded blue of

the railings; the family linen, wetted but not washed, hung on the elderbushes, whose white blossoms

drooped degraded under the foul burden. A very dirty blanket hung out of the bedroom window, and on the

doorstep, among dust and flue, bones, crusts, and the miscellaneous sweepings of a filthy floor, three

indescribably unengaging children, with dirty noses, were playing moodily and without smiles. Their

Chloe is absurdly fond of children, butor, perhaps, thereforeshe turned away with a shudder.

We went home boiling with indignation, but in the crucible of our thought our rage, as it cooled, left as

precipitate the unmistakable consciousness of our own incompetence. True, as Chloe said, it was she who had

accepted a tenant so manifestly undesirablelured by a bait of fourteen shillings a month. She had done it,

but I had stood by and let it be done. Now, however, I must act. I would act. Was it, I wonder, an inexcusable

cowardice or a wise discretion which led me to refrain from giving Mr. Prosser notice in a personal

interview? I wrote to him, and bade him leave my cottage at the end of the week. But at the end of the week

he was still there, and on the Monday evening, as Chloe and I wandered in the green forest of weeds and

flowers that was our garden, the spell of its silence was broken for us by the sound of Mr. Prosser's voice,

uplifted in one of the less agreeable comic songs of the year before the year before last.

I went down at once to give him, personally, that notice to quit which I found him in no fit state

to receive. Another call, in the morning, found my tenant conscious, indeed, but little amenable.

"I gave you written notice to quit last week," said I. "How is it you've not gone?"

Mr. Prosser, unshaved, without tie, collar, or boots, settled his head between his shoulders, and

"I give you notice now," said I, "and, while I am here, suppose you hand over the rent."

"I'm a yearly tenant, I am, and I pays on quarterday, and six months' notice is what I'm entitled

"Very well. I shall consult my solicitor," I said, and turned away helpless. I didn't knowhow

should I, though I had kicked my heels, briefless, in the Inner Temple for at least two yearswhether he was

I wrote to my solicitor. I had never had a solicitor before, but I acquired one at once an old

chum. He wrote me three pages of advice, in which a writ of ejectment loomed large. But his private opinion,

as I read it between the lines, seemed to be that I had got myself into a tight place by my own folly, and had

Our garden's peace was broken. We never knew now when the hoarse, raucous voice of our

tenant might desecrate the moonlit stillness with coarse echoes of transpontine musichalls. The knowledge of

Mr. Prosser's nearness seemed to smirch the clean sweetness of life. The very jasmine stars seemed less white

for the presence of our tenant's sordid m�nage on the other side of our red wall. And Mary, day by day,

tormented us with fresh tales of what was being said in the village of our tenant's antecedents and character,

and, by implication, of ours. And all the time my inability to set steadfastly to work was fretting at my

selfcontrol. It is like a mouse gnawing at the cord of lifethe longing to work, and the inability to conquer

the thousand tiny obstacles that fate erectsfate, backed by one's own folly in having "bitten off a larger

chunk than one can chew";I still think that a most excellent phrase, and not vulgar, only homely, going

straight to the mark as the homely expression of a great truth may be permitted to do. Chloe was worried

alsoher editors were clamoring for the illustrations which she was now incapable of working at. And Mr.

Prosser was a live blister, and, like a blister, he hurt more and more the longer we had to bear with him.

I was sitting in our little workroom one morning, pen in hand, hardly able to meet with a

confident eye the white paper that, as I stared at it, seemed to stare at me in returnto stare rudely,

contemptuously, in the confident superiority of its fulfilment of its destiny, as opposed to my manifest

inability to fulfil mine. It was waiting to be written on, and no one could ask more of it. And I was waiting to

write on it; and a good deal more than mere waiting was obviously demanded of me by our financial

circumstances and my own selfrespect. The six stories"in the style of the ghost"I longed to get them

written with a longing more desperate than the longing of the lover for his mistress, the mother for her child.

Though more desperate, it had not, however, the force of these natural desires, because it was not a desire for

the thing in itselfnot a desire to achieve, to attainbut depended for its vitality on a secondary motive. I

longed to write the stories because I wanted the money they would bring to me. The longing was keen

enough to be painful, not strong enough to get itself satisfied. So I sat idle, and drew fancy portraits of Chloe

on the blottingpaper. I turned it over hastily as I heard her footstep on the kitchen floor, and I was bending

I drew my breath in sharply. Her face, her eyes, her whole bearing announced disaster

"Len, do you love me?" she asked, clasping her hands with a charming dramatic movement.

"Better than my life, of course," I said, hurriedly, "but I'm just starting on this story, and if it's

"No, it can't wait," said she, sitting down on the edge of the table, "and it's not a variation on the

I resisted an impulse to put aside the six re munerative stories and spend the rest of the day in

"I don't know what it is. We've been nice to her, I'm sure! She likes usat least I thought she did.

It's Destinyit's like Maeterlinckwhatever we do turns out all anyhow. There's a curse upon us!"

"Speak for yourself," I said, cheerfully. "You may be cursed, though it's barely polite of you to

She stamped her foot. "Don't you see," she said, "it's serious, horribly serious? I wish I had never

come here. I wish we were back in the Bandboxthere! Now crow over me, and tell me you told me so all

I told her something quite different, and presently, when we were calmer, I said,

"I'll ask her," said Chloe, drying her eyes. "It's probably Prosser. If I were you I should just take

"Yes, and have an action for assault and a hundred pounds' damages," said I, wise with the

wisdom of my solicitor. "Go and ask her. Perhaps it's not Prosser. Even he, fiend with out references as he

I had completed a fancy sketch of Mary giving notice, and alleging her reasons by unmistakable

"It's all right," said Chloe, with a sigh of deep relief. "We haven't done anything. She is awfully

"It's a loveaffair," said Chloe"the prettiest story. They couldn't marry before because he

wasn't well enough off, and now an uncle has left him some money, and he's bought a partnership."

"And how long have they been waiting for each other? How many long years of priceless

"That's the worst of it," said Chloe, blushing, as I live; "she's only known him for a month. But

"But it's very nice for them," said my wife. "You ought to feel ever so much sympathy with

"I do," said I, "especially when they are married and live in a house miles too big for them."

"And I'm just as sorry for you as you can possibly be for yourself. Where had we got to?"

"We had got to Mary's marrying the baker, and your not minding being left without a servant

"Bother the story!" said she, "and it's not love I want to talk about, unless you can't keep off the

The garden chooses one's subjects for one, and it would not listen to any of Chloe's subjects. It

I WAS writing in the redandwhite marble hall that morningI really had made a beginning

on the first of the six stories. It was not a good beginning, but there it was. I had reached page three, and

knew that unless any domestic event more than commonly cataclysmic befell that day I should see the sun set

The walls of the marble hall are thick, and the windows look to the northeast, so that even when

the sun is turning the garden to fine gold, and the westerly rooms to a burning, fiery furnace, the hall remains

cool as a cave. Through the open door I could see the feathery flowers of the Spanish chestnut; through one

window I could see the copperbeech, winedark, and through the other a gap in the avenue showed me a

square of blue sky backing a single pillar of Normandy poplar, straight, slender, self possessed. The garden

was full of bird noises and the faint rustle of leaves. In the kitchen sounded the clink of silverof

electroplate, to be more accurateand the chime of china. The tapping of my Remington hardly did more

than underline a silence which it might have broken to an ear that loved its monotonous music less than did

The hall is the great highway of the Red House. Chloe passed through now and then with duster

and broom, with an armful of bluefrilled cushions, with a folded rug, with something that rattled in a

covered wastepaper basket. She looked at me, and I knew she was wondering why I did not ask her what

she was playing at. But I forbore, because I had reached the fourth page, and I dared not tempt fate by

pausing to enjoy more deeply the charm of a life my right to which I ought, without doubt, even at that

moment to be earning. Besides, I feared to break the spell. When once the fatal third page is passed fluency

holds her own against ordinary attacks. Not against Chloe, if one allows her to begin to explain a new idea.

Yet my fingers worked more slowly, and my full stops gave me time to count forty instead of four, as they

tell us to do at school, just because I could not either resist or understand a growing im pression that my

wife did not want me to ask any questions. Had I felt that it would please her to be questioned. I could have

wrestled with the definite temptation to please her, and have thrown it. As it was, my phrases grew feebler,

my narrative less convincing. I had to clutch with both hands at my vanishing interest in my story; and when

the struggle was over I found that I had complicated the career of my hero with two wives, a dissipated youth,

and a proposed highway robbery. And my hero was intended to shine in a milieu of "strong domestic interest."

I gathered the pages together; it was lunchtime. The blue and gold of the morning were

overclouded with thick gray; the sky looked like the canvas roof of a travellingcircus tent. A few first drops

made splashes on the doorstep big as fiveshilling pieces. Then down came the rainstraight, strong,

"I knew it was going to rain," said Chloe. "How good it is to hear it! Don't you feel almost as glad

of it as if you were a tree? Fancy standing up to it and holding out all your leaves to feel the splash of it!"

"It makes work easier," I said. "Now you can't entice me away from my stories and tempt me to

"That's the worst of this house," she said"everything inside it urges to industry. The white

parlor is so proper, I never sit in it without feeling that I ought to be doing openwork embroidery, if not

working a sampler. What heaps of work we shall do in the winter when there's no dear garden to tempt us!"

It was Chloe who talked just then. I was trying to keep a few tentacles fixed on my story, and I

"It's not ready yet," said she, rising. Then, "Len," she said, abruptly, "I've got something to show

" Not more rabbits?" I said, for only the week before it had been six baby rabbits that she had to

show, found in our orchard, and painfully fed by Chloe, with the finger of a white kid glove dipped in warm

She led me up the oak stairs, along the gallery, and up a further narrower flight. We were among

the nest of deserted rooms on the second floor. Chloe threw open a door, pulled me through, and shut it

It was a large room, swept and cleaned; three long windows, curtained with cascades of

There were no ornaments, there were no easychairs, there were no flowers and no carpets. Only

one Persian rug on the floor, and a great divan, twelve or fourteen feet long, against one of the walls. On the

shelves in the recesses by the fireplace were some thirty books, a large deal table held a solid inkstand, a

smaller deal table held a brass tray with cups and tins. Two Windsor chairs stood against the big table.

"Coffee seems very flat. Is it possible that you aren't going to satisfy my raging curiosity? What

"It's the loafery," she said. "In the winter, as you say, we shall need a place to loaf in."

"I can't. I'm making the coffee." And indeed she had lighted the spiritlamp to that end.

"Do you know that you are blushing as though you had been detected in pocketpicking, or in

some generous act? Why are you embarrassed? Why are you shy? Why do you screen yourself behind a

spiritlamp? Why have you done this? And why don't you rush into my arms as a dutiful wife should, and

"Like it? I protest, by all my household gods, that if I had been a bachelor inhabiting this house,

"Because my wife likes pretty things. She likes green Flemish pots, and brass warmingpans, and

Sheffieldplate candlesticks, and flowers; and, as a husband, I like what she likes. Chloe, why are there no

"You're a witch," said I. "How did you know exactly what I liked? Here is spacenothing to

knock down! And formno curtains to break the fine lines of these old windows. And colorlook at the

green light; it's like a fairy palace lighted by glowwormlamps, especially when that gleam of sunlight came!

"Not in the least," she said, briskly. "It's becauseLen, don't laugh at meI knew how to do the

She had made the coffee and poured it out. Then she came and took my arm. Outside the rain

"That's why I felt silly and why I blushedonly, of course, I never did blush. I seem to be

turning into somebody else, and perhaps you won't like me so much. Or I'm half myself and half somebody

else, and I don't know which half is really you. It didn't cost anything, hardly," she went on, irrelevantly. "The

divan is only orangeboxes filled with straw, and covered with those old green curtainsyou knowthe

ones that were so faded. And the table is out of the kitchenthe two shelves that pull out are quite enough

We sat down among the bluefrilled cushions. "I bought the stuff for these, of coursethe green

twirlies on them just match the old curtains," she said. "And that really is all."

"I don't know," she said, confusedly, resting her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands.

"You see, the Red House is so big. It's like Shakespeare or Goethe, and the Bandbox was like Savoy opera.

And I hate mixing things up. And then it is so awful to have to dust things! Wasn't it Thoreau who threw

away his curios because he couldn't be bothered to dust them? And Mary's going, and I thought if one could

have a room with just only what one neededa lounge, a table, two chairswe can put more books if you

like. But I thoughtif you wouldwe needn't use it only for loafing; we could bring anything we liked

herework or anything; but I thought if you would agree never to leave anything here, but take everything

away when we'd done it, whatever it was, then we should always have one room tidyat least the untidiness

would never be more than one day deep. It's letting the litter of the days overlap that makes everything so

"You are a genius," I said, "and I am Prince Fortunate. I only regret one thing, and that is, that I

"If you had you wouldn't have done it," she said, quickly"that's just it. Because you thought

"The odd thing is that I think I must be two people, because if I had heaps of servants I should

have the green pottery and brass and things in every room but this. Len, since we came to live here

everything seems different. I feel as if I were swimming for my life in a great seanothing's the same as I

"Into a new world, thena world where we have to think for ourselves and judge things on their

merits. We're like Columbus, madam. The really important thing is to find out for one's self, without any sort

"And the things one doesn't care aboutthose are much more importantthe things one has just

because other people have themat least, if that's not the reason I don't know what is. And we've so much to

learn, and there are so many good qualities I know nothing about. Don't you feel very poor and unimportant,

"I know one or two important things," said I, for I never encourage Chloe in the moods of

humility that end in selfreproaches, "and I have one or two unimportant possessionsthe Red House, and a

wife, and a loafery. See, the sun is coming out in earnest; how glorious it is through the green! Oh, it's a good

world, when all's said and done! How thick the creeper grows. What does it hang by? Why, there are bars!

"Yes," said my wife again, still with her chin on my shoulder. "Len, I feel very silly indeed,

"You know you thought it was so mad of me wanting to come to the Red House, but I saw these

bars that very first day, and I thought how nice it would be for them to have a beautiful place to remember

when they grow up. Not to remember the people next door, and organgrinders, and gritty dust, and

pavements, but quietness and big green trees and lawns, and this grave old house. Don't you think it would be

Some day, if we live, we shall be old and gray, feeble, and look back with dim eyes along a lane

of years; and even then that good moment will stand out golden and perfectthe moment when, strong in

youth and love and hope, we stood together, looking out together through the nursery bars and the green

creeper towards the years to come. The summer day when, if our eyes were dim, it was with the dew of

morning, when, if our hands trembled, it was because they held such full measure of life's good things.

Chloe raised her head suddenly. "I told you I was silly," she said, "but since I am silly I'll say one

silly thing more. I don't think any one in this world was ever so happy as I am. And when I get worried and

cross, you knowOh, why am I saying all the things that you know perfectly, and that one doesn't say? You

must get back to your work, and I'll try to do that drawing of the duke. And tonight we'll have a consultation

That evening when Yolande and my wife were deep in a discussion on the way in which a really

rightminded dressmaker should cut a skirt, I strolled into the new room, and there on the table was Chloe's

drawing of the duke and the humble companion. The duke's arm was wrong, so were his Grace's legs. Pencil

and Indiarubber lay near. I fingered an H.B. absently for a moment, and presently found myself seated at the

table, elbows squared, head bent, working up the duke to the semblance of something human. I always took

the drawing prize in my youthnothing to boast of, since, proverbially, it falls to "the greatest muff in the

school"and at Oxford I had taken a keen pleasure in caricaturing those who sit in the seats of the mighty,

and in idealizing those who stand behind the counters of the pastrycook. Also, in the days when I dreamed

legal dreams in the Temple, and spent my idle days in the law courts, I had made constant use of the excellent

quills and stationery provided by the state, to draw portraits of the leading legal lights. And I could see the

shapes of things. I knew how the arm should go. I knew also how a man's clothes hang when he is in them,

which Chloe never could grasp. So I rubbed out most of her duke, and put in a duke of my ownquite a

fleshandblood creature, and a great deal too good for Chloe's presentment of the humble companion, with

whose carefully arranged draperies I did not venture to meddle. I touched up the background a little,

correcting the wild perspective of a consoletablean article of furniture which had apparently struck Chloe

as ducalslipped the drawing under its sheet of tissuepaper, and went off to confess to my wife what I had

But I found her up to her ears in sleeves and yokes, and it seemed simpler to make Yolande play

the piano in the great drawingroom, and sit beside Chloe in the twilight, and think of many things, only now

and then wondering vaguely how she would meet the discovery of my presumptuous iniquity.

restbefore laying upon her the burden of our caresour drunken tenant and our angel servant, so soon to

be translated to a sphere far from our deep need of her. And the evening passed pleasantly enough. Yolande

had brought half a dozen sketchbooks with her, filled with little notes of her Italian tour. She really draws

rather well; and even when her drawings are incorrect, they are amusing. Chloe and I laughed and criticised,

but no one said anything worth recording. The really noteworthy remark was made next morning by Chloe.

"Oh, Len," she said, coming to me, with the duke and the humble companion in her hands, "look

what sheI mean, look what the ghost has done! Oh, what a clever ghost to be able to draw and write

I would not have believed that she could be so deceived. Yolande's drawing is absolutely

different from mine; she has a sense of humor, but she is wholly lacking in any real feeling for line. Yet

Chloe could believe that my duke was Yolande's work! I told myself that I felt humbled, but really I felt a

"Of course!" she said, opening wide eyes at me. "And I only wish the ghost would illus trate

I determined that the ghost should do this, too, or I would know the reason why.

whether she would prefer to hold the council there, or in the white parlor where her settle and bureau were, or

under the cedars where the hammock hung, and where the grass would be dry in spite of yesterday's rain. We

waited breathlessly for her answer. She stood at the door of our new room, and looked round it, an

"Not here, anyway; this is your very own room. I should feel as uncomfortable in it as I should in

We each said, "Nonsense!" but we went down the stairs, each holding one of her kind hands. No

one but Yolande would have understood. I wondered whether she had noticed the windowbars.

So it was under the cedars that we pointed out to Yolande the overflowing measure of our per

sonal embarrassments. The migration of Mary, the weedchoked garden, the impossible tenants, the empty

cottages which our one experience made us fear any thought of letting. And Yolande listened with the

deepest sympathy, and the shadows of the cedar dappled her green gown and stole the light from her

"Can you do anything?" said Chloe at last, desperately breaking through Miss Richborough's

"I suppose I could offer to stay and help you to wash and spin, and bake and brew," she said, "but

I'm not effectual. And, besides, it would be like cutting firewood with a razor."

"A razor is not fitted for chopping firewood," said Yolande, demurely, "and it is fitted for other

things. If you cut firewood with it it can't do its own proper work that it was made for. And if I may just hit

out once brutally and straight from the shoulder, I will relieve my mind and not hurt you very much."

"May I? Thanks, awfully. Well, then, you allround people, who can turn your hand to anything,

you're always chopping firewood with ra zors; you're always diverting your energies from their proper

channel, and doing a dozen people's work indifferent well, because you haven't time to do it properly. Len

cleans boots and doorsteps and candlesticks, and comes to his real work with only half a heart; Chloe can't

do her drawing comfortably, because she has sweeping and dusting and cooking to see to. A really reasonable

Len, a truly conscientious Chloe, would work at its own trade, and hire other people to work at theirs. I have

"I will not pretend," Miss Richborough said, severely, "to misunderstand your allusion. I am not

an accomplished sweeper. I dust ill and rarely. When I wash up I always break a cup or a plate. I dare say I

"And yet, by your own confession, you love to have your finger in your neighbor's pies."

"Exactly; I like to do what I am fitted for. I can adjust my neighbor's pies better than any

professional pastrycook. And adjusting pies doesn't interfere with my regular workthat's the point."

"Don't I know it? Oh, you needn't trouble to convince me of your depravity. I stick to what I said.

All these irons in the fireyes, even that contemptible little bit of garden that you've weededall take off

from the energy you ought to spend on your writing and drawing. You are both exceedingly naughty

"It would not bite blades of grass, to begin with," she said, "when it was being lectured for its

own good. And then look at your ruffianly tenant. When one lets houses one employs an agent, and he insists

"We were certainly wrong there." Her eyes thanked me for the "we," and Yolande went on:

"Then as to servants, it would pay you to have a really good one, if you had to pay her thirty or

forty pounds a year. Don't open your pretty eyes at me, ChloeI mean it. You've always got far more work

than you can do, as things are now. If you really stick to your work you could well afford the wages of a

"Ah! that's where I come in. I can't wash dishesanyway, I won't. But if you'll give me a free

hand I'll find you a servant as good as this Mary of yours. I'll bet my Omar Khayyam, and it's a first edition,

"One thing at a time," said Yolande. "The question of the tenantry must stand over till we've

settled the problem of domestic service. Ah, don't talk to me any more! My brain is teeming with the most

fascinating ideas, as brilliant as practicable. Let me alone while my schemes develop." She leaned back in the

hammock among the yellow cushions, and in three minutes she was fast asleep. Chloe and I stole away,

"She always succeeds," I said, shortly; "it's her m�tier. Ours, I suppose, is that of these same

babeshelplessness, appealing to the pity of all kindly passersbyand I own that it's not a m�tier I'm

"Dear," said my wife, calmly, "you are very cross, and presently you will be sorry."

I had not been cross beforeat least, I think not; but now, perhaps I picked an unripe quince

"Seriously," said Chloe, catching at my hand as it sought another quince, "I think Yolande's right.

It's our m�tier to write and draw, and earn our livings. We can't be clever enough to do everything. Why

should we be too proud to let her try to do what we haven't been able to doget a servant who will stay?

You're not really vexed because Yolande said what she did? You know how fond she is of us."

"I only know I feel contemptible," I said. "I ought to be able to manage these things for myself."

"I should have thought it would be more pleasant to you to think you'd married a man, and not a

"You were manly enough in the Bandbox, but I didn't know then half how dear you were. Oh,

"Yes, even our limitations. Why should we want to pretend we can do everything? We can do a

"So canso can the ghost. Dear, the black dog is on my back. You'd better go away and leave

Now Heaven be blessed for a wife who did not answer that appeal with an, "Oh, darling, surely

For one shameful instant I feared it. One does not learn everything about one's wife even in ten

As for Chloe, she kissed my forehead lightly, and without a word walked away down the avenue

of nuttrees. I watched her white skirt till the last sway of it against the hollyhocks, and the moment she was

out of sight I sprang to my feet and ran after her. I came up with her by the bench of rotting hives where once

the bees followed their sweet industry. I caught her arm, and she turned to me with a smile.

"Chloe, Chloe, I've put the nasty black dog up the chimney. I'm the happiest man alive! I'm King

of the Universe, and you're Queen! Yolande doesn't belong to the reigning house. Poor Yolande! we can't do

I was holding her hands now, and we were looking at each other with that unquenchable

amazement which still comes to us at odd moments in life's winding wayamazement that there should be

in this world two people so suited to each other as we; and the further wonder at the clemency of a fate which

has allowed us to find each other. This, I suppose, is a lover's commonplace. It was our abiding marvel.

During the next week Yolande worked a good deal in her room, bicycled a little with me, went to

town once or twice with Chloe, and entirely won the heart of Mary, who stated publicly that she would lie

down for Miss Yo to walk on if it would please her. Twice in that week the ghost walked. It finished a story

for me, and I wished it would mind its own business. But I had been positively shocked to find myself

capable of a feeling towards Yolande that was very like jealousy, and just because I knew deep in my heart

that the ghost's work was better than my own, I felt that it was equally impossible for me to insist on an

explanation, or to refuse to send in the ghost's work as mine. I had given away my ignoble secret to Chloe

now, and I could not dare to sink further in her eyes. So I sent in the ghost's work, and the editor was

delighted. The pricking of that same jealousy stung me to correct two of Chloe's drawings and to originate a

third. It was balm to me to hear Chloe's raptures over the drawings, and to know that she believed them to be

the work of YolandeYolande, who could not have done anything half so good to save her life.

It was on the evening before Mary's wedding. I had presented to her a neat service of teacups and

saucers, and Chloe had embroidered for her a teacloth and a collar. I almost think she had sewn tears into

the pretty pattern. Mary had thanked me for my gifts and for my heartfelt expressions of grief at parting from

her, but it was not till Chloe presented her gifts worked by her own hands that Mary broke down.

"I ain't agoing to leave you, mum," she sobbed. "Miss Yo she told me not to say nothing, so as

to make it a regular surprise for you when I come back. I'm only going for a week along of my Jim to see his

father and mother down Marden way, and then I'm coming back. Miss Yo told me you'd told her to arrange

"Oh, mum," said Mary, giggling through her tears, "Miss Yo arranged it all. Him and me is to

have all the rooms beyond the kitchen. He's got a beautiful lot of furniture as come to him from his aunt at

Canterbury. He won't be in no one's way, mum, being out so much, and I'm to do for you just the same as

ever; and I am so glad as never was, for I couldn't abide the notion of leaving you, mum, and you putting

roses in my bedroom and all, as if I was the Queen, and now working those things for me with your own

When I came in a moment later I found Mary and Chloe in each other's arms, and I am not sure

It was a simple solution, wasn't it? Yet Chloe and I had never thought of it. And I had lost my

MARY'S wedding was to be a quiet one. Her Jim brought a dejected young carpenter with him,

to be his "backer," as he explained, and we all walked up to the church in the village, where I was to give

away the bride, while Yolande officiated as bridesmaid. Chloe merely attended, as she explained, to see fair

play. The ceremony was fixed for Sunday afternoon, and when we arrived at the church we were somewhat

disconcerted to find a large congregation. Mary and Jim had not any desire to hide the light of their

lovematch under a bushel. "We ain't ashamed of it, mum," she said, in a hollow whisper, answering Chloe's

agonized glance in the church porch. "I've been reading about it in the prayerbook, and it says, 'In the face

of this congregation,' and that means afore a churchful. We 'ain't got no friends here to ask, so we thought

The congregation looked at us with interest. There was no mistaking Mary's gray cashmere

dressa weddinggarment, if ever there was onetrimmed with lavish indiscrimination and white cotton

lace. And even if the gown had left any room for doubt the orange flowers in her brown hat and in the blue

bow at her neck must have enlightened the least observant. Chloe and Yolande, in pale muslins, looked quite

as bridal as the bride, and Jim and his "backer" and I each looked uncomfortable enough to have been the

bridegroom. The verger recognized us unerringly as the weddingparty, and showed us to a pew near the

chancel, where we remained till the service was over. I had faintly hoped that the congregation would be glad

to get outthe thermometer must have been about a hundred in the shadebut Mary had judged better than

I; not a soul moved, and she was married "in the face of this congregation," as she had wished and intended.

The clergyman was old and shortsightedhe could not see the orange blossoms, I suppose. At

any rate, I found it quite difficult to prevent him from marrying Yolande, in her muslin and Valenciennes and

her big white hat with the ostrich feathers, to the backer, whose white buttonhole was, I admit, twice as big

However, the verger backed me up, and the right couple were married, at last. We all went back

to the Red House and drank the health of the happy pairin Asti, though, not in champagnebecause Asti

Then we saw them off at the station. Then we came home and tore off our smart, hot clothes, and

got into flannels or muslin wrappers, and got our own teaat least, Chloe and I didand drank it under the

When tea was over, Chloe said, maliciously, "Wouldn't you like to wash up the cups, Yolande?"

"Your cups are, I believe, Spodeor is it only Spode and Copeland? Shall I wash up? I warn you

that I cannot answer for my fingers. They lose their grasp if I become interested in my own reflectionsor,

yesor in the conversation of others, so it's no use offering to talk to me while I do it. I know my limitations,

"No, dear," Yolande answered, sweetly; "that's because you haven't any. Why don't you get

"Like you could do anything that silly women can do, and could do any one thing she gave her

whole mind to, better than these silly women. But no one can do everything. When you've found that out, and

"You mean," I said, "that you could wash dishes with the best, and sweep and dust und so weiter,

"Of course I could"Yolande opened her lovely eyes"I could do anything I gave my mind to.

But I haven't a hundred minds to give to a hundred industries. When I was quite a child I declined to be

taught to sew. I saw, even then, that one's knowledge of feminine crafts is just a weapon in the hands of the

evil one, who lies in wait at every corner to keep one off one's real work. I meant to go to Girton: so when

they made me wash up the teathings, I always dropped something. They soon left off asking me to wash up."

"Not at all. I only enforced my decision by concrete argumentsthe only ones my aunt could

understand. The secret of success is to know what you want and what you don't want."

I looked at Chloewe had said the same thing in almost the same words but the other day.

"Do you suppose," Yolande went on, "that I should have taken every prize in each form all the

way up the school, and then got a scholarship at Girton, if I had allowed myself to be taught to dust the

drawingroom and to make my own dresses, and sew on buttons and darn stockings for the boys?"

"I don't know," said Chloe; "perhaps mathematics take more time than drawing. Anyway, I liked

learning the things you despise, and I liked doing them. I liked helping mother. I like playing with my own

"Helping Lenyesperhaps it would be different. You see, I never had a mother. If I had had, I

dare say I should have learned all these arts, just so as to be able to do something for her when she wanted it.

But, as it was, I set myself to do a man's work, and I tried to live a man's lifeapart from these little worries.

And what's more, I succeeded. There's not a feminine trait about me, thank Heaven."

The wide, laceruffled sleeves fell back from her creamy, rounded arms where the gold bangles

shone. I could see the diamonds and sapphires and opals of her rings gleaming among the coppergold of her

hair as she drew out the silver filigreetopped hairpins. Then the coils of bright hair began to fall over the

delicate silk muslin of her gown till she stood before us clothed in a glowing mantle that fell below her knees.

She threw her long hair back, with a quintessentially feminine gesture, and came and sat beside Chloe on the

grass, where her hair curled and coiled on the ground, like swirls of surf on the edge of a sea lit by sunset. We

looked at herbright hair, bright bangles, bright rings, bright eyesand we said together,

"That's not a feminine trait," she answered, elliptically. "Even a man tries to look as nice as he

can. It's not much he can dobut he does it. Look at men's ties. They use thousands of them, and nobody

ever notices what they wear, any more than any one ever notices whether women wear threes or fours in

"Men notice waists, anyhow," said Chloe. "If Len sees a girl pinched in so that you wonder she

"Which, bytheway, is that this very evening as ever is I'm off to my club," said Yolande,

briskly. "I will not be taught to do housework, and I love you both far too much not to fall an easy victim to

your arts if I were to see you really in need of help. I can't abjure the creed of a lifetime. My only safety is in

flight. When Mary comes back I'll come back, too, if you'll have me. I can't stay here and see the dark side of

Mary's honeymoon. And meantime you'll give me leave to let my mastermind play round the question of

your horrible tenant. Did you notice his front garden as we came back from church? Bytheway, why did

"We didn't know it ourselves," said Chloe. "You see, we've always been to Westenden church.

It's a lovely walk through the woods in the evening. Perhaps among the other things you declined to learn you

escaped the knowledge that after you've moved into a new house your first appearance in your parish church

is a signal that you are ready for your neighbors to call on you? Well, we didn't want them to call on us."

"Perhaps they will now, mum, thanking you for your slap about my ignorance of pretty manners."

"Oh no," said Chloe, "our appearance there was unofficial. Any one could see that."

"I'm not surebut I wish you luck," said Yolande. "And now I must tear myself away."

"Not selfish, sweetheart! Only faithful, in the face of tremendous temptation, to the ideals of a

"When you marry," said my wife, impressively, "your husband will be a poor little henpecked

"I shall never marry. I never met but one man who was nice enough for a husband, and he was

only nice enough for younot nearly nice enough for me. Now I've involved you both in the ruins of a

I own that it was with an invigorating sense of something pleasant promised that I awoke next

morning. The feeling deepened as I stole downstairs and lighted the kitchen fire. Marymay her

honeymoon last her life long!had dried a little stack of wood and piled it in the washhouse ready for us.

I filled the kettle, swept up the hearth, and had finished laying the cloth for breakfast when Chloe appeared.

I do not know which of us most enjoyed the housework that followed. Chloe loves housework

for its own sake. As she says, it is play, because it is not what one ought to be doing. For myself, I admit that

when I see my wife working about the house I experience a more intimate sense of possession even than

when I walk with her in the garden, hand in hand, and certainly far deeper than I can ever feel when she is

drawing away for dear life to add her share to our income. Theoretically I know how right and proper it is

that she should earn money as well as I. Practically I want to earn all the money, and to let her spend it. This

is the relic of a barbarous age, and so is the delightful thrill of domestic pleasure with which I see my wife

busy about our house. At the same time I like to prove to her that I can sweep and dust and wash up as well

as she can, if not better. The only drawback to our happiness that morning was Mary's neatness and

cleanness, which left us little or nothing to do. When all her necessary work was done, I noted still a hungry

"Yes, Mr. Bumble. I'll get lunch nowand then you must go and write, and I'll put on my very

Her oldest rags were the redandwhite Trouville petticoat and a blue, longsleeved painting

pinafore. I left her with bare feet, and sleeves rolled up to the shoulder, carrying the piles of china into the

"I shall scrub the shelves first," she said; "you know I've never let Mary touch itshe's never

even seen it unlockedso it's all as black as ink. And then I'll wash the floor, and then I'll wash the china and

"No, not for the world. I'm going to enjoy myself. I'm going to play, I amI'm going to fritter

away my intellect, as Yolande says. And you're going to enjoy the dignity of labor, and do what you are

"In the loafery. It's the only place where I can even begin to be moderately contented away from

"What a pretty speech! You shall bring me two pails of water for a reward. One hot and one cold.

My exercise with broom, mop, and the other implements of domestic industry seemed rather to

have brightened my brain than to have dulled it. My story went very well. I had a good plot which Yolande

had suggested, and the typewriter clicked merrily. I was in the middle of a fine scene between a baffled

company promoter and the simple typist girl who has out witted him on his own ground, when I heard the

"The milk," I thought. And I also thought that perhaps Chloe would not like to face the milkman

barefooted, so I went down. I went softly, for I happened to be wearing rubbersoled tennis shoes. In the

gallery overlooking the hall I paused, for I heard a voice that was neither Chloe's nor the milkman'sa thin,

It came from the front doorstep. In the middle of the hall stood the stack of china shining with

soap and water. Half the floor of the hall was cleaned, the other half partially wetted. A pail of

browncolored water stood by the table, and Chloe, her bare feet splashed with that same brown water, and a

There was an instant of hesitation. Then I saw by the set of my wife's shoulders that she scorned

"Will you come in?" she said, cheerfully. "Mind the pail. I can't shake hands with you, because of

The woman had not offered to shake hands. She came ina face and figure that matched the

voicea bonnet and mantle that matched the face and the figure. There were black beads about her.

Chloe ostentatiously dusted a chair with a corner of her pinafore, and handed it to her visitor.

Then she stood leaning against the table, and looked at the other woman calmly. I ought to have gone down. I

ought not to have left Chloe to bear alone this call, the first fruits of our appearance in our parish church the

day before. But the picture charmed me. Chloe's grace and ease, the other woman's stiffness and

embarrassment, the halfcleaned floor, the scrubbingbrush, the china. I hugged myself on it all.

I could see the caller conscientiously trying her best to keep her eyes off Chloe's bare feet, and off

the scrubbingbrush, and all the rest of it. And I thought Chloe was a little hard upon her. But I was wrong.

"Your mistress is out, I suppose," the woman said. "The vicar told me about the marriage

yesterday. I was not at church myself. I hope you will tell your mistress that I called. And don't you think, my

good girl, that you could manage to get your dress changed by four in the afternoon? It has a very slatternly

appearance. And do you think it conscientious to leave off your cap and apron just because your mistress is

not at home? We should try to act the same in people's absence as in their presence. I suppose, now that your

fellowservant has left, you have extra work, but that need not make you careless about personal cleanliness.

"I am my own mistress," she said, "and the mistress of the Red House. No, don't apologize,

unless it is for lecturing another person's servantof course you couldn't be expected to understand." Chloe

spoke very sweetly, but the woman half rose. "Do sit down. You're the vicar's wife, I suppose," Chloe went

on. "It's very kind of you to call. My husband will be down presently. He shall make the kettle boil and get

"I am extremely sorry that the mistake occurred," she said; "I am rather shortsighted."

"Yes, of course you must be, very," said Chloe, amiably. The vicar's wife looked more and more

"It was very funny," she said. "You mustn't mind my laughing a little. Really I ought to be proud

to be taken for a servant. But, of course, moving only among the upper classes, you've never met any one

who did any housework except servants. Now, I love housework. I like it much better than my own proper

"You must find this house very large, with no servants." I could not decide whether sympathy or

"The leading families are very select. They expect to know all about newcomers, and it is not

"My dear Mrs. I fear I do not know your nameI am only warning you for your own good,

and to prevent disappointment in the future. I shall continue to call on you. A vicar's wife has duties As the

dear Dean of Somerset used to say, 'Social distinctions do not exist among the wives of the clergy.'"

"Yes, he did indeed. But, on the other hand, we learn in our catechism to do our duty in that state

of life to which it has pleased God to call us. And, of course, we all have our appointed stations."

"Shall please, not has pleased," corrected Chloe; "we are not forbidden to rise if we can, even

from domestic service to the level of the best set in Elmhurst. What is the chief qualification? Money, I

"The best families are very well off," said the vicaress, innocently. "As the dear Bishop of Selsea

used to say, we ought not to associate in intimacy with persons of distinctly different social rank from our

"Are you sure you didn't misunderstand him? I have often heard him say that a man should

"You have often heard him say?" The vicar's wife's voice trembled unaccountably.

"YesI know him rather well. He is my uncle. I never heard him mention your name. Yet I

"I remember you when I was a little girl and you were my uncle's housekeeper. Well, I was

There was a desperate pause. The woman was indeed delivered into Chloe's hands by the long

"I am sorry," she said. "I wouldn't have said it if I hadn't thought you wanted to be horrid to me. I

dare say you didn't, really, but I have a hateful temper. Please forgive me. I won't tell a soul, if you'd rather I

didn't. And I like you heaps better since I've remembered that you used to work too. Do forgive me! I won't

tell any one, not even my husband," she went on; and I was shocked to find she could even think of keeping a

The vicaress smileda smile of sheer embarrassmentyet even that changed her face more

"There's only one thing I wish you would do for me," Chloe went on. "Don't let the first families

of Elmhurst know one of my uncles is a bishop, or they'll call. We want to be quiet. And we live here because

I came down at this point and was presented to the vicaress. She quite thawed, and we had a

pleasant tea. But when we called on her she was as stiff and almost as disagreeable as ever. The habits of a

lifetime cannot be uprooted even by such a delightful experience as quarrelling and making it up again with

Chloe. When she had gone that day Chloe began to cry. A woman can never get into a royal rage without

The awful truth about Chloe's uncle must have leaked out somehow, for later on we had streams

of callers. Some of them were rather nice. And the vicar's wife was almost the only snob among them. But

they were the sort of people who might have called on us anywhere, and they have really no place in the story

Yolande wrote to us that she could let one of our cottages to a desirable tenant. We wrote back

At the end of the week Mary and her Jim came back to us and took up their dwelling in the

"rooms beyond the kitchen." Two days later Yolande led me to the cottage desecrated by the presence of

Prosser. It was empty. The garden had been cleared of all the unseemly litter that during his occupancy had

defiled it. A portion of the cottage garden had even been dug and cleared of weeds. The cottage next door to

Prosser's presented a spotless doorstep, and its shining windows blinked at us over snowy muslin short

"So did Prosser. He knew he was a rat, and fair game for the ferret by virtue of more than one

"I let the nextdoor cottage to the ferret for seven and sixpence a week. Rents are high here.

"That's about eighteen pounds a year. Yolande, you're a goddess! And who is your ferret?"

"His name is Bates. He is a perfectly respectable ferret. I gave him a hint to give Prosser a hint,

"I've told her. And she wants to work. Let's go into Prosser's house and look over it. I'm afraid it

will want doing up. Mrs. Bates has given it what she calls a rough cleaning down already. Mrs. Bates is a

I was musing. Chloe and I had often thought that we should like to do a little paperhanging, but

"When it's cleaned and papered," she said, with kindling enthusiasm, "I'll let that too."

"You shall," I said, and then hastening away from the subject of paperhanging, lest she should

"Bytheway, you haven't told me yet wherein consists the ferretiness of your ferret, Bates."

This, like Yolande's lastsolved problem, was simplicity itself. And yet we had never thought of

HOW had Yolande triumphantly justified her boasther assertion, ratherthat she could do for

us what we could not do for ourselves. The only thing left us was to try and be grateful. I am almost sure that

I succeeded. For the rest, we were extraordinarily comfortable; our domestic service approached perfection,

and was, humanly speaking, assured. Bates, that excellent trained ferret, had dislodged the criminal rat which

had been our tenant. Peace hovered above us with wide, white wings. But those wings were not permitted to

fold themselves about us, because I had a greataunt, my aunt George. I think I have had occasion to name

her before, in connection with a certain patchwork quilt. She gave us the quilt and a pewter teapot on our

marriage. She now, quite suddenly, announced that she was coming to see us. My aunt George is fidgety,

inquisitive, interfering, unforgiving, and dictatorial. She is also generous, affectionate to such as will sue to

her in forma pauperis, and is an excellent sicknurse. We, being neither sick nor indigent, and finding our

homegrown stock of affection sufficient for our humble needs, hastily intrenched ourselves against a long

visit by inviting Yolande to occupy our one furnished spare room. Then we invited all the relations who, like

the fairies at christenings, would make themselves disagreeable if they were not bidden to a family feast, and

plunged headlong into the most exciting preparations for a housewarming. It was to be an evening party

with a cold supper, because we could not expect Mary, singlehanded, to serve up a hot dinner to a crowd of

carping aunts and uncles. The enthusiasm with which we embarked on our labors was tinged, I think, in both

of us, by a desire to show Yolande that we could at least deal masterly with a brief crisis, however little we

"The materials are unpromising," said Chloe. "Aunts and uncles aren't the things exactly to make

"Of course! Not enough to drown the aunts and uncles, but just enough to remind them how

superior they are to the follies of youth, and to incite them to show how much more cheerful they can be, in

their maturity, than these restlessOh, Len, I'm talking like a goodygoody book. Come on; let's make a list

of who we'll ask, and what we will give them to eat, and who shall sit beside who, and then we'll decide

where they're to eat it. We'll save up the peaches for the party. There are three hundred and twentysix of

It is delightful to have three hundred and twentysix peaches of your very own. It is charming to

make lists, especially on rather rough paper, with a B.B. pencil. It is also delightful to roam through a big

house, your very, very own, and to decide in which of its many rooms you shall hear the health and happiness

"It must be the drawingroom," said Chloe, at last, "and we must have little tables, with candles

"Oh, we can make a sideboard in three minutesthose packingcases Yolande's china came in.

We did make itin something under three hours. Draped in the red liberty curtains hastily taken

down from our bedroom, and covered with a fair white cloth, it wasbeing ten feet long and four feet

We collected all the tables from the other rooms,even the writingtable from the loafery was

brought ingate tables, Pembroke tables round tables, square tables, long narrow tables, our own tables,

Mary's tables, and Mrs. Bates's tables. We selected the least leggy, and arranged our guests' namecards. The

"If we took every pikky we've got out of all the other rooms," Chloe said, "they'd hardly show in

this great barn. There ought to be some ideaOh, Len, of course! wreaths of evergreens right up

highoh!and a frieze of pink muslin, and the evergreens in loops and swags. Delicious!"

It takes some time to make properly graduated loops and swags for a room forty feet by

twentyfive, and it takes some material. The evergreens in our garden had not had such a pruning this many a

year. But we did it; we thought of Yolande, and we did not flinch, though our fingers were blistered and our

backs a weariness long before the wreaths were done. The pink muslin proved to be too ruinously expensive,

but we bought a pink "lining paper" and pasted it up, and when we had nailed up the evergreens we felt that

Chloe fell into my arms in an ecstasy of mingled pride and exhaustion. "It's a dream," she said,

"an Italian palace! But, oh, I never want to touch box or yew or laurel again as long as I live! And we've only

A fury of eggbeating drove me forth. A man, I was assured, was worse than useless in matters

of cuisine. The crisis was urgent; I forebore to complicate it by argument; but Soyer and his noble army of

followers seemed to back up my insulted sex, as I walked down the gardenpaths, whose breasthigh weed

growths, mown down by Jim in leisure moments, now permitted glimpses of lowhanging red and golden

fruit and russet leaves. The hour was fivenominally teatimebut what man worthy the name would

thrust the need of boiling kettles on two ardent women strenuous in the compounding of sweets?

I walked softly in the tennis shoes to which a country life seduces the weaker brethren, and the

path was still weedgrown enough to betray nothing of my drawing near to the biggest of the peachtrees on

the red south wall. The espaliers connived at my approach by the shelter of their widespread arms. Thus it

was that I came plump on a man, midway up my wall; his foot rested where a broken brick had been

dislodged. He was handing up peachesmy peachesreserved for the high destiny of auntal and avuncular

palatesto a ruffian with a basket, who, in broad day, only one big garden's breadth from a

policemanferret, sat astride my wall. Some one whistledit was not I; a spring, a swear, and both villains

vanished as if by magic into the paddock. I climbed the wall; they had disappeared in the nettlecoverts of

our orchard; nor, when I threaded those coverts, could I run them to earth. It was a poor consolation to return,

my feet soaked to the bone through my tennis shoes, to count the peaches and to find that the despicable

How age mellows one's views! As a boy I never could understand why farmers made such a fuss

about a few apples or plums. Now, all the landowner welled up within me, and I understood it allwith an

understanding as full as it was bitter. I thought of netting, of mantraps, of a fierce bulldog, of men with

gunsmyself and Jim by turnsincessantly patrol ling my garden. All other crimes in the decalogue

might, I felt, admit of some valid excuse, some reasonable explanation. But breaking the eighth

commandmentand with peachesmy peachesit was intolerable! I felt myself cut off once and forever

I forebore to fling my heavy news among the eggs, but Yolande came that evening to occupy the

spare room, and at dinner I judged the time ripe. My thrilling narrative fell, to my amazement, on inattentive

ears. Chloe, whose horror and reprobation I had expected to exceed even my own, merely said, with what I

could not persuade myself was a calmness assumed to temper my own agitation: "Oh, did they, dear? How

I withdrew into a proud reserve. When, with a studied air of aloofness, I had carved the mutton,

and Mary, having handed the plates and vegetables, left the room, Chloe laid down her fork, and with

"Now," she said, and there was just that suppressed fire about her that I had hoped to waken by

my tale of the fruitstealers"now, I think we might tell him. You tell him, Yolande, because it's your

"Spare me," Yolande interrupted; "whatever my faults may be, I'm not intelligent. That's what the

"Unintelligent as you are," said I, "you'll perhaps be able to break the news gently. My nerves are

"Tell him, tell him," urged Chloe, impatiently. "Len, you're like Nero, talking about unimportant

"It's nothing," said Yolande, nonchalantly, crumbling her bread and looking down so as to

express indifference with her eyelashesa very graceful accomplishment. "It's really nothingonly you

gave me carte blanche as your land agent, and I've let the big cottage for younot Prosser'sthe one on the

"You have? Chloe, I know it seems the basest ingratitude to Yolande, butthink of Prosser,

"He simply bristles with them. His bank, Coutts's, and his father, a cottonbroker of absolute

"But where did you catch him? The sons of cottonbrokers with balances at Coutts's are not

"C'est tout simple. I advertised. You never thought of that? No. Well, we all have our limitations.

Chloe, if you let him throw bread at me I shall tell the tenant the house is unhealthy, and he won't take it. I

advertised, he answered. I interviewed the bank and the cottonbroker,incredibly eminent he really is; I saw

it at once. The man himself is a man of action. The agreement, signed, lies warm at this moment against

"He's a journalist, or an author, or something," said Chloe. "I expect he's awfully nice. Isn't she a

"The rent?" Chloe jumped up from her chair and came round to me. "Oh, Len, what impossibly

"Don't be horrid." Chloe's disappointment was very pretty. "I thought you'd say twenty."

"It's thirtyfive!" cried my wife; and at that my generous heart could no longer forbear, and I

When the enthusiasm of a landlord had sobered in me somewhat, I led the talk back to my

fruitthiefto my secret soul still the most interesting possible topic, because he was my find; the tenant was

merely Yolande's. And by skilful tactics I presently roused Yolande's sympathies. The tactics were quite

simple. I asked her advice. At once the affair assumed in her eyes new proportionsa new complexion.

"You see," I said, "if one repaired the whole wall, there are ladders, and dark nights to set them

up in. You can feel peaches in the dark. And broken bottles can be overcome by sacks of straw"

"And all difficulties by a little thought," she interrupted, with that superb air of finality which I

Yolande was not allowed to help at all in the organizing of the housewarming. An obedient

execution of Chloe's orders was all that was permitted her. And when I saw the charming docility with which

she carried these out, and her rigorous abstention from even the pointing of an uninvited finger at any pie of

Chloe's, I confess that I was humbled and abashed, as in the presence of a soul greater than my own.

No one who has not given a party of the dimensions of ours can have the least idea of the

Herculean labors involved. We all worked like galleyslaves, and on the morning before the party but little

provision had been made save cakes, and the last batch of these were burned because Chloe, who had

undertaken to watch their baking, had become all too deeply absorbed in the French cookerybook's recipe

for soles � la Normande, a dish which we had neither the means nor the skill to prepare. She came into the

hall where Yolande and I were washing the best dessert service,for so large a party all plates must be

requisitioned,sank on to a chair, stuck out her feet straight before heran attitude recognized in our code

"It's no use; you'd better send wires to put them all off. The beef is quite the wrong shape; the

ham is nearly raw, I'm certain; and none of the things have come from the Stores. And now the cakes are

Do I wrong Yolande, or did a gleam of satisfaction flash through the downcast lashes of eyes

ostensibly busy with dishwashing? Did she really say to herself: "I told you so! You can't organize worth a

I hope not; I almost think not. But, after all, most of us are human, and why not Yolande?

Anyhow, if any stirring of the old Adam rose at that moment in Yolande, it was fought down in

an instant, and she was imploring Chloe to tell her what to doto let her run up to town for the

Storesthingsanything, everything, rather than that Chloe should be worried and turn her hair gray before

At this, the absolutely perfect psychological moment, a shadow fell on the red and white marble

"She doesn't live here," said Yolande, courteously. She took the word, for Chloe, on the verge of

tears, sat speechless. "She lives at the first cottage on the way to the station."

"I know," said the soft voice, betraying in its fourth word the charming accent of the dales. "I

am Mrs. Bates, and your Mary was telling me you were having a party, and I thought shorthanded as likely

The situation was saved, and it was Mrs. Bates who saved itor, to be more accurate, it was

Mary, who had drawn Mrs. Bates to our rescue. AndI saw it in Yolande's eyes, though perhaps it was not

thereit was really Yolande who had saved the situation, since it was she who had saved to us Mary. Even if

I did see it, I dare not grudge Yolande that fleeting triumph. Before the party was over But let me, above

For the rest of that day Mrs. Bates and Mary wrought, unaided, in the kitchen, for Chloe, in the

abrupt reaction from despair, became suddenly enlightened as to a far more important matter than even food.

She had nothing to wear, save yellow, which Aunt George could never abide, and pale blue, in which Uncle

Bletherthwaite always remarked how washedout she looked. So the rest of the day passed in washing,

The dye was pale pink, a brilliant scarlet, or a deep crimson, according to the measure of its

dilution. Several minor articles were irrev ocably ruined, and gallons of ruddy dye stood about the

bathroom in pails, before the right shade of delicate pink was achieved in one of my best white silk ties.

Then the primrose gown became rosecolored, and was rinsed and dried and ironed till it looked like a newly

"I wish there was something more to do," Chloe said, sighing; "it does seem such a pity to waste

My cousin, an experimental chemist, had given me the dye, with the words: "The only thing is,

it's such a pure, perfect color, your wife will want to dye everything in the house with it. Don't let her!"

Thus forewarned, I was firm, and I carried away the pails. Yolande followed me, begging that the

dye might not be thrown away. She would find a use for it. So I put it in the toolshed among the rakes and

forks, the garden syringe, and the grasscutterthe only place where I could feel sure that no uncle would

And now it was the day of the housewarming. It was a fine day, and, acting on a sudden

inspiration, Yolande and I rode over to Blackheath on our bicycles, returning laden with light, enor mous

parcels. They were colored Chinese lanterns. We hung them from the trees near the house. And then, further

inspired, I tore off for more, and we strung them on wires and made the house beautiful with them. The big

drawingroom, with its evergreen garlands, its little whitedraped tables, sparkling with borrowed glass and

silver, its bowls of radiant dahlias, its tall green glasses of Japanese anemones, its pinkshaded candles, and

over all the mellow glow of the manycolored lanterns, was a picture at which our hearts beat high with

pride. The sideboard groaned (it really did groan, and that in no mere commonplace metaphorical way, but

honestly, because it was, in its inmost heart, only packingcases) beneath the weight of as fine a cold supper

as any aunt could wish to see, any uncle wish to eat. Chloe's pink hollyhock gown was an exquisite success.

Yolande's was like a white hollyhock bloom. All was ready. The first wheels crushed the gravel of our drive.

The first uncle was relieved of his greatcoat by my hands, the first aunt escorted by Chloe to "take off her

things." Aunts will not dispense with personal attendance in this ceremony. Gradually the hall filled.

Ponderous uncles and portly aunts occupied the heavier chairs. Lean aunts and uncles stood conversing with

frosty geniality. A greatuncle and a secondcousin who had not spoken for yearsa family affair about a

trust and an Australian goldmine, nothing personally discreditable to eithersank their old feud and found

out how much they still had in common, as they discussed in a wheezy undertone the extraordinary

extravagance of their host and hostessagreeing almost cordially in the opinion that we were living in a

style far, far beyond our means. Cousins of every degree enthusiastically compared notes as to the difficulty

of getting to our house. Three nice nieces and a manly nephew or two offered conventional amiabilities to

their elders. We had furnished and adorned the hall, and no one, we felt, could look on its marble floor and

wainscoted walls without feeling himself privileged in being allowed to take part in such a pageant, so

admirably staged. My aunt George objected to the wainscot as dark and out of date, and said the marble floor

was cold to the feet. My uncle Reginald agreed with her, but added handsomely that beggars mustn't be

choosers, and no doubt we were wise not to waste our money on carpets. Altogether, everything was going

When the gong sounded I think it was felt to be an extravagance. I remedied this as far as I could

by telling Aunt George, as I gave her my arm, that the gong was a weddingpresent to Chloe. And so it was,

We crowded into the big drawingroom. Even Aunt George admitted that it looked very

nicebut not until I had asked her if it didn't. And then she said it would have looked better without those

Christmas decorations! These were our loops and swags. I saw more than one uncle cast a glance at the foot

of the sideboard as he passed, and I wondered in anguish whether the drapery had displaced itself and the

naked packingcases were disclosed to the shocked eyes of aunts. But I could not see. Yet the suspense was

unbearable. Under pretext of turning down a lamp, I went to see. I must know the worst. The worst was a

I flashed reproachful glances at Chloe, and as I passed behind her chair, she murmured: "It's all

It seemed to me, in my agitation, to be like the new tenant's cheek, and not at all like Chloe, but

this was no time for anything but the duties of a host. I returned to Aunt George, who said, "I wish to

Mary and Mrs. Bates waited, and the wait ing was excellent. So was the Chianti, which was all I

had intended our winebill to run to. But the uncles looked at the goldtopped bottles, so did some of the

cousins. The aunts looked away from them. So I said: "Aunt George, we've some very fine Italian sparkling

As soon as I had said "a present," I caught my wife's shocked glance, and knew the truth; she had

bought the Asti on the strength of our new tenant. But the words were out; so, in a few moments, were the

corks. The avuncular condemnation of Italian vintages was almost unanimousbut avuncular eyes sparkled,

and a sort of soft current of cheerfulness passed round the room. At the round table at the other end where sat

the nephews and nieces and the few young people whom we had asked to meet them, there was a low buzz of

"Your uncle George always said," my aunt George was saying, as she held out her glass to be

refilled, "that no sparkling wine was worth the drinking except" when a sudden rapping on the table left

her with only time for a, "Well, I'm sure," before a general silence abashed her into quiet.

Uncle Bletherthwaite rose heavily in his place. He made a speech. The Fates forbid that I should

render it to you. It was of a studied temperateness; it dwelt on our blessings; expressed, tepidly, the pleasure

he felt in seeing us at last (he repeated "at last," and I knew he was thinking that it was eight months since he

had dined with us) in our home and with our family (he looked at Yolande) gathered about us. It dwelt, and I

thought at somewhat too great a length, on the good dinners he had eaten in this house in my uncle Thomas's

days, and the good wine he had drunk (he looked disparagingly at the Asti); it ended by a formal hope that we

and those now assembled round our board might long be spared (which I could see he didn't think likely), and

with a wish that our new home might be a blessing to us. (Of course it was perfectly plain that, however

much he might wish it, it appeared to him but too improbable.) He said, finally, and with a sigh, "I and your

aunts and cousins and other relations, including, I am sure, those present who are not members of the family,

The toast was drunk in the gloomiest silenceas to the memory of those who had fallen.

All the lights seemed to burn lower; there was an awkward pause. Chloe bit her lip and would not

Then suddenly there was another buzz from the youthful table, and our eldest nephew rose in his

"Ladies and gentlemen," he began (adding by what was scarcely a happy afterthought, "and

aunts and uncles"), "we have drunk to the old house, and now I want to call another toastwith your kind

permission," he said, catching the eye of an elderly cousin. "So fill your glasses, pleaseno

heeltapsbumpers, please! Here's to the jolliest aunt and uncle that ever were. The dearest and kindest and

jolliest and bestAunt Chloe and Uncle Len. Long life and happiness to them! God bless them! There!"

It was his first speech, dear boy, and I think he hoped then that it might be his last. I saw his hand

trembling as he lifted his glass. Then suddenly all the young people stood up; a momentary hesitation ended

in the rustling rising of elder relatives, and through the rustle came the first words of the refrain, from the

Before the singing was over Aunt George was leading it in her high sweet old voice, and Uncle

Bletherthwaite was thundering an irresponsible bass. I did not know where to look, and I believe Chloe nearly

wept. I made some sort of speechI don't know how. Having one's health drunk like that is a thing that

The party "went" like wildfire after that. It was almost as delightful as if none of us had been

related to each other at all. The tables were cleared, then with the help of nephews and the less frail among

the cousins, cleared away bodily. Yolande sang to the guitar, and aunts nodded approval. A niece and a

nephew danced a minuet, and cousins were mildly pleased. Then Yvonne and the prettiest niece danced a

cachucha, and uncles were enchanted. Some one sangan uncle, I think; some one sniffedno doubt an

aunt; and coffee was served at the absolutely right moment. Then shawls and hats were handed like

refreshments, and we all trooped out into the garden by the moat to look at the moonlight and the Chinese

lanterns, craftily lighted by Mrs. Bates while the cachucha was enchanting us. The night was warm as June.

Groups of personsall related, yet for the moment all at peace with each otherstood "beneath the

dreaming garden trees." Chloe and I glowed with a flush of successful hospitality.

Then suddenly, sharply, the silence of the night, with its soft embroidery of talking and laughter,

was shatteredtorn roughly asunder by a scream, and another scream, from the walled garden beyond the

moat. Feminine cousins paled; male cousins spoke ejaculatorily of pistols; stout uncles breathed heavily of

police. A few of us hastened towards the walled garden. At the door that leads to it from the moat garden we

came face to face with two figures, a man and a woman, who staggered as they walked; both were in white,

"Just our luck!" I murmured. "What an end to a family party!" For the light of a saffroncolored

I flung an arm round the bloodstained woman to sustain her. And the woman was Yolande. And

I heard my uncle Bletherthwaite murmur, "Well, I never!" as though he had foreseen the whole thing.

A GARDEN hung with softtinted Chinese lanterns glowing amid gleams of green leaflights

and deeps of black leafshadow; a company of aunts and uncles placated by food, drink, and the servile

attentions of nephews and nieces; a silvery atmosphere of peace, shot with faint streaks of something almost

approaching a modified approval; a host and hostess weary, though not wholly exhaustedyet counting the

moments till the last uncle, having consumed the ultimate whiskey, should depart in the last of the cabsand

the rest of usChloe, Yolande, and Ishould be left to look back on the party and "talk it over."

And now, on this almost pastoral stage, where uncles were all but in tune to pipe, and aunts not

far from the mood when one wreathes one's crook with flowers, intrudes a harsh shriek from the darkness of

the farther garden, to be fol lowed by the unspeakably dramatic entrance of a man and a woman stained

The woman, as I have said, was Yolande; the man, whom she led familiarly, yet with a certain

ferocity, by the hand, was a perfect stranger. His eyes were closed and his face was stained with crimson. It

dripped still from his head and ears on to the flannels which earlier in the evening must have been pearly

Every aunt shuddered, every uncle winced. Uncle Bletherthwaite so far forgot himself as to

mutter, "Good God!" which, in the "presence of ladies," was more from him than a good round damn might

The nephews and nieces crowded round, cousins drew cautiously near, and as soon as it had been

inferred from my attitude in respect to Yolande that she at least was no stranger to me, the semicircle of aunts

and uncles closed up about us. Uncle Reginald told me afterwards that he feared the worst just then, for none

of them recognized Yolande under her new crimson disguise. As Uncle Reginald said, "They none of them

knew her from Adam." He added, "By Jove! just for the moment I forgot my morals, and I was sorry for you,

And now there was a breathless silence. It was like the scene in Kipling's His Wedded Wife.

I broke the silence. I shook Yolande, and said, I fear not too amiably, "My dear girl, what on

"Lend me your handkerchief," she said, irrelevantly; and, taking it, wiped scarlet dews from her

brow and hands. "Oh, let me get away. And take him away and clean him, won't you? It's all got into his

She dropped the hand of the stranger, and would have fled, but Aunt George barred the way.

"After this scene we've just seen," she said, "I think it's due to your company to explain."

"Jove! it does sting," he said, rubbing at his eyes. "I can't get my eyes open. Won't somebody take

He had a pleasant voice, but it did not soften the aunts and uncles. Curiosity had taken the place

"Asking for taps like this," said Uncle Bletherthwaite, "is no excuse for this unwarrantable

Then Yolande detached herself from me, gave her face a final scrub, and spoke sweetly: "Oh,

please don't be alarmed. There were some pails of red stuff put aside for the fruit trees, and this gentleman,

who lives next door, unfortunately came in contact with them; and I had remembered the pails were there,

and was just going to attend to them" ("In that dress!" said Aunt George, with a sniff), "and I brought him in

to be washed. I think I myself will also wash. Goodnight. I am so sorry to have alarmed you."

"Their carriages are beginning to come. Leave Chloe to get rid of them. That man must be

So I took him to the bathroom and left him with the hot tap and the cold tap, and the hipbath

and the footbath and the long bath, and the handbasin and the soap and a pile of towels, and some clothes

of mine. And all seemed inadequate. I did not believe he would ever be his right color again.

Then, Heaven be praised! there were cabs and trains, and the housewarming party melted away,

Aunt George protesting to the last against Yolande's explanation as a mere excuse for "goingson," and

Uncle Bletherthwaite feverishly anxious, even through the cab window, as to the nature of the crimson

dressing designed for our fruit trees. At long last the last lingering cabborne cousin left our gates, and Chloe

and I turned to each other in the empty hall. A pale and cautious Yolande in a white wrapper peered down the

"Are they gone? Oh, give him lemonsmany lemons; I've got it all off my face with that. My

Our strangely introduced guest was still splashing and laughing andwell, grumblingto

"He'll be ages yet," she said. "You don't know what it is to get off. And he's simply soaked

"Yolande," I said, sternly, "I have borne enough; this ensanguined masquerade requires, as Uncle

"Oh, bother!" she cried. "I am a dog, and an outcast, and an abject idiotand I'll tell you

everything." She fell a dejected heap into the easychair where Aunt George had sat so upright during the

minuet and the cachucha. "I know you'll scorn me forever. But 'a fault that's owned is half atoned,' and I'll

own my fault. It was only my only and always faultI have but the one, you knowbeing too jolly clever

"Tell us quickly, before he gets clean," Chloe pleaded. "Who is he? What was it? How did it

"There's no hurry," said Yolande, gloomily, twisting her reddened fingers tightly together. "You

needn't be afraid of seeing his face clean yet awhile. Well, when you talked about the fruitthief, I thought to

myself, if one could only mark the thief thoroughly, it would be as good as catching him, because you could

wire to all the police stations, 'Lost, Stolen, or Strayed, a Pinkspotted Fruitstealer!' I thought I was quite

"It was a good idea," said Chloe, perfunctorily sympathetic; "and so you took that pink dye"

"Yes. I hid two pails of it, one among the currantbushes and one under the quincetree. And

then when we were in the garden I saw a flash, and I knew some one had struck a matchto see where the

peaches were, I thought. Really, of course, it must have been this wretched man lighting his hateful pipe. So I

"Welloh, then I stalked him; and even when I was close to him I never knew he was just a

human being in flannels. I thought he was playing ghost, and I said to myself, 'All the better to mark you on,

my friend!' Oh, it was funny." She began to laugh shakily. "There was I creeping along with my syringe full

charged, and the pail in my other handheld well out, because of my gownand he, poor soul, sauntering

along in the shadows of the nutwalk, thinking nothing less than that some one was advancing with his pink

doom. When he was a couple of yards off I fired a volleyslap in his faceand turned to run. He

sworebut I forgive him that. My pail caught in a bough, and went over his feet, for he jumped towards the

noise; he is not a coward. He caught hold of my dress, in the dark (he's torn a yard out at the gathers, but it

doesn't matter; the dress was ruined anyway), and as soon as I had heard his voice, even though it was

swearingI knew what I'd done, and I said: 'It's all a mistake. I'm Yolande Riseborough. Can't you see?' for

he was staggering about. And then I saw he couldn't, and I said: 'Come and be cleaned. Give me your hand.'

And so I brought him in, and on the way we tumbled over the other pail. And nous voici"

"Know him? Any one would have known him, when it was too late. Oh, my broken heart! What

"It's your new tenant. That's all," said Yolande, with what is termed the calmness of despair.

"You know, permission to walk in the garden was given as one of the extra attractions of the cottage. I'll

never try to be clever again. I got you the tenantcottonbroking lineage, and Coutts's bank, and alland

now I've squirted him with red dye out of a brass garden syringe, and he will never forgive it; and I wish I

One on each side of her, we were doing our best to console, when the bathroom door opened.

We heard it. I flew into the corridor, pushed by four fair hands. I intercepted my partially washed tenant. I

made him a speech of manly apology. Important as his tenancy was to me, I did not, even then, grovel before

him. I was getting on fairly well with the speech when my tenant began to laughone of the jolliest laughs I

ever heard. And from the drawingroom Chloe's laugh and Yolande's joined in it. So that in a few moments I

had presented my tenant to my wife, and we were all talking at once, explaining and expounding, while I

My tenant was young; Chloe considered him handsome. He certainly had a wellshaped head and

extremely merry blue eyes. He was at home with us at once. Stiffness of demeanor is difficult to maintain in

Three courses were open to him, as Mr. Gladstone used to say. He might have stormed, raged,

threatened, and retired; he might have retired, frigidly polite; in either case following up the retirement by a

notice of the termination of the tenancy. Or he might have laughed and made the best of it, and of us. This he

had done. I liked the man, and I almost forgave him for being able to play the guitara most effeminate

accomplishment, and one I never could acquire, for all Chloe's teachingwhen I heard that he had learned it

in the Philippines during the war. I detest and distrust sudden intimacies, but it was impossible to treat this

man as a stranger. By dyeingor being accessory to the dyeing ofa new acquaintance crimson, you skip a

hundred milestones on the road to friendship. But it might be a hazardous experiment. Anyway, it was not

till the small hours were growing out of all knowledge, and beginning to take notice, that we parted from our

tenant. A second, and much better, supper had risen for us, phoenixlike, from the ashes of the first; we had

sung songs, told travellers' tales, made jokes, and when at last I saw the injured tenant to his door there were

When I came back, Chloe and Yolande, candlebearing, had paused on the stairs for a last word.

"One of our kindyes," said Chloe; "some people are, don't you know, and some aren't; quite

nice people, too, sometimes, curiously enough. And people who aren't very clever are, now and then. Besides

"What a night of adventures for us!" I said, "and, oh, my only hat! what a night for him!"

"He may think himself lucky," said Yolande. "How angelgood you were to him, Chloe!

"Do you think it was a successthe real party?" asked Chloe, anxiously. "They couldn't believe

"It was true," said Yolande, "so I suppose they couldn't. Oh yes, it's all right; give them

something to talk about for months. It was a splendid party, Chloe, though I didn't have anything to do with

"Oh yes, you will," I said, "for the pie's our good! You see, this was such a very pink pieand,

besides, it was just that sort of an unimportant detail that doesn't suit your genius. But it's taught"

"No; it's taught us our tenant. I think he's worth learning. I'm glad we know him. Goodnight."

It was an extravagant entertainment, but the thought of the new tenant's rent upheld us through

the gloomy work of paying the bills; and the price for my stories, as for Chloe's pictures, was rising steadily. I

now had only to begin a story, and, if Yolande were staying with us, it found itself finished, and finished

well, without my help. And I could not disguise from myself that my stories met now with a reception far

more flattering than ever awaited them in the old days. My articles I was still allowed to write on "my own

unaided hook," and I rejoiced in this till the editor of the Weekly Wilderness sent me an amiable letter

congratulating me on the style of certain tales which he had had the pleasure of reading in the magazines and

weeklies, over my signature, and suggesting that my articles would be none the worse for a little of the

"pathetic sort of thing" as well as the "light ironic touch" which he had noticed in the stories. Then I showed

Chloe the letter, and said several things. Among others I swore that I would not be interfered with any more

"I know she means it kindly," I said. "I know it's done entirely to serve us and help us, and it's

most kind and charitable, and I simply won't stand it. I'm not going to go on being complimented on other

Chloe was turning over the pages of the paper in which the last but three of these stories had

"They're so beastly good," said I, "that I won't put my name to another of them. If it weren't that

the whole business sounds so silly, I'd tell every single editor tomorrow, and advertise the facts in the

"Yolande will be off to Italy quite soon now, with her horrid pupils. Len, dear, to please me, don't

make any more fuss. You don't know how unhappy it makes me. Wait till she's gone. Perhaps the ghost won't

"You mean you'll tell her to drop it?" said I. "What must she think of me for letting it go on so

"No, no, no! Dear Len, don't. I'm sure the ghost won't write any more. And I can't think why you

mind. YesI see you doandBut I'm quite pleased when the ghost touches up my drawings, or even

when it does them for me altogether. Dear ghost! Len, it doesn't matter which of us does the work." Her voice

"It wouldn't matter which of us did the work, my pussykitten," I said, "but Yolande's not one of

us. She's our landagent and our registryoffice, as it is, and that ought to be enough even for her. If you

"Then I will," said she, turning away. "Go on with your work. I'm certain no nasty ghost will

Still raging, I sat down to the typewriter and snapped off a letter to my Weekly

Wilderness editor. Then of course I went to look for Chloe. I found her crouched among the blue and green

cushions on the faded green divan in the loafery, and I stayed there with her head on my shoulder till she had

consented to be completely comforted. I told her that I "did not mean to be cross," and when I had said it

After that no ghost ever laid finger on my typewriter, and I worked at it harder than ever. And

my stories were not nearly so good as the ghostridden ones. But my drawings grew better and better, as I did

more and more of themall of which Chloe signed and sent off with a cheerful gratitude, perhaps a little too

pronounced, and designed, I knew, to show me that she wasn't too proud to accept help from a ghostor a

The humiliation which stung me every time I thought of my indebtedness to a writer more expert

than I drove me to this curious retaliation in Fateor Chloeor Yolandeor the ghost. Since Chloe could

bear that my work should be supplemented and improved by another handa hand neither hers nor mineit

pleased me mightily to reflect that no hand but mine had ever tampered with her work, and that she did not

know to whom belonged the hand whose help she accepted so lightly. I hugged myself in the knowledge that

it was mine, mine, mine. An order to illustrate a child's book had thrilled her with delight. She has a pretty

fancy. She can see picturesbut she cannot draw them. It was on her sketches that I always worked; and I

worked hard to finish that child's book before Yolande should take flight for Italy. I found it hard to conceal

from Yolande my growing irritation at the ghost's part in my storiesan irritation doubled, of course, by

vexation at the weakness of my former acquiescence. It was hard to keep the word I had pledged to Chloe,

hard not to have it out with Yolande. There would, I think, have been a constraint strong enough to force on a

He called on us; he invited us to tea; he sent us tickets for the theatres. When I saw him strolling

among the green of our gardenfor he spent most of the time there that he could snatch from his

newspaperofficeI sometimes hated to think that our garden was no longer only our own; but he was

discreet. If Chloe and I set foot in the garden, he disappeared, as swiftly as though our weedgrown walks

had been a wishingcarpet. But when Yolande walked alone in the garden he sometimes joined her. Of

course to her the garden was merely a green space to walk in. To usand I liked our tenant for perceiving

thisthe garden was something far other and far more. He dined with uson a bottledbeer footingmore

than once, and more than once we and Yolande dined with him at his cottage. On the first of these times

Chloe and I could not help exchanging glances when we saw how the soft yellow of our tenant's sittingroom

wallpaper suited his blackframed etchings and mezzotints. Yolande surprised the glance, and it betrayed us

to her. She taxed us roundly with the crime, later on, as we sat sipping cocoa round the kitchen fire at home.

"When will you learn wisdom?" she sighed. "You know you papered that cottage yourselves."

"Are there no poor paperhangers out of work? I ask more in sorrow than in anger. Are there no

"The old defencewhich is none," said Yolande, setting down her cup on the broad fender.

"How many glorious golden guineas could you two have turned at your own trades in the time it took you to

do that house? Oh yes, I saw the exquisite way you'd made the patterns match, and how delicately you'd

"It comes of property," I said. "Our property is exigent. We love it, and it presumes on our

affection and makes us do things for it. It's like doing things for one's own child. Mothers like to wash and

dress their own babies, and they don't think it waste of time to spend hours over iteven if they might be

earning money instead and keeping whole armies of competent professional nurses. Now your property"

"Yes, I know," Yolande interrupted; "my property's in consolswhat there is of itand I love it

for itself alone. It has no sentimental claims. Don't throw it up at me. But even if I had a house and a garden

"If you had a husband," said Chloe, looking up suddenly from the red heart of the fire at which

she had been blinking, "wouldn't you like to sew on his buttons and mend his socks?"

"Never," cried Yolande, with energy. "You can get them done for a penny a pair, and men ought

"Yes; it's good for a man, because he never does itor he never does it because it's good for

"Oh, you!" she said; "but I am sleepy and stupid, and I shall never be married and sit over my

I handed Yolande her brass candlestick and went back to my wife and my own fireside. When we

had sat silent for a little, listening to the slow ticking of the tall clock, Chloe said, still blinking at the fire:

Her cheek was against my shoulder by this time and my face against her hair. So we sat silent

another space. Then suddenly she lifted her head and said, "Len, if she ever is married, she'll be just as silly

"It's absurd," I said, with some heat, for which I can give no reason; "she hardly knows him at all."

I had not forgotten. It is a joy to both of us still to remember how few times we had met before

we knew, quite surely and without mistake, and so ran into each other's arms in the safe confidence and

"I knew you'd say that," she cried, jumping up. "No, I'm not going to sit on your knee another

moment." She busied herself in lighting our candle. "I knew you'd say that. Isn't it odd? Women are so glad to

think of their friends being perhaps going to be happy. But men always feel injured at the mere idea that a girl

"It's not the polygamous instinct at all, my pussykitten," I said. "It's only that women believe in

"Isn't it? Oh, I hope it is! I shouldn't like to think ours was the only proper marriage. It can't be, of

course. There must be heaps of people as fond of each other as we are. Don't you think so? And quite as

"Do you think so?" She had lighted the candle and was standing looking at me as I took off my

boots. I stood up in my stockinged feet and put my arm round her. "Do you?" I asked again.

"No," she said, beginning to smile and blinking softly at me, "honestly, I'm afraid I don't."

I HAVE been writing like a man milliner. I have found no manly tale to set forthonly a record

of domesticity almost florid in its decorative detail. Let the accomplished specialist in obscure psychology

seek, and find if he can, the reason. For me, let me only say that had Chloe written it the tale had been far

otherwise. Chloe would have dwelt, at strenuous length, on my encounter with the coalman who refused to

carry sacks down our cellar stairs. Had he contented himself with a courteous refusal, my sympathies, I own,

would have been with him, for the stairs are medi�val in their uncompromising inconvenience, their

But the coalman did not stop at that, and when I came on the scene Chloe, with tears of pure

rage in her eyes, and in the low, sweet voice that is always lowest and sweetest when she is most furious, was

ordering him out. And he was explaining, in detail, what he would be if he would go before he was ready. So

I suppose cutting down dead trees is manly work, and I certainly did that. Also I sawed them into

lengths proportioned to the woodbasket. But Chloe always sat on the bough to keep it steady, so sawing

cannot count as mere man's work. Rabbitcatching sounds manly enough, but Chloe was in that too, more or

less. The incident which led to the rabbiting was, however, my show entirely, and I confess to a certain pride

in it. My presence of mind, as well as my dramatic ability, was called into play, and I was pleased with

I was wandering in the orchard at dusk one evening, pushing through the long grass and nettles,

and trying to fix in my memory the way of the growing of appleboughs for the ghost's next illustration. The

mists of October drifted like wraiths among the trees, and the scent of wet earth had mingled with itself the

perfume of sadness and regret and memory. In spring the wet earth smells of hope and joy and the green

future. I had stood in contemplation for some moments before the goldenpippin tree, and was really

beginning to know its gnarled face by heart, when I heard a scratch and a squeak, and a voice said, "Got 'im!"

I moved cautiously round my tree. In the open space beyond the orchard the wild rabbits have

made their burrows, and here, grouped round one of the rabbitholes, were two men, three dogs, a boy, and

I was still unseen. I reflected. If I called on these rabbitthieves to surrender, they would

probably decline to do so on any terms. Indeed, why should they? There were six of them, not counting the

ferrets, and I was only one. That was the point. If I had only been threeor even two! Could I not be two, or

even three? How could it be done? Arithmetic is a difficult branch of science. I reflected again. The men had

killed the rabbit, replaced the net over the hole, and resumed their several stations at the mouths of other

burrows. The dusk was falling fast. I crept away for a dozen yards. Then, assuming the gruffest voice at my

command, and rolling my r's to the highest pitch, I cried out: "George! Fred! Dick!" and faintly answering in

a tone I hoped would seem to come from a distance, I voiced a couple of shrill, "Yes, sirs"; then with my

stick I beat madly on the underbushes and, rushing forward, shouted in the voice of my uncle's old Scotch

Had one of the rogues been a Scotbut, no, all were good Deptfordbred ruffians. As I neared

them, shouting, "Come on, my ladscome on!" my rogues fled incontinently, followed by their boy and

their dogs, leaving to me, as prize, fifteen rabbitnets, five ferrets in bags, and one in a burrow. This last

came out presently, creeping like a yellow snake, and looking round with bright eyes and evermoving head

for his master. I captured him, collected the nets and the bagged ferrets, and went back, chuckling, to Chloe.

A wellworn trick, but a good onea relic of the old smuggling days, a preventiveofficer's stratagem. I

This is all by way of prelude to our rabbiting. We housed our ferrets in the stable and hung the

nets in the kitchen. And it was Jim who suggested, one Saturday afternoon when the October sun was

burnishing the coppery leaves of our beeches, and gilding the little quivering hearts that hang from the silver

birch, that we should "have some sport." Bates was invited to join; this seemed, as Yolande said, only his due

as a professional ferret. Our tenant came with him. Yolande declined to join the glad throng.

"It's very exciting sport," said our tenant. "And we shall probably catch nothing."

"Then doesn't that make your sport silly in fact as well as cruel in aspiration?"

"Do come!" he said. "You can sit in your favorite appletree with a volume of moral stories, and

So Yolande established herself in the low, forked bough of the appletree with a volume of

Ruskin. "As near to moral stories as I can get," she told our tenant. But she sat with her pretty back towards

Chloe, in spite of my warnings, was eagerly anxious to help. She was more deft than any of us in

staking the nets over the holes, and she handled the ferrets lovingly, because they loved her, and that was

We had no dogs and no guns, and I felt guiltily unsportsmanlike. At last all was ready; each of us

crouched by his appointed rabbithole. I put in the handsomest ferret; he disappeared, and we waited results

in silence. Now and then we bent our heads to listen in quite a professional manner, as though we had been

real poachers, for some sound of what might be happening underground. And nothing whatever seemed to be

happening. We grew cramped, and changed our positions. Yolande heard the movement and called out, with

insolent triumph, "Any sport?" Indignantly we all said, "Hush!" and the weary work of listening began again.

Then, suddenly, just as hope had died in every breast, there was a rustle underground, a scamperrush, a

piteous little scream of horror and fear, and a small, fat gray rabbit bolted out of the earth into the net over the

hole where Chloe watched. She had it in her arms in an instant. Its feet were caught in the net, but as she held

"Or would you like to, mum?" asked Jim, kindly. "It was your rabbit, so it was! You just hold it

up by the ears like this, and hit it a crack 'longside o' the head with the edge of your handso"

But Chloe had fled, still clasping the rabbit, and leaving us to look helplessly at each other.

"Ladies are no good at sport," said Bates, philosophically. "It's their tender hearts, bless them"

"Missus 'll let it loose in the garden, I shouldn't wonder," said Jim, in gloom.

I left them to recover the ferret and arrange another siege. I found Chloe by the whiteparlor fire

"Oh, Len, how could youhow could you let me? You knew what it would be like! Oh, did you

hear it scream? It was like a little, little baby that some one was hurting! Don't go back to them. Promise me

"I know, but you ought to have beaten me and locked me up, rather than let me go! I didn't know,

"For some other ferret to go after? Never! Fancy running for your life with a long, crawling

horror coming after you in the black dark, all cruel teeth and claws, and just when you think you are safe, and

see the safe, green, light world outside where you can run and hide, you rush into a net and get beaten to

I shrugged my shoulders again. "Anyway," I said, "the rabbit is slowly dying of fright in your

I got a basket and some cabbage leaves. We shut in the rabbit and watched him through the

"Now," she said, "if you care the least bit about me you'll go straight back to those hateful people

"And don't bring those hateful ferrets back. I don't want ever to see them again."

"I don't care," said Chloe, with almost a sob; "anythinggive them away, drown them, strangle

"Oh, Chloe! Chloe!" I said, "your own little ferrets that have eaten out of your hand and climbed

round your neck? Drown them? Strangle them? Never! I will advertise them in the Bazar and Mart in

exchange for goldfish or anything useful, and Bates shall keep them till I find a purchaser."

"All right," she said, impatiently, "only go now. Go! Or they'll have killed another."

They had killed three. The soft, fluffy bodies lay side by side on the brown turf, and even as I

came upon the scene there was a rustle and a screamI thought of Chloe, and I hated to hear itand next

moment Yolandeyes, Yolande herselfrose from beside the hole with a live rabbit struggling in her hands

"Here," she said, gently disengaging its helpless little feet from the netting and holding it tip

tenderly by the ears, "you kill it, Jim. I think you do it quicker than the others. And that makes four." She

"It's not really cruel," she protested, "and it's very exciting. I'd rather die like that myself than die

slowly of starvation when I got too old to go out after my food. That's the end of wild animals, you know, if

we don't eat them. Isn't it?" She appealed almost abjectly from me to the tenant, who said, "That's so!" And I

knew she was rehearsing those arguments by which he had drawn her down from her appletree to share in

"I'm very sorry," I said, "but the sport is now over. My wife decrees a reprieve to the rabbits, and

banishes the ferrets. Bates, I wish you'd cart them off and get rid of them somehow."

Jim and Bates collected the ferrets in a silence full, I knew, of disparaging reflections on woman's

Yolande and the tenant stood a moment talking before they strolled off together, and I heard him

asking her why she should not ride out on her bicycle with him to see some coursingonly a thirtymile ride.

"But I don't think I do approve of it, really," she was saying, "not when I'm cool and collected and

"But you will not be cool and collected when you see the first hare get up. You will be wild with

"Yes, you do; you don't want to cultivate nerves. If you don't like sportwell, it's simple enough,

and half the best women there are don't, either. If you do like itwell, you do, and so do the other half of the

best women in the world. That's all there is to it. And you do like sport. Look here, if I could get a man to

take on my work for Tuesday, we could start early, say about nine. Do say you will."

I did not hear what she said, for they had strolled off down the path that leads to the moat, and

when next I saw them they were engineering the leaky punt under the middle arch of the old bridge. Yolande

in her blue cloth and fox fur was standing in an inch and a half of water, and hanging on to a muddy

Yolande! I shrugged my shoulders for the third time that day, and I went in to my wife. She was

sitting by the fire in the beechwood rockingchair, singing low to herself; the song sounded like "Bye, baby

I never regretted that rabbit. In three days it was perfectly tame; in a week it played with the cats

and sat up on the hearthrug, unconcernedly washing its face. At the end of a fortnight it flopped after Chloe,

in and out, upstairs and downstairs, like a small and very plump kangaroo. When the cats grew too catty in

their play the rabbit would turn round and use his deadly hind foot. They presently learned to respect this, and

Yolande went to see that coursing, I believe, though she never spoke to Chloe of it. And she

listened to tales of tigers from the tenantmore tales, and less convincing, than I should have thought any

Girton girl could have borne. She also learned to take rosecuttings, and did it without gloves. I looked on in

a frenzy of annoyance, which I hid, evenindeed, most of allfrom Chloe. The tenant is a man of

ideasbut I never heard him talk anything but the visibleconcrete to Yolande. I felt a horrid suspicion that

he thought her a bit of a prig, and that he was actually daring to try to "form her"; the audacity took my breath

Mindful of that scorned suggestion of my wife's on the night of the first dinnerparty at the

cottage, I looked straight before me and cultivated an air of seeing nothing. I sometimes wondered whether

Yolande imagined that we did not see anything, or whether she knew we saw anything, and did not care, or

whether she really believed that there was nothing to see. She had arranged, as usual, to personally conduct

three model young persons on a winter tour through the art treasures of Italy, and her going was fixed for the

week after Christmas. She had some private pupils, and went up to struggle with them two or three times a

week, but for the most part she was with us. And I was glad to have herfirst, because she is ever a sight for

sore eyes, and secondly, because I began to see that I did not want either to give up my ghostfathered

pencilwork, nor yet, for some obscure reason which I can't even indicate, to confess to Chloe that it was not

Yolande, but I, who had tinkered her drawings. My own work, my writing, grew less and less important to

The curious change whose initial throes I had felt when first we came to the Red House had

worked in Chloe and in me, till now, while the house was usually tidy to distraction, Chloe's wardrobes and

"I know," she said one day, when I opened a drawer and silently confronted her with a swollen

mass of lace, ribbons, handkerchiefs, scarfs, bead necklaces, letters, collars, wristbands, brass headed nails,

and the longlost hammer, all inextricably tangled up with the ball of twine I had been looking for"I know.

"You do, indeed," I said, fishing up from the bottom of the drawer the penknife that I had missed

"Now, I don't. I never tidy up, but I always know where to find my pencils, and I'm never in any

"What do you want with India rubber, anyhow?" she asked, and I trembled for my secret.

"Perhaps," she said, "if you would tidy up a little sometimes, I could keep the insides of things

tidier. Let's have a grand clearing up now, this instant minute, and then I really will try! I must learn to be

We did have a grand clearing up, beginning with that corner drawer. When all was neatthe

scarfs folded, the ribbons rolled, the handkerchiefs restored to the historic handkerchiefcaseI tried the

"Oh, nothing muchonly little things. I'll show you some day when we've nothing to do but to

be kind to each other. Now we'll go and clear out the sideboard cupboards and all the rest of it."

We did. We found many thingsthe lost corkscrew and the buttonhook and the Nineteenth

Centuries that were missing. It took us all day, and when it was done there was a place for nearly everything,

and everything that had a place was in it. The residue loomed hateful on a tray in the hallodd stoppers,

screws, knobs, handles of knives, curtain ringsall the litter that has no place and that one cannot bear to

"Come, light of my eyes," I cried, exulting; "there is only one thing that we needa

We toiled joyously to the top of the house, I with the tray and Chloe with the little copper

coalscuttle whose broken handle we meant to get mended when we could afford it. We chose a fairsized

room, out of the many disused ones, opened the shutters, and dumped down our treasures on the floor. Our

old tendency to furnish one room at the expense of another came irre sistibly upon us, and we ransacked the

house, carrying off to the lumberroom everything we could possibly not want. The house looked very bare

when we had done, and for weeks I found myself toiling up those stairs in search of some necessary for one

of us which the other had confiscated as "rubbish"but we certainly had a most impressive lumberroom.

"And now," said my wife, looking round with pride, "clearing up will be simply a pleasure."

Yolande was severe as ever when she came back from watching a football match at the Rectory

"Dear Babes in the Wood," she said, "did they invent a new, pretty game to waste their time on?"

"I'd rather waste my time at a game I can play than one I can only look on at," said I, severely.

"Thank you. As to games, c'est selon," she said, unfastening her furs. "Bytheway, before I go

to southern climes I should like to render an account of my stewardship. I'll write it down. Give me a pencil,

She wrote busily for some time, then hand ed the paper to Chloe, who took it in her little grimy

"1. Getting one good servant to keep her situation by letting her keep her husband in it.

"6. Letting garden and orchard to market gardener for �20 a year and as much fruit and vegetables as

She rose and bowed. "Go on," she said; and Chloe, merely pausing to embrace her, went on:

"And that was half a success," said I. "Oh, Yolande, what a glorious baking of beautiful pies!

"I can't help it," she pleaded. "I was born to it. Give me another envelopeno, not one with so

"There's your yearly income! How's that for high?" she asked, flashing a glance of triumph at us.

We had known well enough that our income was increasing, that we no longer had, as Chloe said,

to look all round every shilling. We had told Yolande, gleefully, the amount of every check we had received.

"You shall have that book of Beardsley drawings for a Christmas present, Len," said my wife,

"and Yolande shall have a gold horseshoe brooch with turkisses in it, as becomes a sporting lady."

"Never mind. You shall have a bangle with a double dangling heartoursand an inscription

inside that would get you a situation anywhere. And Chloe shall have" I stopped.

"A very beautiful present, indeed. Something we never thought we'd have. No, I won't tell you.

Yolande had taken off her veil, folded it very carefully, and driven three little turquoiseheaded

pins through it. Now she said, "I'm beginning to think that surprises are the best things in lifeespecially

"Have you surprised yourself lately?" Chloe asked, picking up the rabbit by its ears. It had

"Very much." I held my breath. The very cigarette trembled in my dusty fingers. Could it be that

already that tenant had taught Yolande to be surprised at herself? A sigh of relief broke from me as she went

on: "I am absolutely astoundedand charmed too, of courseat my own cleverness. But all this is a

swansong. I shall have my finger in no more piesfor good or ill. My career of usefulness is at an end.

Henceforth I shall be a female fogy; never a pie shall be the worse nor the better for me. I shall cram young

geese. No more and no less. Mark my words, I have gone up like the rocket, and like the stick I shall come

downif I have not already." She took off her hat, and twisted the blue velvet and fur in her hands. "Mine is

indeed a dark and terrible lot!" she said, smiling brilliantly at us. Then without more words she withdrew.

Chloe sighed, not sadly: "Poor, dear Yolande! I do really believe she doesn't know what is the

"I understand you to mean that you rejoice to see Othello's occupation gone. You are glad that

your friend has renounced her dearest pastime and will finger her neighbors' pies no more."

"Because I see," I answered, slowly, "what you mean me to seewhether she knows it or not,

"I suppose it is," said Chloe, pretending to shiver. "The Bandbox was warmer, certainly, but not

much. Why do people make so much fuss about being too cold and too hot? Isn't it odd that they've never

found out the great truththat one has to be cold in the winter and hot in the summer? And if one has to be

"You mean that great possessions warm the cockles o your heart," I said; "that's because you're

all soul. As for me, I must warm my hands in the teacozy before I can carve the eggs."

The white parlor, with its darkpanelled walls, its olivegreen curtains, its sparkling brass and

silver, and nothing white about it save the ceil ing and the tablecloth, was a delightful picture of a

breakfastroom. Chloe's loose gown of turquoisecolored soft stuff with its brown furry trimmings became

"But the tip of your pretty nose is pink," I said. "It was quite whitewith rage, I believethe

day you bit me so about my shavingbrush. Do you remember? And then the letter came enclosing the Red

"Don't talk of muslin!" she said. "Look, isn't it fairyland? Only it's a little hard to believe that our

A light veil of snow lay on our green garden now, and on the thatched roof of the old

summerhouse and on the sundial's face, whose sentimental expression had decided my wife to decide me

to decide to live at the Red House. The snow lay in sheets, like cottonwool, on the flat tops of the cedars;

and the ivy round the windows, the creepers on the old arches, and the leaves of the tall box hedge were all

"It is a little different," I said; "that day, when you worewell, I won't, thenand we had

haddock for breakfast, and the letter came. Bytheway, my hands are warm enough to open letters now."

There were only two. One was a bill for repairs to the roofthe roof, now spread with snow,

where one warm, wet morning we had fought a flood with brooms and a dustpan; a bill that did not

discompose me, for I was used to that roof. No living plumber could make its repairs permanent. The other

letter was typewritten, and that by a somewhat inexperienced hand. It read thus:

should.) be held on Dec 20 when the Society proposis to visit the interesting church of (x)

Elmhurst andalsotheold Palace they call Kin (gons)Johns. Our president MrAlbert Morris

F;J.B,S! has ob and so have the rest of us. tained permission to fo out on that day/ We

venture to ask whether you would allowthe members of the Cociety to walk � through your

groundsa nd inspect from without of course your beauriful house, which is as you are

doubtless aware of ? great ihstoric interest having been � for some years. We feel sure it was

the 7; residence of the celebrated amn you know who I mean. We hope if the frost ohlds you

I; am dear Sir, Yours faithfully, Edward Turnbull Hon. Sec. PS� Please excuse mistakes

Such was the letter. The more obvious orthographical errors had been carefully corrected with

blue pencil, but, even so, the document was a remarkable one. Chloe read it, taking absent bites at her

"I don't know; the letter's very conventionally worded, except in one or two odd places. Is it

possible that a genuine society could possibly employ such a ghastly roughsketch of a typist?"

"The letter's not signed," she remarked. "The secretary's name is typed as well as the rest."

"I knew a solemn ass named Turnbull, once," I reflected, "but I thought he'd got into a bank

somewhere in KentTonbridge or Dartford, or something. He used to fool around with brass rubbings and

"I expect it's the same man," she said, indifferently. "But we don't want the nasty society

bothering here, do we? Write and tell him there's nothing to see, and no one really important ever lived here

"I don't know," I said. "I wish I could be sure. Blackheath seems an unlikely place for it. If we

were Woolwich, now, that simply bristles with improving societies; but I've a sort of idea this is a

workingmen's society. If the poor beggars have got a holiday on purpose, and are really interestedor think

they areit seems a bit piggy not to let them, doesn't it? We can keep a lookout from the loafery window

and see that they don't get into any mischief. They only want to look at the house 'from the outside.'"

"Yes; Morden House, Blackheath. It sounds decent. I'm almost certain it's a workman's club. I'll

"I'm not wholly a piggywig. But that letter's odd, all the same. Perhaps it's from a gang of

"Well, they can't see that from the garden. Madam, I am beginning to realize that I am a proud

man the day. Think of our position six months ago. Who would have wished to come and inspect, 'from the

outside, of course,' our late lamented Bandbox? And now we are lords of the manor, holding the power of life

"What I don't like," she went on, quite unappeased by this feudal picture, "is that about the

"Now to me," I rejoined, "that's the most convincing touch of all. Of course these workmen don't

often get a holiday, and they want to make the most of it. 'If the frost holds' is a charming touch. It's hardly

It did not hold. I signified to Mr. Edward Turnbull my gracious consent, and from that moment

the snow began to melt, and the weather to settle itself down into something quite as warm and sunny as an

English April, and far warmer than many an English May. A stray furzebush or two at the end of our

paddock broke into golden flower, and the skylarks sang in the pale blue above the orchard. The 20th was a

day of cloudless beauty, and even in the midst of my mental congratulations to the members of the

Antiquarian Society on their royal weather, I found room for a pang of sym pathy for those among them

I recurred again that day, I remember, to our old life at the Bandbox. We were sitting in the

loafery, now made cosey with curtains and a big wood fire. Chloe sat sewing in her rockingchair. She had

had some verses that morning, and, bad as they were, they had pleased her. There were seven stanzas, I

remember. The first two were quite ordinary, and the other five got sillier and sillier, till at the end they were

a mere jingle of nonsensea sort of nursery rhyme, mostly written in the "little language." The

She liked it all, even the nonsense of the last five stanzas, and she said that she liked it none the

less because it happened to be written on the backs of a greengrocer's bill, the votingcard of a candidate for

She said: "It is very pretty, Len. I didn't know you ever noticed whether I was sewing or not."

"You don't know my observant nature," I said, "and after all these years of married life, too."

"And that other dear day when you invented the loafery and we looked at the bars?"

"Let's look at them now," she cried, jumping up and dropping scissors, thimble, tapemeasure, and

a mass of lace and muslin. When I had picked everything up we went to the window. The creeper's leaves

were gone now, and we stood between dull red curtains and looked out on the misty garden, where the dead

leaves lay, patches of wet gold and brown in the faint sunlight, and where a robin on a leafless appletree was

singing his very best, and pretending to the rooks in the elms that he was a thrush disguised in a scarlet

"Those Antiquarian brutes," I said, presently, "they'll be here directly. By Jove! they are here.

They look horribly small. Can it be that the Junior Blackheath only admits dwarfs?"

"Those can't be the Antiquaries," Chloe cried. "Why, Len, they look like children! Lots and lots

of them. What can they want? They look like a slice of a strayed, frayed school treat. And they've all got

books, and they don't seem to have got any grownup people with them. Oh, do go and turn them out!"

"Oh yes, and they'll say they're botanizing, or geologizing, or something, and you'll let them stay,

like you did the boys that wanted conquerors off the chestnuttrees, and overran everything. I've not

She ran down the stairs, slipped her feet into the wooden sabots that she keeps for sudden winter

garden excursions, and stumped off angrily down the path under the cedars. I took a shortcut between Jim's

celerytrenches. Chloe is terrible in her wrath, but if it grows too hot it boils over in tears of rage; and I did

The invaders were grouped round the sundial. All had their backs to us, and one of them was

"....told the time when Charles the First was beheaded, and recorded the deathdevouring

progress of the Great Plague and the Fire of London. There is no doubt the sun often shone even in those

Then the reader heard the unmistakable threat in the emphatic stump, stump of Chloe's wooden

shoes, and stopped short. Her eyes were angry, her mouth expressed inhospitable intentions. I thought I heard

a murmur of, "Oh, Crikey!" from the reader, but the next moment he had stepped towards my wife and taken

off his cap with an oddly graceful flourish. He was a boy; there were other boys, who followed his lead in

capdoffing. There were girls, too, rosyfaced little girls in highwayman coats and scarlet Tamo'Shanters.

The whole invading company were, as Chloe had said, "children." And all wore spectacles.

"Do you know that this is a private garden?" said Chloe, severely. "You are trespassing, you

know." Her voice is very pretty, even when she is angry, and she was not nearly so angry as she had been

"It's not your garden, is it?" asked the smallest boy of all, goggling at her through his spectacles,

and speaking in an offhand but perfectly agreeable manner. One of the girls shook him gently, and bade him

"We're most awfully sorry," said the boy who had been reading. "We wouldn't have come if we'd

thought you'd mind, but we've got a pass, so I thought it was all right. Here, hold my spectacles half a sec.,

The prettiest of the redcapped girls took the spectacles, and the boy felt in several pockets,

"Here it is!" he said, at last, disentangling a dingy paper from a mass of string, matches,

envelopes, putty, and cobbler's wax, and, with really a rather nice bow, he handed to Chloemy letter to the

"That was my fault," said a younger boya thin, pale, anxiouslooking child. "We tossed up

who should copy out the letter on Albert's uncle's typewriter, and I was thinking about something else, so I

Chloe put her hands to her head with a gesture of despair. I said: "Just think a minute. Remember,

we've no idea what all this is about. Just tell us, right away from the beginning, how you came to be here, and

The boy who had been reading twisted his cap, and stood uneasily on one foot. But almost at

once he planted his feet firmly on the ground and began, looking Chloe straight in the eyes with a most

"Wellwhen we were staying in the country some Antiquaries wrote to Albert's unclethis is

Albert"he pushed forward a shy boy in velvet knickerbockers"and asked him to let them come and see

his house. And we thought we should be feeling a bit slack in the holidays, so we thought we'd play at being

antiquaries. And Albert's uncle showed us this place once from the train when we were going to Bexley

Heath, and he said some great person lived here once, and it was a historic place, and we can't remember who

it was. And he said a clever writer lived here now, and he told us the name. So we wrote to ask leave to come,

"Yes," I said, completely melted by this unexpected recognition of myor the ghost'stalent as

"Rather not"his tone was somewhat injured. "I was coming to that. We decided to copy out the

letter that the real Antiquity secretary sent to Albert's uncle, and No�l had to do it, because we tossed up

about it, and he lost. And he got thinking of a poem he's writing, and copied it, name and alland only

remembered it after we'd licked the stamp for the letter. So we thought it didn't matter. And if you'd rather

we'd been Mr. Turnbull, you wouldn't have if you'd seen how thin his legs are, and how he couldn't laugh

"I'd much rather have you," said Chloe, smil ing; and as she smiled I could see how deeply all

present fell in love with her on the instant. "I'm sorry I didn't understand. We won't interfere any more. You'd

"We've each done one," said the eldest girlshe was a little prim, and not so pretty as the

others"only mine is all out of a book, because it is so difficult to think of things."

They all laughed. It was a very pleasant sound, this peal of young laughter in our old garden.

"Oh no!" said the prettiest girl, "only to make us look like learned antiquitiesantiquaries, I

mean. It was an awful bother collecting them all; some of them have no glass in."

"We're the Bastables," the biggest boy said, with a sort of shy pride, as if he were confessing, in

his modesty's despite, to royal lineage. "I'm Oswald, and these are Alice and Dora; No�l's the one who typed

the letter; and this shaver is H.O.; and these are Daisy and Denny Foulkes; and Albert Morrison I told you

"You'll have lunch with us, won't you?" asked Chloe, abruptly, picking up her blue train and

fixing her feet in her wooden shoes. "I don't think there'll be much, but we can make out with bread and

"I like you," said the smallest boy, before the others could answer. "I like you very much, indeed,

"Aren't they perfect dears?" said Chloe, when we were out of earshot. "I don't like the Morrison

"They all areif they have nice grownups belonging to them," I said, enunciating lightly a

tremendous dogma. "But, darling and reckless one, do you know that there's nothing in the house but cold

neck of mutton, and even that, if I remember right, is invidiously distinguished as being not the best end?"

"I know," she said; "but you must go up to Elmhurst and get things: tinned tonguechildren

always adore tongueand candied pineapple and tangerine oranges in silver paper, and nuts, and bananas.

Oh, I do think children are so nice! I wish these weren't so big. The smallest boy, the one they call H.O., he's

"Oswald for my money," said I, "and Alice! Make a list of what I'm to get, and I'll be off. It's

I left Chloe laying the table for eleven in the white parlor. When I came back the cloth was

spread, but Chloe had vanished. I found her in the garden submerged to the shoulders in a wave of children,

and she carried nine pairs of spectacles in her hand. We all went in to lunch. I was now a mere outsider.

Chloe, by some art unknown to me, had become one of the children, and was the most childlike child of all.

The others really were not bad children. I don't think I ever met any so full of enthusiastic energy. As a

permanency, they might have been a little wearing, for, strong in Chloe's extraordinary assumption of esprit

de corps, they now threw away all shyness, and talked to us with simple directness of adventures, of

contemporary literature, of the ways of Providence, and their own vital ambitions. They had a very full flow

of conversation, and a much larger vocabulary than I remember having at their age. What struck me most was

their confident assumption that, now we knew them, we could not help liking them; and the assumption was,

I own, justified. This assumption was particularly marked in Oswald. He evidently thought a good deal of

himself, but, as I could not but reluctantly acknowledge, with some justice! They were extremely "free in

their talk," as Mary said afterwards, but never vulgar. And they were very much funnier than they meant to

be. The lunch, for which Chloe had madly brought out the best greenandgold tablecentre, charmed them.

I had not thought that Chloe could be so thoroughly inspired with any menu. When no one could eat any

more, the children looked at each other, and Dora, the prim one, said, quite unconscious of the evidence of

"And for getting such a jolly lunch," said the pale boy. "I think it is splendid. If you will give me

"It comes of his having bronchitis so often, I think," said the stout child they called H.O. "It isn't

There was an awkward pause while the pale child sucked my pencil and rolled his eyes. He made

the most shocking grimaces I ever saw, but when Chloe turned anxiously to Oswald, he said,

Presently he stopped writing, folded the paper very small, and said suddenly and earnestly,

"We have at the Moat House," he said. "Have you explored your house thoroughly?"

"Yes, I think so," said Chloe, with a glorious inspiration, adding, "but you may explore it if you

No�l pressed the paper into Chloe's hand and they rushed from the room, and as they went I heard

"My dear little old wife," I said, "people might think themselves lucky if their children were half

"The dear!" she said. "And, Len, it's not half bad, is it? What extraordinary children!"

I could hear the wave of children surging wildly about the house. I lighted a cigarette, and strove

"They are dears," she said, for the fourth time. "I do hope they haven't worried you!"

"Worry's not the word," said I. "They have electrified, bewildered, enlightened. I never saw

children with such energetic enthusiasms. The Morrison boy is a muff; but the others, they are very trusting.

There was a silence in the house. I went to see whether the exploring party had drowned itself in

the rainwater cistern, which is just the sort of thing that kind of child would do. No; Mary said they were

exploring the cellars. As she spoke I heard a thunderous report reverberating below. Our cellars are large and

vaulted; from recollections of my childhood, I could conceive that they might seem well worth exploring. But

I had not all Chloe's confidence in these strange children. From the little I had seen of them I felt that they

were quite capable of organizing a Guy Fawkes play, and carrying it out with scrupulous, enthusiastic fidelity

if one of their number should happen, as seemed only too likely, to have any matches and loose gunpowder in

Yolande had just come from town, and by a curious coincidence our tenant had come on the same

train. I left them talking to Chloe, and went down the cellar steps. Halfway down I was met by an incredibly

"I was just coming after you," he said, eagerly. "Do you know, we've found a door behind some

beerbarrels, and Oswald and Denny got in from behind under the diningroom floor; they're hammering on

the other side of the door now. There are barrels in front of the door. We rolled one away. Did it make an

awful row? They say there's all sorts of things inside. Did you know it was there? And please can we have a

Onehalf at least of my foreboding was justified. I wondered where they had dropped the hot

I got some candles and matches, and the cobwebbed child, whose name appeared to be Dickie,

led me to a cellar where barrels were piled. Behind them I could just discern the shadowy outline of a door,

"Can you get the door open, or shall we come back under the floor for the candles? It's a beastly

There were three boys still in evidence, and the tenant had followed me to see the sport. The girls

were as energetic as the boys, and one by one we rolled the barrels away. Curious that Chloe and I had never

looked behind those barrels. The door was not fastened. It opened easily, and a shower of dust and cobwebs

From my soul I congratulated these children. Even to such an adventurous band as this an

They were quite right. There was furniture in the inner cellar, odds and ends stowed away, to

make room for new stuff, by busy, thrifty hands now long since folded in lavish idlenesshands that, in their

We carried the things upstairsall but the vast boxmangle and one other thing which I said I

We bore into the kitchen, and displayed to the dazzled eyes of Chloe and Yolande, and the con

temptuous ones of Mary, a fullsized oak dresserin four pieces; five chestnutwood chairs, more or less

dilapidated; an oak settlethe seat was broken, but, oh, how our hearts rejoiced in the severe beauty of its

panelled back! three ladderbacked chairsseats gone; a large gatetable; an elm kneadingtrough; and the

"I said we would," said the poet, triumphantly. "It's not gold, but it is nice. You have lots of nice

things. I like the way you stick up warmingpans and brass candlesticks instead of plush brackets and crinkly

A most discerning child, truly! When the children had been partially cleaned, our tenant invited

When they were gone I went down to the cellar and fetched the thing I said I would carry myself.

I bore it up to the loafery and cleaned it, and polished it, and mended it a little, and set it by the hearth, in the

glow of the fire; and that evening when Yolande and the tenant were deep in chess, I beckoned Chloe, and

"Oh, Len," she cried, throwing her arms round my neck, "it's miles better than the one we go to

"I meant to give you that for a Christmas present," I said, "but this is better." She fell on her

"Oh, look at the dear little daisy carving on the sides, and the little strong panelled hood, and the

"It was in the cellar," I said. "Do you like it? No; it's absurd to thank me; thank those outrageous,

"I will," she said, coming nearer to me. "LenI've said it before, I know, but they

are dearsand they shall come and see the cradle they found whenwhen it's better worth looking at."

Presently my wife took me into our room, and, unlocking the corner drawer, showed me all that

CHRISTMAS in the Red House was charming. It made us feel like pictures on Christmas cards.

Chloe and I flatly refused to have anything to do with the decorations. We had had enough of evergreens

when we decorated our drawingroom with the loops and swags for the great housewarming party. And

rather than we would touch box or yew or laurel or holly again, the Red House should go undecorated. We

said so, but our tenant insisted that no decorations at Christmas would be the first step towards the downfall

of the British constitution and the deathblow to the naval supremacy of England.

"Let me do it," he said. "I've had my Christmases in such odd, outoftheway placesships

and ranches and diamiondfieldsI haven't put up a sprig of holly since I was a schoolboy. Miss

"I know I won't," said Yolande. "I never do things with my fingers. I'll inspect and direct and

"Scones, I suppose," said Chloe. "There are heaps of string in the cellarette, and don't take my

"We're reformed characters," she answered, gayly. "Where are the pencils and the India rubber?"

I felt a pang. Was it possible that Chloe had any suspicion? Could she possibly guess that it was I,

and not Yolande, who finished drawing her pictures for her? No, she certainly could not. And I more than

half wanted to tell her my secret. Yet I could not make up my mind to part with it. I had nursed it in my heart

We left Yolande enthroned on the settle, di recting the labors of our tenant, but when the gong

summoned us to tea and the wagesofsuperintendencescones, we found our tenant working at one end of

the wreath, and Yolande busy at the other. It was not such a very long wreath as to have needed two pairs of

hands, either. To do Miss Riseborough justice, she looked very much ashamed of this lapse from the

"My hands are very dirty," she made haste to say, "and I think that many of the deserving poor

would have been glad to add a little to their slender incomes by putting up your grimy evergreens for you;

"Don't apologize," I said. "We understand perfectly. We've infected you at last. It is nice to do

"Not in the least. It is very tiresome and very fatiguing; but some one had to do it, it seems, and I

at least could not sit by and see your tenantry ground down without a word of protest, or the holding out of a

helping hand. I hope there are many, many scones, and very, very buttery. We deserve some reward."

After tea the work was resumed, and the hall, stairs, and white parlor were all hung with shining

"Yolande can work," said Chloe to me, in confidence. "It's odd that her perverse abstention from

"As if a hand the shape of hers could ever be clumsy," I said, "any more than a hand like yours

"It might have done," she said, "if you and I had gone on doing all the housework. We ought to

be very grateful to Yolande. She has practically organized the whole of our future for us. We are settled,

fixed, plantedyes, that's itwe grow, ourselves, of course, but she has planted us in the right soil, with

exactly the right aspect. Now our dear little characters can develop beautifully, and our hands keep pretty,

and no wrinkles come in our nice, smooth foreheads. You've been a little I don't know what about Yolande.

Yolande was spending Christmas at the Red House, and, it being Christmas Eve, the tenant dined

with us. We had a merry evening. We had lighted a huge fire in the big, empty drawingroom where the

piano was; Chloe played waltzes, and Yolande danced with me and with the tenant. When the dancing was

over Chloe and I sat by the fire and the others went out to look at the stars from the balcony.

I whispered: "Chloe, in a very short time those people will come through that French window

with the announcement of their engagement on their lips. This is the tamest loveaffair I have ever witnessed.

Everything has gone far too smoothly. Yolande has fallen in love obviously, bluntly, without any of those

fine shades and nice feelings which you will remember to have noted in other casesour own, for instance.

"As for him," I went on, "happiness exudes from him likelike turpentine from the pinetree, or

"I suppose when we're old we shall never talk nonsense," she said. "I almost think you're getting

"No, I'm not. Yes, we shall. We shall never grow old, because we shall always talk nonsense.

Don't you think it would be nice and kind and thoughtful of us to go up to the loafery and leave them this

room? I know she'll have an awful cold if she stays out there much longer. It's a terrible thing to celebrate

So we spoke out into the starlit twilight of the balcony, and begged to be excused, and then we

crept upstairs and raked together the red embers of our loafery fire, and put logs on and crouched happily in

low chairs on the hearthrug of our very own fire. Chloe knitted and I smoked happily and quietly till it

seemed that we must no longer delay to go down and speed our parting tenant. It was, in fact, eleven o'clock.

I was just knocking out my pipe on the hob when a light tap on the door mingled with my own tapping, and

"Come in!" we said, "come in!" But we wondered, because Yolande had never, since the day

when in our pride we first showed it to her, crossed the threshold of that room. Now she came in and closed

She came across the room and sat down on the hearthrug at Chloe's feet. She leaned her arm on

"This is the room of all rooms for confidences," she said, after a silence. "That's why I thought I

"Don't be silly," she said. "It's nothing so very important, after all. Only I am afraid it will

surprise you a little. I am rather surprised myself. As a matter of fact, I had never been so surprised in my life.

It was not at all what I expected myself to do. What do you think I am going to be idiot enough to do?"

We said, with as good an appearance of perfect ignorance as we could command, that we were

It was difficult to express congratulatory surpriseso difficult that we failed utterly. Chloe threw

"You dear, silly, clever, blind, darling mole," she said. "Did you really think we were quite blind

tooLen and I, who love you? My dear, we've known it from the very first, almost, and long before you did,

"Known what?" said Yolande, in a suddenly changed voice; but she returned Chloe's kisses.

"Why, everything, my pretty, clever, foolish child," said Chloe. "We've been watching over you

and loving you all the time, like two old birds with a young one who is just learning to fly."

"Yolande, you don't mind our being glad, and saying so? It's all been so beautifully simple and

straightforward and idyllic; none of those horrible romantic complications that one expects from a Girton

"Oh, it has, has it?" Yolande's voice was softer than ever. I felt in my bones that for some reason

"I will go and put up the shutters," I said, for I felt that I was out of place in this confidence.

"No, don't," said Yolande, with a curious stiffness in her voice. "Do you really mean, Chloe, that

"That the tenant worshipped the ground under your pretty feet?" said my wife. "Well, yes."

"You are strangely mistaken," Yolande said, very deliberately. "I am going to marry a man you

"Then I must offer you more formal and less wellinformed congratulations," said I. "What is his

Our tenant's name was something quite different. A silence followed that none of us knew how to

"My dear girl, how annoying you must have thought us. I am so sorry. I wish I hadn't saidI

"It's all right," said Yolande, in an odd, stifled voice; "but really, if you want romance"

"Yolande, I don't understand you tonight." Chloe was making horseshoes in her forehead. "Tell

us what you wish to tell us. I am afraid of you. I don't like to ask you anything."

"Why should you, when it's so beautifully tame and idyllic? But I'll tell you a story if you like."

Chloe stroked her hair timidly, and I, in sheer embarrassment, refilled my pipe.

"Imagine a young woman, tolerably well educated and very cocksure about everything. She

meets a man, and they like each other. Then they quarreloh, never mind what aboutand the man goes to

India, and she is very sorry. And then he writes that he is coming back, and will she see him on Christmas

Day? And she says yesand tomorrow is Christmas Day. And all this time they've both been perfectly

"But I don't like it so well, Yolande," I said, "because there is more to the story. May I hit out

"Strike here," she said, remembering, and with a smile that seemed to me unmeaning she folded

"Well, then," I said, "this is, as you say, the room for confidences. It is the Palace of Truth."

"Well, it's jolly well going to be," I said, in some irritation. "You must own, dear and foolish

lady, that our mistake was natural. You have walked and talked, played chess, bicycled, gone to football

"He at least will not be satisfied to know that all this was merely done to pass the time while you

"It oughtn't to," I said; "it won't amuse him. I like the tenant, and I think you've behaved

atrociously to him. Now, forgive me for easing my mind, and let's never recur to the subject again."

"But," said Yolande, in a small, meek voice, "he is engaged to another girlher name is

"And even so," I said, "if ever I saw true love in a man's eyes I've seen it in his when he looked at

you. Jane, indeed! And all your interest in sportthe thing you used to hate most?"

Yolande was silent a moment. Then she said: "Len, I haven't been scolded like this for years. I

"You don't know how much we do care," said my wife, gently. "But, Len, what is the use?"

"Suppose," said Yolande, slowly, "one had quarrelled with the other onethe one in

Indiabecause he would hunt and one thought it cruel. Don't you think one might have tried to learn to like

"I've said my say," said I, "and I hope you've forgiven me. Our tenant may be engaged to fifty

"Yes," she said, softly. "Yes." Then she flashed a dazzling, illuminating smile at us and put her

I think I may be pardoned for taking Yolande by the shoulders and shaking her as she held out to

Chloe's eyes a trembling left hand on which shone the gold signet ring which I had noted a hundred times on

"Then why did you say it was so flat and unromantic, and drive me to inventing a romance for

you? It was all your fault, Chloe. No, there isn't any man in India. There isn't any man at all but the

onethere never has been. Now you're not to crow over me and say you told me so, for it's all quite different

from what you think. We shall start on a basis of mutual esteemno, you needn't laughand I will never

sew a button on for him or make him a pudding as long as I live. Goodnight. Thank you for your scolding,

"I'll come and put you to bed," said Chloe. "It's all Len's fault. If he hadn't been here I should

never have put your dear, foolish back up. But I never thought you could have told such wicked stories. I

am blind, and stupid, but I have wit enough left to unhook your gown and brush your hair. Come!"

When they had gone I turned idly to the table. There lay an unfinished drawing of my wife'sa

child with an impossibly foreshortened arm carrying a jug in two dimensions, on a head like a deformed

cocoanut. I looked at it for a little while and then set to work. The sketch was spirited, and I had a certain

pleasure in working it out, a pleasure so engrossing that I did not hear the door open, and my heart leaped like

a fish with a pike after it as two hands fell on my shoulders, and I knew that my secret was discoveredthat

henceforth not Yolande, not the ghost, but I myself must carry the praise or blame due to the finisher of

Chloe's pictures. I turned my head and kissed the hand that lay on my left shoulder, the hand with my

weddingring on it. She ruffled my hair with the other hand, and, "Thank you, dear," she said, simply.

"For that and everythingfor all the trouble you've taken with my silly drawings. I'm glad I

caught you at it, you dear, industrious beaver. I've wanted to tell youoh, for such a long time!how clever

"But you thought it was Yolandeyou know you did," I said, turning in my chair so that my arm

"I know you thought I did," she said, "and I never could understand how you could think me so

silly. Why, Yolande couldn't begin to do the drawings you've done! My silly boy, do you suppose I haven't

got heaps and heaps of your old drawings put away? Did you really think that I shouldn't know your touch

"I did; I was a fool, dear. And you're a darling. But I ought to quarrel with you. Good wives don't

"It wasn't my secret," she said, blinking at me in surprise. "It was your secret. And you were so

fond of it, I couldn't bear to take it from you. And I always thought you'd tell me some day. Wouldn't you

have? Why didn't you? I gave you lots of chances. Don't you rememberwhen I asked what you wanted the

"Did I? Well the principle's the same, isn't it?" You see how good and kind I am. I'm not a bit

angry with you for keeping secrets from me. If I'd kept a secret like that from you you'd have been frightfully

"Ferocious. But then you couldn't," I said, confidently. "And you really like the drawings?"

"You know," she said; "and I'm so awfully pleased to see how clever you are. Len, I like you to

"I think I could talk better grammar," I said, "if I tried very hard indeed, with both hands and all

"It was very nice and funny to see you nursing your dear littlebig secret, and all the time it was

"Madam," I said, "you have deceived and betrayed me. I will go and put up the shutters and

"She is very happy. I must have talked like a tract or an aunt to have driven her to such extremes.

But it is all exactly as I said, perfectly simple and idyllic, and the happiest thing in the worldalmost"

"Oh, almost directly. There's nothing to wait for. They are going to take on the other cottage and

run a covered way across the garden, and have their kitchen and diningroom and her study there and his

study and their sittingroom in the other one. They've arranged it all in the most delightfully practical and

prosaic way. And she'll want her furniture. They are to have separate studies, and always knock at each

other's study doors, and neither is to be offended if the other says: 'You can't come in. I don't want you!'"

"Oh, that's all over. She won't have any more pupils. She's going to write a book on the Higher

"And she wants her furniture? Well, we have the furniture that was in the cellar, and we can go

about, byandby, and pick up beautiful odd things here and there. We can afford to now."

"We make a good bit of money by both," I said. "I think we must give Yolande a very, very

"Yes, but quite apart from the money, which do you like doing best? Do tell me. Tell me straight

"Well, then," I said, "I've got rather fond of drawing; I suppose because it's not my work, but

yours. As Yolande says, we are incurably prone to do anything rather than our own proper work."

"Yes," she said, "we are. Go and put up the shutters now, Len, and don't be hours about it, or I

"My father met a burglar once," I said. "He heard a row and went down, and when he didn't come

back my mother thought he might have been overpowered, so she took the bedroom poker and went down to

"Well, she went down very softly, and there was a light in the kitchen, and there was the burglar

in the armchair, telling a piteous tale, and my father making cocoa for him over the spiritlamp!"

"He was a darling," said Chloe, "and so are you; but we're out of cocoa. You must give the

"Yes; it's Christmas Day, I know, Len. We were talking about secrets just now, and you said I

"I do not advise you to try," I said, taking her hands in mine. They were cold, and they trembled a

"It's absurd," she said, trying to laugh. "I always thought it would be so easy to tell you, and now

it is so difficult. You must tell me things firstsilly thingsto give me courage."

I told her several. Then we sat silent. Presently I said: "My pussykitten, have you really

something serious to tell me? Or is it only that you are upset over this business of Yolande? Don't worry over

trifles, dearest and best, but if there is really anything you want to tell me, tell me now. It can't be anything

"I'm not at all sure about that." She spoke with a gleam of soft mischief in her eyes. "You're very

kind and trusting, Len, butohseriously, I believe you'll hate me when I tell you."

"Then tell me at once," I said. "Don't tantalize me with this promise of a wholly new sensation."

"I'm not, but I won't have you make mountains out of molehills. Come, show me the molehill

and we'll trample it together. Why, silly Chloe, your hands are like ice, and how they tremble! Out with it"

"I don't think I'll tell you at all," she said. "You ought to be clever enough to find out. Besides,

She rose suddenly. "No, I won't tell you tonight," she said. "You don't really want to hear it."

I rose, too. "You will tell me tonight," I said, holding her hands. "My dear, how can you tease

"Cross! My dear, delightful, clever, wonderful genius of a pussykitten! If you only knew how

I've worried and wondered. And it was you all the timeyou, you, you! Oh, what a fool I've been! But I've

been punished for my folly. Chloe, I've come very near to hating Yolande, and all the time it was younot

Yolande or the ghost, but you, who were writing all those wonderful endings to my silly stories! Sit down on

your throne and let me do you homage." I put her back in the rockingchair and knelt before her.

"I meant to tell you at first," she said, "but when you thought it was Yolande, I thought it was so

funny and stupid of you, because she doesn't really see half the things I put in the stories."

"Funny and stupid, indeed," I echoed. "You were wiser. You do see things. And tell me, Chloe,

"Why, writing, of course!" she said, "because it's not my work, but yours. Yolande was quite

"Oh, must I?" she asked, wistfully. "I thought it would be so nice if we put both our names. And

to the drawings, too. Because you do invent plots better than I do, and I can do sketches. Then it would all be

"Very well," I said; "better than well! Ours be it. As you've said once, or more than once, it

doesn't matter a straw which of us does the work, as long as it is us, and not Yolande or the ghost."

"What about grammar now? And trying with both hands? Len, it's Christmas Day by the clock.

I've got a present for you. It's a booken with pretty, pretty pikkies, but I sha'n't give it to you till it's real, live,

"You've given me a most lovely present," I said, "a beautiful brandnew secret of your very own.

To think that my wife's an authoran author of genius! I never thought to see the day."

"Don't peacock!" she said. "You've nothing to be so proud about. I'm as well off as you are. My

husband's an artistan artist of genius! But I knew all the time, didn't I, and you didn't, so I must be much

"Isn't that what I've been saying? Twenty times cleverer and a thousand times as dear."

"I never could do sums," she said, "but I did manage to put two and two together about the

YOLANDE was marriedshe was married at Elmhurst church, Chloe and I her only supporters.

And after the wedding we all walked quietly down together from the church and said "Goodbye" to them at

the door of their cottage, through whose windows the welcoming firelight shone out into the cheerless

"What an ideal beginning to a honeymoon!" said my wife. "Fancy walking straight home to

your own house. No broughams and slippers and things, no long railway journey and horrid hotels and

lodgings, with the rice dropping out of you in showers every time you move an inch, and everybody grinning

"It's a warmer wedding than that," said I, "That description always chills me to the bone, And

does it matter so much where you go, as long as you go together? I seem to remember a hideous parlor at

"Yes," she said, "but this is best. Who knows how much happier we should have been if we'd

"We should never have been able to leave it," said I. "It's better as it is. Suppose I had been wise

"And we had never come to the Red House! Yes, it's all my doing, Lenthe only thing I'm really

and truly proud of. It's Yolande's doing, partly, but it's mine, too. Our lines have fallen unto us in pleasant

places. Come in. I feel as if it was us who had just been married and were going home to our own house. It's

oddI always feel that we've only just been married, and yet that we've been married ever since we can

We were, indeed, fortunate. Chloe's daring adoption of the Red House as our home had been

generously repaid. Instead of being the white elephant as which it had sometimes sought to disguise itself, it

was now a credit to us, and an unchanging joy. Our cottages were let, and our garden. Our work in the Red

House had been prosperous, the memories that had grown up there were precious, the hopes more precious

still. Mary was happier than ever, now that she had a small servanther slender personalty wholly justified

by our prosperity and our futureto teach and order about and be kind to. Our lives were peaceful, ordered,

incredibly pleasant. And if I still sometimes cleaned a candlestick or a sword, and Chloe now and then

washed china or dusted the white parlor, not even Yolande could complain that we neglected our work to

Chloe remarked one day that we had grown uninteresting. Our earlier domestic adventures, she

declared, might have been made really amusing by a competent narrator, but now nothing happened to us

"Ah, wait," I said, "my regretful optimist; things will go on happening to us all our lives long.

This is only an 'easy.' We are in a peaceful backwater just now. We shall be pulling against the stream again

"It's not polite of you to say so. Even the plural pronoun doesn't redeem that speech. I don't find

"It's all quite dull and flat," she went on, scorning to take up the gauntlet; "and the worst of it is, it

is so beautiful when things are flat and dull. I hardly dare to draw my breath for fear something should

happen. Things that happen are always horrid. It's the times when nothing happens that are too good for one

"Nice things do happen sometimes," I said, softly. "Besides, we have the interest of watching

Yolande just now. She won't elude our vigilance forever; sooner or later she'll justify your prediction and be

"Even that won't be a very wonderful happening," said my wife; "though so far, I confess, she has

lived up to her ideals most nobly. He supports her in her resolution to keep her fingers clean of housework,

and the ferret's wife does all her sewing. It's us that things don't happen to any more. And, oh, Len, I don't

want anything to happen. Don't you notice that we hardly ever even quarrel now?"

"We used to be snarky sometimesmuch snarkier than we are now. Why is it? Is it because we

"We were never poor enough to throw the teacups at each other's heads," I said, "even in our

"It's winter aconite," she informed me. "It has a prettier name, but I've forgotten it. It's very late. I

We were walking slowly round the garden, where the crocuses showed green and gold, and the

birds were singing like mad. The spikes and buds of the daffodils made green patches, and the blue squills

were out. The pigeons on the farmroof were preening their shining breasts, nestling up to each other,

"You can hear quite well what they're saying," said Chloe. "Listen: 'Look at us two! Look at us

"So they ought to be," I said; "it's a happy day. There's no doubt at all now that spring will come

again. I've only half believed it all these winter months. How neat that marketgardener man has made

everything! I do hope we sha'n't loathe it in the summer when we walk in it and remember how sweet and

untidy and allovertheplace it was last year. That would be a happening, indeed."

"If we are both alive and in this garden together in the summer we sha'n't hate anything much,

shall we? Very well, I won't, if you hate it so, but it's silly not to face things. People do die sometimes, you

"I won't have it," I said, firmly. "Dearest and silliest, you must not scratch my heart with those

kitty claws of yours, or I shall be sorry I ever let you have it to play with. I'd rather quarrel with you. As you

say, we've neglected that pastime shockingly. Let us begin. Come, think of something to quarrel about, and

you shall see what reserve forces of crude disagreeableness I have been getting ready all these dear months.

"Don't," I heard her say. "I don't want to claw you. It claws me just as much. You don't know how

silly I am. I can't bear to let you out of my sight, because, perhaps, I sha'n't be able to be with you very much

longer. Len dear, we know each other so well; we've been such friends, too, haven't we? We've been so

happy. It makes me frightened. And now it's so peaceful; I feel as if things were gathering together for some

"Yes, you do," she went on, holding me more closely. "You do, you do, but you pretend you

aren't afraid of anything, because you think it makes me cheerful. It doesn't. I hate to think that we're

pretending to each othernow. So I tell you plainly, Len, I'm very, very frightened, and you know it, and so

are you, and I know that, and if you'd only let me look straight at it, perhaps I shouldn't be so frightened. Oh,

there are so many things I want to say to you. There, I won't any more. Let me take your arm, and we'll walk

quietly and respectably like good children, and you must let me say anything I like, and you mustn't try not to

say everything that comes into your head, and you're not to try to cheer me up, because I can't bear it."

So we walked and talked. And, indeed, such talk, while it intensified my own aching passion of

tenderness and solicitude, did, by its frank revelation of that passion, do more to calm and cheer my wife than

all my brave pretence it was braveof confident fearlessness had ever done. But I have written already

more than is needed. It is because, when I remember that time, I cannot well command my thought; and my

pen, seeing its superior officer in mutiny, mutinies too. For it was March now, and the time of our great fear

Strangely enough, after that day it was Chloe who made the brave pretences and I who clung to

her, imploring her to teach me her courage and confidence. Once again in the history of the Red House my

The hushed peace that brooded over us folded us in wings too soft and close to let any breath of

outside tempest come near. Yolande and the tenant talked to us, as it were, through a soft, warm veil. Our

relationsoh, fortunate destiny that was ours!kept away. Chloe's mother (who is as nice as any one could

be who is not Chloe, and is twice Chloe's age) sprained an opportune ankle and could not come to us as she

had intended, and as I had thought I wished. So that my wife and I had these last daysthe last, as we

alternately prayed and fearedalone together. The doings of Yolande and Yolande's husband were like a

bright, gay embroidery on the rich fabric of our quiet happiness. And the time drew near.

It was on the 1st of Aprila too appropriate date, as Yolande afterwards bewailedthat Chloe

suddenly realized, in an imperative shock, that there was a certain Japanese dressingjacket pattern without

which she could not be happy another moment. She had the stuff to make it, a demurely eccentric

Easternpatterned silk; she also had the materiala dull, soft bluefor what she called the revers. I suppose

So she left a halfwritten story of the very strongest possible "domestic interest" (it was, indeed,

for she was to get twenty pounds for the finished article) to go down to Yolande's cottage and borrow this

priceless pattern which Yolande was known to possess. She had bought it among others for the guidance of

the dressmaker who prepared her trousseau. And I, almost without a pang, abandoned a nearly finished

The buds were gray and green on the trees, on the lilacs the buds were bronze, and carmine on the

creeper. The daffodils were out, and the tulips rigid with the energy of pride and promise. Everything that

makes the glory of the summer garden was pushing up green leaves and crying: "I am coming, I am

comingonly be patient! And don't disturb me, for I am very busy making flowers for you. Wait, and you

shall see!" The birds' song was almost as intense as in the first pairingtime. We walked up the neat cottage

garden, and we remembered the days of Prosser and the rags and the dead mouse and the muttonbone. Now

the garden was all trim and neat, and the earth had stirred in her sleep and thrown out handfuls of primroses

and violets and early red tulips, just to show what she could do, and to remind us what she would do for us

We knocked at the cottage door. It was a very nice knockerold brass. Yolandeunder my

guidancehad picked it up for sevenpence at a ragandbottle shop in Deptford. There was a long pause.

Usually the door was opened almost coincidently with the fall of the knocker by pretty, fairhaired,

cheeryfaced Mrs. Bates, but now we stood long on the narrow doorstep and heard from within sounds of

scuffling and rustling. We had time to see how right Browning was when he said, "The leafbuds on the vine

are woolly," and how very long before their white perfection come the green pledges of the annunciation

We knocked again. The scuffle or rustle assured us that some one was within. The leisure of our

next waiting showed us the auriculas"honeyflowers" our grandmothers used to call them; "dusty millers"

the countryfolk call them stillglowing in their soft shades of primrose and orange and red and purple.

But when one desires, with all one's soul, the cutout paper pattern of a Japanese dressingjacket

for which one has already the material, even auriculas cannot charm away desire for long.

This time it was Chloe who knocked; she knocked vehemently, and almost on the instant the door

was opened by our tenant in personour tenant, resplendent in speckless frockcoat and gleaming high

hatthe armor in which he habitually leaves his home to fight with beasts in the newspaperoffices of Fleet

"I'm rushing for my train," he said, hurriedly, and, indeed, its smoke showed already beyond the

gray veil of leafbuds on the trees of our railway embankment. "I'm glad you've come. I wanted to send for

"Oh, nothinga domestic crisis. Yolande's coping with it. She loathes a crisis in little, but she's

coping with it with the detail of a dictionary and the generalship of aof a general. I've no time to turn the

phrase." He tore off down the red path, shouting as he went, "I say, Yo, I'll bring home something cold for

We were left planted on the doorstep. The next moment Yolande came down the stairsthey

lead, sans phrases, from the bedrooms into the diningroomand stood before us, a changed, a transfigured

Yolande. Her stuff dress of dull Venetian red was pinned up over a delicious petticoat of mauve silk and lace;

she wore an apronone of Mrs. Bates's, I knew at once by its tasteful Nottingham trimmingsand over her

bright hair she had pinned a white silk handkerchief that conscientiously strove to look like a mobcap.

"Pray come in," she said, in a bitter travesty of hospitality. "Come in and gloat over my sorrows.

Come in and tell me how you always told me so. 'This is the most unkindest cut of all''Earl Percy sees my

"I'd rather be a dog and bay the morn," she went on, pretending to tear her pretty hair,

"I'm a housemaid," she said, tragically"a housemaid, and a parlormaid, and a cook, and a

boy in buttons, and a butler, and a footman, and a person who mends socks and sews on buttons. The ferret's

"Of course she asked me. And what could I say? Of course I said I could manage perfectly. And

now I am managing perfectly. It's been going on since yesterday morning. Have some bottled beer? 'It's not

With this last quotation she sat down and poured out foaming beer for herself and usat

"We've been up since the middle of the night," she went on, setting down her empty tumbler.

"We're both involved in one common ruin. He lit the fires; I got the breakfast. Then he found he had no socks

mended, andand there were buttons. Chloe, Chloe! I darned his socks, but I did not sew on his buttons.

He did that. I think he'll get shirts with studs for the future. The needle broke and the end went into his finger.

Fortunately, I'd attended classes onwhat do you call it?'first injuries to the aided,' or somethingso I

was able to bandage his wounds; but it all took time, and he's two trains late already. I am prostratea worm

at your intruding feet, for you've no business to come here in the morning and see my disgrace. But since you

are here, I'll confess. I almost wish I had learned to do things like this before."

"Confess a little more, my darling housemaid, page, and cook," said Chloe, "and then I'll help you

"What am I to confess?" asked Yolande. Her eyes were bright, and in her cheeks shone the

"Confess that you like doing housework and making breakfast and darning socks in your own

"I hate it," said Yolande, firmly, but her eyes betrayed her; "but even if I liked it, it doesn't effect

what I used to say to you. I used to tell you that you ought not to neglect your proper work for orgies of

dishwashing and knifecleaning or wild revels of woodchopping. And no more you ought. But if I choose

to do it, I may. If I choose to concentrate myself on it, I can do it as well as you can. And in a crisisit is my

We helped in the housework; it was to us a holiday excursiona treat to good children.

Incidentally, in the course of it we observed several things. One, that the two studies were now in one house,

and that the door between them had been taken off its hinges and replaced by an Indian curtain drawn back in

folds too stiff and formal to allow one to suppose for an instant that it was ever drawn across the doorway.

Two, that Yolande had a workbasket, and that from it peeped a halfhemmed man's necktie, and a

halfknitted man's sock. Third But why sing songs of triumph over the vanquished? Yolande had found

her happiness where we had found it, so let my last words of her leave her there.

And now, if I might, I would leave here certain blank pages to speak for me of certain April days,

I always look with wonder alternating with envy on those men who can set down, in black and

white, the heights of their joy, the depths of their trouble. And I marvel whether they have less imagination

than I, or more. Chloe can do this thingand in a woman one can only envy the faculty; it is that which

For my part, when I think of those days my lips are closed like the lips of the dead, and my pen

falls from between my fingers. So, because, somehow, those days should be recorded, I long for the blank

pages, on which every man who loves his wife should read for himself what his heart would write for him

And now it was May, and the sweetplumed lilac was out, the red and white hawthorns were in

budround, shining beads of coral and pearl. The garden had forgotten the lean days of winter and was all

curves and softnesses in its new green gown; fat thrushes hopped and pecked on the wide, wet lawns. The

yellow tulips stood up like tall lamps above the delicate brocade of the forgetmenots and their leaves. It

was midMay, and this was the morning which Chloe has chosen, since it is Saturday and a whole holiday, to

They arrived, much neater than I had expected, and when Chloe had greeted themshe

"I've something new to show yousomething new and nice. Come upstairs and let's look at it."

Chloe always would go up the stairs two steps at a time when anything she wanted was at the top

of them. The children now, lightfooted, heavybooted, followed, clattering, her flying Turkishslippered

She led them to our loaferynow transformed in many undreamedof ways, but with its

"Rather," said the boy they call Oswald. "It's one of the things we found in your secret cellar that

The girls had made a rush forward, with the prettiest "Oh!" of wonder and delight.

The smallest boy of all put his fat legs very far apart. "Why," said he, in a tone of positive injury,

"Don't you think a baby's rather a good thing to put in a cradle?" I said, meekly.

The girls were gloating over the cradle in the most charming feminine attitudes. I should have

"The dear! the precious!" they said, in chorus. "What color are its eyes? Is it a boy or a girl?

"Its eyes are blueat present," I said, "and it is a girl. And we call it the PussyKitten."

"I should have thought you would have called it after some one with a real namean aunt or

"So I did. I called it after the dearest and best and prettiest lady in the world."

I could not help a glance at Chloe; she certainly did grow prettier every day, and as for

The second boy, Dickie, surprised my glance. "Oh," he said, with obvious cessation of interest,

He indicated Chloe by a not discourteous gesture, and instantly asked if they might not go and see

Permission given, they swept away like a tidal wave, and we heard their boots sound fainter and

"It is hard, isn't it," I said, meeting her eyes across the cradle, "to lose one's high estateeven

"Is it?" she said, covering up a fat, pink fist thrust out from beneath the pink eiderdown.

"To have been a princess and then to be merely a queen! To have been a pussykitten and to have

"It sounds like a riddle," I went on. "Would you rather bea pussykitten or a pussycat? Do

"Oh yes," she said, softly, "I know the answer; I know the answer very well, indeed. And

youaren't you proud to have such a collection of pussiesa pussycat and a pussykitten?"

"Yes," I said, and across the cradle we kissed each other for the last time in this story. "You know