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Schools and Schools

Short Stories

"Fox-in-the-Morning"

A Bird of Bagdad

A Blackjack Bargainer

A Call Loan

A Chaparral Christmas Gift

A Chaparral Prince

A Comedy in Rubber

A Cosmopolite in a Cafe

A Departmental Case

A Dinner at--------*

A Double-Dyed Deceiver

A Fog in Santone

A Harlem Tragedy

A Lickpenny Lover

A Little Local Colour

A Little Talk about Mobs

A Madison Square Arabian Night

A Matter of Mean Elevation

A Midsummer Knight's Dream

A Midsummer Masquerade

A Municipal Report

A Newspaper Story

A Night in New Arabia

A Philistine in Bohemia

A Poor Rule

A Ramble in Aphasia

A Retrieved Reformation

A Ruler of Men

A Sacrifice Hit

A Service of Love

A Snapshot at the President

A Strange Story

A Technical Error

A Tempered Wind

According to Their Lights

After Twenty Years

An Adjustment of Nature

An Afternoon Miracle

An Apology

An Unfinished Christmas Story

An Unfinished Story

Aristocracy Versus Hash

Art and the Bronco

At Arms With Morpheus

Babes in the Jungle

Best-Seller

Between Rounds

Bexar Scrip No. 2692

Blind Man's Holiday

Brickdust Row

Buried Treasure

By Courier

Calloway's Code

Caught

Cherchez La Femme

Christmas by Injunction

Compliments of the Season

Confessions of a Humorist

Conscience in Art

Cupid a La Carte

Cupid's Exile Number Two

Dickey

Dougherty's Eye-Opener

Elsie in New York

Extradited from Bohemia

Fickle Fortune or How Gladys Hustled

Friends in San Rosario

From Each According to His Ability

From the Cabby's Seat

Georgia's Ruling

Girl

He Also Serves

Hearts and Crosses

Hearts and Hands

Helping the Other Fellow

Holding Up a Train

Hostages to Momus

Hygeia at the Solito

Innocents of Broadway

Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet

Jimmy Hayes and Muriel

Law and Order

Let Me Feel Your Pulse

Little Speck in Garnered Fruit

Lord Oakhurst's Curse

Lost on Dress Parade

Madame Bo-Peep, of the Ranches

Makes the Whole World Kin

Mammon and the Archer

Man About Town

Masters of Arts

Memoirs of a Yellow Dog

Modern Rural Sports

Money Maze

Nemesis and the Candy Man

New York by Camp Fire Light

Next to Reading Matter

No Story

October and June

On Behalf of the Management

One Dollar's Worth

One Thousand Dollars

Out of Nazareth

Past One at Rooney's

Phoebe

Proof of the Pudding

Psyche and the Pskyscraper

Queries and Answers

Roads of Destiny

Roses, Ruses and Romance

Rouge et Noir

Round the Circle

Rus in Urbe

Schools and Schools

Seats of the Haughty

Shearing the Wolf

Ships

Shoes

Sisters of the Golden Circle

Smith

Sociology in Serge and Straw

Sound and Fury

Springtime a La Carte

Squaring the Circle

Strictly Business

Strictly Business

Suite Homes and Their Romance

Telemachus, Friend

The Admiral

The Adventures of Shamrock Jolnes

The Assessor of Success

The Atavism of John Tom Little Bear

The Badge of Policeman O'Roon

The Brief Debut of Tildy

The Buyer From Cactus City

The Caballero's Way

The Cactus

The Caliph and the Cad

The Caliph, Cupid and the Clock

The Call of the Tame

The Chair of Philanthromathematics

The Champion of the Weather

The Church with an Overshot-Wheel

The City of Dreadful Night

The Clarion Call

The Coming-Out of Maggie

The Complete Life of John Hopkins

The Cop and the Anthem

The Count and the Wedding Guest

The Country of Elusion

The Day Resurgent

The Day We Celebrate

The Defeat of the City

The Detective Detector

The Diamond of Kali

The Discounters of Money

The Dog and the Playlet

The Door of Unrest

The Dream

The Duel

The Duplicity of Hargraves

The Easter of the Soul

The Emancipation of Billy

The Enchanted Kiss

The Enchanted Profile

The Ethics of Pig

The Exact Science of Matrimony

The Ferry of Unfulfilment

The Fifth Wheel

The Flag Paramount

The Fool-Killer

The Foreign Policy of Company 99

The Fourth in Salvador

The Friendly Call

The Furnished Room

The Gift of the Magi

The Girl and the Graft

The Girl and the Habit

The Gold That Glittered

The Greater Coney

The Green Door

The Guardian of the Accolade

The Guilty Party - An East Side Tragedy

The Halberdier of the Little Rheinschloss

The Hand that Riles the World

The Handbook of Hymen

The Harbinger

The Head-Hunter

The Hiding of Black Bill

The Higher Abdication

The Higher Pragmatism

The Hypotheses of Failure

The Indian Summer of Dry Valley Johnson

The Lady Higher Up

The Last Leaf

The Last of the Troubadours

The Lonesome Road

The Lost Blend

The Lotus And The Bottle

The Love-Philtre of Ikey Schoenstein

The Making of a New Yorker

The Man Higher Up

The Marionettes

The Marquis and Miss Sally

The Marry Month of May

The Memento

The Missing Chord

The Moment of Victory

The Octopus Marooned

The Passing of Black Eagle

The Pendulum

The Phonograph and the Graft

The Pimienta Pancakes

The Plutonian Fire

The Poet and the Peasant

The Pride of the Cities

The Princess and the Puma

The Prisoner of Zembla

The Proem

The Purple Dress

The Ransom of Mack

The Ransom of Red Chief

The Rathskeller and the Rose

The Red Roses of Tonia

The Reformation of Calliope

The Remnants of the Code

The Renaissance at Charleroi

The Roads We Take

The Robe of Peace

The Romance of a Busy Broker

The Rose of Dixie

The Rubaiyat of a Scotch Highball

The Rubber Plant's Story

The Shamrock and the Palm

The Shocks of Doom

The Skylight Room

The Sleuths

The Snow Man

The Social Triangle

The Song and the Sergeant

The Sparrows in Madison Square

The Sphinx Apple

The Tale of a Tainted Tenner

The Theory and the Hound

The Thing's the Play

The Third Ingredient

The Trimmed Lamp

The Unknown Quantity

The Unprofitable Servant

The Venturers

The Vitagraphoscope

The Voice of the City

The Whirligig of Life

The World and the Door

Thimble, Thimble

Tictocq

To Him Who Waits

Tobin's Palm

Tommy's Burglar

Tracked to Doom

Transformation of Martin Burney

Transients in Arcadia

Two Recalls

Two Renegades

Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen

Ulysses and the Dogman

Vanity and Some Sables

What You Want

While the Auto Waits

Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking

Witches' Loaves







I


Old Jerome Warren lived in a hundred-thousand-dollar house at 35 East
Fifty-Soforth Street. He was a down-town broker, so rich that he
could afford to walk--for his health--a few blocks in the direction of
his office every morning, and then call a cab.

He had an adopted son, the son of an old friend named Gilbert--Cyril
Scott could play him nicely--who was becoming a successful painter as
fast as he could squeeze the paint out of his tubes. Another member
of the household was Barbara Ross, a stepniece. Man is born to
trouble; so, as old Jerome had no family of his own, he took up the
burdens of others.

Gilbert and Barbara got along swimmingly. There was a tacit and
tactical understanding all round that the two would stand up under a
floral bell some high noon, and promise the minister to keep old
Jerome's money in a state of high commotion. But at this point
complications must be introduced.

Thirty years before, when old Jerome was young Jerome, there was a
brother of his named Dick. Dick went West to seek his or somebody
else's fortune. Nothing was heard of him until one day old Jerome had
a letter from his brother. It was badly written on ruled paper that
smelled of salt bacon and coffee-grounds. The writing was asthmatic
and the spelling St. Vitusy.

It appeared that instead of Dick having forced Fortune to stand and
deliver, he had been held up himself, and made to give hostages to the
enemy. That is, as his letter disclosed, he was on the point of
pegging out with a complication of disorders that even whiskey had
failed to check. All that his thirty years of prospecting had netted
him was one daughter, nineteen years old, as per invoice, whom he was
shipping East, charges prepaid, for Jerome to clothe, feed, educate,
comfort, and cherish for the rest of her natural life or until
matrimony should them part.

Old Jerome was a board-walk. Everybody knows that the world is
supported by the shoulders of Atlas; and that Atlas stands on a rail-
fence; and that the rail-fence is built on a turtle's back. Now, the
turtle has to stand on something; and that is a board-walk made of men
like old Jerome.

I do not know whether immortality shall accrue to man; but if not so,
I would like to know when men like old Jerome get what is due them?

They met Nevada Warren at the station. She was a little girl, deeply
sunburned and wholesomely good-looking, with a manner that was frankly
unsophisticated, yet one that not even a cigar-drummer would intrude
upon without thinking twice. Looking at her, somehow you would expect
to see her in a short skirt and leather leggings, shooting glass balls
or taming mustangs. But in her plain white waist and black skirt she
sent you guessing again. With an easy exhibition of strength she
swung along a heavy valise, which the uniformed porters tried in vain
to wrest from her.

"I am sure we shall be the best of friends," said Barbara, pecking at
the firm, sunburned cheek.

"I hope so," said Nevada.

"Dear little niece," said old Jerome, "you are as welcome to my home
as if it were your father's own."

"Thanks," said Nevada.

"And I am going to call you 'cousin,'" said Gilbert, with his charming
smile.

"Take the valise, please," said Nevada. "It weighs a million pounds.
It's got samples from six of dad's old mines in it," she explained to
Barbara. "I calculate they'd assay about nine cents to the thousand
tons, but I promised him to bring them along."


II


It is a common custom to refer to the usual complication between one
man and two ladies, or one lady and two men, or a lady and a man and a
nobleman, or--well, any of those problems--as the triangle. But they
are never unqualified triangles. They are always isosceles--never
equilateral. So, upon the coming of Nevada Warren, she and Gilbert
and Barbara Ross lined up into such a figurative triangle; and of that
triangle Barbara formed the hypotenuse.

One morning old Jerome was lingering long after breakfast over the
dullest morning paper in the city before setting forth to his down-
town fly-trap. He had become quite fond of Nevada, finding in her
much of his dead brother's quiet independence and unsuspicious
frankness.

A maid brought in a note for Miss Nevada Warren.

"A messenger-boy delivered it at the door, please," she said. "He's
waiting for an answer."

Nevada, who was whistling a Spanish waltz between her teeth, and
watching the carriages and autos roll by in the street, took the
envelope. She knew it was from Gilbert, before she opened it, by the
little gold palette in the upper left-hand corner.

After tearing it open she pored over the contents for a while,
absorbedly. Then, with a serious face, she went and stood at her
uncle's elbow.

"Uncle Jerome, Gilbert is a nice boy, isn't he?"

"Why, bless the child!" said old Jerome, crackling his paper loudly;
"of course he is. I raised him myself."

"He wouldn't write anything to anybody that wasn't exactly--I mean
that everybody couldn't know and read, would he?"

"I'd just like to see him try it," said uncle, tearing a handful from
his newspaper. "Why, what--"

"Read this note he just sent me, uncle, and see if you think it's all
right and proper. You see, I don't know much about city people and
their ways."

Old Jerome threw his paper down and set both his feet upon it. He
took Gilbert's note and fiercely perused it twice, and then a third
time.

"Why, child," said he, "you had me almost excited, although I was sure
of that boy. He's a duplicate of his father, and he was a gilt-edged
diamond. He only asks if you and Barbara will be ready at four
o'clock this afternoon for an automobile drive over to Long Island. I
don't see anything to criticise in it except the stationery. I always
did hate that shade of blue."

"Would it be all right to go?" asked Nevada, eagerly.

"Yes, yes, yes, child; of course. Why not? Still, it pleases me to
see you so careful and candid. Go, by all means."

"I didn't know," said Nevada, demurely. "I thought I'd ask you.
Couldn't you go with us, uncle?"

"I? No, no, no, no! I've ridden once in a car that boy was driving.
Never again! But it's entirely proper for you and Barbara to go. Yes,
yes. But I will not. No, no, no, no!"

Nevada flew to the door, and said to the maid:

"You bet we'll go. I'll answer for Miss Barbara. Tell the boy to say
to Mr. Warren, 'You bet we'll go.'"

"Nevada," called old Jerome, "pardon me, my dear, but wouldn't it be
as well to send him a note in reply? Just a line would do."

"No, I won't bother about that," said Nevada, gayly. "Gilbert will
understand--he always does. I never rode in an automobile in my life;
but I've paddled a canoe down Little Devil River through the Lost
Horse Canon, and if it's any livelier than that I'd like to know!"


III


Two months are supposed to have elapsed.

Barbara sat in the study of the hundred-thousand-dollar house. It was
a good place for her. Many places are provided in the world where men
and women may repair for the purpose of extricating themselves from
divers difficulties. There are cloisters, wailing-places, watering-
places, confessionals, hermitages, lawyer's offices, beauty parlors,
air-ships, and studies; and the greatest of these are studies.

It usually takes a hypotenuse a long time to discover that it is the
longest side of a triangle. But it's a long
line that has no turning.

Barbara was alone. Uncle Jerome and Nevada had gone to the theatre.
Barbara had not cared to go. She wanted to stay at home and study in
the study. If you, miss, were a stunning New York girl, and saw every
day that a brown, ingenuous Western witch was getting hobbles and a
lasso on the young man you wanted for yourself, you, too, would lose
taste for the oxidized-silver setting of a musical comedy.

Barbara sat by the quartered-oak library table. Her right arm rested
upon the table, and her dextral fingers nervously manipulated a sealed
letter. The letter was addressed to Nevada Warren; and in the upper
left-hand corner of the envelope was Gilbert's little gold palette.
It had been delivered at nine o'clock, after Nevada had left.

Barbara would have given her pearl necklace to know what the letter
contained; but she could not open and read it by the aid of steam, or
a pen-handle, or a hair-pin, or any of the generally approved methods,
because her position in society forbade such an act. She had tried to
read some of the lines of the letter by holding the envelope up to a
strong light and pressing it hard against the paper, but Gilbert had
too good a taste in stationery to make that possible.

At eleven-thirty the theatre-goers returned. it was a delicious
winter night. Even so far as from the cab to the door they were
powdered thickly with the big flakes downpouring diagonally from the
cast. Old Jerome growled good-naturedly about villanous cab service
and blockaded streets. Nevada, colored like a rose, with sapphire
eyes, babbled of the stormy nights in the mountains around dad's
cabin. During all these wintry apostrophes, Barbara, cold at heart,
sawed wood--the only appropriate thing she could think of to do.

Old Jerome went immediately up-stairs to hot-water-bottles and
quinine. Nevada fluttered into the study, the only cheerfully lighted
room, subsided into an arm-chair, and, while at the interminable task
of unbuttoning her elbow gloves, gave oral testimony as to the
demerits of the "show."

"Yes, I think Mr. Fields is really amusing--sometimes," said Barbara.
"Here is a letter for you, dear, that came by special delivery just
after you had gone."

"Who is it from?" asked Nevada, tugging at a button.

"Well, really," said Barbara, with a smile, "I can only guess. The
envelope has that queer little thing in one corner that Gilbert calls
a palette, but which looks to me rather like a gilt heart on a school-
girl's valentine."

"I wonder what he's writing to me about" remarked Nevada, listlessly.

"We're all alike," said Barbara; "all women. We try to find out what
is in a letter by studying the postmark. As a last resort we use
scissors, and read it from the bottom upward. Here it is."

She made a motion as if to toss the letter across the table to Nevada.

"Great catamounts!" exclaimed Nevada. "These centre-fire buttons are
a nuisance. I'd rather wear buckskins. Oh, Barbara, please shuck the
hide off that letter and read it. It'll be midnight before I get
these gloves off!"

"Why, dear, you don't want me to open Gilbert's letter to you? It's
for you, and you wouldn't wish any one else to read it, of course!"

Nevada raised her steady, calm, sapphire eyes from her gloves.

"Nobody writes me anything that everybody mightn't read," she said.
"Go on, Barbara. Maybe Gilbert wants us to go out in his car again
to-morrow."

Curiosity can do more things than kill a cat; and if emotions, well
recognized as feminine, are inimical to feline life, then jealousy
would soon leave the whole world catless. Barbara opened the letter,
with an indulgent, slightly bored air.

"Well, dear," said she, "I'll read it if you want me to."

She slit the envelope, and read the missive with swift-travelling
eyes; read it again, and cast a quick, shrewd glance at Nevada, who,
for the time, seemed to consider gloves as the world of her interest,
and letters from rising artists as no more than messages from Mars.

For a quarter of a minute Barbara looked at Nevada with a strange
steadfastness; and then a smile so small that it widened her mouth
only the sixteenth part of an inch, and narrowed her eyes no more than
a twentieth, flashed like an inspired thought across her face.

Since the beginning no woman has been a mystery to another woman
Swift as light travels, each penetrates the heart and mind of another,
sifts her sister's words of their cunningest disguises, reads her most
hidden desires, and plucks the sophistry from her wiliest talk like
hairs from a comb, twiddling them sardonically between her thumb and
fingers before letting them float away on the breezes of fundamental
doubt. Long ago Eve's son rang the door-bell of the family residence
in Paradise Park, bearing a strange lady on his arm, whom he
introduced. Eve took her daughter-in-law aside and lifted a classic
eyebrow.

"The Land of Nod," said the bride, languidly flirting the leaf of a
palm. ''I suppose you've been there, of course?"

"Not lately," said Eve, absolutely unstaggered. "Don't you think the
apple-sauce they serve over there is execrable? I rather like that
mulberry-leaf tunic effect, dear; but, of course, the real fig goods
are not to be had over there. Come over behind this lilac-bush while
the gentlemen split a celery tonic. I think the caterpillar-holes
have made your dress open a little in the back."

So, then and there--according to the records--was the alliance formed
by the only two who's-who ladies in the world. Then it was agreed
that woman should forever remain as clear as a pane of glass-though
glass was yet to be discovered-to other women, and that she should
palm herself off on man as a mystery.

Barbara seemed to hesitate.

"Really, Nevada," she said, with a little show of embarrassment, "you
shouldn't have insisted on my opening this. I-I'm sure it wasn't
meant for any one else to know."

Nevada forgot her gloves for a moment.

"Then read it aloud," she said. "Since you've already read it, what's
the difference? If Mr. Warren has written to me something that any
one else oughtn't to know, that is all the more reason why everybody
should know it."

"Well," said Barbara, "this is what it says:

'Dearest Nevada--Come to my studio at twelve o'clock to-night. Do not
fail.'" Barbara rose and dropped the note in Nevada's lap. "I'm
awfully sorry," she said, "that I knew. It isn't like Gilbert. There
must be some mistake. Just consider that I am ignorant of it, will
you, dear? I must go up-stairs now, I have such a headache. I'm sure
I don't understand the note. Perhaps Gilbert has been dining too
well, and will explain. Good night!"


IV


Nevada tiptoed to the hall, and heard Barbara's door close upstairs.
The bronze clock in the study told the hour of twelve was fifteen
minutes away. She ran swiftly to the front door, and let herself out
into the snow-storm. Gilbert Warren's studio was six squares away.

By aerial ferry the white, silent forces of the storm attacked the
city from beyond the sullen East River. Already the snow lay a foot
deep on the pavements, the drifts heaping themselves like scaling-
ladders against the walls of the besieged town. The Avenue was as
quiet as a street in Pompeii. Cabs now and then skimmed past like
white-winged gulls over a moonlit ocean; and less frequent motor-cars-
-sustaining the comparison--hissed through the foaming waves like
submarine boats on their jocund, perilous journeys.

Nevada plunged like a wind-driven storm-petrel on her way. She looked
up at the ragged sierras of cloud-capped buildings that rose above the
streets, shaded by the night lights and the congealed vapors to gray,
drab, ashen, lavender, dun, and cerulean tints. They were so like the
wintry mountains of her Western home that she felt a satisfaction such
as the hundred-thousand-dollar house had seldom brought her.

A policeman caused her to waver on a corner, just by his eye and
weight.

"Hello, Mabel!" said he. "Kind of late for you to be out, ain't it?"

"I--I am just going to the drug store," said Nevada, hurrying past
him.

The excuse serves as a passport for the most sophisticated. Does it
prove that woman never progresses, or that she sprang from Adam's rib,
full-fledged in intellect and wiles?

Turning eastward, the direct blast cut down Nevada's speed one-half.
She made zigzag tracks in the snow; but she was as tough as a pinon
sapling, and bowed to it as gracefully. Suddenly the studio-building
loomed before her, a familiar landmark, like a cliff above some well-
remembered canon. The haunt of business and its hostile neighbor,
art, was darkened and silent. The elevator stopped at ten.

Up eight flights of Stygian stairs Nevada climbed, and rapped firmly
at the door numbered "89." She had been there many times before, with
Barbara and Uncle Jerome.

Gilbert opened the door. He had a crayon pencil in one hand, a green
shade over his eyes, and a pipe in his mouth. The pipe dropped to the
floor.

"Am I late?" asked Nevada. "I came as quick as I could. Uncle and me
were at the theatre this evening. Here I am, Gilbert!"

Gilbert did a Pygmalion-and-Galatea act. He changed from a statue of
stupefaction to a young man with a problem to tackle. He admitted
Nevada, got a whiskbroom, and began to brush the snow from her
clothes. A great lamp, with a green shade, hung over an easel, where
the artist had been sketching in crayon.

"You wanted me," said Nevada simply, " and I came. You said so in
your letter. What did you send for me for?"

"You read my letter?" inquired Gilbert, sparring for wind.

"Barbara read it to me. I saw it afterward. It said: 'Come to my
studio at twelve to-night, and do not fail.' I thought you were sick,
of course, but you don't seem to be."

"Aha!" said Gilbert irrelevantly. "I'll tell you why I asked you to
come, Nevada. I want you to marry me immediately -- to-night. What's
a little snow-storm? Will you do it?"

"You might have noticed that I would, long ago," said Nevada. "And
I'm rather stuck on the snow-storm idea, myself. I surely would hate
one of these flowery church noon-weddings. Gilbert, I didn't know you
had grit enough to propose it this way. Let's shock 'em--it's our
funeral, ain't it?"

"You bet!" said Gilbert. "Where did I hear that expression?" he added
to himself. "Wait a minute, Nevada; I want to do a little 'phoning."

He shut himself in a little dressing-room, and called upon the
lightnings of tile heavens--condensed into unromantic numbers and
districts.

"That you, Jack? You confounded sleepyhead! Yes, wake up; this is
me--or I--oh, bother the difference in grammar! I'm going to be
married right away. Yes! Wake up your sister--don't answer me back;
bring her along, too--you must!. Remind Agnes of the time I saved her
from drowning in Lake Ronkonkoma--I know it's caddish to refer to it,
but she must come with you. Yes. Nevada is here, waiting. We've
been engaged quite a while. Some opposition among the relatives, you
know, and we have to pull it off this way. We're waiting here for
you. Don't let Agnes out-talk you--bring her! You will? Good old
boy! I'll order a carriage to call for you, double-quick time.
Confound you, Jack, you're all right!"

Gilbert returned to the room where Nevada waited.

"My old friend, Jack Peyton, and his sister were to have been here at
a quarter to twelve," he explained; "but Jack is so confoundedly slow.
I've just 'phoned them to hurry. They'll be here in a few minutes.
I'm the happiest man in the world, Nevada! What did you do with the
letter I sent you to-day ?"

"I've got it cinched here," said Nevada, pulling it out from beneath
her opera-cloak.

Gilbert drew the letter from the envelope and looked it over
carefully. Then he looked at Nevada thoughtfully.

"Didn't you think it rather queer that I should ask you to come to my
studio at midnight?" he asked.
"Why, no," said Nevada, rounding her eyes. "Not if you needed me.
Out West, when a pal sends you a hurry call--ain't that what you say
here ?--we get there first and talk about it after the row is over.
And it's usually snowing there, too, when things happen. So I didn't
mind."

Gilbert rushed into another room, and came back burdened with
overcoats warranted to turn wind, rain, or snow.

"Put this raincoat on," he said, holding it for her. "We have a
quarter of a mile to go. Old Jack and his sister will be here in a
few minutes." He began to struggle into a heavy coat. "Oh, Nevada,"
he said, "just look at the head-lines on the front page of that
evening paper on the table, will you? It's about your section of the
West, and I know it will interest you."

He waited a full minute, pretending to find trouble in the getting on
of his overcoat, and then turned. Nevada had not moved. She was
looking at him with strange and pensive directness. Her cheeks had a
flush on them beyond the color that had been contributed by the wind
and snow; but her eyes were steady.

"I was going to tell you," she said, "anyhow, before you--before we--
before-well, before anything. Dad never gave me a day of schooling.
I never learned to read or write a darned word. Now if--"
Pounding their uncertain way up-stairs, the feet of Jack, the
somnolent, and Agnes, the grateful, were heard.


V


When Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert Warren were spinning softly homeward in a
closed carriage, after the ceremony, Gilbert s said:

"Nevada, would you really like to know what I wrote you in the letter
that you received to-night?"

"Fire away!" said his bride.

"Word for word," said Gilbert, "it was this: 'My dear Miss Warren-You
were right about the flower. It was a hydrangea, and not a lilac.'

"All right," said Nevada. "But let's forget it. The joke's on
Barbara, anyway!"




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