did n't work well, if I found I was all "Admired Aurora, it surely is the most immoral proposition that ever came from fair lady so well brought up as you!" cried Gerald. "I accept without hesitation. I promise whatever you ask. From this moment onward we are fidanzati, then. And, my blessed Auroretta, you who are such a hand at calling names, have your servant's permission to call him all the names you can think of that signify an ineffable blunderer on the day when you succeed in freeing yourself from him!" CHAPTER XXIII THE servant who opened the door for Leslie on this softly brilliant June morning, being well accustomed to admitting her, obligingly anticipated her question, "Are the ladies at home?" "The signorina is in the salottino," he said. From which Leslie understood that the person whom she chiefly had come to see was out. It did not really matter, for she had time to wait. Aurora was likely to come back for lunch. She released the man from attendance by a little wave of her hand, and directed her footsteps toward the tall white-andgold door standing partly open. swirl of silk when Estelle came forward to see who was there. With delighted good mornings the women exchanged the foreign salute, which Leslie had adopted and Estelle submitted to, a mere touching of cheeks while the lips kiss the air. They sat down on the rococo settee talk, Leslie, quick of eye, wondering what had happened to give Estelle that unusual air, an air of-no, it was indefinable. Excitement had a share in it, and possibly chagrin, and, it almost seemed, exaltation. The chief thing about it, however, was that she was trying to conceal it; doing her best, but it was a poor best, to appear natural. Leslie graciously allowed her to suppose she was succeeding, and entered at once upon the reason for her early call. "I really think, Estelle, that the villa at Antiniano would suit Aurora. As for you, I am positive, my dear, that you would adore it. It is a little out of the thick of things, but has a very fine view of the sea, also a very pretty garden." Estelle began to laugh. Leslie, warned by a note in Estelle's laugh, watched her with suspicion while it developed into a nervous cackle. She saw her cover her eyes with one hand, and with the other vainly feel for her pocket. She was crying. Leslie tendered the little handkerchief found on the floor, and knew then that it had dried tears before on that same day. She waited, tactfully silent, merely placing a condoling hand over that of her friend. "I might as well tell you," Estelle got out, when her crying fit permitted her to speak, "that Aurora is n't going to take any villa at Antiniano this summer. She's gone away." "Gone away? What do you mean?" asked Leslie, surprised into a very com On her way to it she picked up off the plete blankness of expression. floor a small lawn handkerchief. A sharp bark preceded the tumbling out through the salottino archway of a little white mop on feet. Upon recognizing Leslie, this performed evolutions expressive of great joy. She had stopped to pat the excited little "What I say." And in her incalculable frame of mind Estelle again was laughing. "Oh, I don't know which to do, whether to laugh or cry!" she explained, with eyes bright at once from laughter and from tears. "One moment I laugh, next moment I cry." across its diameter, moved an inch or two over and back. "Lower away!" They slacked the fall, and the mast sank like a serpent through the hole. I ran down into the hold. The yellow butt was sliding through the 'tween-decks with the same suggestion of noiseless stealth-the more noiseless for the boomings on every hand caused by the fall of mauls and calking-hammers on the outer skin of the ship. Next appeared the boss rigger's chief assistant, seething with objurgation. "Slack away on the fall!" he yelled. The notched heel of the mast, continuing its miraculous progress into the bowels of the ship, had come to within a few inches of the step appointed to receive it. "Lower a little inch! Hold!” This wild shriek was reëchoed from the deck above, borne aloft in muffled accents until it rebounded from the vault of heaven. And now the mast mysteriously twirled, so as to bring the notch in the heel precisely fore and aft; but it was not quite over the step. "Wedge her forward!" Heavy blows fell; the heel crept over its socket. "Hold! Slack away on the fall!" "What's wrong, then? She's entered the step. She 's clear all round." He peered delicately all round that orifice, brushed it with his finger-tips, as if a grain of dust had checked the mast in its descent. Next he began to swear and lash out at a wedge simultaneously. The invisible man above picked up this red refrain like a torch, whirled it round once or twice to fan it into flame, and cast it up out of the pit he was in. "Ease away the wedges for'ard, then!" cried my ship's carpenter. He hit the mast once more, and now with an invincible pung, that shook the ship all round, as if a battering-ram had found its mark, the mast fell into place. That heavy heel tramped on the keelson. like the foot of an elephant on a matchbox. "Hard down!" And in that moment the monstrous round of the mast assumed a look of immobility, as if it had not moved since time. began, as if not all the machinations of man could ever coax it to give even the fraction of an inch again; hard down, and guaranteed to stand without hitching, wind and weather permitting, for the space of twenty years. And yet a moment back it had twirled like a watch-charm at the end of its chain. "This is a quiet crew," said the carpenter, mildly. He dusted his palms together. "In the old days they used to pick up these sticks and step them with their mouths, as you might say." The good old days-days of the clipperships, days of the vinegar ships! Marvelous rigs, marvelous men, too. They had a stomach for anything then. In that golden morning tide of life, it seemed, a skipper would think nothing of slipping a five-dollar gold piece under the heel of the mast as it was going into place. He valued his ship; and besides, it was a day of faith. Later the gold dwindled to a bright penny. Men were losing confidence in their ships then, maybe; but it was a fact that the trade-winds had never been the same since, Was it likely that, if there was any demon of sailor's luck prowling the seven seas, he would be fooled by a bright penny? Truly the old order changeth. A day came when she was ready for the plunge. Her sticks were in, her paint was on, she was copper painted below water, because that paint continually scales off, and disposes of borers before they can get a foothold. Her stores were slung aboard, a fire kindled in the galley, a cook installed to watch it, and still no movement in all the length and breadth of her. Now comes her destined hour. A hush has fallen on the yard for once. The sawmill no longer puffs forth its yellow cloud over the rushing river; neither clink of chain nor cluck of broadax falls on the ear; a touch of frost is in the air. The ship lies rotund and gleaming in her cradle, her jib-boom pointing to the skies. So slowly has she come into being here that she now seems part and parcel of the landscape, one with all our hopes and fears; wedged and blocked and bill-shored here as if for all eternity. And yet even now all hangs by a hair. The ways have been built up to her bilges; the bilges rest on boards, the under faces of which are smeared with beef tallow or the like. These boards in turn rest on the top of the ways, similarly greased. Nothing remains but to split out the keelblocks, and let the great new foundling of the seas slide into her element. A flag-draped platform has been built against her nose; the daughter of the new owner stands there with a bottle of spring water. Judson, strolling out from a critical inspection of the forward keel-blocks, turns his bleak eyes toward that platform, tweaks his hairy nose again, and mutters: "There 's two of the handsomest women in town brought face to face and rubbing noses." could n't think she meant to give me that along with the rest. Gerald said before. she could speak, 'Take it away!' And Nell said right off: 'Oh, yes. Keep it, Hattie; keep it!' That lovely portrait he painted of her! I don't see how she could bear to part with it. But of course, now she has him, she can have as many portraits as she wants. Come and tell me what you think, whether it would be safe to pack it, frame and all, or better to unframe it, or, better still, to take the canvas off the stretcher and roll it." They stood beneath the portrait, and with the image present to their minds of painter and sitter hasting on their way to be wed, saw this equivocal masterpiece with a difference. Not Aurora alone looked forth from the canvas. Gerald, self-depicted in every subtle brush-stroke, looked, too. Estelle gazed upward at the painting with a wistful, well-nigh solemn look. Not being able, hampered by a dog in her arms, to clasp her hands, she expressed the same impulse by clasping the dog close to her breast in token that her wishes for her dearest friend's good were more than wishes, were a prayer. She felt a hand laid on her forearm. "You need n't be afraid," said Leslie; "they'll be happy." All Mexico stood up from the gulf, colossal, perpendicular, superb; Mexico preoccupied with volcanoes, palm forests, Deserts, cities, jungles, Plantations of coffee and maguey, Unknown valleys, hills of iron, Orchids. I heard the river flash down the cañon between the rosewoods, And vanish over Yucatan. Exotic the thought of Northern trees, Oaks, maples, beeches, Elms still unfledged in the early April; For April here was wild white lilac, Jargon of mocking-birds, Air that glittered with the voice of a river, Heaped shell-pink of rosewood blooms, Bamboo-feathers etched on the sunset, And below the sunset, hanging hills like a weighted curtain of velvet |