Rose MacLeod

								

cheerfulness by the way.
"The story of Hawthorne and the first edition--"
"Hypothetical. Grouse in the gun-room."
"Do you mean that the story of the old slave who came to your mother's
door in Waltham, and the three abolitionists on their way to the
meeting--"
"Now what's the use, Billy Stark?" cried the old lady. "I told you it
was a fake from beginning to end. So it is. So is every page of it. If
I'd written my recollections as they were, the book would have been a
pamphlet of twenty odd pages. It would have said I married a learned
professor because I thought if I got into Cambridge society I should see
life, and life was what I wanted. It would have gone on to say I found
it death and nothing else, and when my husband died I spent all the
money I could get trying to see life and I never saw it then. Who'd have
printed that? Pretty recollections, I should say!"
Mr. Stark was still musing, his eyes interrogating her.
"It's really incredible, Florrie," he said at last. "Poor dear! you
needed the money."
"That wasn't it."
"Then what was?"
"I don't know." But immediately her face folded up into its smiling
creases and she said, "I wanted some fun."
William Stark fell back in his chair and began to laugh, round upon
wheezy round. When his glasses had fallen off and his cheeks were wet
and his face flamed painfully, Madam Fulton spoke, without a gleam.
"You're a nice man, Billy Stark."
"You wanted your little joke!" he repeated, subsiding and trumpeting
into his handkerchief. "Well, you've had it, Florrie; you've had it."
"I don't know that I have," she returned. "I had to enjoy it alone, and
that kind of palled on me. When the first notices came, I used to lie
awake from three o'clock on, to laugh. I used to go to the window when
Electra was in the room, and make up faces, to let off steam and keep
her from knowing. Then the letters kept coming, and clubs and things
kept hounding me, and Electra was always at me. There she is now, with
my grog. See me take it and pour it into the syringa."

II

Electra was crossing the veranda with her springing step, bearing a
glass of beaten egg and milk on a little tray. Madam Fulton signed to
her to place the tray on a table, evidently ready for such
ministrations, and then presented her friend. Electra greeted him with a
smile of bright acceptance. She knew his standing, and his air of
worldly ease quite satisfied her.
"May I bring you--?" she began, with a pretty grace.
"I should like a glass of water," said Billy, "if you will be so good."
When she had gone, Madam Fulton spoke in impressive haste:--
"How long can you stay, Billy? All day? All night?"
"I've got to run back to New York for a bit, but I shall be in America
all summer, one place or another. I'll stay to luncheon, if you'll let
me."
"We must avoid Electra! If she comes back and settles on us, I shall
simply take you to walk. We can go over to Bessie Grant's. You remember