IT ALL began with the tap of a gavel—an imposing white gavel adorned with a yellow bow and resounding like the crack of doom. Behind it, under a nodding purple ostrich feather, sat Mrs. Bunker; before it the eight awe-struck members of the Village Improvement Society; enveloping us all in its cold, judicial atmosphere was room No. 10 of the new town building, maintained as a meeting place in order to give dignity to our association, and its rent representing just so many entertainments and strawberry-festivals per annum.

Mrs. Bunker is the “progressive woman” of West Hedgeworth. She lives in that large, white house with the terraces and box borders and a fountain, just where you turn into Main street. She goes to Boston twice each season to get clothes and ideas upon which she feeds our little social circle through the medium of clubs and afternoon teas. The clothes are remarkable, the ideas equally up to date; we look upon her with reverence and obey her slightest mandate.

I believe I am the only one who now and then rebels inwardly. Why, for example, I should have been considered eligible for the V. I. S., a girl of twenty-three, with not the slightest pretensions to domestic talent or judgment, except that I have had to take care of father and the boys for the last few years, I couldn’t see,—nor could any one else; but Mrs. Bunker had ordained that I should go into it, and I had no choice.

“You are a very clever girl, Irene,” she explained severely, as if this were a situation to be deprecated, but could be atoned for by penance of some sort, “and it would be extremely unfortunate for you to have no outlet for your talents. People should take up the work that best suits them.”

I withdrew all objections, of course. If Mrs. Bunker pronounces one clever, no matter how wretched one may be under the verdict, there is never any appeal from it. But as the progressive woman is always ready to shoulder the responsibility of her friends’ cleverness, I haven’t found mine a very great burden. So far as the duties of membership in the Village Improvement Society are concerned, they only consist in doing as one is bid. The gavel roused me from a study of bonnets. Mrs. Suter, the wife of our good druggist, and Mrs. Pitman, the postmaster’s lady, always faithfully advertise the village milliner in familiar black-lace-covered frames, the one adorned with aggressive bunches of buttercups, the other trailed over by a hairy-leaved poppy. Mrs. Cope, the Episcopal clergyman’s wife, has the parish down upon her for appearing in unmistakable French headgear, simple, but beyond imitation; it does not justify her in their eyes that the hats come from a rich relative, and the poor soul is credited with proud and haughty aspirations, of which she is as innocent as a babe. Miss Maria Withers’ strong point is not fashion; so the little parched, limp, black bonnet which she has found satisfactory for eight years, still perches above her gray curls. I was absorbed in working out a series of arguments on the effect of dress upon character, when the white gavel descended and the Society came to order with a start.

We are nothing if not parliamentary. The latest manual lies at Mrs. Bunker’s right hand. Miss Scrapson, of the academy, makes an excellent secretary, and her minutes are comprehensive. Miss Withers, as treasurer, is somewhat rambling and uncertain. Her reports are subject to pauses, silent mental calculations and ejaculations of “Dear me,—no, that wasn’t it—just wait a minute,” and excursions into a little black bag which she carries, after missing items on stray scraps of paper. Mrs. Bunker bears this with self-control, as Miss Maria has valuable qualities. Miss Scrapson and Mrs. Cope play into her hands most cleverly in a discussion over a motion or a point of order. We manage to have a little unfinished business on the carpet, usually, to give style to the meeting, and altogether maintain an air of importance which is quite remarkable for a small village club. But on this particular day, a May morning, I saw in our president’s eye that there was something new and exciting to be taken up.

“Ladies,” she announced at last, “our spring campaign is opening with opportunities of no mean order. The village of West Hedgeworth is menaced with a disgrace which so far outdoes in horror even the peanut shells on the post-office floor and the loose papers on the common that words almost fail me as I mention it. Give me your close attention, please.”

Ever since the meeting when Mrs. Bunker took Mrs. Pitman to task for the condition of her ash barrels, we have been subject to a weak-kneed and guilty sensation when she gives us an introduction of this sort.

“You probably know,” she continued in more colloquial style, “the small house with pointed gables and a piazza, fronting the common next the old Benjamin place. You are aware how neatly it has always been kept by former occupants. That house is just rented by a doctor who has come here with his wife, I am told, from New York. They moved in a week ago, and in that short space of time,—one week, ladies,—they have made the premises a blot upon the scutcheon of our lovely village. Their packing-cases were unloaded on the piazza in a high wind, and bits of paper, excelsior and what not are scattered from end to end of the yard; boxes, planks, tin cans and other refuse are piled at one side; the whole appearance of the establishment is enough to make one of us,”—impressively—”avert her head in passing it. And still the scandal goes on, unabated, from day to day. It is a moment for immediate action, a moment to be seized by patriotic and public-spirited women, and the disturbers of our peace of mind made to feel the necessity of taking immediate steps towards reform. I lay the case before you, ladies, for suggestions as to prompt aggression.”

There was a suitable pause. Then Miss Withers’ gentle voice piped up. “This is really a dreadful state of things,” she began mildly. “I hadn’t noticed it myself, I suppose because”—

“Hadn’t noticed it!” ejaculated the president, in tones of thunder.

“I was going to say,” fluttered Miss Maria hurriedly, “because I haven’t passed there in two weeks. If I had, no doubt I should have been very much annoyed about it.”

“Annoyed!” exclaimed Mrs. Bunker again, savagely. “Annoyance is altogether too personal a term. It arouses all my loyalty to the society; that’s the way it impresses me.”

Of course this brought forth many protestations of the same sentiment from the rest of us. Then Mrs. Pitman ventured to ask if Mrs. Bunker didn’t think it would be well to send a committee to the doctor and ask him to “clear up a little.”

“The chair has no thoughts, Mrs. Pitman,” answered that body loftily. “I await a motion.”

I always second everybody else’s motion, but have never made one yet, in the meetings. Miss Scrapson, however, came to the fore, and it was presently decided that the president should appoint a committee to visit the doctor and his lady and reprove them.

“If that is really the pleasure of the Association,” said Mrs. Bunker, with a wave of her purple ostrich plume, “I will appoint Miss Allison” (that is my name), “a committee of one to call at the doctor’s house for this purpose. As you are one of the young ladies of the place, Irene, it would be in the way of your social duty at any rate. You can mingle business with pleasure.”

“Yes,—but Mrs. Bunker, I never could mingle things! Don’t ask me to go,” I implored. “I’m sure I shall make a failure of it. I don’t want to offend them, you know,—they may be nice people.”

“Nice people!” Mrs. Bunker compressed her lips into that peculiar stiff smile which means scorn, and closed her eyes slowly with her head tilted back.

“They certainly must be lax,” murmured Miss Scrapson,—”very lax.” Nobody, however, came to my rescue. I was evidently doomed to be the unhappy instrument of the Society’s revenge. I gave in and took my instructions as meekly as I could.

“The wife has an extremely youthful and inexperienced air,” said my mentor, “and undoubtedly needs a little judicious instruction. It will alarm her less to be confronted by a person of her own age. Our work is largely educational, you know, so do not antagonize her. Simply say to her something of this kind in gentle but firm tones: ‘My dear madam, do you not appreciate the beauty of this peaceful little village, and will you not bear your part henceforward in the maintenance of its order and symmetry?’ Such a method of speech would be better than to alarm her. And yet don’t fail to impress upon her that disorder simply cannot be.”

I acquiesced, with a slightly strangling sound, which the president did not notice, fortunately. It resulted from physical distress of a kind which is sometimes on these occasions, beyond control. It was with me yet, in a milder form, as I ascended the doctor’s steps that afternoon, card-case in hand, which last appendage seemed the most despicable mockery.

The house was a neat, smart little affair in its way, inartistic, but not aggressively ugly, and well arranged for professional purposes. The sign, Dr. M. H. Richmond, was tacked up beside the door. There certainly were evidences of an upheaval, however, in plain sight. The front yard was, as Mrs. Bunker had described it, littered with papers and excelsior, the piazza floor as bad. At the side of the house was a pile of tin cans, boxes, broken china and other unsightly abominations. Somehow one could not help feeling that a woman’s eye and touch were wanting, and I found myself stiffening against the wife who could allow such a state of affairs to go on. My primmest expression was ready, as the door flew open, swung hospitably wide by a big young man with a short brown beard and gray eyes. The moment I saw him it occurred to me to wonder what he would take me for—patient, caller, or perhaps an agent! Horrible thought, that last,—I found a certain timidity threatening my assurance.

“Might I,” I began, putting myself into the latter category at once by my mode of address, “might I see the lady of the house, please?”

“Walk in, won’t you?” said the doctor affably, ushering me into what happened to be his office. Ah,—one knew now a little better where one was. Whatever its exterior shortcomings, this must be the home of thoroughly cultivated people. Their furniture was solid, their pictures were fine, and their few decorations faultless.

As to their books, filling all available space, no library critic could find the selection wanting in true literary discrimination. I felt the courage of my mission diminishing as I slid into a leather covered arm chair opposite the easy, amused looking doctor.

“I’m so very sorry,” he observed, “that she isn’t at home. She went away by the early train this morning; but perhaps you could leave a message with me if it’s a matter of importance.”

There was a short but awkward pause. No help for it,—I might as well make the plunge. The more Bunkerish I could be, the better, if any stern message was to be sent to the wife by this good-natured personage.

“I wanted to see Mrs. Richmond,” I explained stiffly, “on a little matter of business connected with the work of the Village Improvement Society. It was reported at our last meeting that the condition of your front yard is very bad.”

“My front yard! I see.” The doctor looked quizzical but serene, and glanced out over his shoulder to the lawn.

“Our Association,” I continued bravely, “aims to incite the pride of householders in the appearance of the village as well as in their own homes; and your place here is conspicuous, facing the common as it does. We thought that might not have occurred to you.”

“It really hadn’t,” smiled my host. “This is very kind of you, however. Do I understand that your Society orders me, through you, to clear up the yard? In that case, do they provide cleaners and so forth,—or will they perhaps come and take charge of it themselves?”

“Not at all,” I exclaimed angrily. “You are expected to attend to it.”

“What should you do,” he inquired suavely, “if I left it in disorder? I ask from curiosity, naturally, as I should never have the temerity to defy so august a body. Would the law be obliged to take its course?”

“You are probably aware that we have no law whatever behind us,” I said with all the dignity I could assume, “though the selectmen are very good about backing us up in flagrant cases. But I should imagine a doctor just settling in a town would be sufficiently alive to his own interests to see the propriety of making a good impression by the appearance of his house and grounds.”

“Ah!” He nodded slowly, smiling in a way which maddened me. “Now I see. This is a special kindness on your part. How grateful I am to you. Your suggestion may really result in my winning the hearts of the West Hedgeworth people; and I shall begin at once. The propriety of making a good impression by the appearance of my house and grounds!—it is a noble sentiment. My colored boy who is my only servant, shall attend to the matter, and the Village Improvement Society shall see a change indeed. Are there any other little touches,—extra touches, you know,—that occur to you?”

I glanced at the big, low table with its littering of attractive books and magazines, a great ivory club of a paper knife lying across an uncut review. I was as much at home among those things as he. Why had I been forced into the attitude of an impertinent village miss, to be laughed over with his wife again in the way he was laughing now? The idea was distressing; but I had no defence.

“I think you are quite capable of arranging your own yard,” I said curtly. “You will very soon find out what the village people like. All that our Association requires is cleanliness and good order;”—with which I moved towards the door, murmuring a regret that I had not seen Mrs. Richmond.

“This is so good of you”—and now the doctor actually showed a shade of embarrassment himself,—”that I am really overwhelmed with shame to be obliged to disappoint you about my wife. It would be so pleasant for her to know you ladies and to”—he coughed slightly—”to come under your helpful influence. But the fact is, she isn’t—she doesn’t—there never has—in short, there isn’t any Mrs. Richmond. My sister came with me to help me settle things. She is a college girl somewhat younger than I and with no experience whatever. I hope you will be willing to welcome her when she comes back in July,—that is, of course, if we are tidy enough to be recognized by the villagers.” Still the blandest expression about his mouth, but a twinkle in the gray eyes which made me grind my teeth. And he had calmly sat there, letting me call on him!

I attempted to “sweep” across the piazza with dignity, but only swept up little bits of excelsior on the hem of my gown. But I did make him feel the arrows of a dignified wrath, I think;—not that he evinced any such sensation at the time. To Mrs. Bunker, who had asked for a prompt report, I flew. She took the affair with unsympathetic calmness.

“You did your duty, Irene,” was her gracious commendation, “and it was not your fault that the girl—who certainly was there, for I saw her—should be his sister and not his wife. You said precisely the right thing, and I trust he will profit by it and earn the respect of the village. I am glad he is a young man of taste.”

He got on, whether possessed of taste or not. It annoyed me to see the way he made friends with everybody who crossed his path, man, woman or child. They were rather slow to consult him professionally; but Doctor Bell, the old physician who had all the practice round here, lives at Hedgeworth Centre, three miles away, so when Miss Phoebe Withers, Miss Maria’s older sister, had an attack of heart failure one day, they sent for Doctor Richmond, and took a tremendous fancy to him. I kept out of his way; to my mind he was the most thoroughly disagreeable man I ever met.

The front yard, meanwhile, had been cleared up. Nick, the black imp who drove, cooked and gardened for the doctor, was known to be mysteriously occupied behind the house for hours at a time, after the rubbish was removed. Mrs. Benjamin saw it all from her back windows, and reported it at the sewing society. He spent hours pottering among paint-cans, starting seeds and what not; and shortly after, the front fence appeared painted grass green, the gate picked out with white cross-bars, and the lamp-post similarly decorated, bearing a brand-new reflector. Then clam-shell borders to the gravel-walk cropped out, and two round clam-edged beds of geraniums stared from the lawn, while a “rockery” of red and blue boulders, with ferns, reared itself where the piles of tin cans had been.

“Do you like that sort of thing, I want to know?” I inquired wrathfully of Mrs. Bunker at our next Village Improvement meeting.

“Well, it looks perfectly neat,” she answered, “and it is in the style of most of the best kept yards here. I can’t say that I should not prefer quieter colors; but he is a young man yet, you know.”

I was silenced. What right had I, any way, to feel as if there were a sort of practical joke on me, personally, in all this? The day after, a new ornament appeared;—a pair of andirons, painted scarlet, and a hollowed out log across them filled with yellow nasturtiums. Mrs. Pitman pointed it out to me delightedly.

“Just like a real fire!” she said. “Do you see, Irene? The doctor is quite a landscape gardener, isn’t he?” I made no reply.

Another decoration was set forth next, on the opposite side of the yard;—this time a crane, also of scarlet hue, and a swinging pot, with money-wort bubbling in it and dribbling down the sides. By ill luck I was passing at the moment when Nick put it there, turning round with a grin for the approval of his master, who stood in the window.

“Very good, indeed, Nick,” I heard the doctor call out. “You’re a regular Village Improvement Society in yourself, boy.” I wondered if it were possible, by Delsartian methods, to throw scorn into the expression of one’s back. The attempt ended weakly in one of those little conscious adjustments of drapery to which one resorts involuntarily at such junctures. Somehow I felt that those gray eyes were upon me. I had occasionally caught the expression of them before, always with the inevitable twinkle, when we met in public.

He grew into the habit of dropping in at the Bunkers’, to my disgust, as it spoiled my own intimacy there. Mr. B., a shadowy figure in the background of the family stage, had been cured, or imagined he had, of rheumatism by the new physician, and took a great fancy to him. Emily, the daughter, who is so fearfully quiet that most people never make any attempt to rouse her, was actually known to chat with him quite naturally and easily; and our beloved president submitted to cruel thrusts from him with a good grace.

“Mrs. Bunker,” he said one evening as we were all sitting on the piazza in a June twilight, “you’ve never told me yet how you liked the arrangement of my front yard. Have you seen the new garden seat I had put out this week? It’s one of the latest fads in outdoor decoration, made of the head-board and frame of an antique bedstead—a very choice thing. I got the idea from a farmhouse up on the north road.”

“I haven’t noticed it,” she answered somewhat cautiously, “but I observe, doctor, that you have an idea of falling in with the taste of the people.”

“My dear madam,” he clasped his hand round one knee and looked off dreamily into space,—”a doctor just settling down in a town should be sufficiently alive to his own interests to see the propriety of making a good impression by the appearance of his house and grounds.”

How dared he mock me to my very face in this fashion? I was thankful for the little back gate leading out of the Bunkers’ grounds, by which I could get a short cut home, leaving my good-byes with Emily Bunker. When we met accidentally at the post-office next morning, I turned my back on him to stamp some letters, and never looked up till he was gone, after telling Alice Cobb, one of the village belles, who stood there, that he was going away in the afternoon to his sister’s Commencement and would bring her back with him.

The week seemed very peaceful, and I enjoyed going about without the dread of further shafts of ridicule. I was always planning some way to give his impertinence a decided snub, but never found the chance. The afternoon of his return, I was sitting with my work in Mrs. Benjamin’s parlor as the buggy drove up, Nick having been left to walk home from the station. When he helped the sister out,—a manifestly high bred, charming little blonde,—I couldn’t help watching for the effect upon her of those painted monstrosities. She wouldn’t tolerate them a moment, I felt sure. But oh, stab after stab! She gave one glance at them and turned to her brother with an expression of such utter merriment that I knew at once the thing was a joke already understood between the two. I decided that Amy Richmond would not become a friend of mine. Yet curiously enough she actually sought me out, at an academy reception the next night. Emily Bunker introduced her, and she began at once: “I’ve been so anxious to meet you, Miss Allison. Morris tells me so much about you, and he’s sure we shall be congenial.”

I stiffened. Another back-handed thrust, probably, lay underneath this.

“He thinks I shall learn an immense amount from you, too,” she pursued,—”don’t you Morris?”—to the doctor, who was unexpectedly standing behind me.

“I’ve told my sister,” he answered, “that she must persuade you to give her some hints about household matters. She hasn’t had even as much experience yet as Nick and I.”

I tried to be very ungracious, as dark suspicions flew through my mind; but Miss Richmond looked absolutely guileless, and furthermore she wouldn’t let me alone; there was no use trying to avoid her. And it did seem good to have a friend of her sort. The West Hedgeworth girls are bright and pretty, and some of them intellectual, but we had all been village comrades too long to get up much enthusiasm over one another’s society. Doctor Richmond’s brotherly devotion caused him to lend his sister the buggy and spirited little horse for her own use now and then, besides the drives she took with him; so we two enjoyed long excursions through the country roads, steeped in July sunshine and finding our mutual interest deeper with every day. Once I went to tea with them, and on that occasion the doctor seemed quite like other people, except just as I was leaving under the escort of my younger brother, which I had purposely arranged, the temptation to give me a parting thrust was too strong for him, and he remarked as we descended the front steps: “Miss Allison, I am so glad to have had you get a glimpse of our clam-shells in the moonlight.”

Amy went off to the seashore a day or two later, and I felt really sorry for him, but it was much the easiest way to avoid him altogether, and I never asked him to come to our house, nor crossed his path if I could help it. As for the nasturtiums and geraniums, scorching on his lawn in the midsummer heat, I wanted no sight of them. By and by I went away myself, and came back in September to a taste of the unpleasantnesses of life. My two brothers left home, one to a business position in Boston, the other to college. Father, meanwhile, who for eight years since mother’s death had been lost in melancholy and required my constant offices as consoler, divulged the fact that a buxom widow in Hedgeworth Centre had succeeded in resurrecting his buried affections; an individual as utterly unlike—well, there was a sting about it all that made things look pretty black for awhile, and since they desired the engagement “kept quiet,” I locked up my woes and could only wonder now and then whether anybody felt any sympathy, while parrying the usual village questions about father’s frequent drives to the Centre. The Bunkers went abroad for the winter, thank Heaven!—and the V. I. S. was suspended for the time being. Mercifully I had a chance to do something for somebody else. Aunt Abby, my mother’s sister, who had lived alone with her servants in a big house fronting the common, a rather morose and unmanageable old maiden lady, was breaking down. My other aunt, who lives in California, could not come east at once, so I was the only member of the family to nurse her, and with father and the boys provided for I had time to go to her whenever she needed me.

Dr. Bell fell ill and Dr. Richmond was called. His appearance in the sick-room seemed likely to destroy the only comfort I had there; but, strange to say, I laid down my weapons before three visits were over. His management of her was absolutely perfect; thoughtful, gentle, cheery, and so patient with her whims and imaginings, poor old soul, that his coming grew to be the one bright spot in her life, and I fancied she would give herself up to complete invalidism for the sake of them. But he looked grave one day over her, and informed me she must have a nurse.

“Do you think me incapable?” I asked rather sharply.

“No, but you couldn’t hold out to do all there is to be done. Your aunt is going to be worse, Miss Allison, and I doubt if we can pull her through. You’ll want somebody for night work.”

Mrs. Smith, the village nurse, is the dreariest of her kind, and brings an atmosphere of melancholy with her. My services were needed as cheerer-up from this time on, for poor Aunt Abby grew visibly weaker, and finally one stormy night the end seemed near, so I did not go home. Dr. Richmond came in about nine o’clock and found me in the cold, lofty parlor with its straight backed furniture and grim family portraits.

“See here,” he remarked as he returned from the sick-room, “mightn’t you be a little more comfortable somehow? You can’t sit up all night on the edge of a slippery sofa like that. Why don’t you doze, and let the nurse call if she wants you?”

I had unconsciously taken the attitude of my childhood’s years, when sent to call on Aunt Abby and charged not to let my feet touch the furniture, my hands crossed in my lap, and spine rigid. But I couldn’t have slept at any rate, I told him, and should manage all right.

He opened the front door to depart, then came back. A West Indian tornado was tearing at the house and lashing the trees with howls of fury, the chimneys moaning and blinds rattling. He looked at me irresolutely, I sitting motionless. What did a mere storm matter,—a tumult of nature which would be over by morning? He might object to it, with nothing worse to worry about; it made no difference to me.

“I must be on hand every hour, anyway,” he said slowly, “to watch your aunt’s pulse. Neither you nor the nurse would understand it. If you don’t mind, I’ll stay here, instead of coming back and forth across the common in such a gale as this. And meanwhile let me show you a better way to rest.”

Poor Aunt Abby! It was fortunate that she could not see her plush sofa moved around cornerwise and its end filled with pillows, nor the logs which the doctor brought from the cellar piled across her beautifully polished, unused andirons. Had I any business to sink back luxuriously and enjoy the sparkle and warmth of a fire, with that unconscious figure in the next room? I sprang up again and tiptoed in to ask the nurse if I might not take her place.

“No,” said Mrs. Smith dolorously but firmly, “you ain’t experienced enough to watch out her last hours. Miss Abby’s been good to me in ways I sha’n’t say nothin’ about, and I’m a-goin’ to see her through. All I want you for is to call if I need you, and so long as I ain’t all alone I shall stay up till the last.”

I crept back, feeling incompetent and useless, and with some of the diminished nerve which results from the nearness and certainty of death—that hour we are never ready for.

“Lie against the cushions, please,” commanded the doctor quietly. “Now I’m going to be here and watch every symptom. You won’t have to keep anything on your mind,—and your aunt may rally, remember, perhaps even return to consciousness again. Just put the responsibility entirely on Mrs. Smith and me, and try to rest as much as you can.”

There was no resisting this; he should not see, however, that my eyes grew moist under the unwonted sensation of being looked out for. I turned my head away to pull my forces together, but he had gone back to Aunt Abby’s bedside. When he came out, in about five minutes, he told me that all was going well, and then sitting down began to speak of everyday matters. Before very long a better footing was established between us than ever before, and for a couple of hours we talked, only interrupted by visits to the sick-room. I forgot my secret smart at having been ridiculed, in hearing Morris Richmond tell delightful bits of his own experiences and life interest. Not being enough of a woman of the world to resist the delicate flattery which such a recital implies, I didn’t suspect him either of adroitness enough to use his autobiography for that purpose. But about twelve o’clock he looked at his watch, then at me, and frowned.

“You’re horribly tired,” he said, “and I’ve no business to keep you up when it isn’t necessary. Please go upstairs to bed, and sleep till four o’clock. I shall be here till then, and there will be absolutely nothing for you to do. If your aunt is improving, you needn’t be called till seven, for you can take Mrs. Smith’s place to-morrow, and Mrs. Benjamin will come over to help you if you need her.”

Evidently he himself was tired of talking so long. I didn’t give him credit for any especially disinterested motives in sending me off, but went with some resentment, since he so plainly wished me to go. I didn’t sleep, however. The mirror on the wall of the barren guest room moved from some hidden draught or jar, the old willow whipped its twigs against the window panes, and I lay watching them with a strange tumult in my heart, a whirlwind of whys and conjectures, a creeping nervousness as to the outcome of the next few hours, a lonely dread of the after months when Aunt Abby should be gone and my home life changed,—and yet, through it all, an odd new satisfaction which I tried to push away, and a tendency to go over word for word the talk of that evening and the looks on Morris Richmond’s face. There was a faint dawn in the room before I knew it, and then it occurred to me that the doctor ought to have a little breakfast after his long vigil. The servants were asleep, but the kitchen fire had been left “in,” and I knew where everything was kept. I freshened myself up and stole down the back stairs to cook coffee and eggs and hot toast. In the midst of it the door opened behind me, and I started guiltily.

“What are you doing now?” he demanded.

“How did you know?” I faltered.

“The smell of that coffee going all through the house is enough to wake anybody. So this is the way you obey orders! Miss West is better, and I am just going. You might perfectly well have slept on.”

“But I couldn’t,” I insisted, “and you will stay and drink the coffee now that I have cooked it.”

He consented if I would have some too, and we ate our impromptu meal in the dark dining-room, warming up over it and chatting most familiarly. It was growing light when the doctor took his hat in the hall.

“Thank you for being so good to me,” he said. “I appreciate it. Now please don’t overdo. I sha’n’t be in again probably until noon, unless you send for me;”—and he opened the door, where we both stood looking out. We were just opposite his house. The storm was abating, but the havoc it had made was visible everywhere. A big elm had been uprooted on the common, and lay prone, with hundreds of scattered twigs about it. And the doctor’s front yard? Alas! Mrs. Benjamin’s old buttonwood tree, which had been dying all summer, was crashed over, burying in its prostrate branches the crane, the andirons, the gay beds and all. Nature itself had swept away the last barriers now, I reflected triumphantly, to what might be a good satisfactory friendship. Better days were coming. But—

“Whew!” said my companion lightly. “Look over there. Dear me—I must hurry home and set Nick at work. It will take us a whole week to get square with the Village Improvement Society!”

Aunt Abby lived nearly a month longer. Her sister came on from California and took charge in the sick-room with an energy which left very little for others to do. After the funeral she went away again. The property had been left to her, the house to me, with just enough income to live, economically, in it. Father and his affianced bride were well satisfied with this arrangement, and made preparations to be married at Thanksgiving, at which time I was to move into my new abode. I felt it to be following indeed in Aunt Abby’s footsteps, and could see myself in imagination going on year after year with my one servant, growing older and grimmer, brooding over past days, finally slipping out of life without a friend in the world. It was rather a new thing for me to take this morbid view, but one always finds a fresh idea interesting, and I hugged it for a time with all the vehemence of my nature. The doctor I had seen now and then, and we had managed to remain pretty well on our new basis of easy and even confidential acquaintanceship. But I could not forget the old grudge; he would not keep up that spirit of mockery which cropped out so often unless he regarded me still as a village nonenity. Yet why need I care?

One November afternoon I started out to walk off the blues. It was gray and windy, but with occasional gleams of sunshine,—a good day for a hilltop. I went by the Bunkers’ shut up mansion, waved to Miss Maria at her little corner sitting-room window, shook my head to resist Mrs. Benjamin’s beckoning hand as I passed her door, and glanced at the doctor’s yard. It was in order again indeed. The mutilated crane and andirons had been removed, and the beds emptied and raked over; but a new horror had been perpetrated in the shape of two brilliant globular lawn-reflectors on pedestals, one blue-gray, the other yellow, which gave a miniature distorted panorama of all passing objects and showed me a waddling image of myself, with flattened, wrathful countenance. It was the last straw, and I walked fiercely away, resolved that if my future dwelling must be opposite this man’s, its front blinds should be lowered forever.

As that walk registered just about the lowest point my mental and spiritual barometer has ever reached, I can hardly forget it. I climbed over Hart’s hill, and from its summit looked off westward over level fields, bounded by a horizon of tossing gray clouds and slits of pale, yellow light. The old graveyard lay to the right, smooth bare maple boughs tossed above me. The road ran straight ahead, and I stood undecided whether to go on down or not. If it had been in a story, I reflected bitterly, the man I hated yet longed to see would appear then and there; in real life such things never happen at the right juncture. I should simply go back, give father his tea, and see him depart as usual for the evening, then sit alone.

But, after all, this is a story, or I shouldn’t be telling it. A buggy turned out of the farm-yard half way down the hill, and came toward me. I knew the horse and occupant, and turned my feet resolutely homeward, with a confusion in my brain which I thought was anger. A rapid trot sounded behind me, and then the doctor’s “Whoa!” I did not look up till I heard him say: “Miss Allison, would you please let me drive you home?”

“I came out for a walk,” I answered.

“Yes, but you’ve had the walk. And besides that, you are more by yourself nowadays than is good for you.” What business was it of his?—”Then, best of all, I have a letter from Amy to read you.”

“Oh, I don’t suppose it matters,” said I, climbing wearily in beside him, “only please have the goodness not to drive me past your house. The prospect of looking at it morning, noon and night hereafter is bad enough since this latest infliction.”

“Infliction! do you really think so?” he asked, with the old merriment in his voice. “But I had to put something there, you know, to brighten it up a little. You certainly would have me sufficiently alive to my own interests as a physician, wouldn’t you, to see the propriety—”

“Stop!” I burst out, my cheeks one flame and the hot tears of tired-out nerves and pent-up anger springing to my eyes. “Be kind enough to understand that for your interests as a physician I don’t care one straw!”

The Doctor turned and laid his hand gently on mine, looking down at me with a smile which levelled all my fortifications.

“Of course you don’t,” he said. “But as a man—you surely must have seen by this time how badly I need a wife! Won’t you come home and take command of my front yard?”

Ruth Huntington Sessions.