Grace S. Richmond I am ashamed that women are so simple To offer war when they should kneel for peace. —Taming of the Shrew.

"We are invited to spend the week-end with Camellia," announced my hostess at the breakfast-table one morning, glancing up from a note which the hall-boy had just brought to the door.

The Skeptic jumped in his chair. "Those same old sensations come over me," he announced, digging away vengefully at his grapefruit. "What have I to wear? My only consolation now is that Camellia married a man who cares about as much what he wears as I do."

"It's not Camellia's clothes that bother me now," said Hepatica thoughtfully, "so much as the formality of her style of entertaining. My dear, she has a butler."

"How horrible!" I agreed. "Can I hope to please the eye of the butler?"

"Camellia's husband is a downright good fellow," said the Skeptic warmly. "The fuss and feathers of his wife's hospitality can't prevent his giving you the real thing. Even Philo likes to go there—particularly when Camellia is away. I presume Philo's invited now?"

"So she says," assented Hepatica, studying her note again, with a care not to look at me which made me quite as self-conscious as if she had. Why the dear people will all persist in thinking things which do not exist! Of course I was glad the Philosopher was to be there. What enjoyment is not the keener for his friendly sharing of it? But what of that? Has it not been so for many years?—and will be so, I trust, for all to come.

Hepatica and I packed with care, selecting the most expensive things we owned. Hepatica scrutinized the Skeptic's linen critically before she put it in. When we departed we were as correctly attired as time and thought could make us. When we arrived we were doubly glad that this was so, for the sight of the butler, admitting us, gave us much the same feeling of being badly dressed that Camellia's own presence had been wont to do.

Camellia herself was as exquisitely arrayed as ever, but she looked considerably older than I had expected. I wondered if constant engagements with her tailor and dressmaker, to say nothing of incessant interviews with those who see to the mechanism of formal entertaining, had not begun to wear upon her. But she was very cordial with us, and her husband, the Judge, was equally so. He was considerably her senior—quite as much so, I decided, as the Professor was Dahlia's—but on account of Camellia's woman-of-the-world air the contrast was not so pronounced.

We sat through an elaborate dinner, during which I suffered more or less strain of anxiety concerning my forks. But the Judge, at whose right hand I sat, diverted me so successfully by means of his own most interesting personality and delightful powers of conversation, that in time I forgot both forks and butler, and was only conscious of the length of the dinner by the sense, toward its close, of having had more to eat than I wanted.

illustration

"Camellia herself was as exquisitely
arrayed as ever"

"They have this sort of thing every night of their unfortunate lives, to a greater or less degree," murmured the Skeptic in my ear, as the men came into the impressively decorated room where Camellia and Hepatica and I were talking over common memories. "The gladdest man to get into his summer camp in Maine is the Judge, and the life of absolute abandon to freedom he lives there ought to teach his wife a thing or two—if she were wise enough to heed it. Why two people—but I've just eaten their salt," he acknowledged in reply to what I suppose must have been my accusing look, and forbore to say more.

"I think I'll give a little dinner for you to-morrow night," said Camellia reflectively, as we sat about. "A very informal one, of course—just some of our neighbours."

I felt my spirits drop. I saw those of Hepatica and the Skeptic and the Philosopher drop, although they made haste to prop their countenances up again.

But the Judge protested. "Why give anything, my dear?" he questioned. "I doubt if our friends would prefer meeting our neighbours, whom they don't know, to visiting with ourselves, whom they do—however egotistic that may sound."

"I want to make things gay for you," explained Camellia; "and the Latimers and the Elliots are very gay."—The Judge only lifted his handsome eyebrows.—"And the Liscombes are lovely," went on Camellia. "Mrs. Liscombe sings."

The Judge ran his hand through the thick, slightly graying locks above his broad forehead. He did not need to tell us that he did not enjoy hearing Mrs. Liscombe sing, and doubted if we should.

"Harry Hodgson recites—we always have him when we want to make things go. Oh, he's not a professional, of course. He only gives readings among his special friends. I believe I'll run and telephone him now. He's so likely to have engagements." Camellia hastened away.

We could hardly tell the Judge we fully agreed with his feeling about to-morrow's proposed festivities, neither could we discuss his wife's tastes with him. He and we talked of other things until Camellia came back, having made her engagement with Mr. Harry Hodgson, and so having sealed our fate for the succeeding evening.

The Skeptic and the Philosopher spent much of the following day—it was a legal holiday—with the Judge in his private den up on the third floor. This, as Camellia showed us once when the men were away, was a big, bare room—this was her characterization—principally fireplace, easy-chairs, books and windows. I liked it better than any other place in the house, for it was unencumbered with useless furniture of any sort, and the view from its windows was much finer than that from below stairs.

"But we're not invited up here, you observe," was Camellia's comment. "I don't come into it once a month. The Judge spends his evenings here—when I don't actually force him to go out with me—and I spend mine down in the pleasanter quarters. I have the Liscombes and the Latimers in very often, but he never comes down if he can avoid it. They understand he's eccentric, and we let it go at that."

She spoke with the air of being a most kindly and forbearing wife. I followed her downstairs, pondering over points of view. Eccentric—because he preferred wide fires and elbow-room and outlook to Camellia's crowded and over-decorated rooms below, and his books to Mrs. Liscombe's music and Mr. Harry Hodgson's "readings." I felt that I knew Mrs. Liscombe and Mr. Hodgson and the rest quite without having seen them.

I found, the next evening, that my imagination had not gone far astray. Camellia's friends were certainly quite as "gay" as she had pictured them, and gorgeously dressed. I felt, as I attempted to maintain my part among them, like a country mouse suddenly precipitated into the society of a company of town-bred squirrels.

Mrs. Liscombe sang for us. I could not make out what it was she sang, being unfamiliar with the music and unable to understand the words. She possessed a voice of some beauty, but was evidently determined to be classed among the sopranos who are able to soar highest, and when she took certain notes I experienced a peculiar and most disagreeable sensation in the back of my neck.

"I wonder if we couldn't bring in a stepladder for her," murmured the Skeptic in my ear. "It gives me a pang to see a woman, alone and unassisted, attempt to reach something several feet above her head!"

Mr. Hodgson recited for us with great fervour. He fought a battle on the drawing-room floor, fought and bled and died, all in a harrowing tenor voice. He was slender and pale, and it seemed a pity that he should have to suffer so much with so many stalwart men at hand. From the first moment, when he drew his sword and leaped into the fray, our sympathies were with him, although he personified a doughty man of battles, and led ten thousand lusty followers. There were moments when one could not quite forget the swinging coat-tails of his evening attire, but on the whole he was an interesting study, and I was much diverted.

"Dear little fellow!"—it was the Skeptic again. "How came they to let him go to war—and he so young and tender?"

I exchanged observations with Mr. Hodgson after his final reading; I can hardly say that I conversed with him, for our patchwork interview could not deserve that name. At the same time I noted with interest the Philosopher's expression as he and Mrs. Liscombe turned over a pile of music. If I had not known him so well I should have been deceived by that grave and interested air of his—a slight frown of concentrated attention between his well-marked eyebrows—into thinking him deeply impressed by the lady's dicta and by her somewhat dashing manner as she delivered them. But, familiar of old with the quizzical expression which at times could be discovered to underlie the exterior of charmed absorption, I understood that the Philosopher was quietly and skilfully classifying a new, if not a rare, specimen.

When the guests had lingeringly departed I saw, as I went to my room, three male forms leaping up the second flight of stairs toward the Judge's den.

"Don't you envy them the chance to soothe their nerves with a pipe beside the fire up there?" I asked Hepatica as, with hair down and trailing, loose garments, she came into my room through the door which we had discovered could be opened between our quarters.

"Indeed I do. They went up those stairs like three dogs loosed from the leash, didn't they? Can one blame them?"

"One cannot."

Hepatica gazed at me. I stared back. But we were under our host's roof.

"Mrs. Liscombe really has quite a voice," said Hepatica, examining the details of the tiny travelling workbag I always carry with me.

"So she has."

"It was a wonderful dinner, wasn't it?"

"It was, indeed. Would you mind having quite specially simple things to eat for a day or two after we go back?"

"I've been planning them," admitted Hepatica.

"Mr. Hodgson's readings were—entirely new to me; were they to you? I had never heard of the authors."

"Few people can have heard of them, I think. Several were original."

"Indeed!"

"Would you mind taking off your society manner?" requested Hepatica, a trifle fractiously. "I'm a little tired of seeing you wear it so incessantly."

"I shall be delighted," I agreed.

I sprang up and she met me half-way, and seizing me about the neck buried her face in my shoulder. I felt her shaking with smothered laughter, and had great difficulty in keeping my own emotions under control.

We went home on Sunday afternoon, the Skeptic pleading the necessity of his being up at an early hour next morning. By unanimous consent we went to the evening service of a church where one goes to hear that which is worth hearing, and invariably hears it. The music there is also worth a long journey, though it is not at all of an elaborate sort.

"There, I feel better after that," declared the Skeptic heartily, as we came out. "It seems to take the taste of last evening out of my mouth."

Nobody said anything directly about our late visit until we had reached home. Then the Skeptic fired up his diminutive gas grate—which is much better than none at all—and turned off the electrics. We sat before the cheery little glow, luxuriating in a sense of relaxation.

"It seems ungracious, somehow to discuss people, when one has just left their hospitality," suggested Hepatica, as the Skeptic showed signs of letting loose the dogs of war.

"Not between ourselves, dear," affirmed the Skeptic. "We four constitute a private Court of Inquiry into the Condition of Our Friends. When I think of the Judge——"

"He has his own way, after all, when it comes to refusing to join in the sort of thing that pleases Camellia," said I.

"Of course he does. He's too much of a man not to have it. But living upstairs while my wife lives downstairs isn't precisely my ideal of married happiness."

The Philosopher shoved his hands far down into his pockets and laid his head back, gazing up at the ceiling. "What puzzles me," he mused, "is the attraction such a woman has, at the start, for such a man."

"Camellia was a most attractive girl," said I.

"You mean her clothes were most attractive," amended the Skeptic. "They even befuddled me for a few brief hours, as I remember—till I discovered that not all is gold that——"

"You didn't discover that yourself," the Philosopher reminded him. "We had to do it for you. You don't mind our recalling his temporary paralysis of intellect?" he questioned Hepatica suddenly. "It was all your fault, anyhow, for retiring to the background and allowing the fireworks to have full play."

Hepatica smiled. The Skeptic put out his hand and got hold of hers and drew it over to his knee, where he retained it. "She knows I never swerved a point off my allegiance to her," he declared with confidence.

"Do you suppose," suggested Hepatica, "if the Judge and Camellia were to lose all their money and had to come down to living in a little home like this, it would help things any?"

The Skeptic shook his head. The Philosopher shook his, thoughtfully. "It's too late," said the latter. "Her ideals are a fixed quantity now, to be reckoned with. So are his. Under any conditions there would be absolute diversity of tastes."

"I don't think there's any ideal more hopelessly fixed than the fine clothes ideal." The Skeptic looked at his wife.

"I like nice clothes," said she, smiling at him.

"So you do," he rejoined; "thank heaven! A woman who doesn't is abnormal. But when we walk down certain streets together you can see something besides the shop-windows."

"I look away so I won't want the things," confessed Hepatica.

The Skeptic laughed, and the Philosopher and I joined him.

"I passed Mrs. Hepatica the other day when she didn't see me," said the Philosopher to me. "She was staring fixedly in at a shop-window. I stole up behind her to see what held such an attraction for her.—It often lets a great light in on a friend's character, if you can see the particular object in a shop-window which fixes his longing attention. When I had discovered what she was looking at I stole away again, chuckling to myself."

"What was it?" I asked.

"I'll wager half I own that the wife of our friend the Judge wouldn't have given that window a second glance," pursued the Philosopher.

"It was probably a bargain sale of paper patterns," guessed the Skeptic. But we knew he didn't think it.

"A bargain sale of groceries, more likely," said Hepatica herself.

"It was no bargain sale of anything," denied the Philosopher. "It was a most expensive edition of the works of Charles Dickens."

"Good for you, Patty!" cried the Skeptic.

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