I. I asked no other thing, No other was denied. The mighty merchant smiled. Brazil? He twirled a button, II. Will there really be a morning? Has it feet like water-lilies? Has it feathers like a bird? Oh, some scholar! Oh, some sailor! Where the place called morning lies! III. Have you a brook in your little heart, And nobody knows, so still it flows, That any brook is there; And yet your little draught of life Is daily drunken there. Then look out for the little brook in March, And the snows come hurrying from the hills, And later, in August it may be, When the meadows parching lie, Beware, lest this little brook of life Some burning noon go dry! -Emily Dickinson. "You are too young, dear, to be so good and devout," was Carmen's comment on the situation. To Miss Forsythe's wonder, Margaret did not resent this impertinence, but only said that no accumulation of years was likely to bring Carmen into either of these dangers. And the reply was no more satisfactory to Miss Forsythe than the remark that provoked it. That she had had a delightful visit, that Margaret was more lovely than ever, that Henderson was a delighted host, was the report of Miss Forsythe when she returned to us. In a confidential talk with my wife she confessed, however, that she couldn't tell whither Margaret was going. One of the worries of modern life is the perplexity where to spend the summer. The restless spirit of change affects those who dwell in the country, as well as those who live in the city. No matter how charming the residence is, one can stay in it only a part of the year. He actually needs a house in town, a villa by the sea, and a cottage in the hills. When these are secured each one an establishment more luxurious year by year-then the family is ready to travel about, and is in a greater perplexity than before whether to spend the summer in Europe or in America, the novelties of which are beginning to excite the imagination. This nomadism, which is nothing less than society on wheels, cannot be satirized as a whim of fashion; it has a serious cause in the discovery of the disease called nervous prostration, which demands for its cure constant change of scene, without any occupation. Henderson recognized it, but he said that personally he had no time to indulge in it. His summer was to be a very busy one. It was impossible to take Margaret with him on his sudden and tedious journey from one end of the country to the other, but she needed a change. It was therefore arranged that after a visit to Brandon she should pass the warm months with the Arbusers in their summer home at Lenox, with a month-the right month-in the Eschelle villa at Newport; and he hoped never to be long absent from one place or the other. Margaret came to Brandon at the beginning of June, just at the season when the region was at its loveliest, and just when its society was making preparations to get away from it to the sea, or the mountains, or to any place that was not home. I |