Chapter III: Part 3

"Well, I do. Now, just look at the expense of going to parties. To begin with, it annihilates all your dresses, at one fell swoop. If I make up my mind, for instance, not to go to parties this winter, I have dresses enough and pretty enough for all my occasions. The minute I decide I must go, I have _nothing_, absolutely nothing, to wear. There must be an immediate outlay. A hundred dollars would be a small estimate for all the additions necessary to make me appear with credit. Even if I take my old dresses as the foundation, and use my unparalleled good taste, there are trimmings, and dressmaker's bills, and gloves, and slippers, and fifty things; and then a carriage for the evening, at five dollars a night, and all for what? What _does_ anybody get at a great buzzing party, to pay for all this? Then Harry has to use all his time, and all his nerves, and all his strength on his work. He is driven hard all the time with writing, making up the paper, and overseeing at the office. And you know parties don't begin till near ten o'clock, and if he is out till twelve he doesn't rest well, nor I either--it's just so much taken out of our life--and we don't either of us enjoy it. Now, why should we put out our wood fire that we _do_ enjoy, and scrimp in our flowers, and scrimp in our home comforts, and in our servant's comforts, just to get what we don't want after all?"

"Oh, well, I suppose you are like other new married folks, you want to play Darby and Joan in your chimney-corner," said Aunt Maria, "but, for all that, I think there are duties to society. One cannot go out of the world, you know; it don't do, Eva."

"I don't know about that," said Eva. "We are going to try it."'

"What! living without society?"

"Oh, as to that, we shall see our friends other ways. I can see Sophie a great deal better in a quiet morning-call than an evening reception; for the fact is, whoever else you see at a party you don't see your hostess--she hasn't a word for you. Then, I'm going to have an evening here."

"_You_ an evening?"

"Yes; why not? See if I don't, and we'll have good times, too."

"Why, who do you propose to invite?"

"Oh, all our folks, and Bolton and Jim Fellows; then there are a good many interesting, intelligent men that write for the magazine, and besides, our acquaintances on this street."

"In this street? Why, there isn't a creature here," said Aunt Maria.

"Yes, there are those old ladies across the way."

"What! old Miss Dorcas Vanderheyden and that Mrs. Benthusen? Well, they belong to an ancient New York family, to be sure; but they are old as Methuselah."

"So much the better, Aunty. Old things, you know, are all the rage just now; and then there's my little Quaker neighbor."

"Why, how odd! They are nice enough, I suppose, and well enough to have for neighbors; but he's nothing but a watchmaker. He actually works for Tiffany!"

"Yes; but he is a very modest, intelligent young man, and very well informed on certain subjects. Harry says he has learned a great deal from him."

"Well, well, child, I suppose you must take your own way," said Aunt Maria.

"I suppose we must," said Eva, shaking her head with much gravity. "You see, Aunty, dear, a wife must accommodate herself to her husband, and if Harry thinks this is the best way, you know--and he does think so, very strongly--and isn't it lucky that I think just as he does? You wouldn't have me fall in with those strong-minded Bloomer women, would you, and sail the ship on my own account, independently of my husband?"

Now, the merest allusion to modern strong-mindedness in woman was to Aunt Maria like a red rag to a bull; it aroused all her combativeness.

"No; I am sure I wouldn't," she said, with emphasis. "If there's anything, Eva, where I see the use of all my instructions to you, it is the good sense with which you resist all such new-fangled, abominable notions about the rights and sphere of women. No; I've always said that the head of the woman is the man; and it's a wife's duty to live to please her husband. She may try to influence him--she ought to do that--but she never ought to do it _openly_. I never used to oppose Mr. Wouvermans. I was always careful to let him suppose he was having his own way; but I generally managed to get mine," and Aunt Maria plumed herself and nodded archly, as an aged priestess who is communicating to a young neophyte secrets of wisdom.

In her own private mind, Eva thought this the most terrible sort of hypocrisy; but her aunt was so settled and contented in all her own practical views, that there was not the least use in arguing the case. However, she couldn't help saying, innocently,

"But, Aunty, I should be afraid sometimes he would have found me out, and then he'd be angry."

"Oh, no; trust me for that," said Aunt Maria, complacently. "I never managed so bunglingly as that. Somehow or other, he didn't exactly know how, he found things coming round my way; but I never opposed him openly--I never got his back up. You see, Eva, these men, if they _do_ get their backs up, are terrible, but _any_ of them can be led by the nose--so I'm glad to find that you begin the right way. Now, there's your mother--I've been telling her this morning that it's her duty to make your father go back into business and retrieve his fortunes. He's got a good position, to be sure--a respectable salary; but there's no sort of reason why he shouldn't die worth his two or three millions as well as half the other men who fail, and are up again in two or three years. But Nellie wants force. She is no manager. If I were your father's wife, I should set him on his feet again pretty soon. Nellie is such a little dependent body. She was saying this morning how would she ever have got along with her family without me! But there are some things that even I can't do--nobody but a wife could, and Nelly isn't up to it."

"Poor, dear little mamma," said Eva. "But are you quite sure, Aunt Maria, that her ways are not better adapted to papa than any one's else could be? Papa is very positive, though so very quiet. He is devoted to mamma. Then, again, Aunty, there is a good deal of risk in going, into speculations and enterprises at papa's age. Of course, you know I don't know anything about business or that sort of thing; but it seems to me like a great sea where you are up on the wave to-day and down to-morrow. So if papa really _won't_ go into these things, perhaps it's all for the best."

"But, Eva, it is so important now for the girls, poor things, just going into society--for you know they can't keep out of it, even if you do. It will affect all their chances of settlement in life--and that puts me in mind, Eva, something or other must be done about Alice and Jim Fellows. Everybody is saying if they're not engaged they ought to be."

"Oh, Aunty, how exasperating the world is! Can't a man and woman have a plain, honest friendship? Jim has shown himself a true friend to our family. He came to us just in all the confusion of the failure, and helped us heart and hand in the manliest way--and we _all_ like him. Alice likes him, and I don't wonder at it."

"Well, are they engaged?" said Aunt Maria, with an air of statistical accuracy.

"How should I know? I never thought of asking. I'm not a police detective, and I always think that if my friends have anything they want me to know, they'll tell me; and if they don't want me to know, why should I ask them?"

"But, Eva, one is responsible for one's relations. The fact is, such an intimacy stands right in the way of a girl's having good offers--it keeps other parties off. Now, I tell you, as a great secret, there is a very fine man, immensely rich, and every way desirable, who is evidently pleased with Alice."

"Dear me, Aunty! how you excite my curiosity. Pray who is it?" said Eva.

"Well, I'm not at liberty to tell you more particularly; but I _know_ he's thinking about her; and this report about her and Jim would operate very prejudicially. Now shall I have a talk with Alice, or will you?"

"Oh, Aunty dear, don't, for pity's sake, say a word to Alice. Young girls are so sensitive about such things. If it _must_ be talked of, let me talk with Alice."

"I really thought, if I had a good chance, I'd say something to the young man himself," said Aunt Maria, reflectively.

"Oh, good heavens! Aunty, don't _think_ of it. You don't know Jim Fellows."

"Oh, you needn't be afraid of me," said Aunt Maria. "I am a great deal older and more experienced than you, and if I do do anything, you may rest assured it will be in the most discreet way. I've managed cases of this kind before you were born."

"But Jim is the most peculiar"--

"Oh, I know all about him. Do you suppose I've seen him in and out in the family all this time without understanding him perfectly?"

"But I don't really think that there is the least of anything serious between him and Alice."

"Very likely. He would not be at all the desirable match for Alice. He has very little property, and is rather a wild, rattling fellow; and I don't like newspaper men generally."

"Oh, Aunty, that's severe now. You forget Harry."

"Oh, well, your husband is an exception; but, as a general rule, I don't like 'em--unprincipled lot _I_ believe," said Aunt Maria, with a decisive nod of her head. "At any rate, Alice can do better, and she ought to."

The ringing of the lunch bell interrupted the conversation, much to the relief of Eva, who discovered with real alarm the course her respected relative's thoughts were taking.

Of old she had learned that the only result of arguing a point with her was to make her more set in her own way, and she therefore bent all her forces of agreeableness to produce a diversion of mind to other topics. On the principle that doctors apply mustard to the feet, to divert the too abundant blood from the head, Eva started a brisk controversy with Aunt Maria on another topic, in hopes, by exhausting her energies there, to put this out of her mind. With what success her strategy was crowned, it will remain to be seen.

_CHAPTER VI._

THE SETTLING OF THE WATERS.

It will not be doubted by those who know the ways of family dictators that Mrs. Maria Wouvermans left Eva's house after her day's visit in a state of the most balmy self-satisfaction, as one who has done a good day's work.

"Well, I've been up at Eva's," she said to her sister, as she looked in on returning, "and really it was well I went in. That Mary of hers is getting careless and negligent, just as all old servants do, and I just went over the whole house, and had a plain talk with Mary. She flew up about it, and was impertinent, of course; but I put her down, and I talked plainly to Eva about the way she's beginning with her servants. She's just like you, Nellie, slack and good-natured, and needs somebody to keep her up. I told her the way she is beginning--of petting Mary, and fussing up her room with carpet and pictures, and everything, just like any other--wouldn't work. Servants must be kept in their places."

Now, Mrs. Van Arsdel had a spirit of her own; and the off-hand, matter-of-fact manner in which her sister was accustomed to speak of her as no manager touched a vital point. What housekeeper likes to have her capacity to guide a house assailed? Is not that the spot where her glory dwells, if she has any? And it is all the more provoking when such charges are thrown out in perfect good nature, not as designed to offend, but thrown in _par parenthèse_, as something everybody would acknowledge, and too evident to require discussion. While proceeding in the main part of a discourse Mrs. Wouvermans was quite in the habit of these frank side disclosures of her opinion of her sister's management, and for the most part they were submitted to in acquiescent silence, rather than to provoke a controversy; but to be called "slack" to her face without protest or rejoinder was more than she could bear; so Mrs. Van Arsdel spoke up with spirit:

"Maria, you are always talking as if I don't know how to manage servants. All I know is that you are always changing, and I keep mine years and years."

"That's because you let them have their own way," said her sister. "You can keep servants if you don't follow them up, and insist on it that they shall do their duty. Let them run all over you and live like mistresses, and you can keep them. For my part, I like to change--new brooms always sweep clean."

"Well, it's a different thing, Maria--you with your small family, and mine with so many. I'd rather bear anything than change."

"Oh, well, yes; I suppose there's no help for it, Nellie. Of course I wasn't blaming you, so don't fire up about it. I know you can't make yourself over," said Aunt Maria. This was the tone with which she usually settled discussions with those who differed from her on modes and measures. After all, they could not be like her, so where was the use of talking?

Aunt Maria also had the advantage in all such encounters of a confessed reputation as an excellent manager. Her house was always elegant, always in order. She herself was gifted with a head for details that never failed to keep in mind the smallest item, and a wiry, compact constitution that never knew fatigue. She held the keys of everything in her house, and always turned every key at the right moment. She knew the precise weight, quantity, and quality of everything she had in possession, where it was and what it might be used for; and, as she said, could go to anything in her house without a candle in the darkest night. If her servants did not love, they feared her, and had such a sense of her ever vigilant inspection that they never even tried to evade her. For the least shadow of disobedience she was ready to send them away at a moment's warning, and then go to the intelligence office and enter her name for another, and come home, put on apron and gloves, and manfully and thoroughly sustain the department till they came.

Mrs. Wouvermans, therefore, was celebrated and lauded by all her acquaintances as a perfect housekeeper, and this added sanction and terror to her _pronunciamentos_ when she walked the rounds as a police inspector in the houses of her relations.

It is rather amusing to a general looker-on in this odd world of ours to contrast the serene, cheerful good faith with which these constitutionally active individuals go about criticising, and suggesting, and directing right and left, with the dismay and confusion of mind they leave behind them wherever they operate.

They are often what the world calls well-meaning people, animated by a most benevolent spirit, and have no more intention of giving offense than a nettle has of stinging. A large, vigorous, well-growing nettle has no consciousness of the stings it leaves in the delicate hands that have been in contact with it; it has simply acted out its innocent and respectable nature as a nettle. But a nettle armed with the power of locomotion on an ambulatory tour, is something the results of which may be fearful to contemplate.

So, after the departure of Aunt Maria our little housekeeper, Eva, was left in a state of considerable nervousness and anxiety, feeling that she had been weighed in the balance of perfection and found wofully wanting. She was conscious, to begin with, that her characteristic virtues as a housekeeper, if she had any, were not entirely in the style of her good relative. She was not by nature statistical, nor given to accounts and figures. She was not sharp and keen in bargains; she was, she felt in her inmost, trembling soul, a poor little mollusk, without a bit of a shell, hiding in a cowardly way under a rock and ready at any time to be eaten up by big fishes. She had felt so happy in her unlimited trust in Mary, who knew more than she did about housekeeping--but she had been convicted by her aunt's cross-questions of having resigned the very signet ring and scepter of her house into her hands. Did she let Mary go all over the house? Did she put away the washing? Did Eva allow her to open her drawers? Didn't she count her towels and sheets every week, and also her tea-spoons, and keep every drawer and cupboard locked? She ought to. To all these inquiries Eva had no satisfactory response, and began to doubt within herself whether she had begun aright. With sensitive, conscientious people there is always a residuum of self-distrust after discussions of the nature we have indicated, however vigorously and skillfully they may have defended their courses at the time.

Eva went over and over in her own mind her self-justifications--she told herself that she and her aunt were essentially different people, incapable of understanding each other sympathetically or acting in each other's ways, and that the well-meant, positive dicta of her relative were to be let go for what they were worth, and no more.

"_Come now, Puss, out with it. Why that anxious brow? What domestic catastrophe?_"--p. 73.]

Still she looked eagerly and anxiously for the return of her husband, that she might reinforce herself by talking it over with him. Hers was a nature so transparent that, before he had been five minutes in the house, he felt that something had gone wrong; but, the dinner-bell ringing, he retired at once to make his toilet, and did not open the subject till they were fairly seated at table.

"Well, come now, Puss--out with it! Why that anxious brow? What domestic catastrophe? Anything gone wrong with the ivies?"

"Oh, no; the ivies are all right, growing beautifully--it isn't that--"

"Well, then, what is it? It seems there is something."

"Oh, nothing, Harry; only Aunt Maria has been spending the day here."

Eva said this with such a perplexed and woful face that Harry leaned back in his chair and laughed.

"What a blessing it is to have relations," he said; "but I thought, Eva, that you had made up your mind not to care for anything Aunt Maria says?"

"Well, she has been all over the house, surveying and reviewing as if she owned us, and she has lectured Mary and got her into hysterics, and talked to me till I am almost bewildered--wondering at everything we mean to do, and wanting us to take her ways and not ours."

"My dearest child, why need you care? Take it as a rain-storm, when you've been caught out without your umbrella. That's all. Or why can't you simply and firmly tell her that she must not go over your house or direct your servants?"

"Well, you see, that would never do. She would feel so injured and abused. I've only just made up and brought things to going smoothly, and got her pacified about our marriage. There would be another fuss if I should talk that way. Aunt Maria always considered me her girl, and maintains that she is a sort of special guardian to me, and I think it very disagreeable to quarrel with your relations, and get on unpleasant terms with them."

"Well, _I_ shall speak to her, Eva, pretty decidedly, if you don't."

"Oh, don't, don't, Harry! She'd never forgive you. No. Let me manage her. I have been managing her all day to keep the peace, to keep her satisfied and pleased; to _let_ her advise me to her heart's content, about things where I can take advice. Aunt Maria is a capital judge of linens and cottons, and all sorts of household stuffs, and can tell to a certainty just how much of a thing you'd want, and the price you ought to pay, and the exact place to get it; and I have been contriving to get her opinion on a dozen points where I mean to take it; and I think she has left, on the whole, highly satisfied with her visit, though in the main I didn't give in to her a bit about our plans."

"Then why so tragic and tired-looking?"

"Oh, well, after all, when Aunt Maria talks, she says a great many things that have such a degree of sense in them that it worries me. Now, there's a good deal of sense in what she said about trusting too much to servants, and being too indulgent. I know mamma's girls used to get spoiled so that they would be perfect tyrants. And yet I cannot for the life of me like Aunt Maria's hard, ungracious way of living with servants, as if they were machines."

"Ah, well, Eva, it's always so. Hard, worldly people always have a good deal of what looks like practical sense on their side, and kindness and unselfishness certainly have their weak points; there's no doubt of that. The Sermon on the Mount is open to a great deal of good hard worldly criticism, and so is every attempt to live up to it practically; but, never mind. We all know that the generous way is the strong way, and the best way, in the long run."

"And then you know, Harry, I haven't the least talent for being hard and sharp," said Eva, "and so I may as well take the advantages of my sort of nature."

"Certainly you may; people never succeed out of their own line."

"Then there's another trouble. I'm afraid Aunt Maria is going to interfere with Alice, as she tried to do with me. She said that everybody was talking about her intimacy with Jim, and that if _I_ didn't speak to Alice _she_ must."

"Confound that woman," said Harry; "she's an unmitigated old fool! She's as bad as a runaway steam engine; somebody ought to seize and lock her up."

"Come, sir, keep a civil tongue about my relations," said Eva, laughing.

"Well, I must let off a little to you, just to lower steam to the limits of Christian moderation."

"Alice isn't as fond of Aunt Maria as I am, and has a high spirit of her own, and I'm afraid it will make a terrible scene if Aunt Maria attacks her, so I suppose I must talk to her myself; but what do you think of Jim, Harry? Is there anything in it, on his part?"

"How can I say? you know just as much as I do and no more, and you are a better judge of human nature than I am."

"Well, would you like it to have Alice take Jim--supposing there were anything."

"Why, yes, very well, if she wants him."

"But Jim is such a volatile creature--would you want to trust him?"

"He is constant in his affections, which is the main thing. I'm sure his conduct when your father failed showed that; and a sensible, dignified woman like Alice might make a man of him."

"It's odd," said Eva, "that Alice, who is so prudent, and has such a high sense of propriety, seems so very indulgent to Jim. None of his escapades seem to offend her."

"It's the doctrine of counterparts," said Harry; "the steady sensible nature admires the brilliancy and variety of the volatile one."

"For my part," said Eva, "I can't conceive of Jim's saying anything in serious earnest. The very idea of his being sentimental seems funny--and how can anybody be in love without being sentimental?"

"There are diversities of operation," said Harry. "Jim must make love in his own way, and it will probably be an original one."

"But, really now, do you know," persisted Eva, "I think Alice might be mated with a man of much higher class than Jim. He is amiable, and bright, and funny, and agreeable. Yet I don't deny but Alice might do better."

"So she might, but the perversity of fate is that the superior man isn't around and Jim _is_; and, ten to one, if the superior man were in the field, Alice would be perverse enough to choose Jim. And, after all, you must confess, give Jim Fellows a fortune of a million or two, a place in Newport, and another on the North River, and even you would call it a brilliant match, and think it a fortunate thing for Alice."

"Oh, dear me, Harry, that's the truth, to be sure. Am I so worldly?"

"No; but ideal heroes are not plentiful, and there are few gems that don't need rich setting. The first questions as to a man are, is he safe, has he no bad habits, is he kind and affectionate in his disposition and capable of constant affection? and, secondly, does the woman feel that sort of love that makes her prefer him even to men that are quite superior? Now, whether Alice feels in that way toward Jim is what remains to be seen. I'm sure I can't tell. Neither can I tell whether Jim has any serious intentions in regard to her. If they were only let alone, and not watched and interfered with, I've no doubt the thing would adjust itself in the natural course of things.

"But see here, I must be going to my club, and, now I think of it, I've brought some Paris letters from the girls for you, to pass the evening with."

"You have? Letters from Ida and Caroline? You naughty creature, why didn't you give them to me before?"

"Well, your grave face when I first came in put everything else out of my head; and then came on all this talk: but it's just as well, you'll have them to read while I'm gone."

"Don't stay late, Harry."

"No; you may be sure I've no temptation. I'd much rather be here with you watching our own back-log. But then I shall see several fellows about articles for the magazine, and get all the late news, and, in short, take an observation of our latitude and longitude; so, _au revoir_!"

_CHAPTER VII._

LETTERS AND AIR-CASTLES.

After Harry went out, Eva arranged the fire, dropped the curtains over the window, drew up an easy chair into a warm corner under the gas-light, and began looking over the outside of her Parisian letters with that sort of luxurious enjoyment of delay with which one examines the post-marks and direction of letters that are valued as a great acquisition. There was one from her sister Ida and one from Harry's cousin Caroline. Ida's was opened first. It was dated from a boarding-house in the Rue de Clichy, giving a sort of journalised view of their studies, their medical instructors, their walks and duties in the hospital, all told with an evident and vigorous sense of enjoyment. Eva felt throughout what a strong, cheerful, self-sustained being her sister was, and how fit it was that a person so sufficient to herself, so equable, so healthfully balanced and poised in all her mental and physical conformation, should have undertaken the pioneer work of opening a new profession for women. "I never could do as she does, in the world," was her mental comment, "but I am thankful that she can." And then she cut the envelope of Caroline's letter.

To a certain extent there were the same details in it--Caroline was evidently associated in the same studies, the same plans, but there was missing in the letter the professional enthusiasm, the firmness, the self-poise, and calm clearness. There were more bursts of feeling on the pictures in the Louvre than on scientific discoveries; more sensibility to the various æsthetic wonders which Paris opens to an uninitiated guest than to the treasures of anatomy and surgery. With the letter were sent two or three poems, contributions to the Magazine--poems full of color and life, of a subdued fire, but with that undertone of sadness which is so common in all female poets. A portion of the letter may explain this:

"You were right, my dear Eva, in saying, in our last interview, that it did not seem to you that I had the kind of character that was adapted to the profession I have chosen. I don't think I have. I am more certain of it from comparing myself from day to day with Ida, who certainly is born and made for it, if ever a woman was. My choice of it has been simply and only for the reason that I must choose something as a means of self-support, and more than that, as a refuge from morbid distresses of mind which made the still monotony of my New England country life intolerable to me. This course presented itself to me as something feasible. I thought it, too, a good and worthy career--one in which one might do one's share of good for the world. But, Eva, I can feel that there is one essential difference between Ida and myself: she is peculiarly self-sustained and sufficient to herself, and I am just the reverse. I am full of vague unrest; I am chased by seasons of high excitement, alternating with deadly languor. Ida has hard work to know what to do with me. You were right in supposing, as you intimate in your letter, that a certain common friend has something to do with this unrest, but you cannot, unless you know my whole history, know how much. There was a time when he and I were all the world to each other--when shall I ever forget that time! I was but seventeen; a young girl, so ignorant of life! I never had seen one like him; he was a whole new revelation to me; he woke up everything there was in me, never to go to sleep again; and then to think of having all this tide and current of feeling checked--frozen. My father overwhelmed him with accusations; every baseness was laid to his charge. I was woman enough to have stood for him against the world if he had come to me. I would have left all and gone to the ends of the earth with him if he had asked me, but he did not. There was only one farewell, self-accusing letter, and even that fell into my father's hands and never came to me till after his death. For years I thought myself wantonly trifled with by a man of whose attentions I ought to be ashamed. I was indignant at myself for the love that might have been my glory, for it is my solemn belief that if we had been let alone he would have been saved all those wretched falls, those blind struggles that have marred a life whose purpose is yet so noble.

"When the fates brought us together again in New York, I saw at a glance that whatever may have been the proud, morbid conscientiousness that dictated his long silence, he loved me still;--a woman knows that by an unmistakable instinct. She can _feel_ the reality through all disguises. I _know_ that man loves me, and yet he does not now in word or deed make the least profession beyond the boundaries of friendship. He is my friend; with entire devotion he is willing to spend and be spent for me--but he will accept nothing from me. I, who would give my life to him willingly--I must do nothing for him!

"Well, it's no use writing. You see now that I am a very unworthy disciple of your sister. She is so calm and philosophical that I cannot tell her all this; but you, dear little Eva, you know the heart of woman, and you have a magic key which unlocks everybody's heart in confidence to you. I seem to see you, in fancy, with good Cousin Harry, sitting cosily in your chimney-corner; your ivies and nasturtiums growing round your sunny windows, and an everlasting summer in your pretty parlors, while the December winds whistle without. Such a life as you two lead, such a home as your home, is worth a thousand 'careers' that dazzle ambition. Send us more letters, journals, of all your pretty, lovely home life, and let me warm myself in the glow of your fireside.

Your Cousin,

CARRY."

* * * * *

Eva finished this letter, and then folding it up sat with it in her lap, gazing into the fire, and pondering its contents. If the truth must be told, she was revolving in her young, busy brain a scheme for restoring Caroline to her lover, and setting them up comfortably at housekeeping on a contiguous street, where she had seen a house to let. In five minutes she had gone through the whole programme--seen the bride at the altar, engaged the house, bought the furniture, and had before her a vision of parlors, of snuggeries and cosy nooks, where Caroline was to preside, and where Bolton was to lounge at his ease, while she and Caroline compared housekeeping accounts. Happy young wives develop an aptitude for match-making as naturally as flowers spring in a meadow, and Eva was losing herself in this vision of Alnaschar, when a loud, imperative, sharp bark of a dog at the front door of the house called her back to life and the world.

Now there are as many varieties to dog-barks as to man-talks. There is the common bow-wow, which means nothing, only that it is a dog speaking; there is the tumultuous angry bark, which means attack; the conversational bark, which, of a moonlight night, means gossip; and the imperative staccato bark which means immediate business. The bark at the front door was of this kind: it was loud and sharp, and with a sort of indignant imperativeness about it, as of one accustomed to be attended to immediately.

Eva flew to the front door and opened it, and there sat Jack, the spoiled darling of Miss Dorcas Vanderheyden and her sister, over the way.

"Why, Jacky! where did you come from?" said Eva. Jacky sat up on his haunches and waved his forepaws in a vigorous manner, as was his way when he desired to be specially ingratiating.

Eva seized him in her arms and carried him into the parlor, thinking that as he had accidentally been shut out for the night she would domesticate him for a while, and return him to his owners on the morrow. So she placed him on the ottoman in the corner and attempted to caress him, but evidently that was not the purpose he had in view. He sprang down, ran to the door and snuffed, and to the front windows and barked imperiously.

"Why, Jack, what do you want?"

He sprang into a chair and barked out at the Vanderheyden house.

Eva looked at the mantel clock--it wanted a few minutes of ten--without, it was a bright moonlight night.

"I'll run across with him, and see what it is," she said. She was young enough to enjoy something like an adventure. She opened the front door and Jack rushed out, and then stopped to see if she would follow; as she stood a moment he laid hold on the skirt of her dress, as if to pull her along.

"Well, Jacky, I'll go," said Eva. Thereat the creature bounded across the street and up the steps of the opposite house, where he stood waiting. She went up and rang the door-bell, which appeared to be what he wanted, as he sat down quite contented on the doorstep.

Nobody came. Eva looked up and down the street. "Jacky, we shall have to go back, they are all asleep," she said. But Jacky barked contradiction, sprang nearer to the door, and insisted on being let in.

"Well, if you say so, Jacky, I must ring again," she said, and with that she pulled the door-bell louder, and Jack barked with all his might, and the two succeeded after a few moments in causing a perceptible stir within.

Slowly the door unclosed, and a vision of Miss Dorcas in an old-fashioned broad-frilled night-cap peeped out. She was attired in a black water-proof cloak, donned hastily over her night gear.

"Oh, Jack, you naughty boy!" she exclaimed, stooping eagerly to the prodigal, who sprung tumultuously into her arms and began licking her face.

"I'm so much obliged to you, Mrs. Henderson," she said to Eva. "We went down in the omnibus this afternoon, and we suddenly missed him, the naughty fellow," she said, endeavoring to throw severity into her tones.

Eva related Jack's ruse.

"Did you ever!" said Miss Dorcas; "the creature knew that we slept in the back of the house, and he got you to ring our door-bell. Jacky, what a naughty fellow you are!"

Mrs. Betsey now appeared on the staircase in an equal state of dishabille:

"Oh dear, Mrs. Henderson, we are so shocked!"

"Dear me, never speak of it. I think it was a cunning trick of Jack. He knew you were gone to bed, and saw I was up and so got me to ring his door-bell for him. I don't doubt he rode up town in the omnibus. Well, good-night!"

And Eva closed the door and flew back to her own little nest just in time to let in Harry.

The first few moments after they were fairly by the fireside were devoted to a recital of the adventure, with dramatic representations of Jack and his mistresses.

"It's a capital move on Jack's part. It got me into the very interior of the fortress. Only think of seeing them in their night-caps! That is carrying all the out-works of ceremony at a move."

"To say nothing of their eternal gratitude," said Harry.

"Oh, that of course. They were ready to weep on my neck with joy that I had brought the dear little plague back to them, and I don't doubt are rejoicing over him at this moment. But, oh, Harry, you must hear the girls' Paris letters."

"Are they very long?" said Harry.

"Fie now, Harry; you ought to be interested in the girls."

"Why, of course I am," said Harry, pulling out his watch, "only--what time is it?"

"Only half-past ten--not a bit late," said Eva. As she began to read Ida's letter, Harry settled back in the embrace of a luxurious chair, with his feet stretched out towards the fire, and gradually the details of Paris life mingled pleasingly with a dream--a fact of which Eva was made aware as she asked him suddenly what he thought of Ida's views on a certain point.

"Now, Harry--you haven't been asleep?"

"Just a moment. The very least in the world," said Harry, looking anxiously alert and sitting up very straight.

Then Eva read Caroline's letter.

"Now, isn't it too bad?" she said, with eagerness, as she finished.

"Yes, it's one of those things that you and I can do nothing to help--it is [Greek: anagkê]."

"What's ananke?"

"The name the old Greeks gave to that perverse Something that brought ruin and misery in spite of and out of the best human efforts."

"But I want to bring these two together."

"Be careful how you try, darling. Who knows what the results may be? It's a subject Bolton never speaks of, where he has his own purposes and conclusions; and it's the best thing for Caroline to be where she has as many allurements and distractions as she has in Paris, and such a wise, calm, strong friend as your sister.

"And now, dear, mayn't I go to bed?" he added, with pathos, "You've no idea, dear, how sleepy I am."

"Oh, certainly, you poor boy," said Eva, bustling about and putting up the chairs and books preparatory to leaving the parlor.

"You see," she said, going up stairs, "he was so imperious that I really had to go with him."

"He! Who?"

"Why, Jack, to be sure, he did all but speak," said Eva, brush in hand, and letting down her curls before the glass. "You see I was in a reverie over those letters when the barking roused me--I don't think you ever heard such a barking; and when I got him in, he wouldn't be contented--kept insisting on my going over with him--wasn't it strange?"

Harry, by this time composed for the night and half asleep, said it was.

In a few moments he was aroused by Eva's saying, suddenly,

"Harry, I really think I ought to bring them together. Now, couldn't I do something?"

"With Jack?" said Harry, drowsily.

"Jack!--oh, you sleepy-head! Well, never mind. Good night."

_CHAPTER VIII._

THE VANDERHEYDEN FORTRESS TAKEN.

"Now, Harry, I'll tell you what I'm going to do this morning," said Eva, with the air of a little general, as she poured his morning coffee.

"And what are you going to do?" replied he, in the proper tone of inquiry.

"Well, I'm going to take the old fortress over the way by storm, this very morning. I'm going to rush through the breach that Jack has opened into the very interior and see what there is there. I'm perfectly dying to get the run of that funny old house; why, Harry, it's just like a novel, and I shouldn't wonder if I could get enough out of it for you to make an article of."

"Thank you, dear; you enter into the spirit of article-hunting like one to the manner born."

"That I do; I'm always keeping my eyes open when I go about New York for bits and hints that you can work up, and I'm sure you ought to do something with this old Vanderheyden house. I know there must be ghosts in it; I'm perfectly certain."

"But you wouldn't meet them in a morning call," said Harry, "that's contrary to all ghostly etiquette."

"Never mind, I'll get track of them. I'll become intimate with old Miss Dorcas and get her to relate her history, and if there is a ghost-chamber I'll be into it."

"Well, success to you," said Harry; "but to me it looks like a formidable undertaking. Those old ladies are so padded and wadded in buckram."

"Oh, pshaw! there's just what Jack has done for me, he has made a breach in the padding and buckram. Only think of my seeing them at midnight in their night-caps! And such funny night-caps! Why, it's an occasion long to be remembered, and I would be willing to wager anything they are talking it over at this minute; and, of course, you see, it's extremely proper and quite a part of the play that I should come in this morning to inquire after the wanderer, and to hope they didn't catch cold, and to talk over the matter generally. Now, I _like_ that old Miss Dorcas; there seems to me to be an immense amount of character behind all her starch and stiffness, and I think she's quite worth knowing. She'll be an acquisition if one can only get at her."

"Well, as I said, success and prosperity go with you!" said Harry, as he rose and gathered his papers to go to his morning work.

"I'll go right out with you," said Eva, and she snatched from the hat-tree a shawl and a little morsel of white, fleecy worsted, which the initiated surname "a cloud," and tied it over her head. "I'm going right in upon them now," she said.

It was a brisk, frosty morning, and she went out with Harry and darted across from the door. He saw her in the distance, as he went down the street, laughing and kissing her hand to him on the door-step of the Vanderheyden house.

Just then the sound of the door-bell--unheard of in that hour in the morning--caused an excitement in the back breakfast-parlor, where Miss Dorcas and Mrs. Betsey were at a late breakfast, with old Dinah standing behind Miss Dorcas' chair to get her morning orders, giggling and disputing them inch by inch, as was her ordinary wont.

The old door-bell had a rustling, harsh, rusty sound, as if cross with a chronic rheumatism of disuse.

"Who under the sun!" said Miss Dorcas. "Jack, be still!"

But Jack wouldn't be still, but ran and snuffed at the door, and barked as if he smelt a legion of burglars.

Eva heard, within the house, the dining-room door open, and then Jack's barking came like a fire of artillery at the crack of the front door, where she was standing. It was slowly opened, and old Dinah's giggling countenance appeared. "Laws bless your soul, Mis' Henderson," she said, flinging the door wide open, "is that you? Jack, be still, sir!"

But Eva had caught Jack up in her arms, and walked with him to the door of the breakfast room.

"Do pray excuse me," she said, "but I thought I'd just run over and see that you hadn't taken any cold."

The scene within was not uninviting. There was a cheerful wood fire burning on the hearth behind a pair of gigantic old-fashioned brass fire-irons. The little breakfast-table, with its bright old silver and India china, was drawn comfortably up in front. Miss Dorcas had her chair on one side, and Miss Betsey on the other, and between them there was a chair drawn up for Jack, where he had been sitting at the time the door-bell rang.

"We are ashamed of our late hours," said Miss Dorcas, when she had made Eva sit down in an old-fashioned claw-footed arm-chair in the warmest corner; "we don't usually breakfast so late, but, the fact is, Betsey was quite done up by the adventure last night."

"Perhaps," said Eva, "I had better have tried keeping Jack till morning."

"Oh no, indeed, Mrs. Henderson," said Mrs. Betsey, with energy; "I know it's silly, but I shouldn't have slept a wink all night if Jack hadn't come home. You know he sleeps with me," she added.

Eva did not know it before, but she said "Yes" all the same, and the good lady rushed on:

"Yes; Dorcas thinks it's rather silly, but I do let Jack sleep on the foot of my bed. I spread his blanket for him every night, and I always wash his feet and wipe them clean before he goes to bed, and when you brought him back you really ought to have seen him run right up stairs to where I keep his bowl and towel; and he stood there, just as sensible, waiting for me to come and wash him. I wish you could have seen how dirty he was! I can't think where ever that dog gets his paws so greasy."

"'Cause he will eat out o' swill-pails!" interposed Dinah, with a chuckle. "Greatest dog after swill-pails I ever see. That's what he's off after."

"Well, I don't know why. It's very bad of him when we always feed him and take such pains with him," said Mrs. Betsey, in accents of lamentation.

"Dogs is allers jest so," said Dinah; "they's arter nastiness and carron. You can't make a Christian out o' a dog, no matter what you do."

Old Dinah was the very impersonation of that coarse, hard literalness which forces actual unpalatable facts upon unwilling ears. There was no disputing that she spoke most melancholy truths, that even the most infatuated dog-lovers could not always shut their eyes to. But Mrs. Betsey chose wholly to ignore her facts and treat her communication as if it had no existence, so she turned her back to Dinah and went on.

"I don't know what makes Jack have these turns of running away. Sometimes I think it's our system of dieting him. Perhaps it may be because we don't allow him all the meat he wants; but then they say if you do give these pet dogs meat they become so gross that it is quite shocking."

Miss Dorcas rapped her snuff-box, sat back in her chair, and took snuff with an air of antique dignity that seemed to call heaven and earth to witness that she only tolerated such fooleries on account of her sister, and not at all in the way of personal approbation.

The nurture and admonition of Jack was the point where the two sisters had a chronic controversy, Miss Dorcas inclining to the side of strict discipline and vigorous repression.

In fact, Miss Dorcas soothed her violated notions of dignity and propriety by always speaking of Jack as "Betsey's dog"--he was one of the permitted toys and amusements of Betsey's more juvenile years; but she felt called upon to keep some limits of discipline to prevent Jack's paw from ruling too absolutely in the family councils.

"You see," said Mrs. Betsey, going on with her reminiscences of yesterday, "we had taken Jack down town with us because we wanted to get his photographs; we'd had him taken last week, and they were not ready till yesterday."

"Dear me, do show them to me," said Eva, entering cheerfully into the humor of the thing; and Mrs. Betsey trotted up stairs to get them.

"You see how very absurd we are," said Miss Dorcas; "but the fact is, Mrs. Henderson, Betsey has had her troubles, poor child, and I'm glad to have her have anything that can be any sort of a comfort to her."

Betsey came back with her photographs, which she exhibited with the most artless innocence.

"You see," said Miss Dorcas, "just how it is. If people set out to treat a dog as a child, they have to take the consequences. That dog rules this whole family, and of course he behaves like spoiled children generally. Here, now, this morning; Betsey and I both have bad colds because we were got out of bed last night with that creature."

Here Jack, seeming to understand that he was the subject-matter of some criticism, rose up suddenly on his haunches before Miss Dorcas and waved his paws in a supplicatory manner at her. Jack understood this to be his only strong point, and brought it out as a trump card on all occasions when he felt himself to be out of favor. Miss Dorcas laughed, as she generally did, and Jack seemed delighted, and sprang into her lap and offered to kiss her with the most brazen assurance.

"Oh, well, Mrs. Henderson, I suppose you see that we are two old fools about that dog," she said. "I don't know but I am almost as silly as Betsey is, but the fact is one must have _something_, and a dog is not so much risk as a boy, after all. Yes, Jack," she said, tapping his shaggy head patronizingly, "after all you're no more impudent than puppies in general."

"I never quarrel with anyone for loving dogs," said Eva. "For my part I think no family is complete without one. I tell Harry we must 'set up' our dog as soon as we get a little more settled. When _we_ get one, we'll compare notes."

"Well," said Miss Dorcas, "I always comfort myself with thinking that dear Sir Walter, with all his genius, went as far in dog-petting as any of us. You remember Washington Irving's visit to Abbotsford?"

Eva did not remember it, and Miss Dorcas said she must get it for her at once; she ought to read it. And away she went to look it up in the book-case in the next room.

"The fact is," said Mrs. Betsey, mysteriously, "though Dorcas has so much strength of mind, she is to the full as silly about Jack as I am. When I was gone to Newburg, if you'll believe me, _she_ let Jack sleep on her bed. Dinah knows it, doesn't she?"

Dinah confirmed this fact by a loud explosing, in which there was a singular mixture of snort and giggle; and to cover her paroxysm she seized violently on the remains of the breakfast and bore them out into the kitchen, and was heard giggling and gurgling in a rill of laughter all along the way.

Mrs. Betsey began gathering up and arranging the cups, and filling a lacquered bowl of Japanese fabric with hot water, she proceeded to wash the china and silver.

"What _lovely_ china," said Eva, with the air of a connoisseur.

"Yes," said Mrs. Betsey, "this china has been in the family for three generations, and we never suffer a servant to touch it."

"Please let _me_ help you," said Eva, taking up the napkin sociably, "I do so love old china."