Rose MacLeod

								

think for a moment of the discussion there has been, and not expect
questions?"
The old lady smiled to herself.
"Well," she said, "they won't find out."
"But why, grandmother, why?"
"I can't tell you why, Electra; but they won't, and there's an end of
it." She rose from her chair, and Electra, gathering her mail, followed
punctiliously. As they were leaving the room, her grandmother turned
upon her. "Did you hear from Peter?" she asked.
"Yes. From New York. He will be here to-morrow." Electra's clear,
well-considered look was very unlike that of a girl whose lover had come
home, after a five years' absence, for the avowed purpose of marriage.
Madam Fulton regarded her for a moment with a softened glance. It seemed
wistfully to include other dreams, other hopes than the girl's own, a
little dancing circle of shadowy memories outside the actual, as might
well happen when one has lived many years and seen the growth and
passing of such ties.
"Well, Electra," she said then, "I suppose you'll marry him. You'll be
famous by brevet. That's what you'll like."
Electra laughed a little, in a tolerant way.
"You are always thinking I want to become a celebrity, grandmother," she
said. "That's very funny of you."
"Think!" emphasized the old lady. "I know it. I know your kind. They're
thick as spatter now. Everybody wants to do something, or say he's done
it. You want to 'express' yourselves. That's what you say--'express'
yourselves. I never saw such a race."
She went grumbling into the library to answer her letters, or at least
look them through, and paused there for a moment, her hand on the table.
She knew approximately what was in the letters. They were all
undoubtedly about her book, the "Recollections" of her life, some of
them questioning her view of the public events therein narrated, but
others palpitating with an eager interest. She had written that history
as a woman of letters in a small way, and a woman who had known the
local celebrities, and she had done it so vividly, with such incredible
originality, that the book was not only having a rapid sale, but it
piqued the curiosity of gossip-lovers and even local historians. No
names were mentioned; but when she wrote, "A poet said to me in
Cambridge one day," everybody knew what poet was meant. When she
obscurely alluded to the letters preceding some smooth running of the
underground railway, historians of the war itched to see the letters,
and invited her to produce them. The book was three months old now, and
the wonder no less. The letters had been coming, and the old lady had
not been answering them. At first she read them with glee, as a later
chapter of her life story; but now they tired her a little, because she
anticipated their appeal.
A bird was singing outside. She cocked her head a little and listened,
not wholly in pleasure, but with a critical curiosity as well. She was