Mrs. Forsythe did not come to Ashurst until the middle of April, and then she came alone. Dick had been detained, she said, and would come in a week or two. So Lois breathed freely, though she knew it was only a respite, and made the most of her freedom to go and see his mother.

She was very fond of the invalid, who always seemed to her, in her glowing, rosy health, like an exquisite bit of porcelain, she was so fine and dainty, with soft white hair curling around her gentle and melancholy face. Mrs. Forsythe dressed in delicate grays and lavenders, and her fingers were covered with rings, and generally held some filmy fancy-work. Her invalidism had only given her an air of interesting fragility, which made Lois long to put her strong young arms about her, to shield her lest any wind might blow too roughly upon her.

Mrs. Forsythe accepted her devotion with complacency. She had never had this adoring tenderness from her son, who had heard her remark that she was at the gates of death too often to live in a state of anxiety; but to Lois her gentle resignation and heavenly anticipations were most impressive. The girl's affection almost reconciled the elder lady to having been made to come to Ashurst while the snow still lingered in sheltered spots, and before the crocuses had lighted their golden censers in her garden; for Lois went to see her every day, and though she could not always escape without a meaning look from the invalid, or a sigh for Dick's future, she thoroughly enjoyed her visits. It was charming to sit in the dusk, before the dancing flames of an apple-wood fire, the air fragrant with the hyacinths and jonquils of the window garden, and listen to tales of Mrs. Forsythe's youth.

Lois had never heard such stories. Mrs. Dale would have said it was not proper for young girls to know of love affairs, and it is presumable that the Misses Woodhouse never had any to relate; so this was Lois's first and only chance, and she would sit, clasping her knees with her hands, listening with wide, frank eyes, and cheeks flushed by the fire and the tale.

"But then, my poor health," Mrs. Forsythe ended with a sigh, one evening, just before it was time for Lois to go; "of course it interfered very much."

"Why, were you ill then," Lois said, "when you used to dance all night?"

"Oh, dear me, yes," answered the other shaking her head, "I have been a sufferer all my life, a great sufferer. Well, it cannot last much longer; this poor body is almost worn out."

"Oh, don't say it!" Lois cried, and kissed the white soft hand with its shining rings, in all the tenderness of her young heart.

All this endeared the girl very much, and more than once Mrs. Forsythe wrote of her sweetness and goodness to her son. Miss Deborah, or Miss Ruth, or even Mrs. Dale, would have been careful in using the name of any young woman in writing to a gentleman, but Mrs. Forsythe had not been born in Ashurst.

However, Dick still lingered, and Lois rejoiced, and even her anticipation of the evil time to come, when he should arrive and end her peaceful days, could not check her present contentment. It was almost May, and that subtile, inexplainable joy of the springtime made it a gladness even to be alive. Lois rambled about, hunting for the first green spears of that great army of flowers which would soon storm the garden, and carrying any treasure she might find to Mrs. Forsythe's sick-room. The meadows were spongy with small springs, bubbling up under the faintly green grass. The daffadown-dillies showed bursting yellow buds, and the pallid, frightened-looking violets brought all their mystery of unfolding life to the girl's happy eyes.

One Saturday morning, while she was looking for the bunch of grape hyacinths which came up each year, beside the stone bench, she was especially light-hearted. Word had come from Helen that the long-promised visit should be made the first week in June. "It can only be for a week, you know," Helen wrote, "because I cannot be away from John longer than that, and I must be back for our first anniversary, too."

More than this, Mrs. Forsythe had sighed, and told her that poor dear Dick's business seemed to detain him; it was such a shame! And perhaps he could not get to Ashurst for a fortnight. So Lois Howe was a very happy and contented girl, standing under the soft blue of the April sky, and watching her flock of white pigeons wheeling and circling about the gable of the red barn, while the little stream, which had gained a stronger voice since the spring rains, babbled vociferously at her side. The long, transparent stems of the flowers broke crisply between her fingers, as she heard her name called.

Mr. Denner, with his fishing-basket slung under one arm and his rod across his shoulder, was regarding her through a gap in the hedge.

"A lovely day!" said the little gentleman, his brown eyes twinkling with a pleasant smile.

"Indeed it is, sir," Lois answered; "and look at the flowers I've found!"

She tipped the basket of scented grass on her arm that he might see them. Mr. Denner had stopped to ask if Mrs. Forsythe would be present at the whist party that night, and was rather relieved to learn that she was not able to come; he had lost his hand the week before, because she had arrived with the Dales. Then he inquired about her son's arrival, and went away thinking what a simple matter a love affair was to some people. Lois and that young man! Why, things were really arranged for them; they had almost no responsibility in the matter; their engagement settled itself, as it were.

He walked abstractedly towards his house, wrestling with the old puzzle. Nothing helped him, or threw light on his uncertainty; he was tired of juggling with fate, and was growing desperate.

"I wish they would settle it between themselves," he murmured, with a wistful wrinkle on his forehead. Suddenly a thought struck him; there was certainly one way out of his difficulties: he could ask advice. He could lay the whole matter frankly before some dispassionate person, whose judgment should determine his course. Why had he not thought of it before! Mr. Denner's face brightened; he walked gayly along, and began to hum to himself:—

Here he stopped abruptly. Whom should he ask? He went carefully through his list of friends, as he trudged along the muddy road.

Not Dr. Howe: he did not take a serious enough view of such things; Mr. Denner recalled that scene in his office, and his little face burned. Then, there was Mrs. Dale: she was a woman, and of course she would know the real merit of each of the sisters. Stay: Mrs. Dale did not always seem in sympathy with the Misses Woodhouse; he had even heard her say things which were not, perhaps, perfectly courteous; that the sisters had been able to defend themselves, Mr. Denner overlooked. Colonel Drayton: well, a man with the gout is not the confidant for a lover. He was beginning to look depressed again, when the light came. Henry Dale! No one could be better.

Mr. Denner awaited the evening with impatience. He would walk home with the Dales, he thought, and then he and Henry could talk it all over, down in the study.

He was glad when the cool spring night began to close, full of that indefinable fragrance of fresh earth and growing things, and before it was time to start he cheered himself by a little music. He went into the dreary, unused parlor, and pulling up the green Venetian blinds, which rattled like castanets, he pushed back the ivy-fastened shutters, and sat down by the open window; then, with his chin resting upon his fiddle, and one foot in its drab gaiter swinging across his knee, he played mournfully and shrilly in the twilight, until it was time to start.

He saw the Misses Woodhouse trotting toward the rectory, with Sarah walking in a stately way behind them, swinging her unlighted lantern, and cautioning them not to step in the mud. But he made no effort to join them; it was happiness enough to contemplate the approaching solution of his difficulties, and say to himself triumphantly, "This time to-morrow!" and he began joyously to play, "Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon," rendering carefully all the quavers in that quavering air.

Mr. Denner's meditations made him late at the rectory, and he felt Mrs. Dale look sternly at him; so he made haste to deal, sitting well forward in his chair, under which he tucked his little feet, and putting down each card with nervous care. His large cuffs almost hid his small, thin hands, and now and then he paused to rub his thumb and forefinger together, that the cards might not stick.

But Mr. Denner did not play well that night; Miss Deborah looked at him with mild reproach, and was almost angry when he answered her with an absent smile.

The evening seemed very long to Mr. Denner, and even when the party had said "Good-night" Mr. Dale was slow about getting off; he put his wife into the carriage, and then stopped to ask Dr. Howe if he had the first edition of "Japhet in Search of a Father"?

"In search of a father!" Mr. Denner thought, as he stood waiting by the steps,—"how can he be interested in that?"

At last the front door closed, and Mr. Dale and Mr. Denner walked silently down the lane in the starlight, the lawyer's little heart beating so with excitement, that he had a suffocated feeling, and once or twice put his hand to his throat, as though to loosen his muffler.

Mr. Dale, still absorbed in his first edition, took swinging strides, the tails of his brown cloth overcoat flapping and twisting about his long, thin legs. Mr. Denner had now and then almost to break into a trot to keep up with him.

Mr. Dale walked with his hands clasped behind him, and his stick under his arm; his soft felt hat was pulled down over his eyes, so that his keeping the path was more by chance than sight. He stopped once to pluck a sprig from the hawthorn hedge, to put between his lips. This gave Mr. Denner breath, and a chance to speak.

"I think I will walk home with you, Henry," he said. "I want to have a talk with you."

His heart thumped as he said that; he felt he had committed himself.

"Well, now, that's very pleasant," responded Mr. Dale. "I was just thinking I should be alone half the way home."

"But you would not be alone when you got there," Mr. Denner said meditatively; "now, with me it is different."

"Oh, quite different,—quite different."

"Yes," proceeded the other, "I have very little companionship. I go home and sit in my library all by myself. Sometimes, I get up and wander about the house, with only my cigar for company."

"I suppose," said Mr. Dale, "that you can smoke wherever you want, in your house? I often think of your loneliness; coming and going just as you please, quite independently."

Mr. Denner gave him a sudden questioning look, and then appeared to reproach himself for having misunderstood his friend.

"Yes, just so,—just so. I knew you would appreciate it; but you can never know from experience, Henry, how a man feels left quite to himself. You do not think of the independence; it is the loneliness. You cannot know that."

"No," murmured Mr. Dale, "perhaps not, but I can imagine it."

When they reached the iron gate of Dale house, they followed the trim path across the lawn to the north side of the house, where it ended in a little walk, three bricks wide, laid end to end, and so damp with perpetual shade, they were slippery with green mould, and had tufts of moss between them.

Mr. Dale's study was in a sort of half basement one went down two steps to reach the doorway, and the windows, set in thick stone walls and almost hidden in a tangle of wistaria, were just above the level of the path.

The two old men entered, Mr. Dale bending his tall white head a little; and while the lawyer unwound a long blue muffler from about his throat, the host lighted a lamp, and, getting down on his knees, blew the dim embers in the rusty grate into a flickering blaze. Then he pulled a blackened crane from the jamb, and hung on it a dinted brass kettle, so that he might add some hot water to Mr. Denner's gin and sugar, and also make himself a cup of tea. That done, he took off his overcoat, throwing it across the mahogany arm of the horse-hair sofa, which was piled with books and pamphlets, and whitened here and there with ashes from his silver pipe; then he knotted the cord of his flowered dressing-gown about his waist, spread his red silk handkerchief over his thin locks, and, placing his feet comfortably upon the high fender, was ready for conversation.

Mr. Denner, meanwhile, without waiting for the formality of an invitation, went at once to a small corner closet, and brought out a flat, dark bottle and an old silver cup. He poured the contents of the bottle into the cup, added some sugar, and lastly, with a sparing hand, the hot water, stirring it round and round with the one teaspoon which they shared between them.

Mr. Dale had produced a battered caddy, and soon the fumes of gin and tea mingled amicably together.

"If I could always have such evenings as this," Mr. Denner thought, sipping the hot gin and water, and crossing his legs comfortably, "I should not have to think of—something different."

"Your wife would appreciate what I meant about loneliness," he said, going back to what was uppermost in his mind. "A house without a mistress at its head, Henry, is—ah—not what it should be."

The remark needed no reply; and Mr. Dale leaned back in his leather chair, dreamily watching the blue smoke from his slender pipe drift level for a moment, and then, on an unfelt draught, draw up the chimney.

Mr. Denner, resting his mug on one knee, began to stir the fire gently. "Yes, Henry," he continued, "I feel it more and more as I grow older. I really need—ah—brightness and comfort in my house. Yes, I need it. And even if I were not interested, as it were, myself, I don't know but what my duty to Willie should make me—ah—think of it."

Mr. Dale was gazing at the fire. "Think of what?" he said.

Mr. Denner became very much embarrassed. "Why, what I was just observing, just speaking of,—the need of comfort—in my house—and my life, I might say. Less loneliness for me, Henry, and, in fact, a—person—a—a female—you understand."

Mr. Dale looked at him.

"In fact, as I might say, a wife, Henry."

Mr. Dale was at last aroused; with his pipe between his lips, he clutched the lion's-heads on the arms of his chair, and sat looking at Mr. Denner in such horrified astonishment, that the little gentleman stumbled over any words, simply for the relief of speaking.

"Yes," he said, "just so, Henry, just so. I have been thinking of it lately, perhaps for the last year; yes—I have been thinking of it."

Mr. Dale, still looking at him, made an inarticulate noise in his throat.

Mr. Denner's face began to show a faint dull red to his temples. "Ah—yes—I—I have thought of it, as it were."

"Denner," said Mr. Dale solemnly, "you're a fool."

"If you mean my age, Henry," cried the other, his whole face a dusky crimson, that sent the tears stinging into his little brown eyes, "I cannot say I think your—surprise—is—ah—justified. It is not as though there was anything unsuitable—she—they—are quite my age. And for Willie's sake, I doubt if it is not a—a duty. And I am only sixty-one and a half, Henry. You did not remember, perhaps, that I was so much younger than you?"

Mr. Dale pulled off his red handkerchief, and wiped his forehead; after which he said quite violently, "The devil!"

"Oh," remonstrated Mr. Denner, balancing his mug on his knee, and lifting his hands deprecatingly, "not such words, Henry,—not such words; we are speaking of ladies, Henry."

Mr. Dale was silent.

"You have no idea," the other continued, "in your comfortable house, with a good wife, who makes you perfectly happy, how lonely a man is who lives as I do; and I can tell you, the older he grows, the more he feels it. So really, age is a reason for considering it."

"I was not thinking of age," said Mr. Dale feebly.

"Well, then," replied the other triumphantly, "age is the only objection that could be urged. A man is happier and better for female influence; and the dinners I have are really not—not what they should be, Henry. That would all be changed, if I had a—ah—wife."

"Denner," said his friend, "there are circumstances where a dinner of herbs is more to be desired than a stalled ox, you will remember."

"That is just how I feel," said the other eagerly, and too much interested in his own anxieties to see Mr. Dale's point. "Mary is not altogether amiable."

Again Mr. Dale was silent.

"I knew you would see the—the—desirability of it," the lawyer continued, the flush of embarrassment fading away, "and so I decided to ask your advice. I thought that, not only from your own—ah—heart, but from the novels and tales you read, you would be able to advise me in any matter of esteem."

Mr. Dale groaned, and shook his head from side to side.

"But, good Lord, Denner, books are one thing, life's another. You can't live in a book, man."

"Just so," said Mr. Denner, "just so; but I only want the benefit of your experience in reading these tales of—ah—romance. You see, here is my trouble, Henry,—I cannot make up my mind."

"To do it?" cried Mr. Dale, with animation.

But Mr. Denner interrupted him with a polite gesture. "No, I shall certainly do it, I did not mean to mislead you. I shall certainly do it, but I cannot make up my mind which."

"Which?" said Mr. Dale vaguely.

"Yes," answered the little gentleman, "which. Of course you know that I refer to the Misses Woodhouse. You must have noticed my attentions of late, for I have shown a great deal of attention to both; it has been very marked. Yet, Henry, I cannot tell which (both are such estimable persons) which I—should—ah—prefer. And knowing your experience, a married man yourself, and your reading on such subjects,—novels are mostly based upon esteem,—I felt sure you could advise me."

A droll look came into Mr. Dale's face, but he did not speak.

Feeling that he had made a clean breast of it, and that the responsibility of choice was shifted to his friend's shoulders, the lawyer, taking a last draught from the silver mug, and setting it down empty on the table, leaned comfortably back in his chair to await the decision.

There was a long silence; once Mr. Denner broke it by saying, "Of course, Henry, you see the importance of careful judgment," and then they were still again.

At last, Mr. Dale, with a long sigh, straightened up in his chair. He lifted his white fluted china tea-cup, which had queer little chintz-like bunches of flowers over it and a worn gilt handle, and took a pinch of tea from the caddy; then, pouring some boiling water over it, he set it on the hob to steep.

"Denner," he said slowly, "which advice do you want? Whether to do it at all, or which lady to choose?"

"Which lady, of course," answered Mr. Denner promptly. "There can be but one opinion as to the first question."

"Ah," responded Mr. Dale; then, a moment afterwards, he added, "Well"—

Mr. Denner looked at his friend, with eyes shining with excitement. "It is very important to me, Henry," he said, with a faltering voice. "You will keep that in mind, I am sure. They are both so admirable, and yet—there must be some choice. Miss Deborah's housekeeping—you know there's no such cooking in Ashurst; and she's very economical. But then, Miss Ruth is artistic, and"—here a fine wavering blush crept over his little face—"she is—ah—pretty, Henry. And the money is equally divided," he added, with a visible effort to return to practical things.

"I know. Yes, it's very puzzling. On the whole, Denner, I do not see how I can advise you."

Mr. Denner seemed to suffer a collapse.

"Why, Henry," he quavered, "you must have an opinion?"

"No," Mr. Dale answered thoughtfully, "I cannot say that I have. Now, I put it to you, Denner: how could I decide on the relative merits of Miss Ruth and Miss Deborah, seeing that I have no affection, only respect, for either of them? Affection! that ought to be your guide. Which do you have most affection for?"

"Why, really"—said Mr. Denner, "really"—and he stopped to think, looking hard at the seal ring on his left hand—"I am afraid it is just the same, if you call it affection. You see that doesn't help us."

He had identified Mr. Dale's interest with his own anxiety, and looked wistfully at the older man, who seemed sunk in thought and quite forgetful of his presence. Mr. Denner put one hand to his lips and gave a little cough. Then he said:—

"One would think there would be a rule about such things, some acknowledged method; a proverb, for instance; it would simplify matters very much."

"True," said Mr. Dale.

"Yes," Mr. Denner added, "you would think in such a general thing as marriage there would be. Complications like this must constantly arise. What if Miss Deborah and Miss Ruth had another sister? Just see how confused a man might be. Yes, one would suppose the wisdom of experience would take the form of an axiom. But it hasn't."

He sighed deeply, and rose, for it was late, and the little fire had burned out.

Mr. Dale bent forward, with his elbows on his lean knees, and gently knocked the ashes from his silver pipe. Then he got up, and, standing with his back to the cold grate, and the tails of his flowered dressing-gown under each arm in a comfortable way, he looked at the lawyer, with his head a little on one side, as though he were about to speak. Mr. Denner noticed it.

"Ah, you cannot make any suggestion, Henry?"

"Well," said Mr. Dale, "it seems to me I had a thought—a sort of a proverb, you might say—but it slips my memory."

Mr. Denner, with his overcoat half on, stood quite still, and trembled.

"It is something about how to make up your mind," Mr. Dale continued, very slowly; "let me see."

"How to make up your mind?" cried Mr. Denner. "That's just the thing! I'm sure, that's just the thing! And we cannot but have the greatest confidence in proverbs. They are so eminently trustworthy. They are the concentrated wisdom—of—of the ages, as it were. Yes, I should be quite willing to decide the matter by a proverb."

He looked at Mr. Dale eagerly, but this especial piece of wisdom still eluded the older man.

"It begins," said Mr. Dale, hesitating, and fixing his eyes upon the ceiling,—"it begins—let me see. 'When in doubt'—ah"—

"What is it?" gasped Mr. Denner. "That has a familiar sound, but I cannot seem to finish it. When in doubt, what?"

"Well," answered his friend ruefully, "it is not quite—it does not exactly apply. I am afraid it won't; help us out. You know the rest. It is merely—'take the trick'!"