the other. The eyes of Louisa and Harriet and Mary were averted. The hysterical note returned to Wilhelmina's voice. "Eighteen-year-old Helen weeping over the sins of her forty-two-year-old aunt! Does n't that seem a trifle ridiculous? And suppose I did go to a restaurant for supper after the theater!" 'Wilhelmina!" said Louisa. "Wilhelmina!" cried Harriet. "Wilhelmina!" groaned Mary. "You don't know how often I have and Mary together. All their wedbeen there." "That," wailed Louisa, "is the awful part." "Vulgar!" cried Harriet and Louisa dings had been six-week pageants of dinners and luncheons and theater-parties. Again their husbands looked at each other "Or how often I may go there in the slyly. future." Her three brothers-in-law, even the Rev. John Smith, stared at her with astonished, amazed approval. Her three sisters stared at one another aghast, That Wilhelmina, in the foolish immaturity of an unmarried person, might yield even once to the temptation to be unconventional was hard to believe; that she boldly purposed to repeat the offense was incredible. There was a middle-aged woman of their acquaintance, a widow, who surrounded herself with a circle of admiring young men whom she took yachting and automobiling. Was Wilhelmina, staid, fortytwo-year-old Wilhelmina, to become another Anna Lenwood? They knew no wrong of Anna Lenwood, but her behavior was undignified, unconventional, mad. They remembered with terror the elderly men, friends of their father, and the boys, sons of friends of their own, who liked to go to see Wilhelmina. They remembered also their own children, Wilhelmina's nieces and nephews, whom they had expected her to enrich as their Aunt Wilhelmina had enriched her. Suppose Wilhelmina should buy a yacht and an automobile! Harriet found her breath first. "No unmarried woman should go to a theater or to supper alone with a man if she is eighty," she declared. "The newer set may do those things. We do not." "But suppose," said Wilhelmina, slowly, "suppose I should say I was going to be married." "Yes, vulgar," said Wilhelmina. "Well, I give up!" cried Harriet. "And to whom," faltered Louisa-"to whom would you like to be married?" "I am married," said Wilhelmina. “I was married last evening at Dr. Pryor's. Then we went to the theater. We sat two rows behind Helen and Mrs. Wentworth, and we went out early on purpose to avoid them. I never thought of their driving past our restaurant. Then we came home. I sent you announcements this morning by special messenger. If you had waited a little longer you would have got them. The others have gone by mail." "Announcements," cried Harriet "to your sisters!" "I did n't wish to be talked over even for a week." "And who-" gasped Louisa, in her mind a dozen frantic possibilities of attractive, foolish boys and unattractive old men, each of whom was an enemy taking an inheritance away from her children— "who is the man?” "The man son. ?" Wilhelmina flushed crimA man appeared suddenly in the doorway. At sight of him Louisa groaned once more. It was John Barrett. She had been praying that he would not ap pear. John Barrett seemed to be very much at home. He walked across the room, put his arm round Wilhelmina, and called her Tiny. "What do you think of it?" he asked them all. "John!" said Miles Barrett. "Of course," said John Barrett. "None of you supposed that a man could live in the same house with her without falling in love with her, did you?" His brother, and newly acquired brothers-in-law rushed forward to seize his hand. To each of them Wilhelmina presented a flushed and dutiful cheek. Her sisters did not come forward. Harriet managed to cross the room to put her arms round her father. He had come into the room not to assist in the discussion,-he had not known that a discussion was in progress, but to find a book which he had mislaid. In the years of Wilhelmina's gentle administration he had occasionally forgotten that he had been trained to keep his books in the library. Harriet embraced him tenderly. "We can forgive her for treating us this way," she mourned; "it is you for whom we resent it, Father. To go out of your house alone, and be married at the clergyman's without an engagement, without attendants, without-" Father shook himself free. "Now, Harriet," he said, "don't be a goose. If you are talking about Wilhelmina's wedding, she had an attendant. I was the attendant. Wilhelmina, where is my book?" THEY COMING HOME BY E. SEWELL HILL HEY have hauled in the gang-plank; the breast-line crawls back; Of the storm and the night, and across to the mouth Of the harbor, where stretching far out to the south, Swinging slowly, we turn, Pointing out for mid-lake, past the long pier, where burn And I'm coming; huddled close by the slow-falling rail, But tell me, O gray eyes and blue, 62415 The silence of midnight; the hiss of the swell; There's a rent in the night, and a star glimmers through; The hills smile a welcome, the long night is past, The weary throb sends us straight into the dawn, And away to the north, over depths of cool green From the pier to the boat-house and far down the shore And I? I'm not worth it. But, gray eyes and blue! But heaven it will be when down the blue dome |