Mrs. Abby Meguire Roach, "the very cleverest of the Louisville school of women novelists," was born at Philadelphia in 1876. She was educated in the schools of her native city, finishing her training with a year at Wellesley College. In 1899 she was married to Mr. Neill Roach, of Louisville, Kentucky, and that city has been her home since. Mrs. Roach wrote many stories of married life for the New York magazines, which were afterwards collected and published as Some Successful Marriages (New York, 1906). These have been singled out by the reviewers as "charming" and "most beautiful"; and her work has been compared to Miss May Sinclair's, the famous English novelist. One of Mrs. Roach's most recent stories was published in The Century Magazine for July, 1907, entitled "Manifest Destiny," but this has not been followed by any others in the last year or so. "Unremembering June," one of the best of the tales in Some Successful Marriages, relates the love of Molly-Moll for her invalid husband, after whose death she falls in love with Reno, the father of Lola, "who had been his salvage from the wreck of his marriage."

Bibliography. Harper's Magazine (May, 1907); Library of Southern Literature (Atlanta, 1909, v. xv), contains Miss Marilla Waite Freeman's excellent study of Mrs. Roach.

UNREMEMBERING JUNE[85]

[From Some Successful Marriages (New York, 1906)]

"And you will let me have word of you? Surely? And give me a chance to be of use? Won't you?" he persisted, taking leave. She swept his face swiftly with a glance of inquiry, intelligence. "Won't you?"

"O-h—perhaps," with just the faintest puckering of the mouth.

But spring passed without word from her, until there were times when Reno's impatience seethed like a colony of bees at hiving-time.

At last he wrote.

With unpardonable deliberation a brief answer came: Molly's son was a couple months old, but not yet finished enough to be much to look at.

He wrote again: Lola was pale from the city, and bored with herself and her maid; a farm with other children on it sounded like fairyland to her. Could some arrangement be made...?

Lola had been there a month before he had any word but her own hard-written and naturally not very voluminous love-letters, letters in which the homesickness was an ever fainter and fainter echo of the first wild cry, and in which the references to "Dandie" made it plain that she had adopted the other children's auntie into a peculiar relationship with herself. At last a postscript from Mrs. Loring herself:

"Wouldn't you like to come to see her? It's worth a longer trip."

"Of course I would. You're uncommon slow asking me. What kind of father, and man, do you think me?"

Molly was standing with the baby in her arms, chewing its chub of fist. In the warm wind soft wisps of blown brown hair curled all around forehead and neck. Her flesh was firm, transparent, aglow; her skin as clear, satiny, pink as the baby's. And what generous, sweet plumpness! She was at perhaps the most beautiful time of a woman's life—in the glamour of first young motherhood, with the beauty of perfect health and uncoarsened maturity.

And in the black-and-white of her shirt-waist suit there was no more suggestion of mourning than there is thought of winter in full June—rich, warm, full of promise, "unremembering June," the present and future tenses of the year's declension.

As she stood biting the baby, Reno understood why. His look devoured her.

Seeing him, her eyes only gave greeting, and, smiling, directed his to the group of animated children's overalls in a sand-pile in front of her. One particular occupant of one particular pair of overalls spied him. Lola flew. He held her off, brown, round, rosy. "Why, who is this? Whose little girl—or boy—are you?"

Her head dropped; she dropped from his hand like a nipped flower.

"Whose little girl are you?" coached a rich voice with an undercurrent of laughter.

Like a flower again, the child swayed at the breath of that elemental nature. "Dandie's little girl," ventured a small voice. At sight of the father's face, Molly laughed, a laugh of many significances. And with a flood of recollected loyalty, "Papa's!" gasped the child, and smothered him with remorse.

"Wouldn't you like to be Dandie's and papa's little girl all at once?"

("Well! I like that!")

"Why, yes. Ain't I? Can't I?"

"I think you can."

("Oh, you do?")

"No?" His grip on her wrist hurt, and forced her to look up. ("Is it only a mother you want for Lola—and yourself?"); and, looking, she was satisfied; and, looking, she flushed slowly from head to foot, answering him.

"The most loyal, affectionate woman in the world!" he added, after a little.

"Oh, never mind the fairy tales!" she scoffed, pleased, waiting.

He spoke none of the time-honored commonplaces that belittle or dignify or mask the real individual feeling under the stereotype of what it is assumed love ought to be. He could foresee her amusement. Besides, it would have been about as appropriate as trying to capture a bird with a smile.

"But I would never marry any woman that I wasn't sure would be kind to Lola and fond of her."

"Oh, Lola!" Her whole look was soft and sweet. "I am fond of her now." Then a mischievous laugh bubbled in her throat. "And could be of you, too, if you insist." Even with the laugh her eyes were deeper than words, grave and tender.

"As to that, also, Molly-Moll, what you will be to me I am quite satisfied, quite."