 A Rainy Evening, a Sketch, from Love After Marriage and Other Stories of the Heart, by Mrs. Carolyn Lee Hentz. Red for Love Stories, Vol. 2, by Wayne Cook. A Rainy Evening, a Sketch, from Love After Marriage and Other Stories of the Heart, by Mrs. Carolyn Lee Hentz. A pleasant little group was gathered around Uncle Ned's domestic hearth. He sat on one side of the fireplace opposite Aunt Mary, who, with her book in her hand, watched the children seated at the table, some reading, others sewing, all occupied, but one, a child of larger growth, a young lady, who, being a guest in the family, was suffered to indulge in the pleasures of idleness without reproof. Oh, I love a rainy evening! said little Anne, looking up from her book and meeting her mother's smiling glance. It is so nice to sit by a good fire and hear the rain pattering against the windows. Only I pity the poor people who have no house to cover them to keep off the rain and the cold. And I love a rainy evening, too, cried George, a boy of twelve. I can study so much better. My thoughts stay at home and don't keep rambling off after the bright moon and stars. My heart feels warmer and I really believe I love everybody better than I do when the weather is fair. Uncle Ned smiled and gave the boy an approving pat on the shoulder. Everyone smiled, but the young lady, who, with a languid discontented air, now played with a pair of scissors, now turned over the leaves of a book, then, with an ill-suppressed yawn, leaned idly on her elbow and looked into the fire. And what do you think of a rainy evening, Lisbeth? asked Uncle Ned. I should like to hear your opinion, also. I think it is over dull and uninteresting indeed, answered she. I always feel so stupid I can hardly keep myself awake. One cannot go abroad or hope to see company at home, and one gets so tired of seeing the same faces all the time. I cannot imagine what George and Anne see to admire so much in a disagreeable rainy evening like this. Supposing I tell you a story to enliven you, said Uncle Ned. Oh yes, Father, please tell us a story, exclaimed the children simultaneously. Little Anne was purged upon his knee as if by a magic, and even Lisbeth moved her chair as if excited to some degree of interest. George still held his book in his hand, but his bright eyes, sparkling with unusual animation, were riveted upon his uncle's face. I'm going to tell you a story about a rainy evening, said Uncle Ned. Oh, that will be so pretty! cried Anne, clapping her hands. But Lisbeth's countenance fell below zero. It was an ominous enunciation. Yes, continued Uncle Ned, a rainy evening. But though clouds darker than those which now met the sky were lowering abroad, and the rain fell heavier and faster, the rainbow of my life was drawn most beautifully in those dark clouds, and its fair colors still shine most lovely on the sight. It is no longer, however, the bow of promise, but the realization of my fondest dreams. George saw his uncle, Cassin, express a glance towards the handsome matron in the opposite corner, whose color perceptibly heightened, and he could not forebear exclaiming, ah, Aunt Mary is blushing. I understand Uncle's metaphor. She is his rainbow, and he thinks life one long rainy day. Not exactly so. I mean your last conclusion. But don't interrupt me, my boy, and you shall hear a lesson, which, young as you are, I trust you will never forget. When I was a young man, I was thought quite handsome. Boy, as as pretty as he can be now, interrupted little Anne, passing her hand fondly over his manly cheek. Uncle Ned was not displeased with the compliment, for he pressed her closer to him while he continued. Well, when I was young, I was of a gay spirit and a great favorite society. The young ladies liked me for a partner in the dance, the chess board, or the evening walk, and I had reason to think several of them would have made no objection to take me as a partner for life. Among all my young acquaintances, there was no one whose companionship was more pleasing as that of a maiden whose name was Mary. Now, there are great many Marys in the world, so you must not take it for granted, I mean your mother or aunt. At any rate, you must not look so significant till I have finished my story. Mary was a sweet and lovely girl, with a current of cheerfulness running through a disposition that made music as it flowed. It was an undercurrent, however, always gentle and kept within its legitimate channel, never overflowing into boisterous mirth or unmeaning levity. She was the only daughter of her mother, and she a widow. Mrs. Carlton, such as was her mother's name, was in lowly circumstances, and Mary had none of the appliances of wealth into fashion to decorate her person or gild her home. A very modest competency was all her portion, and she wished for nothing more. I have seen her in a simple white dress, without a single ornament, unless it was a natural rose, transcend all the gaudy bells who sought by the traction to dress to win the admiration of the multitude. But alas for poor human nature. One of these dashing bells so fascinated my attention that the gentle Mary was for a while forgotten. Theresa Vane was, indeed, a rare piece of mortal mechanism. Her figure was the perfection of beauty, and she moved as if strong upon wire, so elastic and springing were her gestures. I never saw such lustrous hair. It was perfectly black and shone like burning steel. And then such ringlets, how they waved and rippled down her beautiful neck. She dressed with the most exquisite taste to delicacy and neatness, and whatever she wore assumed a peculiar grace and fitness, as if art loved to adorn what nature made so fair. But what charmed me most was the sunshiney smile that was always waiting to light up her countenance. To be sure she sometimes laughed a little too loud, but then her laugh was so musical and a tease so white, it was impossible to believe her guilty of rudeness or want of grace. Often when I saw her in social circle, so brilliant and smiling, the life and charm of everything around her, I thought how happy the constant companionship of such a being would make me, what brightness she would impart to the fireside of home, what light would joy to the darkness scenes of existence. Oh, Uncle! interrupted George, laughing. If I were Aunt Mary, I would not let you praise any other lady so warmly. You are so taken up with their beauty you have forgotten all about the rainy evening. Aunt Mary smiled, but it is more than probable that George really touched one of the hidden springs of her woman's heart, for she looked down and said nothing. Don't be impatient, said Uncle Ned, and you shall not be cheated out of your story. I have began a full Elizabeth's sake rather than yours, and I see she is wide awake. She thinks I was by this time more than half in love with Theresa Vane, and she thinks more than half right. There had been a great many parties of pleasure, writing parties, sailing parties, and talking parties, and the summer slipped by almost unconsciously. At length the autumnal equinox approached, and gathering clouds, northeastern gales, and drizzling rains succeeded to the soft breezes, mellow skies, and glowing sunsets. Peculiar to that beautiful season. For two or three days I was confined within doors by the continuous rains, and I am sorry to confess it, but the blue devils actually got complete possession of me. One strided upon my nose, another danced on the top of my head, one pinched my ear, and another turned some salts on my chin. You laugh, little Vanny, but they are terrible creatures, these blue gentlemen, and I could not endure them any longer. So the third rainy evening I put on my overcoat, buttoned up to my chin, and taking my umbrella in my hand, set out in the direction of Mrs. Vane's. Here, I thought, as my fingers pressed the latch, I shall find the moonlight smile that will illuminate the darkness of my night. The dull vapors were dispersed before her radiant glance, and this interminable equinoctical storm shall be transformed into a mere, verbal shower, melting away in sunbeams at her presence. My gentle knock, not being apparently heard, I stepped into the enter room, set down my umbrella, took off my drenched overcoat, arranged my hair in the most grateful manner, and claiming a privilege to which perhaps I had no legitimate right, opened the door of the family sitting room, and found myself in the presence of the beautiful Teresa. Here, Uncle Madhu made a provoking pause. Pray go on, how was she dressed? And was she glad to see you? As sailed him on every side. How was she dressed? Repeated he. I am not very well skilled in the technicalities of a lady's wardrobe, but I can give you the general impression of her personal appearance. In the first place, there was a jumping up in an offhand sliding steps towards the opposite door, as I entered, but a disobliging chair was in the way, and I was making my lowest bow before she found an opportunity of disappearing. Confused and mortified, she scarcely returned my salutation, while Mrs. Vane offered me a chair, and expressed in somewhat dubious terms, their gratification at such an unexpected pleasure. I have no doubt Teresa wished me at the bottom of the frozen ocean, if I might judge by the freezing glances she shot at me through her long lashes. She sat uneasily in her chair, trying to conceal her slip-shod shoes, and furtively arranging her dress about the shoulders and waist. It was a most rebellious subject, for the body and the skirt were at open warfare, refusing to have any communion with each other. Where was the graceful shape I had so much admired? In Vane I sought its exquisite outlines in the folds of that loose slovenly robe. Where were those glistening ringlets and burnished locks that had so lately rivaled the tresses of Medusa? Her hair was put in tangled bunches behind her ears, and tucked up behind a kind of Gordian knot, which would have required the sword of an Alexander to untie. Her frock was assorted in dingy silk with trimmings of salo blonde, and a faded fancy handkerchief was thrown over one shoulder. You have caught me completely in déceblée, said she, recovering partially from embarrassment. But the evening was so rainy, and no one but Mother and myself had never dreamed of such an exhibition of gallantry as this. She could not disguise vexation with all her efforts to conceal it, and Mrs. Vane evidently shared to Daughter Chagrin, I was wicked enough to enjoy their confusion, and never peered more at my ease, or played the agreeable with more signal success. I was disenchanted at once, and my mind reveled in its recovered freedom. My goddess had fallen from the pedestal on which my imagination had enthroned her, despoiled of the beautiful drapery which had imparted to her such ideal loveliness. I knew that I was a favorite in the family, for I was wealthy and independent, and perhaps of all Theresa's admirers, what the world would call the best match. I maliciously asked her to play on the piano, but she made a thousand excuses, studiously keeping back the true reason, her disordered attire. I asked her to play a game of chess, but she had a headache. She was too stupid. She never could do anything on a rainy evening. At length I took my leave, inwardly blessing the moving spirit which had led me abroad that night, the dispel which had so long enthralled my senses might be broken. Theresa called up one of her lamben smiles as I bade her adieu. Never called again on a rainy evening, she said sportively, I am always so wretchedly dull, I believe I was born to live among the sunbeams, the moonlight and the stars. Clouds will never do for me. Amen, I silently responded as I closed the door, while as putting on my coat I overheard without the smallest intentional listening a passionate exclamation from Theresa. Good heavens mother, with her ever anything so unlucky, I never thought of seeing my neighbor's dog tonight, if I have not been completely caught. I hope you will mind my advice next time, replied her mother in a grieve tone. I told you not to sit in that slovenly dress, I have no doubt you have lost him forever. Here I am made good, my retreat, not wishing to enter the penternalia of family secrets. The rain still continued unabated, but my social feelings were very far from being dampened. I had the curiosity to make another experiment. The evening was not very far advanced, and as I turned from Mrs. Vane's fashionable mansion, I saw a modest light glimmering in the distance, and I hailed it as the ship wrecked a mariner hails a star that guides him or oceans foam to the home he has left behind. Though I was gay and young and a passionate admirer of beauty, I had very exalted ideas of domestic felicity. I knew that there was many a rainy day in life, and I thought the companion who was born alone for sunbeams and moonlight would not aid me to dissipate their gloom. I had, moreover, a shrewd suspicion that the daughter who thought it a sufficient excuse for a shameful person on neglect, that there was no one present but her mother, would, as a wife, be equally regardless of a husband's presence. While I pursued these reflections, my feet involuntarily drew nearer and more nearer to the light, which had been the lodestone of my opening manhood. I had continued to meet Mary in the gay circles I frequented, but I had lately become almost a stranger to her home. Shall I be a welcome guest, as I said to myself as I crossed the threshold? Shall I find her indigilable, likewise, and discover that feminine beauty and grace are incompatible with a rainy evening? I heard a sweet voice reading aloud as I opened the door, and I knew it was the voice which was once music to my ears. Mary rose at my entrance, laying her book quietly on the table, and greeted me with a modest grace and self-possession peculiar to herself. She looked surprised and a little embarrassed, but very far from being displeased. She made no allusion to my estrangement or neglect, expressed no astonishment in my untimely visit, nor once hindered that being alone with her mother and not anticipating visitors, she thought it unnecessary to wear the habiliments of a lady. Never in my life had I seen her look so lovely. Her dress was perfectly plain, but every fold was arranged by the hand of the graces. Her dark brown hair, which had a natural wave in it, now uncurled by the dampness, was put back in smooth ringlets from her brow, revealing a face which had not considered its beauty wasted because her mother's eye alone rested on its bloom. A beautiful cluster of autumnal roses placed in a glass vase on the table perfumed the apartment, and a bright blaze on the hearth diffused the spirit of cheerfulness around, while it relieved the atmosphere of its excessive moisture. Mrs. Carlton was an invalid and suffered also from an inflammation of the eyes. Mary had been reading aloud to her from her favorite book. What do you think it was? It was a very old-fashioned one indeed, no other than the Bible. And Mary was not ashamed to have such a fashionable young man as I then was to see what her occupation had been. What a contrast to the scene I had just quitted, how I loathed myself for the infatuation which had led me to prefer the artificial graces of a bell to this pure child of nature. I drew my chair to the table and entreated that they would not look upon me as a stranger, but as a friend anxious to be restored to the forfeited privileges of an old acquaintance. I was understood in a moment, and without a single reproach was admitted again to confidence and familiarity. The hours I had wasted with Theresa seemed like a kind of mesmeric slumber, a blank in my existence, or at least a feverish dream. What do you think of a rainy evening, Mary? I asked before I left her. I love it of all things, replied she with animation. There is something so home-drawing, so heart-knitting in its influence. The dependencies which bind us to the world seem withdrawn, and retiring within ourselves we learn more of the deeper mysteries of our own being. Mary's soul beamed from her eye as it turned with the transient obliquity towards heaven. She pauses a fearful of unsealing the fountains of her heart. I said that Mrs. Carlton was an invalid and consequently retired early to a chamber, but I lingered till a late hour, nor did I go till I had made a full confession of my folly, repentance, and awakened love. And as Mary did not shut the door on my face, you may imagine she was not sorely displeased. Ah, I knew who Mary was, I knew it all the time, exclaimed George, looking harshly at Mary. A bright tear, which at that moment fell into her lap, showed that, though silent, she was no uninterested auditor. You have it done, Father, said little Anne in a disappointed tone. I thought you were going to tell a story. You have been talking about yourself all the time. I have been something of an egotist, to be sure, my little girl, but I wanted to show my dear young friend here how much might depend upon a rainy evening. Life is not made all of sunshine. The happy and most prosperous must have their seasons of gloom and darkness, and woe be it to those from whom souls no rays of brightness emanate to gild those darkened hours. I bless the god of the rain, as well as of the sunshine. I can read his mercy and his love, as well as in his tempest, whose wings obscure the visible glories of his creations, as in the splendor of the rising sun or the soft dews that descend after his setting radiance. I began with a metaphor. I said a rainbow was drawn on the clouds that lowered in that eventful day, and that it still continued to shine with undiminished beauty. Woman, my children, were sent by God to be the rainbow of man's darker destiny. From their glowing red emblematic of that love which warms and gladdens his existence, to the violet melting into the blue of heaven, symbolical of the faith which links him to a pure world, her blending virtues, mingling with each other in beautiful harmony, are a token of God's mercy here, and an earnest future blessings in those regions where no rainy evenings ever come to obscure the brightness of eternal day. End of A Rainy Evening, A Sketch, From Love After Marriage and Other Stories of the Heart, by Mrs. Carolyn Lee Hentz. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Captain Veneno's Proposal of Marriage Great heavens, what a woman! cried the captain and stamped with fury. Not without reason have I been trembling and in fear of her from the first time I saw her. It must have been a warning of fate that I stopped playing a cart with her. It was also a bad omen that I passed so many sleepless nights. Was there ever mortal in a worse perplexity than I am? How can I leave her alone without a protector loving her as I do, more than my own life? And on the other hand, how can I marry her after all my declaimings against marriage? Then, turning to Augustius, what would they say of me in the club? What would people say of me if they met me in the street with a woman on my arm? Or if they found me at home just about to feed a child in swaddling clothes? I, to have children, to worry about them, to live in eternal fear that they might fall sick or die? Augustius, believe me, as true as there is a God above us, I am absolutely unfit for it. I should behave in such a way that after a short while you would call upon heaven either to be divorced or to become a widow. Listen to my advice, do not marry me, even if I ask you. What a strange creature you are, said the young woman, without allowing herself to be at all discomposed and sitting very erect in her chair. All that you are only telling to yourself? From what do you conclude that I wish to be married to you, that I would accept your offer, or that I should not prefer living by myself, even if I had to work day and night, as so many girls do who are orphans? How do I come to that conclusion, answered the captain with great candor? Because it cannot be otherwise, because we love each other, because we are drawn to each other, because a man such as I and a woman such as you cannot live in any other way. Do you suppose I do not understand that? Don't you suppose I have reflected on it before now? Do you think I am indifferent to your good name and reputation? I have spoken plainly in order to speak, in order to fly from my own conviction, in order to examine whether I can escape from this terrible dilemma, which is robbing me of my sleep, and whether I can possibly find an expedient so that I need not marry you. To do which I shall finally be compelled if you stand by your resolve to make your way alone. Alone? Alone, repeated Augustius roguishly, and why not with a worthier companion, who tells you that I shall not someday meet a man whom I like, and who is not afraid to marry me? Augustius, let us skip that, growled the captain, his face turning scarlet, and why should we not talk about it? Let us pass over that, and let me say at the same time that I will murder the man who dares to ask for your hand, but it is madness on my part to be angry without any reason. I am not so dull as not to see how we two stand. Shall I tell you? We love each other. Do not tell me I am mistaken. That would be lying. And here is the proof. If you did not love me, I too should not love you. Let us try to meet one another halfway. I ask for a delay of ten years. When I shall have completed my half-century, and when a feeble old man, I shall have become familiar with the idea of slavery, then we will marry without anyone knowing about it. We will leave Madrid and go to the country where we shall have no spectators, where there will be nobody to make fun of me. But until this happens, please take half of my income secretly and without any human soul ever knowing anything about it. You continue to live here, and I remain in my house. We will see each other but only in the presence of witnesses, for instance, in society. We will write to each other every day. So as not to endanger your good name, I will never pass through the street, and on Memorial Day only we will go to the cemetery together with Rosa. Augustus could not put smile at the last proposal of the good captain, and her smile was not mocking, but contented and happy, as if some cherished hope had dawned in her heart, as if it were the first ray of the sun of happiness which was about to rise in her heaven. But being a woman, though as brave and free from artifices as few of them, she yet managed to subdue the signs of joy rising within her. She acted as if she cherished not the slightest hope and said with a distant coolness which is usually the special and genuine sign of chaste reserve. You make yourself ridiculous with your peculiar conditions. You stipulate for the gift of an engagement ring for which nobody has yet asked you. I know still another way out for a compromise, but that is really the last one. Do you fully understand, my young lady from Aragon, it is the last way out which a man also from Aragon begs leave to explain to you. She turned her head and looked straight into his eyes with an expression indescribably earnest to captivating, quiet, and full of expectation. The captain had never seen her features so beautiful and expressive at that moment she looked to him like a queen. Augustius said, or rather stammered, this brave soldier who had been under fire a hundred times and who had made such a deep impression on the young girl through his charging under a rain of bullets like a lion. I have the honor to ask for your hand on one certain essential unchangeable condition. Tomorrow morning, today, as soon as the papers are in order, as quickly as possible, I can live without you no longer. The glances of the young girl became milder and she rewarded him for his decided heroism with a tender and bewitching smile. But I repeat, that is on one condition, the bold warrior hastened to repeat, feeling that Augustius glances made him confused and weak. On what condition, asked the young girl, turning fully round and now holding him under the witchery of her sparkling black eyes. On the condition, he stammered, that in case we have children, we send them to the orphanage. I mean, on this point, I will never yield. Well, do you consent? For heaven's sake, say yes. Why should I not consent to it? Captain Veneno answered Augustius with a peel of laughter. You shall take them there yourself. Or better still, we both of us will take them there. And we will give them up without kissing them or anything else. Don't you think we shall take them there? Thus spoke Augustius and looked at the captain with exquisite joy in her eyes. The good captain thought he would die of happiness. A flood of tears burst from his eyes. He folded the blushing girl in his arms and said, So I am lost. Irretrievably lost, Captain Veneno answered Augustius. One morning in May 1852, that is four years after the scene just described, a friend of mine who told me the story stopped his horse in front of a mansion on San Francisco Avenue in Madrid. He threw the reins to his room and asked the long-coated footman who met him at the door, is your master at home? If your honor will be good enough to walk upstairs, you will find him in the library. His Excellency does not like to have visitors announced. Everybody can go up to him directly. Fortunately, I know the house thoroughly, said the stranger to himself while he mounted the stairs. In the library, well, well, who would have thought of Captain Veneno ever taking to the sciences? Wondering through the rooms, the visitor met another servant who repeated, the master is in the library. And at last he came to the door of the room in question, opened it quickly and stood, almost turned to stone for astonishment before the remarkable group which it offered to his view. In the middle of the room, on the carpet which covered the floor, a man was crawling on all fours. On his back rode a little fellow about three years old who was kicking the man's sides with his heels. Another small boy who might have been a year and a half old stood in front of the man's head and had evidently been tumbling his hair. One hand held the father's neck a-chiff and the little fellow was tugging at it as if it had been a halter shouting with delight in his merry child's voice, GEE UP DONKEY GEE UP! End of Captain Veneno's Proposal of Marriage by Pedro Antonio de Alican. A short story by Ernest Hemingway. One hot evening in Milan they carried him up onto the roof and he could look out over the top of the town. There were chimney swifts in the sky. After a while it got dark and the searchlights came out. The others went down and took the bottles with them. He and Ag could hear them below on the balcony. Ag sat on the bed. She was cool and fresh in the hot night. Ag stayed on night duty for three months. They were glad to let her. When they operated on him she prepared him for the operating table and they had a joke about friend Derenema. He went under the anesthetic holding tight onto himself so that he would not blab about anything during the silly talky time. After he got on crutches he used to take the temperature so Ag would not have to get up from the bed. There were only a few patients and they all knew about it. They all liked Ag. As he walked back along the halls he thought of Ag in his bed. Before he went back to the front they went into the Duomo and prayed. It was dim and quiet and there were other people praying. They wanted to get married but there was not enough time for the bands and neither of them had birth certificates. They felt as though they were married but they wanted everyone to know about it and to make it so they could not lose it. Ag wrote him many letters that he never got until after the armistice. Fifteen came in a bunch and he sorted them by the dates and read them all straight through. They were about the hospital and how much he loved him and how it was impossible to get along without him and how terrible it was missing him at night. After the armistice they agreed he should go home to get a job so that they might get married. Ag would not come home until he had a good job and could come to New York to meet her. So understood he would not drink and he did not want to see his friends or anyone in the States only to get a job and be married. On the train from Padova to Milan they quarreled about her not being willing to come home at once. When they had to say goodbye in the station at Padova they kissed goodbye but were not finished with the quarrel. They felt sick about saying goodbye like that. They went to America on a boat from Genoa. Ag went back to Torre de Mosta to open a hospital. It was lonely and rainy there and there was a battalion of Arditi quartered in the town. Living in the muddy, rainy town in the winter the major of the battalion made love to Ag and she had never known battalions before and finally wrote a letter to the States that there has been only a boy and girl affair. She was sorry and she knew he would probably not be able to understand but might someday forgive her and be grateful to her. And she expected absolutely unexpectedly to be married in the spring. She loved him as always but she realized now it was only a boy and girl love. She hoped he would have a great career and believed in him absolutely. She knew it's for the best. The major did not marry her in the spring or any other time. Ag never got an answer to her letter to Chicago about it. A short time after he contracted gonorrhea from a sales girl from the fair riding in a taxicad through Lincoln Park. End of a short story by Ernest Hemingway. Cupid at Forty. My Mrs. Florence Skirtin Tuttle. Read for Love Stories Volume 2 by Anita Saloma Martinez. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Cupid at Forty. My Mrs. Florence Skirtin Tuttle. At last it begins to look more like a Christmas tree and less like a cemetery evergreen. Miss Winslow exclaimed, stepping back in the artist's fashion to survey her work and feeling her aesthetic nature sensuously soothed by the sight of green fringed, tinsel-laden branches against the rich crimson of the library walls. I was born with an eye for backgrounds. She took up a fat, wax-cupid, silver-winged and equipped with quiver and darts and looked at him speculatively, before soaring up the step ladder to place him at the apex of the tree. Have you shafts that will pierce the world-worn heart of Forty, she inquired whimsically? And would you have loved Psyche had she ceased to be perennially young? Old age. Ah, she shivered daintily. Miss Winslow was a middle-aged belle. She was Forty and carried her years with an engaging likeness which was the marvel of her set. She was rich, consequently popular to the point of envy, charming and therefore possessed a few friends who loved her for herself. Yet on Christmas Eve when all the world was sung by echoing bells into temporary tranquility, Miss Winslow's heart was not at peace. Holidays are horrible resurrections to people who live alone, she murmured. Resurrections of heart-wringing sorrows and ghosts of the past. I am glad that I insisted upon having the tree here, spinster though I am. Ten nieces and nephews with their respective guardians will make the rafters ring, and Lester, in the role of family friend, will relieve the Christmas dinner from the narrowness of a strictly family affair. I trust that my spirits will have regained their usual mercurial ascendancy. They are much below freezing point now. Miss Winslow's unrest was indefinite and therefore intangible. Only a discontent which assumes a specific form may be coped with. Mary Winslow's life had been too active to permit of self-analysis. So she did not probe her mood nor realize that pain sprang in her heart as it must in the heart of every true woman from the void which legions of friends only make more vacant, but which may be filled to overflowing by the magical presence of one. She had steadfastly refused all invitations to domicile with her married brothers. It would be very nice, she would admit, and the children would be brought up much better. Old maids are born disciplinarians. They never are over-indulgent like grandparents. Grandparents should be seen and not heard. But, you see, I enjoy too much being perfectly free. To appreciate liberty one must have known slavery. Miss Winslow's early life had been spent in a bondage which, though loving, had nevertheless held her in chained. The unconsciously selfish exactings of an invalid mother had sentenced her to the shadows of a sick room and to an atmosphere heavy with drugs. When emancipation at last came it was like breathing the pure sunshine for the first time. She took deep, invigorating draughts of the life of the world, enjoying her debut doubly because it had come nearly a decade late. And the world enjoyed her as much as she enjoyed the world. It was so accustomed to prematurely blasé types, what wonder it welcomed gladly one who was maturely young. The years might record her as a woman past the thirties. Spirit stamped her as a girl with a newfound capacity for life. When the souffle menu of society ceased to satisfy her she traveled and beheld enthusiastically civilizations older than her own. The sight taught her to view life in its proper proportions and to realize the microscopic part in the plan of the grand whole which her own smart set enacted. She found pleasure in collecting curios, tapestries, and pictures. Upon her return, unrest still remaining importunate, she secured occupation and a kind of satisfaction in a diversion welcomed by people whose incomes increased in a ratio beyond their ability to disperse them. She built a magnificent home. Only those who know the delights and vexations of this form of diversion realize its absorption. Miss Winslow had her own ideas, so likewise had her architects. Her home must be characteristic, stamped, like her crested stationery with the insignia of her personality. There was to be no such hideous deformity in it, for instance, she insisted, as a chandelier. The red library was lighted with swinging antique brass lanterns hung in each corner and going softly with the pressing of a single switch. Other rooms had sidelights or curious lamps, one of them said to have belonged to a vestal virgin. The and irons in her hall were adorned with winged golden dragons, orlocks nefariously bribed from a Venetian gondolier. Norway contributed a beautiful dark bear skin, which was not treated to the ignominy of being trampled underfoot, but was stuffed and permitted to stand erect, a savage guardian of the entrance hall. Each room represented a different period, accurate in detail, only to be secured after long historical research. French and Italian palaces had been explored and treasures purchased, not for their intrinsic value, but for the part they had played in the comedy or tragedy of the world. Lester had been a great help to her in building her home. Lester was her brother's intimate friend and an architect of established fame. He enjoyed drawing her out to steal her ideas, he said, appreciating the rareness of her ingenuity and taste. The friendship she enjoyed with Lester was uncommon and a source of mutual satisfaction. Ms. Winslow's experience of men was large and not holy to their advantage. It was the inevitable penalty a woman with a fortune paid. She described Lester as an unusual man who was never in nor out of the way, and who had no nonsense about him. This last was intelligible to her intimates. It meant that Lester had never made love to her. His good humor was unfailing, his optimism of the brightest hue. This last was not because he did not see the world's shadows, but rather because he possessed that larger vision which sees also the world's sunshine, and which obstinately refused to live anywhere but in it. He elevated the ideal above the real in thought and tried to maintain the relationship, in fact. When success came, he bore it without undue elation, just as he had previously borne failure without undue despair. He was beloved by the few whom his discriminating taste would admit to the valued privilege of intimacy, and respected by all who would have liked to claim that distinction. Miss Winslow's labors were interrupted by a ring at the doorbell and an inquiring voice in the hall. Soon after, without presenting credentials, Lester appeared on the threshold of the library. At a glance one felt that the scrupulously groomed man was unknown to marital responsibilities. The unlined, fresh-looking face bore the imprint of the irresponsible bachelor and clubman, and if his eyes sometimes suggested that life had not yet granted that which was most subtle, most satisfying, most craved, the philosophers' smile on the lips indicated the manner in which the knowledge had been borne. Do you come in the role of Santa Claus? Miss Winslow asked, glancing at the presents for the children which Lester and his servant were bringing in, and falling into the usual banter with which she and Lester were wont to play. And did you dust the chimney on the way down? No. The modern Santa Claus comes in a horseless carriage with rubber tires, he replied, carrying with one arm the Empire State Express and placing it beneath the tree. That explains the change in Christmas. I knew that it was not what it used to be. No, it's much better, he asserted. I tell you, we have overdone it, she reiterated. What is Christmas now in reality? A time when the person who cannot extract some fun out of it would better examine his mental machinery, he said, taking off his gloves. Miss Winslow scorned the rebuke. It is a time, she replied, answering her own question, which we first stalled by working so hard that we are fit subjects for the rest cure when it gets here. It is merry in anticipation and melancholy, in fact. Oh, of course, when you remember everyone who has ever bowed to you and all the inmates of the old ladies' homes besides. It is a time, she continued, when you receive a lot of things that you don't want and give away everything that you do. I'd better take my gift home, then, he said, stooping and picking up a square package. It's only a first edition of Shelley, which— which you happen very much to want, she laughingly finished. It was her turn to score. Don't ask me to take off my coat. I couldn't think of it, he said, divesting himself of the garment. I'm in a most unaccountable mood, she protested. You'll regret it if you stay. A few more regrets won't matter, he said, leisurely seating himself. Besides, you're only a sweet bell out of tune. She shook her head sadly at him. No, it won't do, Arthur. I'm not in a mood to be sugared. What is it all about, he asked, picking up a fierce-looking dagger, which had fallen to the humblest state of cutting magazines. I'm struggling under the startlingly new discovery that the moon is not made of green cheese. And, plaintively, you know I'm one of the few women who like my fromage green. Things are not what they seem. Oh, yes, they are. Your mood has gotten into your optics and tinged the lenses with blue. I feel as if life would be quite indurable if it were not for its pleasures, she continued. Golf is an elusive phantom. Cotillion's a torture. While as for people, she hesitated. Go on, he said, encouragingly. Don't mind me. People are masqueraders, one and all. The good are wicked saints, and the bad are righteous sinners. I'll have to think before I decide in which class I'd rather be found. Go on, he said. I know there is more. I'm lonely, she replied, obediently. That's nothing. I've been living that down for years. This barn of a house oppresses me. I warned you against making it perfection, said Lester unsympathetically. I have succeeded in building an establishment. I have discovered that what I want is a home. Lester's lips emitted a low sound which might have been an exclamatory whistle. Is it really as bad as that, he inquired? I am afraid she is taking life seriously. Making epigrams is a sure sign. No laugh and grow thin has been my motto. I've made a study of it. So have I, with different results. What is the secret of your success, he interrogated? Oh, it's not a secret. Like everything else nowadays, it's only a state of mind. Which implies that mine is suffering from fatty degeneration, he inquired. You will suffer from something worse if you remain. I am really unmistakably savage. Besides, I must finish the tree. By all means, but don't send me away. It is such an incomparable pleasure to see someone else work. Besides, do you know that I have a peculiar, physical, Madame Blavatsky sort of feeling, that if I went, I should be doing irremediable injury to us both? In short, I refuse to go. So you don't feel that four walls in the fashionably crowded part of the city constitute a home? They are so much expensive paint and brick, she replied. You can say, he said, homeless near a thousand homes I stood, and near a thousand tables, pined, and wanted food. Why will you persist in understanding one's mood, Miss Winslow asked grievously? You deprive one of the sweet misery of explaining. I feel as if this house were a museum. Everything has such an unused, creepy look. I have found that a home does not consist in having colonial and empire rooms, nor even in antiques like these, she waved her hands at the old mahogany of fashionably modern outline which adorned the library. Home lies in this spirit infused into it, and one woman's spirit, pathetically, will not cover a house of this size. There is one thing that I am seriously thinking of doing. I think I shall adopt an orphan child. An orphan asylum would feel it better, he commented. Miss Winslow went over to the table and lifted the cupid. Since you prefer me in a bad mood to anyone else in a holiday one, I must continue my work. What are you going to do with that dangerous boy? Lester asked, looking at the pink-faced cherub as she dangled him from a string held between finger and thumb. I am now about to hang cupid, she said solemnly. How delightful! I have always wanted to be present at an execution. Besides, it's a fate I've often thought he deserved. You must have suffered a good deal at his hands, she said, looking sideways at him between half-closed lashes. That reminds me. I heard someone at the Hoyt's Dance last night call you an artistic flirt. And what may I ask is a flirt, artistic or otherwise, Lester inquired with sparkling eyes? Miss Winslow thought for a moment. A flirt, she replied, is a man with a small capacity for loving every woman and a large incapacity for loving one. The laughter died from Lester's eyes. Do you believe that is true of me, he asked lightly? Miss Winslow did not reply. Do you really believe that of me, he asked more seriously? Miss Winslow moved uneasily. There was something in Lester's tone which she could not meet with the usual banter. Look at me, Mary, he said, peremptorily. You can study the pattern of your rugs any time. Miss Winslow shot a swift glance at him, then lowered her lids again. Lester rose and came toward her. You have very pretty eyelashes. I have always admired them, he said, standing directly in front of her. But I want you to look at me and tell me if you honestly believe I have a large incapacity for loving one woman. Something new in his voice, something subtle and almost painful in the atmosphere, played havoc with Miss Winslow's usually well-adjusted mental processes. She felt silenced, paralyzed, almost afraid. When the silence became intolerable, being a woman of the world, she treated the occasion with the world's greatest emotional safeguard. She took refuge in a laugh. I impeach your power to cataclyse me, she said. Here take your arch enemy Cupid and be revenged by hanging him high. He took the wax figure from her and stood as if in debate. Then he turned toward the tree and addressed the figure in his hand. Cupid, he said, I hang you with many apologies. I confess to a fondness for you, not shared by the lady of this manner. I shall suspend you high where you can keep a watchful eye upon her. Who knows, he broke off and ascended the steps. The universal god revolved slowly in mid-air in his new home on the tree, then settled into permanence of direction. See Mary Lester cried, looking over his shoulder. He is pointing his arrow at you. Have a care. As he said it, his foot which was reaching backward for a lower step miscalculated, and with a crash he fell heavily to the floor. Well, of all awkward brutes, he exclaimed, regaining a sitting position where he remained with one foot under him. The trick elephant in the circus could have done better. Miss Winslow's first inclination was to laugh. When Lester attempted to rise, however, and unconsciously omitted a groan, she flew it at once to his side. Is it your foot? You've twisted and perhaps sprained it. Oh, if you had only gone before. Don't, Mary, don't hit a man when he's down. You may think the fall was retribution, but I'd attribute it to another cause, he gave a glance at the Cupid. That little rascal, I believe, knocked me down. He closed his eyes with pain. Miss Winslow's talent for emergencies came to the front. She summoned her man to help lift Lester to the couch, and then flew to the telephone and called a doctor. Her own physician responded. After the usual pullings, pinchings, and pressings, he cheerfully pronounced the wrench a very bad sprain. It will be a matter of weeks, though hardly, I hope, of months, he said amably. You'd better have yourself moved where you can be made comfortable and be supplied with diverting companionship. These affairs are tedious at the best. He offered his further services, which Miss Winslow, catching a telegraphic message from Lester's eyes, declined, saying that her man could do everything necessary. In a few moments she was alone with her guest, who sat helpless as a child with bandaged foot, elevated upon a tabaret in front of him. Well, Miss Winslow said, in some embarrassment, why did you not allow the doctor to accompany you home? Do you prefer the distraction of William's accent? Lester contemplated his wounded foot. Mary, he said, do you realize that we are facing a state of things? I realize that you are. Well, be unselfish and imagine that you are, too. Do you think that a bachelor's apartment house, without a woman in sight, ideally fills the doctor's prescription? Of course I don't. It is most unfortunate. Oh, if your married sister did not live one hundred miles away. Yes. Or if I could be expressed to her. You can have a nurse, she suggested. But you will have to eat and sleep and wink on schedule. And you hate doing things by rule. Yes, and if she were not pretty, she would make one feel worse. And if she were, you'd fall in love with her. Not at all. But there's no telling what would happen to her. No, a woman nurse I feel is an anomaly. Then why not have a man? A man is a monstrosity. I should be at liberty to throw boots and vigorous invectives at him. But I am afraid I would be unfit for society at the end of the term. No, Mary, I see but one loophole. Fate has erected a signpost with a straight, clear path for you and me. Her me, she echoed feebly. Yes, I have a proposition to make, a most logical solution. You wish to adopt someone. I am in need of a home. Do you not see that Providence has left a charge, not on your doorstep, but on your stepladder, as it were? No, I don't, she gasped. This foundling, he continued, has every requirement which her orphan child could not possess. You must have someone who understands your every peccadillo, who will not laugh when you sigh or weep when you are Mary, who will not monopolize your favorite chair, be bored with Omar Kayam, or sleep through the opera. Mary, we are all only children of a larger growth. Listen to Fate and save me from the doom of solitary confinement by adopting me. Did you sprain your brain as well as your ankle, Miss Winslow inquired? No, my senses are intact. But you don't mean. You didn't intend, she faltered. I certainly did. You always had unusual perspicacity. You may catalog me as, Number 25, is it? I have had the honor to make you with the Lady Novelist's terms an honorable proposal of marriage. Miss Winslow fell back in her chair. What more rational solution of a difficult problem, he continued. You are lonely and wish to adopt someone. I am sentenced to bachelor banishment for months. You wouldn't like to think of me fuming and fretting existence away, would you, when you might have prevented it? Miss Winslow leaned forward in her chair and quietly scanned his face. Then the blood flamed over her own, tipping even her close-set ears with crimson. Yes, he really means it, she said musingly and with reluctance. He has asked me to marry him, for convenience's sake, and he does not realize how he has humiliated me. Yet that could be borne. But to be disappointed in him, one could never get used to that, and I thought he understood me. Then at a low exclamation from Lester, oh, I give you credit for not intending to pain me. The awful part is not to know that you have. Do you realize what you have said? I have heard of men who married to obtain a housekeeper. It is a novelty to meet one who wishes a trained nurse. Lester's face flushed deeply. He opened his mouth to refute the injustice, but she would not let him begin. No, don't speak, she said. I am choking with the words I want to say. She met his gaze now with eyes from which vehement indignation flashed, and he sank back among the pillows of the couch. How dared you, she inquired with low forcefully distinct enunciation. How dared you to speak to me of marriage and never speak of love? Do you think forty outgrows it? She covered her hot cheeks with her hands. Let me say one thing more, as again he attempted to check her. Of course we can't be friends after tonight. The bone camaraderie of our relationship is over. You have forever spoiled it. Your going will make a void in my life. I don't think I ever knew until tonight how large a place you filled. Her voice gave a little break which she quickly controlled. You satisfied me because I thought you understood me. But the one vital thing you did not understand. Let me tell you now that you may know why I am so stung. I, Mary Winslow, spinster, with face turned toward the setting sun, demand of the man who would win me, absorbing all compelling love. I am not a woman to bestow myself. I must be won, and it cannot be done with a jest. Lester's face had grown white as he listened. Sometimes he closed his eyes as if trying to shut out sound. Sometimes the hands on his knees moved a little. When he spoke his voice was entirely without the intensity of tone she had used. It was the conversational tone of a stunned man, finding refuge in conventional phrase. The ever-blessed law of habit which prevents human tension from being stretched too far. I can't tell you how I regret having pained you, he finally said. It was the last thing I intended to do, and I am sorry not to have done well what I should like to have done the best of all. Yet, with a touch of whimsicality, I don't know that it is surprising. One can hardly expect a staged proposal from a man who has never made one before. Her eyes were fastened upon the tree. Her attitude indicated a polite but weary judge who was tolerantly waiting to hear what the defense might say. If I had not felt so deeply, I could have been more eloquent, he continued. We have played with words so long it was hard to be serious, even when I most wished. I must have taken it for granted that you knew that I loved you. Women are either amazingly astute or incredibly blind in such matters. Why did you suppose I had haunted your hearth for nearly ten years? I think it began then when your mother was taken away. He spoke simply as if relating a narrative long familiar and one that should not surprise his listener. You will wonder why I never told you. It was because you came into your heritage late. I would not try to take it from you. You found your girlhood years later than most women. While your mother lived, her health held you in a bondage of love. When you entered the gay world, it was a fairy land to you. Like a girl, you enjoyed each moment. I would not rob you of one. I followed your enthousiasms, your disappointments, your triumphs, waiting until pleasure should fall. I wished you to find for yourself that the pretty bubbles you chased turned to air when you grasped them. When I came to date, I knew immediately that the mood I had longed for had come. You were heart-sick and filled with satiety. The apples of Sodom were bitter in your mouth. I was so happy I could have shouted. For Mary, he leaned forward and spoke rapidly, it was love your soul was crying for, love the deepest need of human life, and what your heart was vaguely demanding, mine had longed been throbbing to give. Do you know to what heights of folly I have been led by this masterful passion? Do you know that I go blocks out of my way at night to pass your window? Do you know that I visit barbaric receptions for a glimpse of your faith? Can you realize the pangs of jealousy I suffer when I find you monopolized by some young cub whom in fancy I cuff and throw out at the door? His eyes rested on her and held her with resistless power. Think of the men who have loved you. Did you fancy I did not know when you turned them away? Love is keen. Mary, you do care, or you would not have been so stung by my cursed flippancy tonight. Don't try to answer me now. I will go home, and in spite of solitude my Christmas will be the happiest I have ever known. Think of what I have said and remember, your happiness and mine are at stake. Oh, Mary, gift of God to me. Prayer and creed of my life. Give me the right before the world to worship. Mary, Mary, sweetheart, don't cry. Reaction from her indignation had left Miss Winslow quiescent. When Lester spoke, incredulity and then amazement swept over her, followed by a peace which was subtle, restful, new. When his words came faster and faster, she felt herself swept along on their current and questioned not with her she was being born. After years of enforced repression it was blissful to let herself go. That Christmas Eve, her beautiful home, her material possessions, had seemed but a background which intensified the poverty of her heart. She had unconsciously longed for those imperishable riches which now were laid at her feet, and deeper than the knowledge of what she would receive was the certainty of what she knew she could give. When Lester's voice broke with its new tenderness, her overtax to nerves gave way and she sobbed like a child. The sight restored him to the safe path of the commonplace, and his next words were in the usual bantering tone. Well, of all things, that is the unkindest to cry when I cannot reach you. Is that handkerchief a flag of truce? But he could not win her to smiles. Sob after sob filled the room, the pitiful, long-drawn sobs of childhood, or of womanhood that retains the sensitive heart of the child. If you do not wish to break my heart, Mary, you will stop hurting me and come here at once. The doctor's infliction was nothing to this. Mary, I command you to come here. Then, as she did not heed him, he said in her voice in which each word was a caress. Mary, I have waited years patiently for you. See, I will not look. Will you not come to me in my distress? And, obediently, with face still covered, like a little child she came. End of Cupid at Forty But Mrs. Lauren Skirtan Tuttle The Doll's Ghost by Frances Marion Crawford Published 1911 Read for Love Stories Vol. 2 by Michelle Fry, Battenridge, Louisiana, in November 2019. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Doll's Ghost by Frances Marion Crawford It was a terrible accident, and for one moment the splendid machinery of Cranston House got out of gear and stood still. The butler emerged from the retirement in which he spent his elegant leisure. Two grooms of the chambers appeared simultaneously from opposite directions. There were actually housemaids on the grand staircase, and those who remember the facts most exactly assert that Mrs. Pringle herself positively stood upon the landing. Mrs. Pringle was the housekeeper. As for the head nurse, the under nurse, and the nursery maid, their feelings cannot be described. The head nurse laid one hand upon the polished marble bellestrade and stared stupidly before her. The under nurse stood rigid and pale, leaning against the polished marble wall, and the nursery maid collapsed and sat down upon the polished marble step, just beyond the limits of the velvet carpet and frankly burst into tears. The Lady Gwendolyn Lancaster Douglas Scroop, youngest daughter of the ninth Duke of Cranston, and aged six years and three months, picked herself up quite alone and sat down on the third step from the foot of the grand staircase in Cranston House. Oh, ejaculated the butler, and he disappeared again. Ah, responded the grooms of the chamber, and they also went away. It's only that doll, Mrs. Pringle was distinctly hard to say, in a tone of contempt. The under nurse heard her say it. Then the three nurses gathered round Lady Gwendolyn and padded her and gave her unhealthy things out of their pockets and hurried her out of Cranston House as fast as they could, lest it should be found out upstairs, that they had allowed the Lady Gwendolyn Lancaster Douglas Scroop to tumble down the grand staircase with her doll in her arms. And as the doll was badly broken, the nursery maid carried it, with the pieces wrapped up in Lady Gwendolyn's little cloak. It was not far from Hyde Park, and when they had reached a quiet place, they took means to find out that Lady Gwendolyn had no bruises, for the carpet was very thick and soft, and there was thick stuff under it to make it softer. Lady Gwendolyn Douglas Scroop sometimes yelled, but she never cried. It was because she had yelled that the nurse had allowed her to go downstairs alone with Nina, the doll, under one arm, while she steadied herself with her other hand on the balustrade, and tried upon the polished marble steps beyond the edge of the carpet. So she had fallen, and Nina had come to grief. When the nurses were quite sure that she was not hurt, they unwrapped the doll and looked at her in her turn. She had been a very beautiful doll, very large and fair and healthy, with real yellow hair and eyelids that would open and shut over very grown-up dark eyes. Moreover, when you moved her right arm up and down, she said, Pa pa. And when you moved the left, she said, Mama, very distinctly. I heard her say Pa when she fell, said the under nurse, who heard everything. But she ought to have said Papa. That's because her arm went up when she hit the step, said the head nurse. She'll say the other Pa when you put it down again. Pa, said Nina, as her right arm was pushed down, and speaking through her broken face, it was cracked right across from the upper corner of the forehead with a hideous gash through the nose and down to the little frilled collar of the pale green silk Mother Hubbard frock, and two little three-cornered pieces of porcelain had fallen out. I'm sure it's a wonder she can speak at all, being all smashed, said the under nurse. You'll have to take her to Mr. Puckler, said her superior. It's not far, and you'd better go at once. Lady Gwendolyn was occupied in digging a hole in the ground with a little spade and paid no attention to the nurses. What are you doing, inquired the nursery maid, looking on. Nina's dead, and I'm digging her aggrave, replied her ladyship thoughtfully. Oh, she'll come to life again, all right, said the nursery maid. The under nurse wrapped Nina up again and departed. Fortunately, a kind soldier with very long legs and a very small cap happened to be there, and as he had nothing to do, he offered to see the under nurse safely to Mr. Puckler's and back. Mr. Bernard Puckler and his little daughter lived in a little house in a little alley, which led out off a quiet little street, not very far from Belgrave Square. He was the great doll doctor, and his extensive practice lay in the most aristocratic quarter. He mended dolls of all sizes and ages, boy dolls and girl dolls, baby dolls in long clothes and grown-up dolls and fashionable gowns, talking dolls and dumb dolls, those that shut their eyes when they lay down, and those whose eyes had to be shut for them by means of a mysterious wire. His daughter, Elsa, was only just over 12 years old, but she was already very clever at mending dolls' clothes and at doing their hair, which is harder than you might think, though the dolls sit quite still while it is being done. Mr. Puckler had originally been a German, but he had dissolved his nationality in the ocean of London many years ago, like a great many foreigners. He still had one or two German friends, however, who came on Saturday evenings, and smoked with him and played piquet or scat with him for farthing points, and called him hair doctor, which seemed to please Mr. Puckler very much. He looked older than he was, for his beard was rather long and ragged, his hair was grizzled and thin, and he wore horn-rimmed spectacles. As for Elsa, she was a thin, pale child, very quiet and neat, with dark eyes and brown hair, that was plaited down her back and tied with a bit of black ribbon. She mended the dolls' clothes and took the dolls back to their homes when they were quite strong again. The house was a little one, but too big for the two people who lived in it. There was a small sitting room on the street, and the workshop was at the back, and there were three rooms upstairs. But the father and daughter lived most of their time in the workshop, because they were generally at work, even in the evenings. Mr. Puckler laid Nina on the table and looked at her a long time, till the tears began to fill his eyes behind the horn-rimmed spectacles. He was a very susceptible man, and he often fell in love with the dolls he mended, and found it hard to part with them when they had smiled at him for a few days. There were real little people to him, with characters and thoughts and feelings of their own, and he was very tender with them all. But some attracted him especially from the first, and when they were brought to him maimed and injured, their state seemed so pitiful to him that the tears came easily. You must remember that he lived among dolls during a great part of his life and understood them. How do you know they feel nothing, he went on to say to Elsa, you must be gentle with them. It costs nothing to be kind to the little beings, and perhaps it makes a difference to them. And Elsa understood him because she was a child, and she knew that she was more to him than all the dolls. He fell in love with Nina at first sight, perhaps because her beautiful brown glass eyes were something like Elsa's own, and he loved Elsa first and best, with all his heart. And besides, it was a very sorrowful case. Nina had evidently not been long in the world, for her complexion was perfect, her hair was smooth where it should be smooth, and curly where it should be curly, and her silk clothes were perfectly new. But across her face was that frightful gash, like a saber cut deep and shadowy within, but clean and sharp on the edges. When he tenderly pressed her head to close the gaping wound, the edges made a fine grating sound that was painful to hear, and the lives of the dark eyes quivered and trembled, as though Nina were suffering dreadfully. Poor Nina, he exclaimed sorrowfully, but I shall not hurt you much, though you will take a long time to get strong. He always asked the names of the broken dolls when they were brought to him, and sometimes the people knew what the children called them and told him. He liked Nina for a name, altogether, and in every way she pleased him more than any doll he had seen for many years, and he felt drawn to her, and made up his mind to make her perfectly strong and sound, no matter how much labor it might cost him. Mr. Puckler worked patiently a little at a time, and Elsa watched him. She could do nothing for poor Nina, whose clothes needed no mending. The longer the doll doctor worked, the more fun he became of the yellow hair and the beautiful brown glass eyes. He sometimes forgot all the other dolls that were waiting to be mended, lying side by side on a shelf, and sat for an hour gazing at Nina's face. While he wracked his ingenuity for some new invention, by which to hide even the smallest trace of the terrible accident. She was wonderfully mended, even he was obliged to admit that, but the scar was still visible to his keen eyes, a very fine line right across the face, downwards from right to left. Yet all the conditions had been most favorable for a cure, since the cement had set quite hard at the first attempt, and the weather had been fine and dry, which makes a great difference in a doll's hospital. At last he knew that he could do no more, and the under-ners had already come twice to see whether the job was finished, as she coarsely expressed it. Nina is not quite strong yet. Mr. Puckler had answered each time, for he could not make up his mind to face the parting. And now he sat before the square-deal table at which he worked, and Nina laid before him for the last time, with a big brown paper box beside her. It stood there like her coffin, waiting for her, he thought. He must put her into it, and lay tissue paper over her dear face, and then put on the lid, and at the thought of tying the string, his sight was dim with tears again. He was never to look into the glassy depths of the beautiful brown eyes any more, nor to hear the little wooden voice saying, Papa and Mama. It was a very painful moment. In the vain hope of gaining time before the separation, he took up the little sticky bottles of cement and glue and gum and color, looking at each one in turn, and then at Nina's face, and all his small tools lay there neatly arranged in a row. But he knew that he could not use them again for Nina. She was quite strong at last, and in a country where there should be no cruel children to hurt her, she might live a hundred years, with only that almost imperceptible line across her face to tell of the fearful thing that had befallen her on the marble steps of Crenston House. Suddenly Mr. Puckler's heart was quite full, and he rose abruptly from his seat and turned away. Elsa, he said unsteadily, you must do it for me. I cannot bear to see her go into the box. So he went and stood at the window with his back turned, while Elsa did what he had not the heart to do. Is it done? he asked, not turning around. Then take her away, my dear. Put on your hat and take her to Crenston House quickly, and when you are gone, I will turn around. Elsa was used to her father's queer ways with the dolls, and though she had never seen him so much moved by a party, she was not much surprised. Come back quickly, he said, when he heard her hand on the latch. It is growing late, and I should not send you at this hour, but I cannot bear to look forward to it any more. When Elsa was gone, he left the window and sat down in his place before the table again to wait for the child to come back. He touched the place where Nina had lain, very gently, and he recalled a softly tinted pink face, and the glass eyes, and the ringlets of her yellow hair, till he could almost see them. The evenings were long, for it was late in the spring, but it began to grow dark soon, and Mr. Puckler wondered why Elsa did not come back. She had been gone an hour and a half, and that was much longer than he had expected, for it was barely half a mile from Belgrave Square to Crenston House. He reflected that the child might have been kept waiting, but as the twilight deepened, he grew anxious, and walked up and down in the dim workshop, no longer thinking of Nina but of Elsa, his own living child whom he loved. An undefinable, disquieting sensation came upon him, by fine degrees, a chilliness and a faint stirring of his thin hair, joined with a wish to be in any company, rather than to be alone much longer. It was the beginning of fear. He told himself in strong German English that he was a foolish old man, and he began to feel about for the matches in the dusk. He knew just how much he loved, he knew just where they should be, for he always kept them in the same place, close to the little tin box that held bits of ceiling wax of various colors for some kinds of mending, but somehow he could not find the matches in the gloom. Something had happened to Elsa, he was sure, and as his fear increased, he felt as though it might be allayed if he could get a light and see what time it was. Then he called himself a foolish old man again, and the sound of his own voice startled him in the dark. He could not find the matches. The window was gray still, he might see what time it was if he went close to it, and he could go and get the matches out of the cupboard afterwards. He stood back from the table to get out of the way of the chair, and began to cross the board floor. Something was following him in the dark. There was a small pattering, as of tiny feet upon the boards. He stopped and listened, and the roots of his hair tingled. It was nothing, and he was a foolish old man. He made two steps more, and he was sure that he heard the little pattering again. He turned his back to the window, leaning against the sash so that the pains began to crack, and he faced the dark. Everything was quite still, and it smelled of paste and cement and wood filings as usual. Is that you, Elsa? he asked, and he was surprised by the fear in his voice. There was no answer in the room, and he held up his watch and tried to make out what time it was by the gray dusk that was just not darkness. As far as he could see, it was within two or three minutes of ten o'clock. He had been alone a long time alone. He was shocked and frightened for Elsa out in London so late, and he almost ran across the room to the door, as he fumbled for the latch he distinctly heard the running of little feet after him. Mice, he exclaimed feebly, just as he got the door open. He shut it quickly behind him, and felt as though some cold thing had settled on his back and were writhing upon him. The passage was quite dark, but he found his hat and was out in the alley in a moment, breathing more freely, and surprised to find how much light there still was in the open air. He could see the pavement clearly under his feet, and far off in the street to which the alley led, he could hear the laughter and calls of children playing some game out of doors. He wondered how he could have been so nervous, and for an instant he thought of going back into the house to wait quietly for Elsa. But instantly he felt that nervous fright of something stealing over him again. In any case it was better to walk up to Cranston House and ask the servants about the child. One of the women had perhaps taken a fancy to her, and was even now giving her tea and cake. He walked quickly to Bell Grave Square, and then up the broad streets, listening as he went whenever there was no other sound, for the tiny footsteps. But he heard nothing, and was laughing at himself when he rang the servants' bell at the big house. Of course the child must be there. The person who opened the door was quite an inferior person, for it was a back door, but affected the manners of the front, and stared at Mr. Puckler superciliously under the strong light. No little girl had been seen, and he knew nothing about no dolls. She is my little girl, said Mr. Puckler tremulously, for all his anxiety was returning tenfold, and I am afraid something has happened. The inferior person said rudely that nothing could have happened to her in that house, because she had not been there, which was a jolly good reason why. And Mr. Puckler was obliged to admit that the man ought to know, as it was his business, to keep the door and let people in. He wished to be allowed to speak to the under-nurse who knew him, but the man was ruder than ever, and finally shut the door in his face. When the doll doctor was alone in the street, he steadied himself by the railing, for he felt as though he were breaking in two, just as some dolls break in the middle of the backbone. Presently he knew that he must be doing something to find Elsa, and that gave him strength. He began to walk as quickly as he could through the streets, following every highway and byway, which his little girl might have taken on her errand. He also asked several policemen in vain if they had seen her, and most of them answered him kindly, for they saw that he was a sober man and in his right senses, and some of them had little girls of their own. It was one o'clock in the morning when he went up to his own door again, worn out and hopeless, and broken-hearted. As he turned the key in the lock, his heart stood still, for he knew that he was awake and not dreaming, and that he really heard those tiny footsteps pattering to meet him inside the house along the passage. But he was too unhappy to be much frightened any more, and his heart went on again with a dull regular pain that found its way all through him with every pulse. So he went in and hung up his hat in the dark, and found the matches in the cupboard and the candlestick in its place in the corner. Mr. Puckler was so much overcome and so completely worn out that he sat down in his chair before the work table and almost fainted as his face dropped forward upon his folded hands. Beside him, the solitary candle burned steadily with a low flame in the still warm air. Else, else he moaned against his yellow knuckles, and that was all he could say, and it was no relief to him. On the contrary, the very sound of the name was a new and sharp pain that pierced his ears and his head and his very soul. For every time he repeated the name, it meant that little else was dead somewhere out in the streets of London in the dark. He was so terribly hurt that he did not even feel something pulling gently at the skirt of his old coat, so gently that it was like the nibbling of a tiny mouse. He might have thought that it was really a mouse if he had noticed it. Else, else he groaned right against his hands. Then a cool breath stirred his thin hair, and the low flame of the one candle dropped down almost to a mere spark, not flickering as though a drought were going to blow it out, but just dropping down as if it were tired out. Mr. Puckler felt his hands stiffening with fright under his face, and there was a faint rustling sound, like some small silk thing blown in a gentle breeze. He sat up straight, stark and scared, and a small wooden voice spoke in the stillness. Ba, ba, it said, with a break between the syllables. Mr. Puckler stood up in a single jump, and his chair fell over backwards with a smashing noise upon the wooden floor. The candle had almost gone out. It was Nina's doll voice that had spoken, and he should have known it among the voices of a hundred other dolls. And yet there was something more in it, a little human ring, with a pitiful cry and a call for help, and the wail of a hurt child. Mr. Puckler stood up, stark and stiff, and tried to look around, but at first he could not, for he seemed to be frozen from head to foot. Then he made a great effort, and he raised one hand to each of his temples and pressed his own head round as he would have turned a doll's. The candle was burning so low that it might as well have been out all together for any light it gave, and the room seemed quite stark at first. Then he saw something. He would not have believed that he could be more frightened than he had been just before that, but he was, and his knees shook, for he saw the doll standing in the middle of the floor, shining with a faint and ghostly radiance, her beautiful glassy brown eyes fixed on his, and across her face, the very thin line of the break he had mended, shown as though it were drawn in light with a fine point of white flame. Yet there was something more in the eyes, too. There was something human, like Elsa's own, but as if only the doll saw him through them, and not Elsa. And there was enough of Elsa to bring back all his pain and to make him forget his fear. Elsa, my little Elsa, he cried aloud. The small ghost moved, and its doll arm slowly rose and fell with a stiff mechanical motion. Bop, bop, it said. It seemed this time that there was even more of Elsa's tone echoing somewhere between the wooden notes that reached his ears so distinctly and yet so far away. Elsa was calling him. He was sure. His face was perfectly white in the gloom, but his knees did not shake anymore, and he felt that he was less frightened. Yes, child, but where? Where, he asked. Where are you, Elsa? Bop, bop. The syllables died away in the quiet room. There was a low rustling of silk, the glassy brown eyes turned slowly away, and Mr. Puckler heard the pitter-patter of the small feet in the bronze kid's slippers as the figure ran straight to the door. Then the candle burned high again. The room was full of light, and he was alone. Mr. Puckler passed his hand over his eyes and looked about him. He could see everything quite clearly, and he felt that he must have been dreaming, though he was standing instead of sitting down, as he should have been if he had just waked up. The candle burned brightly now. There were the dolls to be mended, lying in a row with their toes up. The third one had lost her right shoe, and Elsa was making one. He knew that, and he was certainly not dreaming now. He had not been dreaming when he had come in from his fruitless search and had heard the doll's footsteps running to the door. He had not fallen asleep in the chair. How could he possibly have fallen asleep when his heart was breaking? He had been awake all the time. He steadied himself, set the fallen chair upon its legs, and said to himself again, very emphatically, that he was a foolish old man. He ought to be out in the streets, looking for his child, asking questions, and inquiring at the police stations where all accidents were reported, as soon as they were known, or at the hospitals. Ba-ba! The longing, wailing, pitiful little wooden cry rang from the passage outside the door, and Mr. Puckler stood for an instant with white face transfixed and rooted to the spot. A moment later his hand was on the latch. Then he was in the passage with the light streaming from the open door behind him. Quite at the other end he saw the little phantom shining clearly in the shadow, and the right hand seemed to be back into him as the arm rose and fell once more. He knew all at once that it had not come to frighten him, but to lead him and when it disappeared, and he walked boldly towards the door, he knew that it was in the street outside waiting for him. He forgot that he was tired and had eaten no supper and had walked many miles for a sudden hope ran through and through him like a golden stream of life. And sure enough, at the corner of the alley and at the corner of the street, and out in Belgrave Square he saw the small ghost flitting before him. Sometimes it was only a shadow where there was other light, but then the glare of the lamps made a pale green sheen on its little mother-hubbard frock of silk, and sometimes when the streets were dark and silent the whole figure shone out brightly with its yellow curls and rosy neck. It seemed to trot along like a tiny child, and Mr. Puckler could almost hear the pattering of the bronze kid's slippers on the pavement as it ran. But it went very fast, and he could only just keep up with it tearing along with his hats on the back of his head and his thin hair blown by the night breeze and his horn-rimmed spectacles firmly set upon his broad nose. On and on he went, and he had no idea where he was. He did not even care, for he knew certainly that he was going the right way. Then at last, in a wide quiet street, he was standing before a big sober-looking door that had two lamps on each side of it, and a polished brass bell handle, which he pulled. And just inside, when the door was opened, in the bright light, there was a little shadow and the pale green sheen of the little silk dress, and once more the small cry came to his ears, less pitiful, more longing. Ba-ba! The shadow turned suddenly bright, and out of the brightness the beautiful brown glass eyes were turned up happily to his, while the rosy mouth smiled so divinely that the phantom doll looked almost like a little angel just then. A little girl was brought in soon after ten o'clock, said the quiet voice of the hospital doorkeeper. I think they thought she was only stunned. She was holding a big brown paper box against her, and they could not get it out of her arms. She had a long plait of brown hair that hung down as they carried her. She is my little girl, said Mr. Pruckler. But he hardly heard his own voice. He leaned over Elsa's face in the gentle light of the children's ward, and when he had stood there a minute the beautiful brown eyes opened and looked up to his. Ba-ba! cried Elsa softly. I knew you would come. Then Mr. Pruckler did not know what he did or said for a moment, and what he felt was worth all the fear and terror and despair that had almost killed him that night. But by and by Elsa was telling her story and the nurse let her speak for there were only two other children in the room who were getting well and were sound asleep. They were big boys with bad faces, said Elsa, and they tried to get Nina away from me, but I held on and fought as well as I could till one of them hit me with something and I don't remember anymore for I tumbled down and I suppose the boys ran away and somebody found me there. But I'm afraid Nina is all smashed. Here is the box, said the nurse. We could not take it out of her arms till she came to herself. Should you like to see if the doll is broken? And she undid the string cleverly, but Nina was all smashed to pieces. Only the gentle light of the children's ward made a pale green sheen in the folds of the little Mother Hubbard Frog. End of The Doll's Ghost by Francis Marion Crawford. When should we be strange like not in our days? Spirrepoe and sad days when unbearable seems to be a variety of life-threatening possibilities. A few young girls in our days made a circle a access to which it was quite difficult and the goal of activity which could, of course, be called strange. When I died in the city of a young man who had not yet been a bride, one of the participants of the circle put on a deep wound and came to the funeral as a bride. The families were surprised very familiar less, but those and others believed that there is a beautiful and sad secret near the fresh grave. Nina Alexeevna participated in the circle without sleep. Young, missing for some reason the girl is not very beautiful, but quite cute. In her, they even fell in love what to do under the growing gymnast and I was all boring. And here after one of the friends came for Nina a line to spend in the grave of the unknown bride. The next one your said to her. Were you jealous of the one who still did not fall to the grave? With a sense of sadness looked at Nina the friends who have already fulfilled their sad and beautiful purpose. On this day Nina returned home strangely nervous and pulled for her long and gloomy days without action dragging sorrow. Tickling the feeling of this love for her and on every step understated marks promising loss tears the death of the close heart. How to carefully know what will happen unknown time and will die some not yet familiar but already dear and dear and with him will die the opportunity of happiness. And who he will be and why he was destined not to meet with her closer to the grave limit. Perhaps would save would save would pray from the cruel fate of the clock and the days of the sweet sorrow. I do not know who he will be but how it is a pity. What a drag. Such a young and unfulfilled I have already followed him understated and will bring a terrible blow from which nothing can be saved. No way not to save. Sometimes Nina almost envied those of her girlfriend on this circle which already have time to complete the sweet sorrow. And now just finished his light beautiful Traor. Traor so to their cute face that the passers-by on the streets stopped to see. It was impossible to know in advance whether this event will happen soon. It is necessary to be ready to go on the first call not to be late. Therefore Nina ordered for herself all the trauma on the row slowly from relatives although it was enough what had to be from them hide and hide. About the money for the for the the sorrow she did not take care was not needed. It was the expense of the the falling on the means of the circle. The circle had a pretty structured organization. They were going to in his cash monthly member the wear were as there are in other communities and different random income. But at least it was not necessary to take care about that to immediately get a lot of money for the Traor. Although it was sewed already and bought to hide somewhere at home. And all will have to someday the Traor to put. And, of course, it would be better to say it for a while. But Nina why ashamed to speak about it with her mother. And how to say I have to explain what and why and the rules circle did not allow speak about his goals and business to anyone who did not entered in his composition. I would have to come up and laugh and it was against for Nina. And she put it off from day to day and then decided to provide all the case. Somehow will go thought she. The dress brought Nina chose an hour when mother was not at home and hidden him in her room. In the evening she put on bed and on the chair Traor the outfits. In her room everything was white and pink transparent were light because of the hangers on the windows gentle and gentle smell of field flowers in beautiful vases and behind the window over the far steel the blue sea flowed the girls with a scorching sunset. And from all of this carefully clean and light black clothes seemed especially scary and scared heart and fast and shudder from stinging eyes tears. I looked at black color and cried cried cried for a long time. Sometimes I tried Traor and looked in the mirror black color and modest cover dress and straight fashion hats. All this was her so to the face and from this even sad became on the heart and still not held and I wanted to cry. And in the morning waking up opened eyes with secret fear did not came already it expected grief. The sun was already high the garden burned covered melted the greatness of the dragon and the green anger. And through light pink and through the film of the rowing of metal in the eyes of the same day. And on the meeting of the day and the fear of the rapid life did not throw neither to the evil word of the poison of the stinging of the feeling. And he my dear he will soon will die. And she went out to the sad and foggy table with the cute face strangely resisted a light light on the rowing of the lady. The mother looked at her with doubt and asked what are you missing Ninochka what are you worried what with you. Nina was silent mysterious and sad smiling and sat in his place behind the table quiet short beautiful to the face dressed and quite similar to the heroine of the novel which does not promise a happy end. And the mother could not achieve the truth what with Nina. But once in a minute of sudden transparency soaked sorrow and reflected silence northern white night excited with beautiful flights of distant fairies on whose unknown names right against Veranda and their dacha where they sat then together after evening tea Nina trust press