The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck. A Comedy of Limitations

trouble and dissatisfaction and giving up all this'—she waved her hand lightly toward the lawns of Matocton,—'and it would mean our giving you up, for, you know, you haven't any money of your own, Rudolph. Ah, Rudolph, we can't give you up! We need you to lead our Lichfield germans, and to tell us naughty little stories, and keep us amused. So please be sensible, Rudolph.'

'Permit me to point out I firmly believe that silence is the perfectest herald of joy,' observed Colonel Musgrave. 'Only I do not understand why you should have dragged John Charteris's name into this ludicrous affair——'

'You really do not understand——?'

But Colonel Musgrave's handsome face declared very plainly that he did not.

'Well,' Mrs. Pendomer reflected, 'I dare say it is best, upon the whole, you shouldn't. And now you must excuse me, for I am leaving for the Ullwethers' to-day, and I shan't ever be invited to Matocton again, and I must tell my maid to pack up. She is a little fool and it will break her heart to be leaving Pilkins. All human beings are tediously alike. But, allowing ample time for her to dispose of my best lingerie and of her unavoidable lamentations, I ought to make the six-forty-five. I have noticed that one usually does—somehow,' said Mrs. Pendomer, and seemed to smack of allegories.

And yet it may have been because she knew—as who knew better?—something of that mischief's nature which was now afoot.

IV

The colonel burned the malefic letters that afternoon. Indeed, the episode set him to ransacking the desk in which Patricia had found them—a desk which, as you have heard, was heaped with the miscellaneous correspondence of the colonel's father dating back a half-century and more. Much curious matter the colonel discovered there, for 'Wild Will' Musgrave's had been a full-blooded career. And over one packet of letters, in particular, the colonel sat for a long while with an unwontedly troubled face.

PART SIX - BYWAYS

'Cry Kismet! and take heart. Eros is gone,
Nor may we follow to that loftier air
Olympians breathe. Take heart, and enter where
A lighter Love, vine-crowned, laughs i' the sun,
Oblivious of tangled webs ill-spun
By ancient wearied weavers, for it may be
His guidance leads to lovers of such as we
And hearts so credulous as to be won.

'Cry Kismet! Put away vain memories
Of all old sorrows and of all old joys,
And learn that life is never quite amiss
So long as unreflective girls and boys
Remember that young lips were meant to kiss,
And hold that laughter is a seemly noise.'

PAUL VANDERHOFFEN. Egeria Answers.

I

Patricia sat in the great maple-grove that stands behind Matocton, and pondered over a note from her husband, who was in Lichfield superintending the appearance of the July number of the Lichfield Historical Association's Quarterly Magazine. Mr. Charteris lay at her feet, glancing rapidly over a lengthy letter, which was from his wife, in Richmond.

The morning mail was just in, and Patricia had despatched Charteris for her letters, on the plea that the woods were too beautiful to leave, and that Matocton, in the unsettled state which marks the end of the week in a house-party, was intolerable.

She, undoubtedly, was partial to the grove, having spent the last ten mornings there. Mr. Charteris had overrated her modest literary abilities so far as to ask her advice in certain details of his new book, which was to appear in the autumn, and they had found a vernal solitude, besides being extremely picturesque, to be conducive to the forming of really matured opinions. Moreover, she was assured that none of the members of the house-party would misunderstand her motives; people were so much less censorious in the country; there was something in the pastoral purity of Nature, seen face to face, which brought out one's noblest instincts, and put an end to all horrid gossip and scandal-mongering.

Didn't Mrs. Barry-Smith think so? And what was her real opinion of that rumor about the Hardresses, and was the woman as bad as people said she was? Thus had Patricia spoken in the privacy of her chamber, at that hour when ladies do up their hair for the night, and discourse of mysteries. It is at this time they are said to babble out their hearts to one another; and so, beyond doubt, this must have been the real state of the case.

As Patricia admitted, she had given up bridge and taken to literature only during the past year. She might more honestly have said within the last two weeks. In any event, she now conversed of authors with a fitful persistence like that of an ill-regulated machine. Her comments were delightfully frank and original, as she had an unusually good memory. Of two books she was apt to prefer the one with the wider margin, and she was becoming sufficiently familiar with a number of poets to quote them inaccurately.

We have all seen John Charteris's portraits, and most of us have read his books—or at least, the volume entitled In Old Lichfield, which caused the Lichfield Courier- Herald to apostrophize its author as a 'Child of Genius! whose ardent soul has sounded the mysteries of life, whose inner vision sweeps over ever widening fields of thought, and whose chiseled phrases continue patriotically to perpetuate the beauty of Lichfield's past.' But for present purposes it is sufficient to say that this jewelsmith of words was slight and dark and hook-nosed, and that his hair was thin, and that he was not ill-favored. It may be of interest to his admirers—a growing cult—to add that his reason for wearing a mustache in a period of clean-shaven faces was that, without it, his mouth was not pleasant to look upon.

'Heigho!' Patricia said, at length, with a little laugh; 'it is very strange that both of our encumbrances should arrive on the same day!'

'It is unfortunate,' Mr. Charteris admitted, lazily; 'but the blessed state of matrimony is liable to these mishaps. Let us be thankful that my wife's whim to visit her aunt has given us, at least, two perfect, golden weeks. Husbands are like bad pennies; and wives resemble the cat whose adventures have been commemorated by one of our really popular poets. They always come back.'

Patricia communed with herself, and to Charteris seemed, as she sat in the chequered sunlight, far more desirable than a married woman has any right to be.