Chapter III: Part 3

"'And David consulted with the captains of thousands and hundreds and every leader. And David said unto all the congregation of Israel, If it seem good unto you, and that it be of the Lord our God, let us send abroad unto our brethren everywhere, that are left in all the land of Israel, and with them also to the priests and Levites which are in their cities and suburbs, that they may gather themselves together unto us: and let us bring again the Ark of our God to us: for we inquired not at it in the days of Saul. And all the congregation said that they would do so: for the thing was right in the eyes of all the people. So David gathered all Israel together from Shihor of Egypt even unto the entering of Hemath, to bring the Ark of God from Kirjath-jearim. And David went up and all Israel to Baalah, that is to Kirjath-jearim, which belonged to Judah, to bring up thence the Ark of God the Lord, that dwelleth between the cherubim whose name is called on it. And they carried the Ark of God in a new cart--' In a _new_ cart, Tessa; see how careful he was!"

"Yes."

"'--Out of the house of Abinadab; and Uzza and Ahir drave the cart.' That was all right and proper, wasn't it?"

"It seems so to me."

"'And David and all Israel played before God with all their might, and with singing, and with harps, and with timbrels, and with cymbals, and with trumpets.' They were joyful with all their might. Were you as joyful as that?"

"Yes: fully as joyful as that."

"Now see the confusion, the shame, and the fear that followed those harps and timbrels and trumpets. 'And when they came unto the threshing-floor of Chidon, Uzza put forth his hand to hold the Ark; for the oxen stumbled. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzza, and He smote him, because he put his hand to the Ark: and he died before God. And David was displeased, because the Lord had made a breach upon Uzza: wherefore that place is called Perez-uzza, to this day. And David was afraid of God that day, saying, How shall I bring the Ark of God home to me?'"

"I should think that he _would_ have been afraid," said Tessa; "and after he had been so sure and joyful, too."

Miss Jewett read on: "'So David brought not the Ark home to himself to the city of David, but carried it aside to the house of Obed-edom the Gittite.'"

Tessa raised her head to speak. "I can not understand where his mistake was; how could he have been too careful of such a treasure. Oh, how terrible and humiliating his disappointment must have been! How ashamed he was before all the people! I can bear any thing better than to be humiliated."

"My poor, proud Tessa."

Tessa's tears started at the tone; these first words of sympathy overcame her utterly; she dropped her head again and cried like a child, like the little child Tessa who had had so many fits of crying.

The eyes above her were as wet as her own; once or twice warm lips touched her forehead and cheek.

"Did _he_ have another opportunity?" asked Tessa, at last. "I can understand how afraid he was. I was troubled because I gave thanks for the thing that was taken away from me. Did he find an answer to his 'How'?"

"He was thankful, sincere, and careful."

"I should think that was enough," exclaimed Tessa, almost indignantly; "but I know that there was sin somewhere, else the anger of the Lord would not have been kindled. They went home without the Ark. That is saddest of all."

"It was kept three months in the house of Obed-edom, and during those three months humbled David studied the law and found that his cart, new as it was, was not according to the will of God.

"'Then David said, None ought to carry the Ark of God but the Levites; for them hath the Lord chosen to carry the Ark of God, and to minister unto Him forever.'"

"And he _could_ have known that before," cried Tessa.

"'And David gathered all Israel together to Jerusalem, to bring up the Ark of the Lord unto his place, which he had prepared for it, and David assembled the children of Aaron and the Levites and said unto them, Ye are the chief of the fathers of the Levites: sanctify yourselves, both ye and your brethren, that ye may bring up the Ark of the Lord God of Israel unto the place that I have prepared for it. For because ye did it not at the first, the Lord our God made a breach upon us, for that we sought Him not after the due order."

"Oh, how can we know every thing to do at the first?"

"How could David have known? Now he had found the right way to do the right thing. 'So the priests and the Levites sanctified themselves to bring up the Ark of the Lord God of Israel. And the children of the Levites bare the Ark of God upon their shoulders with the staves thereon as Moses commanded, according to the word of the Lord. And David spake to the chief of the Levites to appoint their brethren to be the singers with instruments of music, psalteries and harps and cymbals, sounding, by lifting up the voice with joy. So David, and the elders of Israel, and the captains over thousands, went to bring up the Ark of the covenant of the Lord out of the house of Obed-edom with joy.'"

"He was not afraid now," said Tessa. "I think that he was all the more joyful because he had been so humiliated and afraid. I will think about that new cart."

"And those three months in which he was finding out the will of God. 'And it came to pass, when God helped the Levites that bare the Ark of the covenant of the Lord that they offered seven bullocks and seven rams.' He could not help them the first time because their way was not according to His law; their joy, their thankfulness, their sincerity, their carefulness availed them nothing because they kept not His law. Uzza was a priest and should have known the law; David was king and he should have known the law."

"But he had his second opportunity, despite his mistake."

"And so, if your desire be according to His will may you have yours; it may be months or years, half your lifetime, but if you study His word and ask for your second opportunity through the intercession of Christ, I am sure that you will have it."

"Sometimes I am angry, sometimes bewildered, sometimes there is hatred in my heart because I have been deceived and humiliated--sometimes I do not want it back--"

"My dear," said Miss Jewett, gravely, "discipline is better than our heart's desire."

"Is it? I don't like to think so."

When the clock in the church-tower struck midnight Tessa lay awake wondering if she could ever choose discipline before any heart's desire.

Then she crept closer to Miss Jewett and kissed her.

VII.--THE LONG DAY.

With the apple blossoms came Tessa's birthday. She had lived twenty-five years up-stairs and down-stairs in that white house with the lilac shrubbery and low iron fence. Twenty-five years with her father and mother, nineteen with her little sister, and almost as many with her old friend, Mr. Hammerton; twenty years with Laura and Felix and Miss Jewett, and not quite three years with the latest friend, the latest and the one that she had most believed in, Ralph Towne.

She was counting these years and these friends as she brushed out her long, light hair and looked into the reflection of the fair, bright, thoughtful face that had come to another birthday.

Nothing would ever happen to her again, she was sure; nothing ever did happen after one were as old as twenty-five. In novels, all the wonderful events occurred in earlier life, and then--a blank or bliss or misery, any thing that the reader might guess.

Would her life henceforth be a blank because she was so old and was growing older?

In one of her stories, Miss Mulock had stated that the experience of love had been given to her heroine "later than to most" and _she_ was twenty-four!

"Not that that experience is all one's life," she mused; "but it is just as much to me as it is to any man or woman that ever lived; as much as to Cornelia, the matron with her jewels, or Vittoria Colonna, or Mrs. Browning, or Hypatia,--if she ever loved any body,--or Miss Jewett,--if she ever did,--or Sue Greyson, or Queen Victoria, or Ralph Towne's mother! I wonder if his father were like him, so handsome and gentle. I have a right to the pain and the blessedness of loving; perhaps I _have_ been in love--perhaps I am now! He shut the door that he had opened and he has gone out; I would not recall him if I could do it with one breath--

"'No harm from him can come to me
On ocean or on shore.'

"Well," smiling into the sympathetic eyes, "if nothing new ever happen to me, I'll find out all the blessedness of the old."

For she must always find something to be glad of before she could be sorrowful about any thing.

She ran down-stairs in her airiest mood to be congratulated by her father in a humorous speech that ended with an unfinished sentence and a quick turning of the head, to be squeezed and hugged and kissed by Dinah, and dubbed Miss Twenty-Five, and then to have her mood changed, all in the past made dreary, and all in the future desolate, by one of her mother's harangues.

Mr. Wadsworth had kissed his three girls and hurried off to his business, as he had done in all the years that Tessa could remember; Dinah had pushed her plate away and was leaning forward with her elbows on the table-cloth, her face alight with the mischief of teasing Tessa about being "stricken in years." Tessa's repartees were sending Dinah off into her little shouts of laughter when their mother's voice broke in:

"I had been married eight years when I was your age, Tessa."

"It will be nine years on my next birthday," said Tessa.

"Yes, just nine; for I was married on my seventeenth birthday; your father met me one day coming from school and said that he would call that evening; I curled my hair over and put on my garnet merino and waited for him an hour. I expected John Gesner, too. But your father came first and we set the wedding-day that night. I was seventeen and he was thirty-seven!"

"I congratulate you," said Tessa. "I congratulate the woman who married my father."

"Girls are so different," sighed Mrs. Wadsworth. "Now _I_ had two offers that year! Aunt Theresa wanted me to take John Gesner because he was two years younger than your father; but John was only a clerk in the Iron Works then, and so was Lewis. Lewis is just my age. How could I tell that he would make a fortune buying nails?"

"You would have hit the nail on the head if you had known it," laughed Dinah.

"And here's Dine, now, _she_ is like me. You are a Wadsworth through and through! Young men like some life about a girl; how many beaux Sue Greyson has! All you think of is education! There was Cliff Manning, you turned the cold shoulder to him because he couldn't talk grammar. What's grammar? Grammar won't make the pot boil."

"Enough of them would," suggested Dinah.

"Mr. Towne came and came till he was tired, I suppose. I hope you didn't refuse him."

"No, he refused me."

Her tone was so gravely in earnest that her mother was staggered. Dinah shouted.

Mrs. Wadsworth went on in a voice that was gathering indignation: "You may laugh now; you will not always laugh. 'He that will not when he may, when he will he shall have nay.' Mrs. Sherwood told me yesterday that she hoped to have Nan Gerard back here for good, and Mary looked as if it were all settled. Mr. Towne did not do much _last_ winter, Mary said, beside run around with Naughty Nan. I'm hearing all the time of somebody being married or engaged, and you are doing nothing but shilly-shally over some book or trotting around after poor folks with Miss Jewett."

"She will find a prince in a hovel some day," said Dinah. "He will be struck with her attitude as she is choking some bed-ridden woman with beef-tea and fall down on his knees and propose on the spot. 'Feed me, seraph,' he will cry."

"He wouldn't talk grammar, or he couldn't spell or read Greek, and she will turn away," laughed Mrs. Wadsworth. "Tessa, you are none of my bringing up."

"That is true," replied Tessa, the sorrowfulness of the tone softening its curtness.

"You always _did_ care for something in a book more than for what I said! You never do any thing to please people; and yet, somehow, somebody always _is_ running after you. I wish that you _could_ go out into the world and get a little character; you are no more capable of self-denial and heroism than an infant baby; for getting along in the world and making a good match, I would rather have Sue Greyson's skin--"

"Her father understands anatomy, perhaps you can get it, mother."

"_She_ knows how to look out for number one. Her children will be settled in life before Tessa is engaged. You needn't laugh, Dine, it's her birthday, and I'm only doing a mother's duty to her."

Tessa's eyes laughed although her lips were still. Her sense of humor helped her to bear many things in her life.

"You have never had a trial in your life, Tessa, and here you are old enough to be a wife and mother!"

"If she lived in China she could be a grandmother," said Dinah.

"I have always kept trouble from you; that is why, at your mature age, you have so little character. In an emergency you would have no more responsibility than Nellie Bird. If you had studied arithmetic instead of always writing poetry and compositions, you might have been teaching now and have been independent."

"Father isn't tired of taking care of her," said Dinah, spiritedly. "It's mean for you to say that."

"Why don't you write a novel and make some money?"

"I don't know how."

"Can't you learn?"

"I study all the time."

"Why don't you write flowery language?"

"I don't know how."

"It is Gus that has spoiled you; he has nipped your genius in the bud. What does he know, a clerk in a bank? I know that he tells you to leave out the long words; and it is the long words that take. I shouldn't have had my dreadful cough winter after winter if I hadn't worked hard to spare your time that winter you wrote those three little books for the Sunday School Union; I lay all my sickness and pain to that winter."

Mrs Wadsworth had brought this charge against Tessa several times before, but she had never shivered over it as she did this birthday morning.

"And what did you get for them? Only a hundred dollars for the three. Your father made a great fuss over them, and he really cried (his tears come very easy) over that piece you called 'Making Mistakes.' I couldn't see any thing to cry over; I thought you made out that making mistakes was a very fine thing."

"Four people from away off have written to thank her, any way," exulted Dinah.

"People like your father I suppose."

Dinah sprang up and began to rattle the cups and saucers; she could not bear the look in Tessa's eyes another second.

"Dinah, I can't talk if you make so much noise. You are very rude."

"Oh, I forgot to tell you," cried Dinah, standing still with two cups in her hands. "It's great fun! Nan Gerard refused Mr. John Gesner while she was here."

"I don't believe it," exclaimed Mrs Wadsworth. "Those brothers are worth nearly a million."

"Naughty Nan didn't care."

"She'll jump out of the frying-pan into the fire, then; for the Townes, mother and son, are not worth a quarter of it."

"What does she care? Mr. Lewis Gesner is a gentleman, and he knows something."

"He said once that I was only a little doll," said Mrs. Wadsworth. "I never liked him afterward."

"I like him," said Dinah; "he doesn't flirt with the girls; he always talks to the old ladies."

"What are you going to do to-day, Tessa?" inquired Mrs. Wadsworth, ignoring Dinah's remark.

"Oh, I don't know," she answered, "and don't care" was the unspoken addition.

There was one thing she was sure to do. On her way to the ten o'clock mail she would take a moment with Miss Jewett for a word, a look; for something to set her heart to beating to a cheerier tune. Ten minutes before mail time she found Miss Jewett as busy as a bee.

"Oh, Tessa," glancing up from her desk, "I knew you would come. I had a good crying spell on my twenty-fifth birthday and I've looked through clear eyes ever since. I wish for you that your second quarter may be as full of hard work as mine."

Tessa felt as if the sun were shining warm again. At the office she received her birthday present; the one thing that she most wished for; if ever birthday face were in a glow and birthday heart set to dancing, hers were when her fingers held the check for one hundred and sixty-eight dollars and fifty cents, and when her eyes ran through the brief, friendly letter, with its two lines of praise.

"I am taken with your book. It gives me a humbling-down feeling. I hardly know why."

"Oh, it's too good! it's too good," she cried, with her head close to Miss Jewett's at the desk over the large day-book. "I was feeling as if nobody cared, and now he wants another book. As good as this, he says."

Tessa lived in fairy-land for the next two hours. No, she lived in Dunellen on a happy birthday.

"Well! well! well!" exclaimed her father, taking off his spectacles to wipe his eyes, "this is what I call fine. So this is what you grew pale over last winter," he added, looking down into a face as rosy and wide awake as a child's waking out of sleep.

"What shall you do with so much money?"

"Spend it, of course. I have spent it already a hundred times."

"You must return receipt and reply to the letter."

"I had forgotten that."

"You will find every thing on my desk. Write your name on the back of the check and I will give you the money."

"I don't want to do that. I want to take it into the bank and surprise Gus with it. His face will be worth another check."

She wrote her name upon the check, her father standing beside her. Theresa L. Wadsworth. He was very proud of this name among his three girls.

"And you expect to do this thing again?"

"I do. Many times. All I want is a nook and a lead pencil."

"Daughter, I would like something else better."

"I wouldn't. Nothing else. I shall not change my mind even for a knight in helmet and helmet feather."

Mr. Hammerton's face _was_ worth another check; he looked down at her from his high stool in a grave, paternal fashion. She remained decorously silent.

"How women _do_ like to spend money," he said. "At six o'clock you will not have a penny left."

"How can I? Father is to have a farm in Mayfield, mother is to go to Europe, and Dine is to have diamond ear-rings!"

"And I?"

"I will buy you a month to go fishing! And myself brains enough to write a better book. Isn't it comical for me to get more for my book than Milton got for Paradise Lost?"

Tessa laughed as she counted her money at tea-time; there was a twenty dollar bill and seventy-five cents! But in her mother's chamber stood a suite of black-walnut with marble tops, in one of Dine's drawers, materials for a black and white striped silk, on the sitting-room table a copy of Shakespeare in three Turkey morocco volumes, for her father; she had also sent a gold thimble to Sue Greyson, several volumes of Ruskin to Mr. Hammerton, Barnes on _Job_ to Miss Jewett, and had purchased a ream of foolscap, a pint of ink, a pair of gloves, and _The Scarlet Letter_ for herself!

"Is there any thing left in the world that you want?" her father asked.

"Yes, but twenty dollars will not buy it," she replied, thinking of Dr. Lake's anxious face as she had seen it that day.

At night, alone in the darkness, there were a few tears that no one would ever know about. Her joy in her accepted work was nothing to Ralph Towne. He did not know about her book and if he knew--would he care?

VIII.--A NOTE OUT OF TUNE.

The blossom storm came and blew away the apple blossoms, the heavy fragrance of the lilacs died, and the shrubbery became again only a mass of green leaves and ugly, crooked stems; but amid this, something happened to Tessa; something that was worth as much to her as any happenings that came before it; something that had its beginning when she was a little school-girl running along the planks and teasing Felix Harrison. How much certain jarring words spoken that day and how much a certain bit of news influenced this happening, she, in her rigid self-analysis, could not determine!

She arose from the breakfast table at the same instant with her father, saying: "Father, I will walk to the corner with you."

"We were two souls with one thought," he replied. "I intended to ask you for a few minutes."

They crossed the street to the planks. She slipped her arm through his, and as he took the fingers on his arm with a warm grasp, she said; "I never want any lover but you, my dear old father."

"Nonsense, child! Only girls who have had a heart-break say such things to their old fathers, and your heart is as good as new, I am sure. Tessa, I want to see you married before I die."

"May you live till you see me married," she answered merrily. "What an old mummy you will be!"

"I have been thinking of something that I want to say to you. I am an old man and I am not young for my age--"

"Now, father."

"I may live a hundred years, of course, and grow heartier each year, and like the 'frisky old girl,' die at the age of one hundred and ten, and 'die by a fall from a cherry-tree then,' but, still there's a chance that I may not. And now, Daughter Tessa"--his voice became as grave as her eyes, "I want you to promise me that you will always take care of your poor little mother; poor little mother! You are never sharp to her like saucy Dine, and she rests in you like an acorn in an acorn cup, although she would be the last to confess it."

"I promise to do my best," Tessa said very earnestly.

"But that is only a part of it. Promise me that if she wishes to marry again, and her choice be one that _you_ approve--"

"Approve!"

"Approve," he repeated, "that you will not hinder but rather further it, and keep Dine from making her unhappy about it."

"I will not promise. You shall not die," she cried passionately. "How can you talk so and break my heart?"

"Dr. Watts says that we all begin to die as soon as we are born, so I have had to do it pretty thoroughly; but he was a theologian and not a medical man. Have you promised?"

"Yes, sir," speaking very quietly, "I have promised."

With her hand upon his arm, they kept even step for ten silent minutes.

"Are you writing again?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then you must walk every day."

"Oh, I do, rain or shine. I am going down the road this afternoon to look at the wheat fields and the oat fields and to see the boys and girls dropping corn!"

"And to wish that you were a little girl dropping corn?"

"No, indeed," she said earnestly and solemnly. "I like my own life better than any life I ever knew in a book or out of a book."

"When I count up my mercies I'll remember that."

She was dwelling upon those words of her father late that afternoon as she sauntered homeward with her hands full of wild flowers and grasses.

"Mystic, will you ride with me?"

A feeling of warmth and of tenderness ever crept into her heart at the sound of this voice.

She loved Dr. Lake.

"No, sir, thank you; I am out for a walk and when I walk I never ride."

"But I want to talk to you--to tell you something." She stepped nearer and stood at the carriage wheel; his voice was sharp and his white temples hollow. "Sue has refused me," he began with a laugh. "I proposed last night, and what do you think she said? 'Why, Dr. Lake, you are poor, and you smell of medicine.'"

"They are both true," she said, not conscious of what reply she was making.

"Yes," he answered bitterly, "they are both true and will _be_ true until the end of time. Don't you think that you could reason with her and change her mind; you have influence." He laid his gloved hand on the hand that rested on the wheel. "It will kill me, Mystic, if she doesn't marry me."

So weak, so pitiful! She could have cried. And all for love of flighty Sue Greyson!

"I was sure that she would accept me. She has done every thing _but_ accept me. I did not know that a woman would permit a man to take her day after day into his arms and kiss her unless she intended to marry him. Would _you_ permit that?" he asked.

"You know that I would not," she answered proudly; "but Sue doesn't know any better; all she cares for is the 'fun' of the moment."

"I have been hoping so long; since Towne went away; I can't bear this."

"There is as much strength for you as for any of us," she said gently.

"But I am too weak to hold it."

And he looked too weak to hold it. She could not lift her full eyes. "I am so sorry," was all she could speak.

"There isn't any thing worth living for anyway; I, for one, am not thankful for my 'creation.' I wish I was dead and buried and out of sight forever. Sue Greyson has another offer to whisper to all Dunellen. I would not stay here, I would go back to that wretched hospital, but my engagement with her father extends through another year. Well, you won't ride home with me?"

"Not to-day, I want to be out in this air."

"And you don't want to be shut in here with my growling. I don't blame you; I'd run away from myself if I could. I'll kill half Dunellen and all Mayfield with overdoses before another night, and then take a big dose myself. Say, Mystic, you are posted in these things, where would be the harm?"

"Take it and see."

"Not yet awhile. I am not sure of many things, but I _am_ sure that a man's life in this world will stare in his face in the next. And my life has not been fit even for your eyes."

Homely, shabby, old, worn, excited, with a sharp ring in his voice and a stoop in his shoulders. What was there in him to touch Sue Greyson? Where was the first point of sympathy?

Tessa could have taken him into her arms and cared for him as she would have cared for a child.

"I have just seen an old man die; a good old man; he was over ninety; he prayed to the last; that is his lips moved and his old wife laid his hands together; he liked to clasp his hands when he prayed, she said. She put her ear down close to his mouth, but she could not distinguish the words. I was wishing that I could go in his place, and that he could take up my life and live it through for me. He would do better with it than I shall."

"Is not that rather selfish?"

"Life is such a sham. I don't believe in the transmigration of souls; I don't want to come back and pull through another miserable existence."

"I want you to stay this soul in this body; I do not want to lose you."

"If every woman in the world were like you--"

"And every man were as tired and hungry as you--"

"What would he do?"

"He would hurry home to a good, hot dinner."

"I have not eaten or drank since yesterday morning. Sue has a hot dinner waiting for me. She will sit with me while I eat, and tell me, perhaps, that she has had a letter from that fellow in Philadelphia, or that that well-preserved specimen of manhood, old John Gesner, has asked her to drive with him. Some flirtation of hers is sauce to every dish."

"Poor Sue," sighed Tessa.

"She might be happy if she would; I would take care of her."

"Good-by," squeezing his fingers through his glove. "Go home and eat."

"Give me a good word before I go."

"Wait."

"Is that the best word you know?"

"It is good enough."

"Well, good day, Mystic," he said, lifting his hat.

She went back to the grassy wayside, thinking. What right had Sue Greyson's light fingers to meddle with a life like Dr. Lake's? They had not one taste in common. How could he find her attractive? She disliked every thing in which he was interested; it was true that she could sing, sing like one of the wild birds down in the woods, and he loved music.

She paused and stood leaning against the rails of a fence, and looked across the green acres of winter wheat; one day in September she had stood there watching the men as they were drilling the wheat; afterward she had seen the tender, green blades springing up in straight rows, and once she had seen the whole field green beneath a light snow. The wind moved her veil slightly, both hands were drooping as her elbows leaned upon the upper rail, her cheeks were tinged with the excitement of Dr. Lake's words, and her eyes suffused with a mist that was too sorrowful to drop with tears. A quick step on the grass at her side did not startle her; she did not stir until a voice propounded gravely: "If a man should be born with two heads, on which forehead must he wear the phylactery?"

She turned with a laugh. "Gus, I would know that was you if I heard the voice and the question in the Great Desert."

"Can't you decide?"

"My thoughts were not nonsense."

"Of course not, you were labelling and pigeon holing all that you have thought of since sunrise! I've been sitting on a stone waiting for your conference to end. Are you in the habit of meeting strange men and conversing with them."

"Yes, I came out to meet you."

"I only wish you did! I wish that you would make a stranger of me and be polite to me. It is nothing new for you to be wandering on a Saturday afternoon, and nothing new for you to find me."

"I didn't find you."

"I intended to give you the honor of the discovery; now we will share the glory. Shall we go on?"

"I have been to my roots; do you know my roots? Do you know the corner above Old Place and the tiny stream?"

"I know every corner, and every root, and every stream. Shall I carry your flowers for you? I never can see why I should relieve a maiden of a burden when her avoirdupois equals mine. You will not give them to me? I have something to read to you--something of my own composing--I composed it in one brilliant wakeful moment--you will appreciate it."

"I do not believe it."

"Wait until you hear it. Lady Blue, are you going to be literary and never be married! Woe to the day when I taught you all you know."

They went on, slowly, for she liked to talk to Mr. Hammerton. "Father said something like that this morning and it troubled me; why may I not do as I like best? Why should he care to see me married before he dies?"

"Why should he not?"

"Nonsense. I can take good care of myself; beside," with a mischievous glance into his serious eyes, "I really don't know whom to marry."

"Oh, you could easily find some one. If all else fail, come to me, and if I am not too busy I will take you into consideration."

"Thanks, good friend! But you will always be too busy. What have you to read to me?"

"Something that you will appreciate. I wrote it for you. Stay, sit down, while I read it."

"I don't want to. You can read and walk. The mother of Mrs. Hemans could read aloud while walking up hill."

Mr. Hammerton's voice was not pleasant to a stranger, but Tessa liked it because it belonged to him; it was a part of him like his big nose, his spectacles, and the tiny bald spot over which, every day, he carefully brushed his hair. The color in his cheeks was as pretty as a girl's, and so was the delicate whiteness of his forehead; the bushy mustache, however, made amends for the complexion that he sometimes regretted; Tessa had once told him that his big nose, his mustache, and his awkwardness were all that kept him from being as pretty as his sister.

"I am not the mother of Mrs. Hemans." He took a sheet of paper from his pocket-book, and showed her the poem written in his peculiarly plain, upright hand.

"Excuse my singing and I will read. You must not think of any thing else."

"I will not."

"You are walking too fast."

She obediently took slower steps.

He cleared his throat and, holding the paper near his eyes, began to read. A shadow gathered in his listener's eyes at the first four lines.

"A nightingale made a mistake;
She sang a few notes out of tune,
Her heart was ready to break,
And she hid from the moon.

"She wrung her claws, poor thing,
But was far too proud to speak;
She tucked her head under her wing,
And pretended to be asleep.

"A lark arm in arm with a thrush,
Came sauntering up to the place;
The nightingale felt herself blush,
Though feathers hid her face.

"She knew they had heard her song,
She felt them snicker and sneer.
She thought this life was too long,
And wished she could skip a year.

"'O, nightingale!' cooed a dove,
O, nightingale, what's the use;
You bird of beauty and love,
Why behave like a goose?

"'Don't skulk away from our sight,
Like a common, contemptible fowl;
You bird of joy and delight,
Why behave like an owl?

"'Only think of all you have done;
Only think of all you can do;
A false note is really fun
From such a bird as you.

"'Lift up your proud little crest:
Open your musical beak;
Other birds have to do their best,
You need only to speak.'

"The nightingale shyly took
Her head from under her wing,
And giving the dove a look,
Straightway began to sing.

"There was never a bird could pass;
The night was divinely calm;
And the people stood on the grass,
To hear that wonderful psalm!

"The nightingale did not care,
She only sang to the skies;
Her song ascended there,
And there she fixed her eyes.

"The people that stood below
She knew but little about;
And this story's a moral, I know,
If you'll try to find it out."

"How did you know that I need that?" she asked, taking it from his hand. "Who wrote it?"

"I did."

"Don't you know?"

"No. I don't know. I copied it for you."

"Thank you. I thank you very much. You could not have brought me any thing better."

"I brought you a piece of news, too."

"As good as the poem?"

"Nan Gerard thinks so. She is to be married and to live at Old Place; our castle in the air."

"Old Place isn't my castle in the air. Who told you?"

"A woman's question. I never told a woman a secret yet that she did not reply, 'Who told you?' Mary Sherwood told me, of course. Do you congratulate Naughty Nan?"

"Must I?"

"It's queer that I do not know that man. I have missed an introduction a thousand times. Do you congratulate her?"

"I am supposed to congratulate _him_. He is very lovable."

"I thought that only women were that."

"That's an admission," laughed Tessa, "you cross old bachelor."

"You learned that from Dine."

"No, I learned it from you."

Tessa talked rapidly and lightly, perhaps, because she did not feel like talking at all.

Would he marry Nan Gerard? Why could she not be glad for Nan Gerard? Why must she be just a little sorry for herself? Why must it make a difference to her? Why must the weight of the flowers be too heavy for her hand, and why must she give them that toss over a fence across a field?

"Your pretty flowers," expostulated Mr. Hammerton.

"I do not care for them; they were withering."

"I have a thought; I wonder why it should come to me; I am wondering if you and I walk together here a year from to-day what we shall be talking about. My prophetic soul reveals to me that a year makes a difference sometimes."

"I remember a year ago to-day," she answered. "A year _has_ made a difference."

"Not to you or me?"

"To Nan Gerard?" she answered seriously.

"But that does not affect us."

Did it not? A year ago to-day Ralph Towne had brought her some English violets, and she had pressed them and thrown a thought about him and about them into a poem. To-day had he taken violets to Nan Gerard?

"Lady Blue; you are absent-minded."

"Am I? I was only labelling and pigeon-holing a thought; it is to be laid away to moulder with the dust of ages."

"A thought that can not be spoken?"

"A thought that it was folly to think, and that would be worse than folly to speak."

If he replied she did not hear; they sauntered on, she keeping the path and he walking on the grass.

A carriage passed, driving slowly. The two ladies within watched the pedestrians,--a fair-faced girl with thoughtful eyes, and a tall man with an intellectual face,--as if they were a part of the landscape of the spring.

"'In the spring a young man's fancy--'"

laughingly quoted one of them.

"Will she accept or refuse him?" asked the other.

"If she do either it will be once and forever," was the reply seriously given. "Did you notice her mouth? She has been very much troubled, but she can be made very glad."

After the carriage had passed, Mr. Hammerton spoke, "I am glad we amused those people; they failed to decide whether or not we are lovers."

"They have very little penetration, then," said Tessa. "I am too languid and you are too unconscious."

"There is nothing further to be said; you do not know what you have nipped in the bud."

"I suppose we never know that."

Dinah met them at the gate, her wind-blown curls and laughing eyes in striking contrast to the older face that had lost all its color. Tessa did not see that Mr. Hammerton's eyes were studying the change in her face; she had no more care of the changes in her face with him than with Dinah.

"I'll be in about eight," he said to Dinah, as Tessa brushed past him to enter the gate.

Another thing that influenced impressible Tessa this day, was a talk at the tea-table. They were sitting around the tea-table cozily, the four people who, in her mother's thought, constituted all Tessa's world. Mr. Wadsworth in an easy position in his arm-chair was listening to his three girls and deciding that his little wife was really the handsomest and sprightliest woman that he had ever seen, that happy little Dine was as bewitching as she could well be, and that Tessa, the light of his eyes, was like no one else in all the world. Not that any stranger sitting in his arm-chair would have looked through his eyes, but he was an old man, disappointed in his life, and his three girls were all of earth and a part of heaven to him. They were all talking and he was satisfied to listen. "I believe that some girls are born without a mother's heart," Mrs. Wadsworth said in reply to a story of Dine's about a young mother in Dunellen who had slapped her baby, saying that she hated it and was nothing but a slave to it! "Now, here's Tessa. _She_ has no motherliness. Only this morning Freddie Stone fell down near the gate and hurt his head; his screams were terrifying, but she went on working and let him scream. As I said it is all as girls are born."

"Yes," answered Tessa, in the deliberate way in which she had schooled herself to reply to her mother, "I know that your last assertion is true. There was a lady in school, a teacher of mathematics, she acknowledged that she did not love her own little girls as other mothers seemed to do. She stated it as she would have stated any fact in geometry; perhaps she thought that she was no more responsible for one than for the other. The mere fact of motherhood does not bring mother love within; any mother that does not give to her child a true idea of the mother-heart of God fails utterly in being a mother. She may be a nurse, a paid nurse, or a nurse upon compulsion; any hired nurse can wash a child's face, can tie its sash and make pretty things for it to wear, and _any_ nurse, who was never mother to a child, can teach it what God means when He says, 'as a mother comforteth.' Miss Jewett could not be happier in her Bible class girls if they were all her own children; she says so herself. Mary Sherwood said to her one day, 'If my mother were like you, how different I should have been!'"

"Such a case is an exception," returned Mrs. Wadsworth excitedly.

"Nineteen out of her twenty-three girls tell her their troubles when they would not tell their own mothers," said Dinah. "She has twenty-three secret drawers to keep their secrets in."

"She has time to listen to fol-de-rol. She advises them all to marry for some silly notion and let a good home slip, I've no doubt."

"I expect that twenty-one of her girls have refused John Gesner," laughed Mr. Wadsworth. "He will have to bribe Miss Jewett to let them alone."

"Only twenty, father," said Dine. "Tessa and Sue and I are waiting to do it."

"I will make this house too uncomfortable for the one of you that does refuse him."

"Mother! mother!" remonstrated Mr. Wadsworth gently.

"He'll never have the honor," said Dine. "Mr. Lewis Gesner is the gentleman; I have always admired him. Haven't you, Tessa?"

"Yes; I like to shake hands with him; he has a trustworthy face."

"So much for the mothers of Dunellen, Tessa; how about the fathers? Would the girls like to have Miss Jewett for a father, too?"

"Oh, the fathers have the bread-winning to do. If the mothers do not understand, we can not expect the fathers to understand. There was a girl at school who had had a hard home experience; she told me that she never repeated the second word of the Lord's prayer; that she said instead: Our Lord, who art in heaven?"

"Oh, deary me! How dreadful!" cried Dinah, moving nearer the arm-chair and dropping her head on her father's shoulder. "Didn't she _ever_ learn to say it?"

"Not while we were at school."

"Tessa, you can talk," said her mother.

"Yes," said Tessa, humbly, "I can talk."

"She was a very wicked girl," continued Mrs. Wadsworth. "I don't see how she dared; I should think that she would have been afraid of dying in her sleep as a judgment sent upon her."

"Perhaps she did not repeat the prayer as a charm," answered Tessa, in her clearest tones.

Dinah lifted her head to laugh.

"You upheld her, no doubt," declared Mrs. Wadsworth.

"I sympathized with her as they who never had a pain can feel for the sick," said Tessa, smiling into her father's eyes.

"How did you talk to her?" asked Dine.

"What is talk? I only told her to wait and she would know."

"It's easy to talk," said Mrs. Wadsworth uncomfortably. "You can talk an hour about sympathy, but you didn't run out to Freddie Stone."

"Why didn't you?" inquired her father seriously.

Tessa laughed, while Dine answered.

"Mother was there talking as fast as she could talk, Bridget was there with a basin of water and a sponge, Mrs. Bird had run over, a carriage with two ladies, a coachman and a footman had stopped to look on, and oh, I was there too. He was somewhat bloody."

"You are excused, daughter. Save your energies for a time of greater need."

"Energies! Need!" tartly exclaimed Mrs. Wadsworth. "If she begins to be literary, she will care for nothing else."

"I see no evidence of a lessening interest yet," replied her father.

"Oh, I might know that you would encourage her. She might as well have the small-pox as far as her prospects go! A needle is a woman's weapon."

"You forget her tongue, mother," suggested Dine. "Oh, Tessa, what is that about a needle; Mrs. Browning says it."

Tessa repeated:

"'A woman takes a housewife from her breast,
And plucks the delicatest needle out
As 'twere a rose, and pricks you carefully
'Neath nails, 'neath eyelids, in your nostrils,--say,
A beast would roar so tortured--but a man,
A human creature, must not, shall not flinch,
No, not for shame.'"

"Some woman wrote that when she'd have done better to be sewing for her husband, I'll warrant," commented Mrs. Wadsworth. Mr. Wadsworth looked grave.

"Oh she had a literary husband," replied Tessa, mischievously. "A word that rhymed with supper would do instead of bread and butter; and he cared more for one of her poems than he did for his buttons."

"Literary men don't grow on every bush; and they don't take to literary women, either," said her mother.

"Mother, you forget the Howitts, William and Mary; what good, good times they have taking long walks and writing; like you and Gus, Tessa, and Mr. and Mrs. Browning--"

"You don't find such people in Dunellen; _we_ live in Dunellen. Gus will choose a woman that doesn't care for books, and so will Mr. Towne, mark my words! And so will Felix Harrison, even if he is killing himself with study."

"He is improving greatly," said Mr. Wadsworth, pulling one of Dine's long curls straight. "He is going away Monday to finish his studies."

"I honor him," said Tessa, flushing slightly.

"Don't," said Dine, "he sha'n't have you, Tessa. Don't honor him."

"That's all you and your father think of--keeping Tessa. She needs the wear and tear of married life to give her character."

"It's queer about that," rejoined Tessa in a perplexed tone, playing with her napkin ring. "If such discipline _be_ the best, why is any woman permitted to be without it? Why does not the fitting husband appear as soon as the girl begins to wish for him? In the East, where it is shameful for a girl not to be married at eleven, I have yet to learn that the wives are noted for strength or beauty of character."

"You may talk," said her mother, heatedly, "but two years hence _you_ will dance in a brass kettle."

"I hope that I shall work in it," answered Tessa, coloring painfully, however. Whether her lips were touched with a slight contempt, or tremulous because she was very, very much hurt, Dinah could not decide; she was silent because she could not think of any thing sharp enough to reply; she never liked to be _too_ saucy.

Mr. Wadsworth spoke in his genial voice: "It's a beautiful thing, daughters, to help a good man live a good life."

Dinah thought: "I would love to do such a beautiful thing." Tessa was saying to herself, "Oh, what should I do if my father were to die!"

Mr. Wadsworth pushed back his chair, went around to his wife and kissed her. Tessa loved him for it.

"You have helped a good man, a good old man, haven't you, fairy?" he said, smoothing the hair that was as pretty as Dinah's.

"Yes," answered his wife, and Tessa shivered from head to foot. "People all said that you were a different man after you were married."

"I'm going over to Norah's," cried Dinah. "I told her that I would come to write our French together. And, oh, father! I forgot to tell you, Gus will be in about eight."

"I don't know that I care for chess; I can not concentrate my attention as I could a year ago."

"Why do you run off if he is coming?" asked Mrs. Wadsworth.

"He comes too often to be attended to," Dine answered. "Won't you be around, Tessa?"

"Perhaps."

Tessa had resolved to give the evening to writing letters, and was passing through the dining-room with a china candlestick in her hand, when her father, reading Shakespeare at the round table, on which stood a shaded lamp, detained her by catching at her dress.

"Set your light down, daughter, and stay a moment."

With her hand upon his shoulder, she looked down over the page he was reading:

"'Heaven doth with us as we with torches do;
Not light them for themselves--'"

she read aloud.

"I made my will to-day," he said quietly; "that is, I changed it. Lewis Gesner and Gus Hammerton, my tried friends, were in the office at the time. If you ever need a friend, daughter, any thing done for you that Gus can not do--I count on him as the friend of my girls for life--go to Lewis Gesner."

"I don't want a friend; I have you."

"If I should tell your mother about the will she would go into hysterics, and Dine would be sure that I am going to die; I have divided my little all equally among my three. That is, all but this house and garden, which I have given to my elder daughter, Theresa Louise. It is to be hers solely, without any gainsaying. Your mother will fume when the fact is made known to her, but I give it to you that my three girls may always have a roof, humble though it be, over their heads. The old man did not know how to make money, but he left them enough to be comfortable all their lives there was never any need that his wife should worry and work, or that his daughter should marry for a home. Very good record for the old man; eh, daughter?"

She laid her cheek against the bald forehead and put both arms around his neck.

"And, Tessa, child, your mother is half right about you; don't have any notions about marriage; promise me that you will marry--for you will, some day--but for the one best reason."

"What is that?" she asked roguishly. "How am I to know?"

"What do you think?"

"Because somebody needs me and I can do him good."

"A Hottentot might urge that; you will find the reason in time. Don't make an idol; that is your temperament."

"I know it."

"And above all things don't sacrifice yourself; few men appreciate being done good to! I know men, they are terribly human. Gus Hammerton is a fine fellow."

"_He_ is terribly human," she answered with a little laugh.

"Am I harsh towards your mother ever, do you think?" he asked in a changed tone.

"Why, _no_," she exclaimed in surprise.