THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES GIFT OF CALIFCRFIA STATS LIPRRART ant From an . SECTION 11. The Librarian shall cause to be kept a register of all books issued and returned ; and all books taken by the members of the Legislature, or its offij^rs, shall be returned at the close of the session. If any person injure or W^o return any book taken from the Library, he shall forfeit and pay to 'Wft Librarian, for the benefit of the Library, three times the value thereof ; vid before the Controller shah issue his warrant in favor o' any member oT'&fficer of the Legislature, or nf this State, for his per diem, allowance, orftary, he shall be satisfied that such member or officer has returned all bob^Htaken out of the Library by him, and has settled all accounts for injuring fuch books or otherwise. SEC. 15. Books may be taken from the Library by the members of the Legislature and its officers during the session of the same, and .-it any time by the Governor and the officers of the Executive Department of this State who arc required to keep their offices at the scat <>f ^ivi rnmcnt, the Justices of the Supreme Court, .the Attorney-General and the Trustees of the Library. Library, ( * '"'r \> \- v) ^ \ EIRENE OR, WOMAN'S EIGHT. BY MARYV CLEMMER ) AMES. u Eirene a name which signifies peace." ' ' The ornament she wore a lowly heart. " NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM & SONS, ASSOCIATION BUILDING, TWENTY-THIRD STREET. 1871. TO MT MOTHEE. CONTENTS. PAGE CHAPTER I. SEEKING HER FORTUNE 1 " IL THE CAMBRIDGE STUDENT 15 III. GOING HOME 27 IV. THE SHOP GIRL 34 " V. EIRENE'S SUMMER ....... 46 " VI. FLIRTATION 56 * VII. THE CAMP-MEETING 67 " VIII. PAUL'S WOOING 79 " IX. WHAT CAME OF PAUL'S WOOING . . . . 93 X. THE CRISIS 106 " XI. ANOTHER LIFE BEGUK 114 " XIL THE GREAT CITY 120 * XIII. THE DE PEYSTERS 134 XIV. HILLTOP . .."-.'. ... . . . 142 " XV. THE WAR. EIRENE TO HER MOTHER . . 152 " XVI. EIRENE TO HER MOTHER. MARYLAND HEIGHTS 155 " XVII. THE ARMY NURSE . . . . . . 158 " XVIII. EIRENE'S DIARY. THE SURRENDER OF MARYLAND HEIGHTS AND BATTLE OF HARPER'S FERRY . 163 " XIX. EIRENE'S DIARY. DEATH OF WIN ... 169 (t XX. EIRENE'S DIARY. DR. DE PEYSTEE . . . 175 " XXI. THE BEGINNING OF THE END . . . 179 " XXII. THE WEDDING AT HILLTOP .... 191 XXTTI. ONE DAY OF HER LIFE 199 EIEENE. i. LEAVING HOME. " GOOD-BY, Rene." " Good-by, Win." Here the soft voice broke, and a pair of brown eyes looked through gathering tears, while the young girl who owned them leaned across a rough gate and kissed a boy who stood inside. " Good-by, Pansy," she said, turning to a little girl. " Be a good girl to mother till I come back, and I will bring you a new dress as blue as the sky. Think of it, Pansy, and don't cry ! " This promise of a new dress stopped Pansy's tears. She opened her purple- blue eyes wide and laughed with de light. She threw her arms around her sister, and exclaimed : " Rene, how long before you will comeback and bring me the new frock ? " " Very soon," said Rene, and she kiss ed the child on her yellow hair. " Mother ! You will pray for me ? " " Yes. Always." " Come ! We shall be too late for the cars ! They never stop for good-ln/s" said a kind voice a little impatiently. This call came from an elderly man who sat waiting in a rickety buggy. As he spoke he mildly jerked the reins, as if to impart a little of his own impatience to his horse ; but the jerk only made the meek old mare stretch out her straight neck a little straighter, stiffen her legs as if they were riveted in the sod, and she herself willing to stand till the end of the world without stirring. At the sound of her father's voice Eirene turned to her mother with a sudden, deep embrace, then hurried from the gate, climbed up into the ancient vehicle, tucked herself into a corner of the rusty seat, and without looking back said, " Now, father." " Get up, Muggins ! " But Muggins was decidedly averse to "getting up." She seemed to know that it involved carrying Eirene away. " Muggins, I say, get up ! " The injunction this time was accom panied by so decided a jerk, that Mug gins did " get up ; " that is, she began to move away at the slowest of all paces. The aged, straight-necked horse, the old wagon, the gray-haired man, the young girl, went shaking together along the stony hill-road. A COUNTRY RAILWAY-STATION. The October sun had filtered its gold through a hazy heaven till the wide spaces of air palpitated with topaz mist. An uplifted veil, it trembled above the faces of the hills, and floated in luminous nebulae far down the valley. On the mountain-sides, in the deep gorges, in the wide woods, the carnival of color had begun. The maples fluttered their vivid ambers and scarlets ; the oaks wore their garnet ; vines, ruby and yellow, festooned the rugged boulders with flame-like hues. Armies of ferns stood by the way with nodding plumes and crimsoned falchions. Through the mellow air rained the ripe leaves of October. With a low stir of melody, they rus tled down into the stony road, and the ruthless wagon-wheels passed over them and crushed them. They were full- juiced, and their exuding wine filled the atmosphere with a faint, delicious fragrance. The air was sweet also with the perfume of the pines, distilling their balsams amid the stillness of the hills. The world was all athrill with murmurous music the quick rustle of the squirrel running through the loosely- meshed leaves, the shrill trill of the cricket, and the low hum of insect- wings astir on the borders of silence. Over all bent the azure-amber firmament. 3 EIREXE : It was one of the rare days which God makes perfect. " How sweet the pines smell, father. I can't make it seem that I am not going to see these dear old woods any more ; " and as she uttered these words, Eirene, who had been silently taking in color and odor and sound, gazed around her' with an expression of unutterable love and sadness, strangely at variance with a face so young. " Yes, you will, child. You will see the old woods at Thanksgiving. You know that I am coming down after you then," said her father. " Yes, but at Thanksgiving the leaves will all have fallen. The woods will be gray not my woods, all in a glory as now. But then I am going to something better. I am glad of that, father," and the girl looked anxiously into his face, as if sorry that she had uttered a repin ing word. " I wish that you were going to some thing better, Rene. I haven't said any thing about it before, because I felt that I couldn't. It is very hard for me to send my Rene out into the world to earn her bread, instead of sending her to school, and giving her the start in life which I always intended that she should have. But I have done the best that I could, child. It is not my lot to be lucky." There was a pathos in the man's voice and utterance which brought the swift tears back into Eirene's eyes. " Oh, father, I didn't know that you felt so bad about my going away," she said, " or I am sure I would not have spoken a word about leaving the woods. You know that I want to go. I am young and strong ; why shouldn't I do something ? After my work is done, I shall find some time to study. And if Win and Pansy can be educated, it does not make so much difference about me. " Now, father, don't feel bad any more, because there isn't any reason why you should," she continued, as looking up she saw that her words had failed to bring any smile into the sor rowful eyes. " Father, mind me ; " and with an effort to be playful, ivhe took the corner of her shawl and wiped away the solitary tear that was making its way down a groove of the furrowed cheek. It was only two miles to the railroad- station, down-hill all the way. Eirene and her father had ridden in silence but a little way, when the most uninter esting of all material objects, a country railway-depot, confronted them at the angle of two roads. It looked like a diminutive barn painted a blackish brown. Inside it boasted of a dirty floor, a spittoon half filled with saw dust, a rusty stove, a bleared looking- glass, two unsteady benches, and a hole in the wall, in which was set the red face of a man waiting to sell tickets. Yet this depot was the centre of attrac tion for miles around. It was the grand hall of reunion for all the people of the scattered town, not second in import" ance even to the meeting-house. Here, twice a-day, stopped the great Western and Eastern trains, the two fiery arte ries through which flowed all the tu multuous life of the vast outer world that had ever come to this secluded hamlet. Its primitive inhabitants in their isolated farm-houses, under the" hills and on the stony mountain moors, could never have realized the existence of another world than the green, grand world of nature around them and above them, and would have been as oblivious of the great god " News " as the deni zens of Greenland, if it had not been for the daily visits of this Cyclops with the burning eye. Now twice a-clay the shriek of his diabolical whistle pierced the umbrageous woods and hilly gorges for miles away, and its cry to many a solitary household was the epoch of the day. Hearing it, John mounted his nag and scampered away to the station for the Boston journals of yesterday. Seth harnessed Peggy, and drove off in the buggy in all possible haste to see if the mail had brought a letter from Amzi who was in New York, or from Nimrod who had gone to work in " Bosting," or if the train had brought Sally and her children from the city, who were ex pected home on a visit. Here, undei A WOMAN'S RIGHT. pretext of waiting for the cars, congre gated the drones and supernumeraries of the different neighborhoods, loung ing on the steps, hacking the benches with their jack-knives for hours togeth er, while they discussed politics, and talked over their own and their neigh bors' affairs. A walk to the station on a summer evening ws more to the boys and girls of this rural region than a Broadway promenade to a metropolitan belle. Their day's tasks done, here they met in pairs, comparing finery, and indulging in flirtations with an impunity which would not have been tolerated by their elders at the Sunday recess in the meet ing-house. Then, besides, it was such an exciting sight to see the cars come in, to see the long rows of strange faces, and to catch glimpses of the new fash ions at their open windows. Besides, at rare intervals, a real city-lady would actually alight at the rustic station of Hilltop, followed by an avalanche of trunks, " larger than hen-houses," the girls would afterward affirm to their as tonished mothers, when it was discover ed that the city-lady, in her languishing necessity for country-air, had really condescended to come in search of a remote country-cousin. Besides the fine lady, sometimes small companies of dashing young gentlemen, with fishing- rods and retinues of long-eared dogs, or a long-haired artist with a portfolio under his arm, all lured by the moun tains and woods and streams to seek pleasure in far different ways, would alight at the station and inquire of some staring rustic where they could find the hotel. The question invariably called forth the response, " Thar' ain't nun' ; but Farmer Smoot accommodates." The dog-star, whose fiery rays sent these pilgrims of the world to the cool bosom of the hills, had long set. It was October now. No one was expected. But the girls and boys of Hilltop had heard on Sunday, " at meeting," that on Monday Eirene Vale was going down ' to Busyvllle to work in a factory, and they had come to the station to see her off. She stood in the midst of a group, her plain brown dress and shawl, her dark straw bonnet, with its blue ribbon, affording a striking contrast to the glaring finery of her companions. " Now, I say, Rene, if you don't bring the Fashion Book when you come hum at Thanksgivin', you'll see what you'll git. You know we've sech lots of com pany tu our house, I've got to be dress ed," said a coarse, red-haired girl, who rejoiced in the mellifluous appellation of Serepty Hepzibah Smoot. " See here, Rene ! " and a tall girl witi glowing red cheeks and flaming black eyes took her by the arm and drew her aside with an air of impenetrable mys tery. " See here, Rene, and don't you tell, for if it gits out, mother'll set her back agin it, and I can't bring it round. But I'll tell you what, if you like it down to Busyville, I'm coming tu. I'll work and board with you. I know thar' ain't no need on't. Father's fore handed. He sez I can go tu school, but I ain't goin'. I never could larn ; now I'm eighteen, I ain't goin' to try. I'm goin' to have clothes. Father don't half dress me, so I'm goin' to work tu earn 'em. I ain't goin' to live and die on this old mountain. I'm goin' whar' I can see and be seen ! " and the rustic beauty tossed her head with a self-con scious and defiant air. " Let me speak ! " said a squeaky voice, in an imploring tone. " The cars'll come and I shan't have no chance ; " and black-eyed Nancy Drake made way for Moses Loplolly, a tall, lank youth, with a crotchet in his shoulders, yellow locks, and small, pale eyes of a gooseberry green. " Rene, here's a keepsake fur yer to remember me by," he said, thrusting into her hand a small metallic cage, inside of whose swinging ring sat a little green parrot, muffling its bill in its feathers, and peering and blinking with great solemnity from a pair of yellow eyes. " Yer can't guess the lots of time I've spent a-larnin' on't, and it's learnt. Say your lesson, Polly : ' Pretty Rene. Poor Mo , Poor Moses Lop " As it heard these words, the bird plucked its bill from out its breast, nodded its head, winked on one side, then on the other, and with a shrill scream called out, " Say your lesson, Polly. Pretty Rene, poor Mo, poor Moses Lop ; " at which utterance the boys and girls of Hilltop broke forth into simultaneous laughter. All hut Moses Loplolly ; he, with a very sor rowful visage, leaned over Eirene, and whispered : " When it screeches, you'll think of me, won't yer, Rene ? Yer won't forget me 'mong the scrumptious fellers you'll see down in Busyville, will yer ? You know I never sot so high by nobody as I set by you, Rene ? " "I shan't forget you, Moses," said Eirene. " You have been too kind to Win and Pansy, as well as to me." " Why should I forget any one be cause I am going to Busyville ? " she asked. " I shall think of you all, and of the pleasant times that we have had together." This was an exceedingly popular remark. The young Hilltopers naturally wished to be held in remem brance by their young companion amid the splendors of Busyville, and they gathered closer around her with part ing injunctions and ejaculations. " Wai, neighbor Vale, so yer goin' to send yer little gal out to seek her fortin'," said red-faced Farmer Stave to the sad-eyed man who stood leaning against the door, gazing at his child. " I reckon she hain't goin' far to find it. Shouldn't wonder if she'd be mer- rid afore this time next year. Sech eyes as hern warn't sot in no gal's head for nothin'. I tell yer what, neighbor Vale, they're mighty takin', them are eyes, leastwise they'd be to me, if I was a youngster. 'Tween me and you, neighbor Vale, if your little gal wasn't jest sech a gal as she is, I should say it's tarnal risky bus'nis a-sendin' on her down into the pomps and vanities and tem'tations of Busyville, and not a blessed soul to look arter her but her self." " Here they are, the cars ! you must be on the platform, or you'll get left," exclaimed a voice, and all rushed out as the shrieking whistle, piercing the gorge, announced the arrival of Cyclops. He condescended to tarry but a moment at the unimportant station of Hilltop. There was just time for Eirene's father to lift her upon the platform. In anoth er moment, with her satchel in one hand, and Moses' bird-cage in the other, with a tremulous " Good-by, father," and a strangely palpitating heart, Eirene had vanished through the car-door. In another, the engine with a scream and a snort was off; and in another the long train had darted behind the sharp curve of an aggressive mountain, leaving the little group upon the station-steps still gazing in its wake. As they turned, each instinctively felt that there was nothing to be said to the silent man who was slowly untying his horse from a tree near by, and who, with a kind " Good-day, all," mounted into his ancient vehicle, and drove away without another word. " Neighbor Vale seems clean cut up about his little gal's goiii' away," said Farmer Stave, looking after him ; " and I think myself, she might as well a-staid to hum. It's mighty risky bus'ness a-sendin' on such a purty cretur into sech a sink-hole as Busyville, and neigh bor Vale is jest clean cut up about it. It doesn't seem more nor a year ago, sence me and him sot eatin' doughnuts, and noonin' it, on the meetin' 'us steps, and the purty little cretur was a sittin' in the middle ; and neighbor Vale was a-starin' at her. And sez he : ' Neigh bor Stave,' sez he, ' this child shall be eddicated. She's a destiny to fill in the world, and it haint triflin'. I can afford to be of small account if my child is eddicated and look'd up to in the world.' " I looked at him so kind a-droopin'- like, and sez I, in'ardly, her destiny's mighty doubtful if it depends on the eddication that you'll give her. For you all know, though neighbor Vale has the best heart in the world, he haint a mite of kalkerlation ; and none of the Vales never had, as ever I heerd A WOMAN'S RIGHT. on. When he thinks of what he said to me about her eddication and sees her when she ain't no more than eighteen, goin' behind that screechin' enjin' to arn her bread and butter in Busyville, it ain't no wonder he's clean cut up." " No, 'tain't no wonder," chimed in a crony. Then these two old gossips, with the assistance of occasional data from half-a-dozen others, began to enumer ate how many times Neighbor Vale's crops had failed ; how many mishaps had befallen him since the beginning of his career ; how large a mortgage there was on his farm ; " for nuthin' under the sun," they said, " only for the want of kalkerlation." " Yes 1 " cried Farmer Stave, bringing his heavy stick upon the dirty floor with great em phasis, and growing very red in the face. " There ain't no better man, no more feelin' man in the world than neighbor Vale, and it's a thousand pit ies for him and hisen, that he hain't a mite of kalkerlation." THE VALES. " Ef he'd only tuk to larnin' that had a-brought in su'then," Farmer Stave continued, " ef he'd only tuk to larnin' that he could ha' turned to account, there's the pint ! He needn't be dig^ gin' in the rocks now, and nuthin' to show. I tell ye, Deacon Smoot ! " " It's a myst'ry to me, with sech a little schoolin', how he's picked up sech a lot of larnin.' I tell ye thar' ain't nuthin' from doctorin' a child all tuck ered out with teethin' to narnin' on the stars, but he knows suthin' about it. Wall ! larnin' doos wall enough, when it brings in a fortin' ; but what the deuce's is its vally if a chap's got to be a poor cuss all his life, with a mortgage on his farm ? I'm glad I alias was back'ard. I hain't had nuthin' to hen- der me gettin' forehanded. Like enuf, if I'd tuk to larnin' as Vale did, me and my folks might a-ben a-livin' from hand to mouth as well as him and hisen. The matter with him is, he hain't no kalker- atiou. But all the Vales never had, none as ever I heerd on ; they was all cracked for larnin', that's my idee." It is true, the Vales were a cultivated and gifted race, long before one of ite sons brought his moderate temporal fortune, his elegant tastes, and rich mental possessions across the Atlantic. They were opulent in those days. Then the wealth which maternal ancestors had garnered for them (a Vale never could have accumulated a fortune) was not nearly exhausted. Nothing in their necessities prompt ed them to coin their large gifts into gold for their own uses. Each gener ation slipped away devoted to reli gion, to science, and to the aesthetic arts, and every son found himself a lit tle poorer than his father. At last it came to pass, upon a later day, one Aubrey Vale found himself, upon his twenty-fourth birthday, an orphan ; his only inheritance a University education, a learned scroll (proclaiming him to be a Doctor of Medicine), his father's li brary, and his father's spotless memory. With a Vale's abilities, any one but a Vale would have planted himself in a flourishing place ; there investing this capital as a sure guarantee for future success. But a Vale had never been known who knew how to struggle for his own fortune or his own fame. The town of his nativity was amply provided with physicians, but Aubrey Vale knew that the not-distant hamlet of Hilltop did not possess one resident medical man. He said : " What a quiet spot for a home ! what magnificent scenery ! Its practice will afford me support, its re tirement opportunities for study. If I ever want the world, I know where to find it." But the air of Hilltop was bleak, too bleak for Aubrey Vale, too bleak for Alice Vale, the young wife, the tropical flower transplanted from a richer and a sunnier soil. They never saw their sum mer. It was yet their spring when all that was left of them mortal was laid away in one grave in the neglected graveyard of Hilltop, a desolate place half overgrown with blackberry bushes, and left open as a pasture for cows. It was many years afterward that the briers were torn away from the else for gotten grave by a strong man's hands, and the new turf planted with violets and lilies of the valley by the hands of a child a child wondrous-eyed, with a low, vibrating voice. She was Eirene Vale, and the dark-eyed man was her father. Lowell Vale was left an orphan when but six years old. After the small homestead was sold, to provide in part means for his support, nothing was left the child but the Vale library. There were no near kin to claim the lit tle boy. Thus it came to pass that Lowell Vale was thrown from the track of life over which his ancestors had glided so smoothly and gracefully for centuries. Doubtless he had his own niche in the world ; but as there was no one to tell him what it was, he never found it. It was a sad, sad childhood for a child of such a nature no father, no mother ! No one was cruel to him, but who was tenderly kind ? They would have liked him better those sturdy fanner-women if he had borne a closer resemblance to their own tow-headed urchins. " Such a queer cretur, to be sure ! " they said to each other. " So still and mopin'. Why didn't he thrash about like Heze- kiah ? " Thus he was tossed from farm house to farmhouse till he came to man's estate. Then why did he not fly from this desert-bondage ? you inquire. Oh, he could not ; he was a Vale. The infirmity of his race was in his blood, its weakness in his brain. With a little more self-reliance, a little more hope, a little surer faith in himself, only a little more of positive qualities, he would have gone forth into the world where he could have wrestled with uu-n for the world's prizes, and he would have won them. His comprehensive mind would have compassed success ; his lack of executive power made his life a failure. Here was a Vale at last, who, with the lack of business qualifications which marked his family, had been denied the liberal culture which had helped many of them to eminence in the professions. He bought a little rock-bound, rock sown farm, and his life shrank into one hopeless effort to wring from the stony soil gold enough to make this sterile piece of earth his own and his chil dren's. To fail even in this, what a fate for a Vale ! When Lowell Vale said to Eirene, " I have done the best that I could. It is not my lot to be lucky," he told the whole story of his life. We see many men who never learn to fit their natures to the groove of life in which they find themselves. At Hilltop life had gath ered itself into one narrow channel for generations. Here human nature had repeated itself in one phase for centuries. The railway cut its first path out to the great world. Cyclops was the first screaming herald of progress, the first innovator upon the unutterable dulness of Hilltop. Yet even now the topics of conversa tion were very scanty ; its people had little to talk about but each other. One variety in the genus homo made an in exhaustible theme ; thus it happened that Lowell Vale and his affairs were more talked of than of all others put together. It was of no account to these sturdy yeomen that his organization was more delicate, his instincts finer, hia aspirations higher, while his house re mained smaller, his stock poorer, and his crops scantier than their own. Of these spiritual facts they were very dimly conscious ; but the material ones stood with painful palpability be fore their scrutinizing eyes. They be held them, to gaze with ever-renewed complacency upon their own posses sions, and to exclaim for the ten thou sandth time, with pharisaical commis eration : " Poor neighbor Vale ! a bet ter critter never lived, nor none more feelin', and it's a thousand pities for him and hisen that he hain't a mite of kalkerlation." LEFT. The unfortunate object of all thig mingled criticism, commiseration, and good-will, slowly urged Muggins up the mountain-road, through the for- A WOMAN'S EIGHT. est, under the scarlet rain of leaves, just as he did an hour before when Eirene sat by his side. No, not just as he did then. He was alone now. He had never felt so alone in all his life before. In spite of himself, he felt as if he had lost his child. " And yet," he reasoned, " she has only gone to Busyville. I can drive down there after her any day. It is only twenty miles away." The fact that she was there did not seem in itself sufficient to fill hi in with such a sense of loss. For eighteen years his meagre life had absorbed grace and beauty, poetry and love, from this child. But never until now had he realized that she was the very soul of his soul ; that to him the very light of the world had gone away with her eyes. As he emerged from the forest-road and saw his home before him, he thought that he had never seen it look forsaken and desolate before. He remembered that all the fine houses in Busyville had failed to disgust him with this lowly abode ; that it never turned such an inviting face toward him as when he returned from that hand some but commonplace village. With a thrill of joy he had always caught the first glimpse of its dormer win dows, of . its low roof, of its brown walls. He could see nothing which fill ed him with such positive delight as the sight of those trees and flowers and vines planted by his own hands. Then all his loved ones awaited his return within this home. Now for the first time one was wanting, and for the first time the little house looked dreary. This look must have been the reflec tion of his OWH feelings ; for any travel ler would have said at this moment, that in all the scattered town of Hilltop there was not another abode so lowly and yet so homelike in its aspect. A painter would have seen before .him a picture of such brilliant autumn beauty that he would have longed to transfix it on canvas forever. Everywhere*the red maples had cast down their scarlet leaves, now lying in glowing drifts in the hollows of the roads. The yellow maples ripening slowly in the soft shelter cf the hills, still fluttered their green skirts edged here and there with gold ; while others, standing in the crisp air of some open space, spread out their tremulous pano plies of unbroken amber. The old vines, which festooned the gables and dormer windows of the cot tage, hung in vivid relief beside the dark green of the dappled English ivy an ivy sprung from the immemorial vine which an elder Vale had brought across the seas and planted ; a souvenir amid the rocks of New England of his old English home. The Swiss larches which Eirene's father planted when she was a baby waved their green plumes above the russet grass in the yard before the house, while on each side of the path stood the sturdy autumn flowers which had defied the early frosts. A few mari golds still flaunted their brazen splen dor, here and there a garnet dahlia looked down from its blackened stalk, and, each side of the porch, beds of crysanthemums brightened the air with their delicate bloom. On one side, the meadow sloped down to a narrow river running swiftly away from the far mountains in its rear ; on the other, the little farm stretched away to the woods that crowned the hill. Before it, far below, spread a lovely valley, while beyond it, another chain of purple mountains bound the horizon. For the first time in his life, Lowell Yale was blind to the beauty of the world around his home ; he thought only of the little group about its hearth, and that one was wanting. Win and Pansy heard the wagon- wheels, and ran out to meet their father, their eyes still swollen with weeping ; and as if to console themselves, began to quarrel as to who should drive Muggins into the barn. Pansy ended the discussion as her father alighted, by scrambling up one of the wheels, and quickly seizing the reins, which feat being accomplished, she turned to her amazed brother with an indescriba bly triumphant air, and exclaimed : EIREMK : "There, Mister Win, who'll drive now ? " He sprang forward as if to seize the bridle, but Pansy's sudden pull of the reins sent Muggins off at a frantic gal lop toward the barn a gallop which proved that Muggins was a susceptible animal in spite of appearances ; that she thrilled to her very shoes with the nervous, wilful pull of Miss Pansy, al though no amount of mild orthodox jerks could ever induce her to "get up." " For shame on a girl driving a horse ! I wouldn't stoop to quarrel with a girl anyhow ! " cried the discomfited Win. A moment after, he saw Muggins in her unprecedented momentum not only knock the buggy-shafts and her own nose against the door of the barn, but toss the triumphant Pansy from her seat against the front of the vehicle ; seeing which sight, this young man of four teen turned and walked slowly away with a lofty, injured, yet satisfied air. Nevertheless, the moment he reached the house, he quickened his steps, and exclaimed : " Oh, father, I'm afraid Pansy is hurt ! Won't you go and see ? " an act which he very much desired to perform himself, only his pride and sense of injury would not let him. At supper, Pansy had a black eye, and her pretty nose was very much swelled. But little Win looked away from her with a severe, offended air. He was too magnanimous to say that he was glad, yet altogether too angry to say that he was sorry. Pansy's nose ached, so did her heart. She had a confused feeling that she had already forfeited the blue frock, and that every thing was going wrong. The peacemaker who had always poured oil on their naughty tempers was gone ; her seat between the scowling brother and sister was empty. The most eventful day that ever comes to a New England household had come to the lowly home of the Vales. The first child had gone out from its shelter into the world. Sooner or later this day comes to every country New England home : its sons and daughters must go forth to be educated, or to work. The secluded farm, the scatter ed town, afford scanty advantages and few employments. Thus the girls and boys must go elsewhere to work in shops, to study in college, to teach school ; and to those who are left, home never seems quite the same that it did before they went away. It was a sore trial to this father and mother to know that their young child had gone, not to the Busyville Academy, but to the Busyville factory ; that from morning till night she was to be shut up to work in a close shop, with little choice of associates, and with none of the amusement and interest so indis pensable to the young. But the poor, who have never learned the trick of making life easy for themselves, can hardly do more for their children. Eirene had gone ; what was left for them now but resignation ? Pansy's little purple nose was bathed in camphor, and she had mounted the confessional of her mother's knee, there to confess her sins and say her prayers before going to bed. She was very penitent at first. She had been naughty, she said ; she was sorry, and would be good to-mor row. Suddenly another mood swept over her. She wouldn't have been naughty if it hadn't been for Win. Mister Win needn't think that Tie was always going to drive Muggins, and leave her stand ing on the ground. Her head ached, her nose was sore " it was Muggins who was wicked to bump her against the barn there ! ". Thus, with a passion ate sob, the penitent suddenly passed into a severely abused child bewailing its grievances without stint. She re fused to be soothed, till at last hei mother said : " What would Rene say to see Pansy so angry with Win ? How sorry it would make her ! " These words were magical. Pansy saw as in a vision the receding outline of- a sky-blue frock, and the eyes of her sister full of tears. A WOMAN'S EIGHT. Thus together love and selfishness triumphed ; so early does the mingled essence of good and evil enter into human motive. Pansy suddenly wiped her eyes, threw her arms around her mother's neck, and whispered, " I am sorry that I was naughty." Then the little sinner in the round night-cap and long night-gown march ed off" to bed. At family prayers that night, Lowell Vale for the first time prayed for the absent. As he prayed the Good Shepherd still to hold in his keeping the beloved lamb that they had sent out from the fold, his voice trembled, and at last broke. Mary Vale was very quiet in her grief. All her life she had been relin quishing desire ; not so much desire for that which she had lost, as for that which she had missed. It was a gift conferred upon her, this power of self- renunciation. She had not been always thus ; her soul had been eager and im portunate once. Then it had seemed to her that she must beat her way out of the restricted sphere in which she was born. The life which she read of in books she was very sure was only the faint reflection of a richer life to be found somewhere in the world. It was very different from the life of Hilltop ; to her she was certain it would be more satisfying. There were books and pic tures and music in this life. There were gay cities, cathedrals, and resonant organs ; all the wonderful sights of strange lands, rivers, and oceans that she had never seen ! There was wealth and leisure and beauty in the world ; why might she not have something of it all in her portion ? Had she married an ambitious and successful man, he could have conferred upon her no honor that she would not have grown to adorn. As it was, be fore her youth had passed, Mary Vale knew that this life which she saw in dreams would never become real in her earthly lot. It was a natural transition wken her hopeless longing, turned from the delights of earth, which she knew could never be hers, to the joys of the heaven which she felt sure would one day be her portion. It was such hap piness to know that she could imagine nothing of this unseen world that would transcend the reality. She could afford to live in a poor house here, and even have a mortgage upon that, while she felt certain that after a little while she would enter into a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal, ' and in the heavens. She loved to read over to her chil dren its description in Revelations, all glowing with gems. And when she had ended the inspired story, she would turn to her husband with softly dilat ing eyes, and say : " My dear, the heirs of such an inheritance can afford to wait." " Father ! " This one word comprehended her entire idea of God. To her He was a tender, an all-pervad ing, ever-guarding Presence. Every one of His promises she seized with child like trust. He might deny her, might bereave her, yet she never doubted His love. Every morning she prayed for His strength to bear the cross of that day ; every night she laid it down at the feet of her Lord with tearful thanks that the burden had been so light. There was no object on earth dearer to her than her first-born child. To-day she had relinquished her without one repining word. Yet what a different lot she would have chosen for her, had it been possible. A few tears dropped upon her pillow ere she slept. Then the lids drooped over the soft eyes, and with a tender smile she passed out into the limitless realm of dreams, this mother, to walk hand in hand with her child. Lowell Vale waited till she slept, then taking the candle from the stand beside which he had apparently been reading, he walked quietly up-stairs to Eirene's room. If a room can reflect the character of its occupant, how pure must have been the nature of this child. The windows of the little dormer chamber faced the east, looking out upon the valley with 10 EIKENE : its ribbon-like river, and the great mountains which girded the sky. They were draped with white, and between them stood the white toilet which Eirene's own hands had fashioned. Over it hung a little mirror festooned with golden tissue-paper, falling like flakes of flame against the pale-blue walls. At one end of the room, commanding the view from the windows, stood Ei rene's table. This, too, was covered with white, and on it still stood her work- basket and a glass filled with pink and white crysanthemums. Over it hung a swinging bookcase filled with relics of the Vale library. Here were Shakespeare and Milton and old George Herbert in antique bind ings, stained and worn by time. Here were Rollin and Gibbon, and volumes of the Spectator and Rambler. Thomas a Kempis, Jeremy Taylor, and holy old Baxter stood on the same shelf with Byron and Burns. Ivanhoe and Old Mor tality, with other of Scott's magic crea tions were the only novels ; but there was a shelf filled with old Latin books which Eirene had always treasured as if they were gold, because they looked so wise ; and another filled with French books, which the child had studied many a night when all in the h m-e were sleeping. Under the bookcase where the sweet face always looked into hers as she sat there, Eirene had hung an engraving of St. Elizabeth of Hungary in a frame of dark wood which her father had made for her. How well he remembered her look, and the kiss that she gave him, when she took it from his hands, that frame so deftly fashioned, so fit a setting for her treasure. Over the mantel opposite hung the portrait of a young and most lovely woman. The beauty of this face was not of mere tint and outline, although both seemed faultless. It was not ruddy and rustic, but a high-born face, with the exquisite profile which we see cut in antique gems. But what were this to the soft splendor of the half-veiled eyes, and the tender smile brooding in the curves of the gentle mouth ! It was a mouth to which childish lips would turn and cling in the loving innocence of infancy. And the rippling hair of nutty brown just touched with gold, how a child's hand would love to lose itself in its silken luxuriousness ! It was the face of a woman that no manly man could behold without love ; of a woman for whose sake such a man would live and die, nor desire a hap pier destiny. It was the face of one in the first lustrum of womanhood, else it might well have been taken for the portrait of Eirene Vale. It was the portrait of Eirene's grand mother. How unlike the other grand mothers of Hilltop, sitting in their mouldy frames in high caps, sausage curls, and bagpipe sleeves, was this tutelary saint who passed from the world in the undimmed lustre of her youth ! The image of Alice Vale was repeated in her grandchild. Perhaps this was one reason why the heart of Lowell Vale seemed bound by so close a tie to his first-born child that her face recalled in vivid reality the living face of the young mother so dimly remembered. Lowell Vale, with the light in his hand, walked slowly around the room, pausing before every object, each one in his eyes sacred for the sake of his child. Every thing was left as if she had gone out for an hour, and might return any moment. There was the unfinished work in her basket, the glass filled with flowers, the last book that she had read with the mark in it as she had laid it down on the table ; the low chair where she had sat. Lowell Vale looked long, looked with a sigh that swelled almost to a groan, as he turned to the low cot with its white counterpane and untouched pillow. Since he first laid her down there himself, a tiny child, fourteen years before, when Win was born, this was the first night that the cot had been empty, and the fair child-head sheltered by the roof of strangers. He knelt down, buried his face in A WOMAN'S RIGHT. n her pillow, and did what the strongest and weakest of mortals are almost sure to do in their moments of extremity. This father, who felt that it was beyond his faltering power to take care of her himself, again committed his child to the care of God. THE OIRL CP-STAIR8. While her father knelt beside her pil low at home, Eirene sat alone in her new room at Busyville. She sat like one in a daze, as if stunned by the strangeness of her surroundings. Her eyes were fixed upon Moses Loplolly's little parrot, now fast asleep on its perch ; yet she did not see the bird nor the hard, bare outline of the new room. No, she saw her own little chamber with its azure walls ; saw her own little bed ; saw her father kneeling by its side ; then again the soft eyes swam in tears, and she started as if she had just wakened from a vision. " Father," she murmured, stretching out her arms as if to enfold him. " Dear father, for your sake, and for yours, dear mother, I will be brave and patient and hopeful." She felt strangely alone. Surely that angular little room could never seem home-like to her ; it was so cold and cheerless. Its very atmosphere was re pelling. Its bare walls were covered with coarse whitewash ; its one window covered with a stiff paper curtain ; its floor was painted a bright yellow ; its furniture consisted of a very diminutive looking-glass, a pine washstand on which stood a tin basin, a straight-backed wooden chair, and a bed covered with a glaring patchwork-quilt. As Eirene's eyes wandered over these meagre ap pliances, she started, for the first time remembering the words of a metallic voice, uttered while the door was clos ing upon her for the night : " Remember, we breakfast at six. We never wait. You are to be in the shop by seven o'clock." Eirene took from her head the silken net which covered her hair, and as she shook and brushed out its waving length, repeated to herself the Bible verse which her mother had marked for her in the morning. The young head touched the strange pillow, and the young lips murmured as they had murmured from infancy : " Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep." Thus, and with a prayer in her heart for each beloved one at home, the young eyes closed in innocent sleep. But thpre was somebody very wide awake down-stairs. This somebody sat in a large family-room, a commodious room which reflected the competence and the thrifty housekeeping of its owner. Yes, it was a very comfortable room, although not a single picture, not one artistic touch, suggested a love for the beautiful in the one who had furnished it. The walls were hung with yellow paper ; the windows were covered with yellow shades. The great lounge and stiff-backed rocking-chair were covered with chintz of large device, and glar ing hue. The floor was covered with that home made carpet indigenous to New Eng land, which is never seen in perfection out of it a carpet in which stripes of violent yellow, red, and green run side by side in acute lines till they cover the floor. The slumbering fire of an autumn night dwindled upon, the hearth. Be fore it stood a large table, on which was a shaded lamp and a work-basket piled high with work. On each side sat a man and woman, with a cradle between them, in which a baby slept. The woman slowly moved the cradle with her foot, while her busy hand plied the needle in and out through the heel of a stocking, which had been mended till not even imagination could conjec ture which had been its original yarn. This woman had restless, eager eyes ; greedy eyes yoti would have called them, had you looked into them closely. They had a taking-in look, as if they had grown hungry gloating over objects of desire and of possession. Yet they were handsome eyes, and in certain moods could suffuse with tears 13 EIP.ENE: of motherly feeling. The watery ten dency of these handsome eyes had won a popular reputation for their owner among the matrons of Busyville. " There never was a more feeling woman than Tabitha Mallane,'' they would say. " Such a capable woman ! What a family she has, and how she has brought them up. What a mother she is, to be sure ! " Her face was deeply care-lined. Every motion indicated disquietude, as if in all her anxious, workful life she had never earned the right to Heaven's own boon repose. It was not thus with her husband. Time and care had furrowed his face also ; but in its intellectual lines, so much more intellectual than his wife's, you could trace the capacity for rest as well as for work ; and now with a re mote look in his eyes he was buried in the oblivion of his newspaper. Perhaps his wife was more restless than usual. She gave a spasmodic rock to the cradle, she moved her chair, she pushed the lamp, she pulled her needle with such violence through the stocking that the yarn broke. From time to time she looked round the side of the news paper into the face of her quiet husband with an expression of positive annoy ance. At last the silence became unen durable. Again she jerked the cradle, pushed the lamp, and in a peremptory tone said : " Father ! " No reply issued from the voluminous depths of the Boston Journal. Mr. Mallane was absorbed with the affairs of his country. " Father ! This time the endearing appellation was uttered in such a keen tone of acer bity, that it penetrated the thick* rime of national affairs. Mr. Mallane slowly laid down his paper, slowly took his spectacles from his eyes, slowly took his silk handker chief from his pocket, slowly wiped his glasses, and as slowly said : " Well, mother ? " " I should think that you would say ' Well, mother 1 ' Where are your eyes, Mr. Mallane ? " " In my head, I believe, Tabitha." " You know what I mean ! Are you crazy, John Mallane ? " " No. I am perfectly sane, Tabitha." " No, you are not. You are either blind or crazy ; or you never would have brought that girl up-stairs into this house." " Why not ? She is a very pretty girl, mother. I should think that you would like to have her in the house for the sake of the children." " For the sake of the children ! Why do you aggravate me, John Mallane ? Isn't Paul coming home in a week ? Hasn't Paul eyes in his head ? " " Yes, Paul has eyes in his head, very handsome eyes, too ; just such eyes as yours used to be, Tabitha, before you /began to worry ; and he knows how to use them, too," said Mr. Mallane ; and a smile of parental pride passed over his face as he spoke of his first-born son. " I'll tell you how he'll use them, John Mallane ; " and in her eagerness the mother leaned forward with dis tended eyes and ominous voice : " He'll use them the very first thing to fall in love with that girl up-stairs. If there's no running away and getting married, and all that, it will be a pretty story to go about town, that Paul Mal lane has fallen in love with one of his father's shop-girls. I warn you, John Mallane." " Tabitha, why will you always bor row trouble ? As you say, Paul has eyes in his head. He will see that the girl is pretty. He can't help that. But Paul has common sense. Paul is long headed ; he has any amount of fore sight. He is just as ambitious for wealth and for position as you are. He is the last fellow on earth to make a fool of himself by running off with a poor shop-girl. And I don't see that he ig very much inclined to fall in love with any body. Here he has been flirting a whole year with Tilly Blane, the pret tiest and the richest girl in town. She would like to have him fall in love with her ; but he hasn't. And she is pretty, and I don't know but prettier than the girl up-stairs." A WOMAN'S RIGHT. 13 " Yes, she is prettier, perhaps," an swered the mother, dubiously. " But it is only flesh and blood pretty, pink cheeks, blue eyes, curly hair. At thirty she will be as ugly as her mother, who, you know, twenty-five years ago was the belle of Busyville. But this girl up stairs has an uncommon face. Didn't you notice it, father ? "Why, with that expression on it, she will be beautiful at fifty. When those great brown eyes look up through those long lashes, there is a look in them that would take the heart out of any young man, and they'll take the heart out of our Paul. And she'll turn them up, and cast them down. She'll make good use of those eyes, the artful " " Be reasonable, be reasonable, Tabi- tha. Don't call the poor child names ; for she's only a child, and whatever arts she may learn, she hasn't learned them yet. You could see that at supper. She felt so strange and frightened, she could scarcely eat. She has never been away from home before. Let us show her the same kindness that we would like shown to our Grace if we had to send her away to earn her bread." " Show her kindness ? The greatest kindness that we can show her, is to send her out of this house. It is no place for her. I cannot have her here. I will not have her here. She shall go to-morrow. I have set my foot down, John Mallane." " She shall not go to-morrow," said Mr. Mallane, quietly, but in a tone which could not be contradicted. It usually happened that when Tabitha Mallane " set her foot down," John Mallane set his down also. Coolly and quietly he asserted his will ; but having once asserted it, it was as fixed as a rock. His wife's tem per, like a stormy wave, chafed and fretted in helpless anger against the immovable mountain of will. Poor wave ! it soon beat itself weary. Baffled, worn-out, it always subsided in sullen passivity at last. Yet John Mallane was not a tyranni cal husband. As he allowed no one to interfere with " his business," so he was careful not to encroach upon his wife's prerogatives in the management of the household where she reigned supreme. Thus, this sudden invasion of her terri tory, with his last declaration of author ity, seemed as unpardonable as it was unexpected. Yet he had said it " She shall not leave to-morrow " and Tabi tha Mallane knew that now there was nothing for her to do but to smother her rage and submit. John Mallane read on awhile in si lence, giving time to the chafed and fret ted temper of his wife to subside into calmness. She, too, was silent, knowing well that at the present crisis no added word of hers could avail in gaining her end. John Mallane was wise ; he never talked with his wife when she was angry ; and thus, without any serious matrimonial combats, he managed to have his own way whenever he chose. When he thought that the proper moment had arrived, he laid down his newspaper, took off his spectacles, took his red silk handkerchief again from his pocket, deliberately polished his glasses, deliberately reset them upon the high bridge of his imperturbable nose, and as deliberately said : " Tabitha, I have no desire to be unreasonable. I know that you have care enough, and I don't want to in crease it. But I promised this little girl's father she should have a home in my family. I feel sorry for Vale. He is one of the kindest men in the world, but he isn't a manager. I am. I've been successful ; he hasn't. I'm rich, he's poor. I send my boy to college ; he sends his little girl to work in my shop. And he'll have to take her small wages to help pay the mortgage on his farm. I am not willing to advance money on the mortgage, but am willing to give a comfortable home to his little girl, who will help earn it. I am perfectly able to do the first, I am only willing to do the latter. It is no stretch of generos ity, you see, Tabitha ? " Mrs. Mallane made no reply. But the needle in the stocking seemed to listen, and the cradle moved with a slow, thoughtful motion. 14 ElRENE t Her husband continued : " Poor Vale ! The tears came into his eyes when he spoke of his little girl. I thought of our Gracy ; what it would be to us to send her out into a strange place to work in a shop*, and I said : ' Vale, I'll do the best that I can for your child. She needn't go into the boarding-house with the other hands. She shall stay in my family, and eat at my table, and I'll ask nothing extra.' To have said less would have been inhuman. You don't want me to be inhuman, especially when it don't cost any more to be human, do you, Tabitha ? " Under ordinary circumstances, Tabi tha Mallane's better nature would have responded to this appeal, and she would have said : " Yes, father, you are right. I have been unreasonable. I don't com plain that you take your own way." But against this act of her husband's, against this child whom he had brought into her home, was arraigned the strong est instinct of her nature, the instinct of maternity, fierce, selfish, prevail ing. In and out through the heel of a fresh stocking flew the glittering needle with spasmodic haste, while the jerking cra dle, the working of the strong features, the movement of the large frame, all told of an inward struggle. There was a silence of moments before she spoke ; then the anger had gone out of her voice, but its tones were deeply troubled. " I have feeling for the girl," she said, " when I think of our Grace in her place. I should be willing enough to have her stay, if it was not for our Paul." " Nonsense ! " said John Mallane, in an incredulous voice. " Tabitha, let me tell you once for all that our Paul will take care of himself;" and with- these words, John Mallane again took up the Boston Journal, and soon forgot the existence of the girl up-stairs in the excitement of reading about " South Carolina Fire-Eaters." A WOMAN'S RIGHT. 15 OUR Paul had come. "Without being told, you would have known the fact, by the changed atmosphere of the house. He strode about like a king, and all the children were afraid of him. To tell the truth, there were altogether too many children in the house to please this royal, voung gentleman. Not but what he had some fraternal affection for each individual brother and sister, but in the aggregate they were troublesome, " so many young ones." They brought more or less of noise and confusion into the house, and his prince- ship craved order and quiet. Their numerous wants absorbed much of the time and attention of his mother, which he wished to appropriate to him self. Every other summer when he came home, he found a new baby in the cradle it was very aggravating. If a portion of the aggravation was born of the fact that each newcomer lessened the amount of his prospective fortune, Paul had never acknowledged it, even to himself. It was enough that they annoyed him in the present ; they made a noise, they were in the way, they filled up the house, which the young gentleman had already pronounced "a mean, pinched-up box." Paul made no effort to hide the fact that he was dissatisfied with the appear ance of his home, and his dissatisfaction was an affliction to his mother. She re membered the time when he looked upon the family sitting-room, with its striped carpet and yellow walls, with great com placency, and thought it a very fine af fair. That, was before he went to Har vard, or had seen the splendid drawing- rooms of Beacon street and of Marlboro Hill. Out in the great world he had stepped upon the plateau of a higher life, a life of leisure and ease, a life of culture and of graceful repose. It was very hard for him to step down again to the level on which he was born. He did it very unwillingly and very ungraceful ly. Ever since he could remember, his mother had been drudging and saving, his father delving and making money. He was determined to do neither. He wanted money only for the gratification that it would purchase ; for the life of luxury and splendor which were unat tainable without it. Each year the streets of Busyville looked narrower, its houses lower, his own parental domain smaller than the yar before. Settle in Intered, in the yeir 1989, by O. P. PUTNAM * 8O!f, In tile Clerk Office of the Diitrict Court of tht U. 5. for th 8 them worthy of all desire and struggle. To see all the fam- . ily cotton flying on the clothes-Hnes by breakfast time each Monday morning was a triumph, whose winning called more than one housewife to her wash- tub a little past midnight. Every chore was done, and she working for the shops and rocking baby, before it was time for her to get her dinner. In the long after noons, many little shiny-topped baby Wagons, precisely alike, issued from the gates, drawn by mother-hands. These matrons then found the recreation of their day, in going to each other's hous es, comparing babies, and serving to each other delectable dishes of small gossip. "Women endowed with such a remark able amount of New England " faculty " that they could dispatch every household affair of their own in one fourth of the day, necessarily had some time left for the affairs of their neighbors. Socially, the Brahmins and Bustlers were as far apart as if they lived on separate planets. The shop-girl from her window watching the academy girl pass to school, mocked her dainty airs, and when she met her on the street with " I'm as good as you are," toss of head, took care that the pretty Brahmin did not have more than her share of the sidewalk. Meanwhile, the Brahmin averted her pretty nose, and gathered up her delicate robes, lest they should be contaminated by the touch of the work ing-frock of "that dreadful shop T girl." Yet both of these were American maid ens, Christian maidens, born in New England Busyville. The Bustlers and the Brahmins rarely worshipped God together. The Brah mins were all orthodox, and praised their Maker in a proper manner in an imposing structure. From serene heights they looked down with pious pity or dis gust, according to their dispositions, on the happy Bustlers, whose devotions they deemed "of an unnecessary, vocifer ous, and hysterical character. All the time, the Bustlers considered themselves not only sound in faith, but as a city set upon a very high hill in the spiritual kingdom, with light enough in it to il luminate the entire race. With holy triumph they referred to the place and 26 EIBEXK : the moraent where they "got religion." With warm compassion they prayed for the groping Brahmins, who only ''hoped that they had a hope." And for no one with so profound an unction as for old Dr. Drier, the Brahmin divine, the meekest and most blameless of men, yet one so utterly undemonstrative and un like themselves, that they were sure " he know'd nuthin' what religion wuz." Thus, the Brahmins ignored the Bus tlers, and the Bustlers alternately envied and pitied the Brahmins. Each pos sessed qualities which the others lacked, which, had they been blended together, would have made a more harmonious type of manhood and of womanhood. The Brahmins needed the stamina and activity of the Bustlers. The Bustlers lacked the refinement and capacity for repose which crowned the Brahmins. But there could be no exchange of gifts and graces, for in social life they rarely met, and never mingled. Neither class ever knew half the good that was in the other. Hero came bounding down the road to meet them. Mary Vale, with Win on one side and Pansy on the other, stood outside of the gate. Again the loose wheels of the old buggy rattled, and for once in her life Muggins hurried. Eirene had come home, had come home to spend Thanksgiving what joy there was in the dormer cottage. A month had wrought a great change in the aspect of nature. The maples had dropped all their scarlet and amber, and stood discrowned in the wood. A few garnet leaves still clung to the shel tered boughs of the oaks. The larches in the yard still waved their feathery plumes, and the pines on the hill still swayed their evergreen branches with the old soughing sound. The English ivy, dappled and warm, still festooned the brown walls and dormer windows; all else was bleak and bare. Piles of wind-whipped, rain-beaten leaves filled the hollows of the road. The mari golds and dahlias h.'id ceased to parade their splendor, lying prone and ragged upon the ground. Even the crysanthe- mums had vanished, and now smiled in snug boxes in the sitting-room win dows. How was it with Eirene ? Had she changed, as well as the garden ? Do we ever come back from the world to any beloved spot just the being that we left it? One moment in her mother's arms then the happy little company followed Eirene into the house. A WOMAN'S RIGHT. m. GOING HOME. EVBRT thing was bright for Thanksgiv ing. The white curtains were newly hung, branches of laurel and holly, bright with scarlet berries, garnished mantel and pictures ; little Sir Don, the canary, was trilling a throat- breaking welcome amid a bower of greenery, while his wife, as she could not sing, went plunging into her glass bath-tub for joy. Out from the pantry issued a compound of savory odors, in which an epicure could have detected the aroma of roast fowls, of mince and pumpkin pies, and spice- cakes. " What have you brought for me ? Have you brought me the new frock? I've waited and waited ! " cried the ex cited Pansy, her nervous little fingers already trying to open Eirene's satchel. "Is that all you've wanted? How selfish you are," said Win, in a stern tone of reproof; " I should think that you'd want to see Rene." " I do want to see her as much as you do, Mister Win. But she promised me a frock. You want to see what she has brought you ; I know you do." "No, I don't want Rene to spend a cent for me. It's bad enough that she has had to go away and work, without spending her earnings for us, Pansy." " But I must spend something for you, see what I have brought you 1 " said Eirene, her face all flushed with happi ness, as she took a little key from her pocket and unlocked the satchel, taking out first a red, rotund volume. " See, Win, this is the book you wanted so much, ' Washington and his Generals.' " Win's dark eyes kindled. He did want this book so very much! Could he find fault if his sister had spent her money to gratify this desire of his heart? " O Eirene ! some time ! " Ho did not finish the sentence, but he thought " Some time I will repay her, she always remembers me." Pansy had commenced to pout. Why should any body be remembered before this little princess ? Win had a book! Where was her blue dress ? " She didn't believe she had any, there ! " " You promised, you did ! " cried the child with a passionate sob. " Yes, and here it is," said Eirene. "See, haven't I brought you a pretty frock ? " Like a rainbow through a shower looked forth the glittering eyes of the child. Pansy had never had such a dress, had never seen one even half BO lovely; it was merino, blue as the sky. " Azure aud amber. See, mother," said the happy Eirene, as she laid a soft fold of the fabric against the gold of the child's hair. u What a lovely contrast ! Oh, I must stay at home long enough to make it for you, Pansy ; " and with an impulse of love, she threw her arms around her sister and kissed her. The mother's impulse had been to set the teakettle in the polished stove, to draw out the table and cover it with her whitest cloth ; and when Eirene looked around, she was already setting some of the viands which her loving hands had compounded for her absent child, while she thought of the coming of the most joyful of all Thanksgiving days. Just then, Lowell Vale having paid his last necessary attention to Muggins, came in to behold his happy household group. "See, father! see my new dress! Rene brought it to me," cried the exult ant Pansy, as, wrapped in the blue me rino, she stood perched on tip-toe upon a chair, surveying herself in the looking- glass. The father's eyes grew misty as he took 28 EIKEXE : the gifts into his hands one by one the blue dress, the red book and then look ed from one child to the other. "Rene earned these for you," he said; "will Pansy ever earn any thing for Rene ? " Pansy had not thought of that. "I can't work ; 'Rene caw," was the little beauty's conclusive reply. It seemed a rich compensation for separation and absence the dear home- 1-1 pper that came after. To hear her mother say, as she set some delicate dish before her, "I made this for you ; " to be the object of so much tender solici tude, of so many loving looks and words, brought tears into Eirene's eyes. It made her remember the last four weeks of her life, in which she had sat a scarce ly tolerated presence at the dismal table of strangers. She knew that she had felt strangely lonely at that table. But the neglect and unkindness wliich she had received, came to her now as a positive thought for the first time, forced into her mind by contrast to all this home-love. The beloved child, the unloved stranger she knew, now, what it was to be both. " Oh, it is so pleasant to be at home once more ! " she said with overflowing eyes. " Not but what I have had every thing necessary at Mr. Mallane'?, but it is not like being with you all at home, you know." She forbore to complain ; she did not say once that she had been lonesome, or homesick. In answer to all her mother's anxious inqu ; ries, she said that she had had every thing that she had needed. She had a comfortable room. The Mallanes were good people. It was better for her to be with the family, because out of the shop, she had no one to disturb her in her studies. It would be quite different at the boarding-house, the girls were very gay and noisy. She did not find her work hard; indeed, she was perfectly satisfied. Thus she silenced every misgiving of her mother's heart, and no shadow fell on the happy supper of Thanksgiving eve. "Tell me about the children," said Pansy, with her pretty lisp. " Is Grace Mallaue so pretty ? Has she very fine frocks ? Any finer than mine ? " And the dimpled hand smoothed fondly the blue merino, which she had laid within arm's reach, before sitting down to her supper. Then Eirene told her sister every pleasant thing that she could remember about Grace Mallane, and all the " chil dren," save one. She scarcely men tioned Paul. She did not know why, but it did not seem easy to talk of him , perhaps because he was not at all a child. How long they lingered around the little table! At last Eirene, with won- drously smiling eyes, took from her pocket her little purse, and poured its contents upon the table. " It is not much, but there will be more another month. I could not come home for the first time, without bringing Win and Pansy something. But I intend to be very saving; and if you are pros pered, father, the old place will be saved." " But what have you bought for your self, child? " asked the mother, with the suggestion of tears in her voice. " Nothing," said Eirene. " I have not needed any thing." " We thank God for onr child," said Lowell Vale, as soon as he could com mand his voice ; " but we cannot take all your earnings, Eirene. What yon do not need, put in the bank at Busyville. Another year's crops such as this year has brought us, and Hillside will be saved. If not, for your mother's sake, and your's and the children's that we may not lose our home, we must take what you have saved ; but not unless we must. If not, it will pay for you at the academy at Busyville. You can go to school a long time, Eirene." Eirene seeing that it was hard for either father or mother to talk about money, slipped out of the room to look for Win. She proceeded to the old barn, within which she had seen him vanish a few moments before. It was chilly without, but as she opened the door, the air within seemed warm and sweet with the smothered fragrance floating out from piles of clovry hay. As she entered, old Bios- A WOMAN'S RIGHT. 29 Bom and young Daisy, who stood quietly waiting to be milked, rubbed their noses against her hand, and Muggins, in her stall, looked up and whinnied a welcome over her half-eaten oats. Eirene climbed up above the great mounds of hay into the loft ! She knew Win's haunts ; knew that after the November rain and damp had fallen on the beloved woods, his chosen sanctuary was this little chamber in the loft. It had one window looking out upon the west; upon the great hills of amethyst, behind which the sun went down. Against the rough boards hung Win's rifle and all the ac coutrements of hunting. On the other side, some hanging shelves, neatly cov ered with paper, were filled with Win's books more relics of the Vale library. And here, with the pale late rays of the November sun falling on his dark hair, with Hero by his side, stretched upon some fresh hay, lay Win, devouring with his eyes "Washington and his Generals." He started half abashed, half delighted, as he saw his sister Eirene's face, her loving wistful eyes. But Win was not demonstrative ; he was strangely shy and reticent, even with those whom he knew and loved the best. The love which he felt for his sister, Eirene, was nearly blended with worship. She was finer and lovelier to him than any other being in the world. He would sit and gaze on her with a strange mixed feeling of awe, admiration, and love, which could not be expressed in language. It was the involuntary reverence for wo manhood, born of the unconscious man hood stirring in the boy's heart. " Hero, will you take up all the room when you see who has come? " he said to his dog, as he jumped up and made room for Eirene on the hay by his side. When she was seated he opened his new book, then looking up, said abruptly, " Eene, do you think that there will ever be another war in this country? " " Why, Win, how can there be ? Why do you think of sucli a thing ? " " Because I would rather be a soldier than any thing else in the world." " Oh, Win, how could I live and think of you suffering all that a soldier must ! I was reading the other day what the soldiers suffered in the Crimea, and I thanked God when I thought that there never could be war in this country. England will never trouble us again. France likes us. Who else could fight this country? " u We may fight each other, some time, Eirene. I never should have thought of such a thing, but the other day I found among the old books, a pamphlet with the great speeches which Webster and Hayne made in the Senate, in 1830 be fore we were born. I read them through, and learned an extract from each for a declamation in school. There are sen tences in them which keep ringing through my mind. Do you want to hear them, Eene ? " "Yes," said his sister, with a deep in terest kindling through her eyes. The boy arose, and with all a boy's unction of feeling and less than most boys' stiffness of declamation- with a rich voice that made the old barn ring, he exclaimed : " Good God ! Mr. President, has it come to this? Do gentlemen estimate the value of the Union at so low a price, that they will not even make one effort to bind the States together with the cords of affection ? And has it come to this? Is this the spirit in which this government is to be administered ? If so, let me tell you, gentlemen, the seeds of dissolution are already sown, and our children will reap the bitter fruits." "Now shall I recite Webster's an swer?" asked the excited boy. And Eirene answered " yes," gazing on liim as if she saw him in a dream, when he once more exclaimed : "I have not allowed myself, Sir, to look beyond the Union to see what mijzht be hidden in the dark recesses behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty, when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asun der. I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion, to see whether with my short sight I can fathom the depth of the abyss below. " While the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread 30 EIRENE : out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that, I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant my vision never may be opened on what lies behind. "When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once plorious Union ; on States dis severed, discordant, belligerent ; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched it may be with fraternal blood ! "Let their last feeble and lingering glance, rather, behold the gorgeous en sign of the Kepublic, now known and honored throughout the earth still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured bearing for its motto no euch miserable interrogatory as, What is all this worth? Nor those other words of delusion and folly Liberty first, and Union afterwards; but everywhere spread all over in characters of living light blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, true to every American heart Liberty and Union, now nnd forever, one and inseparable ! " "How you feel all this," said Eirene, as "Win sat down, with the perspiration on his face and a scarlet spot on his cheeks. " I have never thought of any of these things. All that I have thought of our country is, that it is beautiful, and great, and free, and must always remain as it is now only growing greater. " But I have thought a great deal about you, Win, and about your future life ; I want you to go to college. I want you to study a profession, and be happy and successful. I am going to help you : I am older than you, you know." "Eirene, I don't want you to help me. I am a boy, and ought to be able to help myself. But I have heard father say that no Vale has been successful for gen erations. I don't know whether I could get on in the world any better than father or not; but I know that I could be a soldier, and fight for my country." " But, Win, if the great words which you have just spoken should come true, you would have to fight against your own countrymen. That would be dread ful." " My own countrymen ? They would not be my own countrymen if they had broken the Union. I think it would be splendid to fight for that." " I hope it will never need your life, Win. You have been reading 'Wash ington and his Generals ' till you want to be a hero. You can be heroic without a war." " Rene, you think that the Union will never come to an end," said Win, still pervaded by Webster and Hayne. " Don't you remember, in the histories that we read last winter, each one of the old republics had something in it which destroyed it ? " " Yes ; but they were heathen repub lics. This is a Christian nation. W T in." " Yes, I suppose it is," said Win, du biously. " But it don't seem to me very Christian. Its great men are fighting all the time, I should think by the news papers. The South has grown rich and saucy living on negroes ; and the North has grown rich and greedy on manufac tures and trade. We are down on the South for its Slavery ; and the South is down on us for our Tariff. We pity the ignorant Southerners, and they despise us peddling Yankees ; and we'll come to a fight some day, or I don't under stand what I read." "Don't you think that we are too young to understand these great ques tions, or to tell what is going to happen? If this country is ever to be torn by war, I don't want to think of it till I must. Let us talk of something cheerful, Win," " I don't want to make you feel bad, Rene, and I'm sure I don't know what will happen to the country. But the only thing I feel sure of is, that some day I shall be a soldier." There was a strange commingling of incredulity and sorrow in Eirene's gaze as Win uttered these words. The possibility of Win's being a sol dier had never entered her mind. She did not believe that he would ever be A WOMAN'S BIGHT. 81 one, yet the mere suggestion was enough to fill her eyes with a brooding sadness. As they sat, gazing upon each other, they looked strangely alike this boy and girl. Win's forehead was brown, his cheeks bronzed by exposure; while Eirene's low brow was white, and on her cheek trembled the delicate bloom of the blush-rose. But both had the same wavy hair of nutty-brown, touched with gold, and the same mouth, in whose exquisite curves trembled all the sensibility, the purity of an entire race. Their eyes, too, were as the eyes of one face in their oneness of expression consisted the re markable likeness which each bore to the other. They were the Vale eyes, of a limpid brown, winsome and winning. They were not melancholy eyes, for they overflowed with light not with the light which exults and triumphs, but rather s that wliich hopes and believes the light which kindles the eyes of mar tyrs and of saints. They were not rest less, anxious eyes, they were serene in their very wistfulness, yet they had a deep, far gaze, as if looking on toward something distant, for some joy that they had missed, or for some treasure which they had never found ; not that these young lives were conscious of any such longing, but their eyes reflected the souls of their ancestors. It was as if Aubrey and Alice, and Lowell and Mary Vale, were all looking out from the eyes of these children. They were sealed with the family soul, they were signs of the family fate. Superlative eyes, suffused with soft sunshine, they still suggested sadness rather than smiles. In their deep lovingness they drew hearts toward them like magnets, yet in their too deep tenderness you read the pro phecy of tears, not of triumph. As they sat, the setting sun sent his last rays above the hills. They poured through the little window of the barn, and covered the children sitting upon the hay with glory. Through the chinks of the loose boards they floated in, and for a moment seemed suspended in the form of a cross over their heads. Was it the augury of destiny? TWO CHUMS. That same sunset which made th old barn-loft glitter like the chamber of a palace, lit up the venerable walls and windows of old Harvard just as two young men met in one of the innumer able walks which intersect each other in the grounds of the University. " "Well, old boy, you have come at last," said one, as he switched the sleeve of the other with a rattan cane ; he was a small, fashionably-dressed, blase young man. "Justin?" "Yes, in the last train," answered Paul Mallane, who, from his altitude of six feet, looked down upon his insignif icant companion, as handsome and as nonchalant as ever. "Why didn't you stay up-country al . winter, and be done with it? You have stayed so deuced long I have made up my mind that something has been to pay. Come, now ! Why haven't you been in more of a d 1 of a hurry ? " " I thought I'd stay and help my Governor take inventories and cast ao counts." " A likely story 1 You've been touch ed, I know. Nothing but a girl could have kept you so long in a town that you curse. And the term commenced, and all your chums eating nice little sup pers, and enjoying all sorts of nice little pleasures. I'll swear that nothing but a girl conld have kept you from us a whole month." "Pshaw, Dick, I am not always chas ing a girl's shadow, because you are. You don't believe, then, that I have turned dutiful son, and have been post ing my father's books ? " " Not I. Come, my boy, you may just as well own up first as last. You want my advice; you know yoxi do. Who is it? Not pretty Tilly? She'd never wake you up. Come, now ! " And the wise old-young man slipped his arm into Paul's, and they sauntered on toward the colleges. " You are a bore, Dick Prescott, yet I suppose that I do need your advice," said Paul, in a half annoyed, half impatient tone. " I want you to suppose a case. Suppose you should meet a young lady, 32 EIRENE : to you exquisitely lovely, not handsome in just the flesh -and-blood sense, but in figure, in coloring, in expression, and in manners to you perfectly lovely " here Paul paused as if he were interrupted. " I have it ; 'to you perfectly lovely ! ' Go on, I am supposing the case," said Dick. " "Well, suppose you should meet her in a place, and in company utterly at variance with her nature, in the midst of a crowd of ignorant, noisy girls. Sup pose that you should meet her in well, in your father's shop: what would you do ? " Dick Prescott broke into a loud laugh. "Prince Mallane," he said, "I did not think that you could be such a spooney." "I don't know why you should call me a spooney," Paul replied, angrily; " I have only asked you to suppose a case." " Suppose a case ? I can't suppose any such case. I can suppose a perfect lady, and a perfect beauty; but I can't sup pose her at work in a shop in the midst of a pack of noisy, ignorant girls. It's all in your eye, Prince. She is just like all the rest, only you are touched." " Touched ! by heaven, I am touched," exclaimed Paul, in a passion. " I've never been in 16ve in my life although I've tried to be, hard enough. I am not in love now; but I am haunted by a face. Her eyes follow me wherever I go. If I have a mean thought it seems as if she saw it, and the pure face makes me ashamed and uncomfortable ; but only uncomfortable when I feel that I am mean and unworthy. No woman's face ever made me feel so before. I can't get rid of the look in her eyes. But then I have not tried very hard. I am willing to own up, I have stayed in Busyville a whole month, just to look at it." " Do you think me verdant enough to believe that?" asked Dick. 4( You have made love, and proposed an elopement, I will bet my head." " Then you will lose it. I spoke to her the first day I went into the shops, but it was bef >re I saw her face. I wanted to see what she was like. She turned and looked, and her surprise and her face made me so ashamed of my impertinence that I never more than bowed to her afterwards. You may laugh if you please ; I am telling the truth. As we were situated I could not meet her as I did other ladies ; and I would not, in deed I could not, talk to her as I did to the rest of the shop-girls." " Well, Prince, I never expected to see you so far gone. That's all I have to say. What do you propose to do? " "That's just it. What am I to do? To me she is a lady ; to every body else she is a shop-girl. I don't go with shop girls, I can't go with her; it would drive my mother mad. Besides, I can't afford it. I am not an only son, like you, Dick. I shall only have an eighth of my Governor's money ; and lie is not a millionaire, like your parental relative. I am not going to begin life in any shabby way ; I must marry either posi tion or a fortune when I do marry. Con found it! I can never propose to this lit tle girl, if I want to. Not that I am at all sure that I shall ever want to, but it maddens me to think that I can't, if I do. One thing I never could bear that is, to be balked." "Mallane, you talk like an idiot. I never before suspected you of being such a fool," said Dick. " You can't pro pose to this belle of the shops, of course you can't. Of course you don't want to ; you wouldn't if you could. You are only mad at the fact that you can't, that's all. You cannot perpetrate matrimony. but you can amuse yourself, that's enough better. You can make her be lieve that yon are going to marry her ; the excitement of such fun will be worth a dozen weddings. When you are tired of it, leave her (she will get over it), and take somebody el^e. If you married her think of it! you'd have to stare at her at least three hundred and sixty-five times a-year for the rest of your life, no matter how much she bored you. Take my advice amuse yoursdf, my boy. I'd like to know what the d 1 is to pay that I have to exhort Prince Mallane to amuse himself. It is the firat time." A WOMAN'S RIGHT. 33 " Dick Prescott, I feel as if I could knock you down. You show that you know nothing of my case, when you name her in such connections. Yet, I suppose I should have talked just the same a month ago. I have amused my self, and perhaps I may again. But it would be easier for me to cut off my hand than to trifle with this girl. She seems so lifted above all evil, that I feel ashamed of myself every time I come into her presence. I feel like an inferior being, I do ! You may laugh if you want to, but I am inferior, and so are you. "When we think of all the disgraceful things that we have done, we ought to stand abashed in the presence of such purity. Yet you dare ask me to amuse myself! Trifle with Tier ! No ; I never saw a lady at Marlboro Hill, nor anywhere else, that I would treat with more considera tion. I used to think that I could talk agreeably to women. I can, can't I? But this innocent girl has taken a little of the vanity out of me. I have not the slightest reason to suppose that she even admires me. The flattery which I deal out to other girls of her condition, would serve me no purpose with her. I should stammer and forget all my fine speeches, the moment I looked in her eyes." " Mallane, I told you you were touch ed. I knew that; but, by Jupiter! you are clear gone. You are dead in love. You rave like a madman," replied Dick Prescott, as he looked up into his chum's face with a surprised and quizzical ex pression. " I think you are past my ad vice, but I'll give it; you may do as you please about taking it." " I am aware of that," answered Paul haughtily. " You can't give advice where you can't even suppose a case. Every word you say only convinces me the more, that you have no conception of the loveliness and purity of the one that I have tried to describe to you." " Oh, your loveliness and purity be hanged ! Your sentiment don't go down with me, Prince. I know too much of the world and of women. You are sappy. You betray the fact that you are from the rural districts. After all my instruction?, 3 you haven't learned the world, Mallane, nor women. Let me tell you again, they are all alike. There was never one since Eve that could not be reached by flat tery. You have let this little plebeian see that yon are smitten. She has been using her power, by making you feel that you must get down upon your knees. But don't tell me that she can't be flattered! A smaller quantity and finer quality she may demand, I admit. But all you want is tact and insight, to administer to her case and be master of the situation. You need not tell her so outright ; there are a thousand ways by which you can make her believe that you think her the loveliest of her sex. Make her feel that you remember her. In short, make yourself necessary to her, and then show her that you are perfectly able to live without her. And Paul, my boy, the game is yours." " I am very much obliged to you for your instructions, although I have heard them all several times before, and they don't apply in this case," said Paul cold ly. " I have made all your moves and won my game more than once. They might win all other women, but they won't her. No sham will live in her presence. Any thing short of utter sin cerity, would shrink before the truth in those eyes. I sha'n't do a thing that you've told me." "Very well, then, don't come to me again for advice. You are as unreason able as a donkey. The trouble is, it is a foregone thing. You are in love al ready, and won't listen to common sense till you are out of it." " No, I am not in love, and I don't in tend to make love. I have made up my mind not to take any advantage of this girl, never to arouse any hopes in her life, that my. position will not allow me to fulfil, even allowing that I could teach her to like me ; and I am not sure of that," added Paul, with a strange touch of humility. "I will do her justice, and all the more because she is so poor, but I am not in love with her ; I want you to understand that, Dick." " Oh, no, you are not at all in love. I understand that. But do you know how 34 EIBEXE : many times you Lave contradicted your self since you commenced to talk about tliis girl?" "No, and I don't care. I only know- that I have told the truth. She" " There ! don't begin to enumerate her perfections again, Prince, or we shall never get out of this yard. I am going to Marlboro. Will you go, too ? " "No, thank you," said Paul, "I am going to my room ;" and he set his face toward Cambridge. IV. MOT IN LOVK. PAUL went back to his books but not to very patient study. He had never dreamed that Coke and Blackstone could be such bores. Dick Prescott's ridicule forced him to two conclusions: the first, that he had made a goose of himself in so nearly fall ing in love with a girl so much his infe rior in station. Paul would not acknow ledge even to himself that he had fallen in love of course he had not. But he had come to the conclusion to do justice to all, no matter how lowly thoir condi tion, and to do justice to this girl, he said he must acknowledge that she was love ly, and a lady, and very superior to her situation. The second conclusion was, that while he would not demean himself by attempting to follow Dick's advice, he would be equally careful to give Dick no opportunity to say that he was com mitting himself seriously to a shop-girl. He would study harder than he had ever done before, and think no more about her. The oftener he said that lie would think no more about her, the more con tinually he thought of her. He had been attracted before by many pretty faces, that he had found it easy enough to for get when it became convenient. " It will be the same with this one," he said to himself. " In a week or two I shaVt think any more about it than about Tilly Blane's. and really this time last year Tilly looked wonderfully pretty. I hadn't seen her in so long a time, that she struck me as something quite new and charming. But I was soon tired enough of her pink and white, and to day she seems perfectly insipid. I shall he tired of this face as soon as I see one that will please me better." In the midst of these very thoughts, a voice far down in his heart would say to him, " You will never see a face that will please you better. 1 ' And even while he exclaimed, " I will think no more about her," he was eagerly recalling every lineament, till the whole face seemed to rise through a mist between his eyes and his book. It was not outline and color, nor the gleam of waving hair, on which his eyes were fixed. It was the pure brow, the appealing eyes, the gentle mouth, which drew nearer and nearer to his, till a thrill of delight ran through his heart, and he closed his eyes as if before an ecstatic vision. Paul often asked himself, "I wonder if she sometimes thinks of me ? " But for once his complacency failed him. He by no means felt certain that she thought of him with any of the exquisite plea sure with which he remembered her. Not even the memory of the blush in the window reassured him. No wonder she blushed when she thought of my rudeness, and saw me still staring nt her, he said, for the first time in his life think ing of a woman without an atom of self- conceit. Christmas came. Paul in his impa tience thought it never would come, yet it did in that year of grace as early as in any other. When he thought of going home for the holidays, his heart gave a great throb. Never had any thought of home so moved it before. And strange to say when he thought of it, he only saw one window and one face in it. The stiff parlor, the staring sitting-room, the baby in the cradle, no longer rose up and annoyed him, for he did not think of them. And when his worldly self said: " Paul Mallane, you are a fool. You can never marry this little girl. YOU re spect her too much even to flirt with her. You could not make love to her even if you were in love, and you know you are not. You can only go and look at her. What a fool to be so anxious for only that." Yet for only "that," Paul refused A WOMAN'S RIGHT. 35 manifold invitations to Beacon-street, and a special one. to Marlboro Hill. "Thank you, Dick," he said, "but I must go home this Christmas; it will be the first time, you know, since I entered college." "Don't I know? I know, too, you are spooney yet over that shop-girl, or you would not go for all Busyville. Own up. Prince! " " I've nothing to own. I am going home because I want to, that is enough." " Well, go ahe.id. We'd like to have you at the Hill, though. We shall have a jolly time and no mistake. Bell is just home from Madame Joli's, ' finished,' and she has brought a school-mate to make my acquaintance ; a Cuban beauty with a cool million. What do you think of that, Prince?" Paul had several thoughts concerning "that " which drew him Marlboro Hill- ward, when Dick's concluding sentence sent the tide back in full force toward Busyville. " Bell says she thinks that it is time that she knew Prince Mallane. And when I was coming away she said, ' Be sure and bring him back, Dick. I want to see how many fibs you have told about him ! ' But of course, Bell Prescott's desire to know you is nothing while a pious shop-girl is waiting to sing psalms to you in Busyville ! I know by the look of your eyes that you don't intend to take my advice and fool her. No ! you will let her fool you into downright love-making. Then there'll be a scrape you won't get out of so easy. Mark what I say. Prince Mallnne won't mar ry a shop-girl, if he does fall in love with her." " I am not going to fall in love with a shop-girl nor marry her ; but I am going to spend Christmas in Bnsyville, Dick. Carry my regrets to Miss Prescott ; tell her I shall lose no time in calling upon her when I return, and that may be before the holidays are over." The moment Dick's grating voice uttered the word "shop-girl," Paul saw again as distinctly as if before his actual eyes the young face of the window, in its frame of summer vines, and the very chords of his heart seemed to trem ble and to draw him toward it. Besides, another feeling influenced him. He saw that Dick was really anxious that he should become acquainted with his sister. When they first became chums, Dick used to patronize Paul. More than once he had made him feel most keenly the difference in their antecedents ; the dis tinction between having one's grand father a poor carpenter, or having one's grandfather a distinguished gentleman. He had taught Paul the advantage of possessing an illustrious name, and the disadvantage of owning one the world never heard of before. Yet, in spite of the obscure name, and in defiance of rank and of ancient lineage, some way the sceptre had slipped into Paul's hands. Dick had learned that the prestige of a fine physique, of graceful manners, and of a brilliant brain, are quite as potent as the memory of one's grandfather. Everywhere he saw Paul possessing him self of attention and of admiration, by the charm of his own personality. He saw, too, that it added to the reputation of even a Prescott, to be on intimate terms with this popular youth. He ac knowledged his claim as a rising man ; spoke of him always as his particular friend, the prince of fine fellows; and though he still lectured and gave him advice as a man of the world, it was no longer with the assumption of superiority or the arrogance of earlier days. Still Paul had not forgotten the snubbings and condescensions which used to bruise his self-love, and he always remembered them most keenly when Dick, by some word or act, made him aware of his pres ent importance. He was flattered at Dick's eagerness that he should meet Miss Bell, ' yet this very eagerness prompted him to show his own indiffer ence as proper pay for old patronage in the past. In characteristic fnshion, if there had been no Eirene Vale in Busy ville, Paul Mallane would probably have gone to that not brilliant winter-town, when he found that Dick Prescott was really anxious that he should become ac quainted with his sister. Without one yearning for Marlboro 36 EIKENE : Hill he went to Busyville. He saw the daguerreotypes which he despised, still piled around the astral lamp. He saw the bright stripes of the sitting-room car pet, the hateful yellow of its oak paper; indeed, he saw most clearly every thing which he disliked, for all that he had longed most to see was wanting. The girl " up-stairs " had gone home to spend Christmas-week, and Paul had his old seat at the table with the ordi nary countenance of his sister Grace for a perfectly safe vis-d-vis. Great would have been the delight of Tabitha Mallane at the prospect of Paul spending his holidays at home, if she could have believed that the unwonted visit had no connection whatever with the girl "up-stairs." Her instincts all bore opposite testimony. Thus she said to her husband, " Father, give the poor girl a week, and let her wages go on. She can't af ford to lose any thing, but I think that she is homesick." " She can go home, and welcome. I am glad that you are getting more kindly disposed toward the little girl. I'm sure she makes no trouble," said good-natured unsuspecting John Mallane. But Paul and his mother knew each other intuitively. The other girls wore at work ; if Eirene had a holiday there was a special reason, and his mother was connected with it, Paul knew. Yet he said nothing ; he did not mention the name of the " new hand ;" he was only more ill-natured than usual, found fault with every thing. He had intended to be very munifi cent to present to each of the children and to his mother an elegant Christmas gift. Besides, he had resolved for once to be as smiling and gracious at home as he had ever been in Beacon-street or Marlboro Hill, and not to swear at the baby once, no matter how loudly it screamed. Poor Paul 1 the result was that he forgot all about the presents, and he made himself so disagreeable, and the atmosphere of the whole house so per fectly uncomfortable, that at the close of the third day his mother felt relieved when he informed her that he should go and spend the remainder of the week at Marlboro Hill. " Very well, Paul," she said in a per fectly undisturbed tone. " I should think you would like to meet Miss Prescott, and the next time you come home I hope that you will be happier." " That will depend on circumstances, mother," answered her son, looking her fully in the eyes. The gray eyes looked back with as wide and deep a gaze. They understood each other. When Eirene heard Grace and the children talk of Paul's coming home at Christmas, it was with a feeling of relief that she thought she should not meet him, and she felt more than ever grateful for Mr. Mallane's unexpected permission to spend the holidays at Hilltop. If she had been asked why she felt re lieved at the thought of not meeting Paul, I doubt if she could have told for she spent very little time anfllyziug her own emotions ; but in a dim, unconscious way, she felt that while he was most pleasant to behold, he was an object so entirely above her own lowly life, that it were wiser for her not to contemplate him, lest what seemed brilliant and desirable in his lot, should make her less patient of what was distasteful in her own. In the weeks thrtt had passed since his hand some face vanished from the house, its memory had at times come back, and brought with it something like light and warmth into the cold little chamber. If Eirene had been a wealthy school girl, with nothing to do but to learn her lessons, and no object of interest dearer than her own pretty self, doubtless she would have spent as much time medita ting on this princely youth as he did in thinking of her. Amid such circumstances this manly face, the most brilliant that she had ever seen, would probably have shone upon her often enough to have satisfied the utmost vanity of its owner. But life's hard conditions saved Eirene from even the temptation of idle dream ing. They had filled her young heart with desires and anxieties too deeply root ed to be displaced by any passing fancy. A WOMAN'S RIGHT. 37 To her already life was a fact whose penalties she did not seek to escape, but to fulfil, faithfully and patiently. Already her labor had found a pur pose and an end ; thinking of these, the young feet might faint, and the young hands grow weary, but the true heart never faltered nor murmured. There was the mortgage ! that dread ful mortgage that she had heard of ever since she could remember. It was cer tain to be foreclosed before very long ; for the man who held it was very aged, and his heir, who lived in a distant city, had already announced that if the little farm was not redeemed by the time of the old man's death, it would be sold in the settlement of his estate. Eirene knew that this day could not be very far off; that unless her father was prepared to meet it, Hilltop would be lost ; and she thought with a shudder, of the family going out from the only home that it had ever known ; of her father, more incapable and discouraged than ever, seeking vainly to begin his fortune anew with all the world's odds against him. Then there was Win's profession ! His life must not be a failure, as his fa ther's had been. No Vale had ever been known to succeed in business ; his tastes and habits were intellectual ; he might succeed in something connected with books, she felt quite sure that he would. And there was a little education for her self! It could never be finished or thorough, she knew, but by improving all her moments out of the shop she could learn considerable. The Vale instincts were strong in the girl's nature. Culture was a necessity. She longed to hold the key of knowledge, and unlock for herself something of the mystery of the universe. Into this pre occupied heart, so full of care for others, so busy with loving thoughts for father, mother, sister, and brother, in strangely brilliant contrast sometimes stepped the image of the handsome Paul ; but it was by no means the absorbing and undivid ed presence which that individual de sired. The Harvard law-student, after he had dismissed his books and his chums, often sat far into the night alone in his hand some bachelor's room in Cambridge. His indulgent father had denied him nothing, and the apartment reflected without stint Paul's love of luxury and beauty.- Rich books atid pictures were scattered around him in profusion. A velvet carpet covered the floor ; a sumpt uous lounge was drawn near the open fire, on which our young gentleman re clined, smoking his meerschaum. The blue velvet cap upon his head, whose sil ver embroidery and glittering tassel af forded such fine relief to his dark hair, and which in itself was so strikingly be coming, was wrought by Helena May- nard, a Beacon-street belle. The delicate buds and roses blooming on his slippers had been worked with tenderest thought for him by the pretty fingers of Tilly Blane. Even the watch-case on the wall with its delicate filigree, and the cigar-stand upon the table with its gold en frettings, were gifts from her and the beautiful Maynard, meet examples of the prodigal presents which fond and fool ish girls are forever making to young men ; presents which are sure at last to find their way into the hands of mistress or wife, while the ungrateful masculine says, " You shall have this, sweetheart. Isn't it pretty ? gave it to me. She was in love with me, poor thing ! " Paul sat in true bachelor reverie, gaz ing into the clear flame and down into the red core of the wood-fire, which was one of his special delights. With the perversity inherent in man, with the silver-embroidered cap upon his head, and the rose-wrought slippers blossoming on his feet, his thoughts were not of the Beacon-street belle, nor of pretty Tilly Blane, but of a girl who had never given him any thing at all. The young eyes into whose depths he seemed to gaze, had a look in them which he could neither fathom nor un derstand, yet it haunted and fascinated him. It was the look of eyes which saw further down into the deeps of life than he could divine, reflecting the emotions of a nature which had felt already the mystery, the tenderness, the pathos of existence ; as h, in his strong 38 EIRENB : self-centered life, had never felt them. Her years were fewer, yet in all that really makes life, in doing, in feeling, in being, she had out-lived him. To Paul, these eyes were full of mystery, guileless as a child's ; they still suggested to him gentleness, tenderness, and love, deeper than he had ever dreamed of in woman. This was why, in spite of himself, they followed him always. It never occurred to him to inquire, " Is there ought in me to suffice these large, tender, asking eyes ? " His thought was, though he was not conscious of it, " What is there not in this heart for me! Somebody will woo and win it! "Why not I I want it. I will have it," he said, at last, but not then. At the same hour, when the luxurious student leaned back amid his cushions, dreaming over pipe and blaze, the young shop-girl sat in her bare chamber with out a fire. Feet and fingers were numb with cold, and she shivered in the shawl which she had wrapped around her, but it was the only time that she had for quiet study; and, though the eyelids would droop sometimes, and the book almost fall from the stiffened fingers, she studied on till the lesson was learned. The frozen air was hardly as favorable to love-dreaming as the summer atmo sphere of the Cambridge parlor. During the three days spent at home, Paul had stalked into this room, impelled by angry curiosity. He was strongly suspicious that it was the most comfort less room in the house ; and in the ab sence of its inmate, he deliberately opened the door and walked in to see if his suspicions were correct. When he looked at the bare painted floor, the cold whitewashed walls, the scanty and shabby furniture, strange to relate, the aristocratic youth thrust his hands into his pockets, and in his wrath swore aloud, because the apartment of this shop-girl was not as comfortable as that of his sister Grace. He had no very generous ideas of what was necessary to the comfort of shop-girls in general, but some way these ideas did n<>t seem to apply in any way to this particular one. He had supposed the room was meagre enough, and yet he was not prepared to see it look quite so barren, so utterly devoid of all comfort. " There are rolls and rolls of carpeting in the garret that have never been used, and yet mother won't lay a strip down here," lie said deprecatingly, as he looked on the painted floor. ' Even old Beck can have a warm fire in her cham ber over the kitchen, and she hasn't had one this winter. She sits here and studies, too, in the cold. Curse it ! " he exclaimed, still more bitterly, as he looked at the stand by the window on which Eirene had left a few books and a work-basket. Paul took up the books one by one, and found them to be Fas- quelle's French Grammar and Dictionary, Fenelon's Telemachus, a small volume of extr.icts of Bossuet's sermons, and a French Testament. The two latter were very small, very richly bound, and very old. On the fly-leaf of the Testament he read in round delicate characters, "ALICE VALE, 1820. Spes mea Christus," and below, in a cleur, graceful hand, " EIEENE VALE, 1856. En Dieu est ma fiance." Paul looked long and thoughtfully on these two names and sentences, the first brown and faded, the last clear and bright, as if lately written. "Well," he at last soliloquized: "I am glad you have somebody to trust in. It would be very little comfort to me though, to trust in God, if I had to work in a shop and burrow in a hole like this, and be snubbed by my inferi ors. For we are her inferiors. I am her inferior, I know it, and d n my position ! " he exclaimed, as proud in his sudden humility as he had ever been in his self-conceit. He laid the books down on the white cover with which Eirene had sought to hide the deformity of the old pine stand, looked at them a moment, and then with a low whistle walked out of the room and out of the house. He knew that his mother had heard him walking on the bare floor over her head ; indeed, he was in such a defiant mood, he had made all the noise that he could. It was partly to punish A WOMAN'S RIGHT. 39 his mother for sending Eirene away, that he had gone up there in the first place ; he knew that nothing could vex her more ; but having done as he chose, he now had no desire to return to the sitting-room and listen to a lecture from over the cradle. If he did, he knew that he would say in reply something perfectly savage, and Paul did not like to be impertinent tot in this case. And I know, father, that you^want every body in your house to be comfortable. I think mother does, too, every one except this little girl, whom she dislikes because she thinks that I shall fall in love with her, of which there is not the slightest danger. " Your affectionate son, " PAUL." John Mallane took his spectacles off, wiped and re-wiped, set them on his high nose, took them off and set them back again numerous times, before Paul's letter had received its last reading and was shut away in his inside pocket. Then he said to himself: " The girl must have the stove, of course. She could have had it before if I had known that she hadn't one. But it seems to me this is new business for Paul, prowling around in his mother's chambers, look ing after the comfort of their inmates. But I consider his letter an encourag ing surn. He has been indulged so innch himself, and has so many wants of his own, I have thought sometimes that he would never think of other people's. I am glad to be mistaken. It is really kind in him to think of the little girl's comfort, when, as he says, she is noth ing to him. He is right, too, in saying that he knows I want every body in my house comfortable. I do. He is right about his mother, also. Tabitha is very unreasonable about this little girl; but then all women are unreasonable some times. I shall not tell her about this letter. It would only make her fret, and do no good, for the little girl must have the stove." And without further meditation, honest John Mallane went and ordered that a stove should be put up immediately in the small bedroom. Paul's letter did make Tabitha Mal lane u fret " that very evening. "When husband and baby were asleep, she laid down the stocking which she was .mending beside the cradle, rose, took down John Mallane's coat from its accustomed hook, and placing her hand in the inside pocket, drew forth all the letters which the mail had brought him that day. This act usually closed her day's work. John Mallane confided to her very little of his business affairs. Early in their married life he had said, in reply to one of her questions, " Mother, you attend to the house, and I will at tend to the shop. You would not half understand business matters if I should try to explain them, and then you would be all the time worrying over what you knew nothing about, and that would worry me. Leave me to attend to the business ; the house and the children are enough for you." Tabitha Mallane thought otherwise. Although she had a passion for that employment, her eager faculties reached out beyond her nightly stocking-darning. What was the yearly income? Was money being made? Was money being saved for all these chil dren, or would they some time come to want ? All these were vital questions to A WOMAN'S RIGHT. 43 lier ; the last a spectre that often rose up and horrified her in the midst of plenty. The fear of coming to want, the selfish insanity which has made miserable so many lives, poor Tabitha Mallane had inherited from her mother, who lived and died in the midst of abundance, yet never enjoyed the good things of this world for a single moment, for fear that some day she might wake up and find them gone. Tabitha Mallane knew her husband too well to trouble him further with financial questions. Yet she deter mined to be answered, nevertheless. Thus she commenced the nightly prac tice of extracting from his pockets and private desk, his memoranda and busi ness letters. By reading orders, receipts, and bills of sale; by additions and deductions, she managed to give herself a partial yet tolerable knowledge of the financial status of her husband's affairs. If her conscience ever reproved her for the deceptive means which she took to obtain this knowledge, she re-assured herself with the thought that she made no bad use of it. Besides, in reality, was it not her business quite as much as it was his ? Was not her share of the Bard homestead invested in this busi ness? Had she not a perfect right to look after her own money, if John Mal lane, like all other men, did think tliat no woman could understand the compli cities of trade? John Mallane slept too soundly and snored too loudly for his wife to incur any risk in the time of looking over his business accounts. But to-night she could scarcely wait till the nasal trumpet began to sound in the adjoining bedroom. That afternoon the stove had been put up in Eirene's room, and she had token in her own hand, from the pine stand, a package directed to that troublesome girl, " care of Hon. John Mallane," in Paul's boldest writ ing. Nothing had been said to her about either package or stove, yet she was sure that both came from her son. She felt abused and indignant. Would that perverse boy be the death of his mother ? Were husband and son com bined to destroy the dearest ambition of her lifetime ? She would see. Her hand trembled, and the lines ab.mt her wide mouth grew more rigid, as she drew the pack age of letters from the coat-pocket. She had only heart for one to-night; she singled it out immediately and drop ped the others back into their receptacle. She sat down again by the cradle, and her pale face grew still paler as she opened the letter and read: "Dear Father: You will oblige me by delivering to Miss Eirene Vale the accompanying pack age ; " and further on, as she came to " Please say nothing of this letter to mother, you know her weakness, etc." the rigid lines grew almost ghastly, and she said : " It is what I expected." And when she read to the concluding sentence she reiterated : " ' Afraid that I will fall in love ! ' Afraid that you will ! Foolish boy ! You are in love, and your father is as blind as a bat. You will have your way for a while. Your fever will run itself out. But you shall never marry her, never." The next day, when Eirene returned, as Mrs. Mallane heard her step in the hall and thought of Paul's letter, her first impulse was to open the door and drive her from the house. But twenty-five years of life with John Mallane had taught her at least some thing of self-control. To send the girl from the house now, she knew would be to madden Paul, and drive him to some extreme act, and to call down upon herself the only wrath which she feared upon earth the wrath of her husband. She had resolved to control both hus band and son, and to do this, she knew that she must first, in part at least, con trol herself. If Eirene could have con ceived of the contending passions in this woman's heart, and of her pitiless anger toward herself, she would no more have dared to approach her with thanks and gratitude than she would have dared to rush into the face of any infuriated an imal. In comparison with what she felt, Ta bitha Mallane's words to Eirene were merciful; and her exclamation to tho minister, "God only knows the trial she is to me ! " was no exaggeration. 44 EIBEXE : Paul counted the cost of angering his mother when he wrote the letter and sent the package. But she had angered him so much in sending Eirene to Hill top, that the satisfaction of inflicting punishment upon her entered into the purer pleasure of purchasing the pic tures. He saw them in Williams & Stevens' window on his way back from Marlboro Hill. And the face of Evangeline, that love of all college youth, her seeking eyes so full of tender quest, the homely dress she wore, made him think of Eirene. Thus, as so many young men more or less romantic have done, he bought one copy for his Cambridge room and another for her. " It will brighten up that den a little," he said to himself. "And this figure of Faith, how like her's! the same pure girlish outline, though with her the cross is not before her, but on her shofllders. She shall have tliis picture too. How angry it will make mother. I am glad of it. She needn't have sent her off. She will find she can't balk me." Paul had a pleasant visit at Marlboro Hill. If he had been in his wonted mood, it would have been to him a sea son of marked triumph. The Cuban beauty was altogether too dark for his fancy. Even her million in sugar and slaves was not altogether to his fastidious taste. But Isabella Prescott, who some way he had fancied would be as bony and freckled as Dick, to his surprise he found his opposite ; a round-limbed blonde, with a head covered with tiny feathery curls; a creature full of kitten ish pranks and coquettish ways, with a twinkle in her small eyes which might have been called a wink in any body but a Prescott, and which in her was the sign and seal of the coquetry which she had already cultivated and consummated as an art. Six weeks earlier, this gay creature would have set Paul's nerves tingling with her witching ways, and he would have opened a campaign of flirtation which would have ended in his subjuga tion or in hers for the time being. But to his own astonishment, and to her ex treme mortification, for once lie found himself indifferent. He was by no meani in a normal mood ; he was preoccupied, and found himself constantly comparing 1 these brilliant beauties of the world to one whose preeminent charm was her un worldliness,and her utter unconscious ness of all the little arts which world- taught women practice to fascinate men. Dashing young ladies of the world who carried with them the prestige of family, of wealth, of beauty, were the only ones that Paul had ever aspired to conquer. Thus it was an utterly new sensation for him to find himself measuring all women by a new standard, and that one which he had never found in the merely fash ionable world. He was vexed with him self, and tried to banish from his thoughts the haunting face which continually came between him and all Bell Prescott's dangerous ways. "Here is a match for me," he said to himself. " The heiress of Marlboro Hill ! Dick says that she inherits this magnifi cent place from her mother, to say nuth- ing of a fortune in railroad stock, and her charming self. She is a proper match for me. Confound it! Why am I not making the most of my chance ? Dick is willing, and she well, one can't be certain of such a witch of a girl in three days. What she's up to now, is to cap tivate me. But in the end, I'll make her love me, that is if she can love, which I rather doubt. Why am I not about it? Why ?" At the close of the visit, Miss Isabella Prescott found herself piqued and disap pointed. Youth, and wealth, and beauty, are not accustomed to indifference, and cannot bear it patiently. Yet Bell Pres cott had borne it from one whom she had expected to conquer, and whom slie had intended, although in a lady-like manner, to treat with condescension. u Dick ! " she said to her brother, after Paul's departure, " I thought you said that your chum was a parcenu f " u Well, I meant that his father came up from nothing. Of course, if I hadn't considered him a gentleman, I shouldn't have invited him here. His mother, I believe, is of old stock, but ran avvajr A WOMAN'S RIGHT. and married a journeyman mechanic. The old fellow is tolerably well off now, and very influential in a small way. I've seen him." "Xever mind his father or mother. He has the air of a grandee, of a prince of the blood, and he don't take it on ; its natural. Why didn't you tell me he was so high and mighty? Why, he was as cool and indifferent to me as could be. I don't think he likes me a bit. I wouldn't mind if he wasn't so handsome and clever. You did not overrate him, Dick." " Of course I didn't," said Dick. " Really his manners are quite Euro pean, yet you say he has never been abroad ? But I blame you, Dick, I do, for talking to me as if he would be ready to kneel at my feet the moment he reach ed here. You knew better. You shouldn't have told me such a story. I can tell you, it will be no every-day conquest to subdue him." " Don't take on, Bell. Wait your time. He's in love with a shop-girl now, but he'll get over it." " A shop-girl ! What do you mean ? " " Why, I mean that he has done what I thought he never would do ; he has fallen in love with a girl who works in one of his father's shops. You ought to hear him rave about her. But he'll never marry her. He is too sensitive on the subject of position. I am perfectly certain that he lias always intended to contract a marriage that would strength en and elevate his own, not one that would drag him back to old antecedents. But for the time being he has lost his wits over this girl." " Indeed ! " was the young lady's only reply. " If you want to make a conquest, Bell, you can do it just the same ; only wait till he gets over the shop-girl, take your turn." " Indeed ! Take my turn after a shop girl ! Where's your family pride, Dick Prescott? I am not so poorly off for admirers, I can tell you." And the young lady perked up her piquant nose, and puckered up her pretty little eyes in a fashion which made her anger very comical. " Oh, you will always have all the beaux you want, Bell. But you seemed piqued over Mallane's coolness, and I was explaining it. Of course, you must wait for one flame to subside before you can expect that he will feel another. Wait your time, then conquer him. I'd like to punish him for this shop-girl nonsense myself. He's fallen in love contrary to all my advice. Of course, Bell, under any circumstances, you wouldn't be in a hurry to commit your self. You know that you can make a higher match. In one sense, it would be a coming down for a Prescott to marry a Mallane, especially to bear the name. But there's no denying one thing, Prince Mallane would make a deucedly pre sentable husband. You might marry a name and a fortune and all that sort of thing, and the man belonging to them be a cursed bore, you know. So take time to decide which you want most, the man, or the accompaniments. The chances are against your having both. It will be worth while for you to bring Mallane to your feet, whatever you do with him afterwards." "Indeed!" again said Bell, as she made a mouth at him and a courtesy, and vanished. A few moments afterwards, she stood prinking and making pretty face?, and throwing herself into graceful attitudes before her mirror. "A shop-girl, ah! I never had to wait for a shop girl before. I wonder what she's like? Of course, he thinks that she is prettier than I am ! She's a common little rustic, I know. Then this is why you were so cool to me, Sir Knight ? This is why you watched me dance, and sing, and do all manner of pretty things, as unmoved as a stone ? Very well, yon won't always. My day will come. Then I'll teach you whether you will sit by my side like your grand father carved in alabaster ! I'll go and tell Delora about you," and with these words she capered off to the boudoir of the Cuban heiress. 46 EIRENI: V. KIRENS'S SUMMER. IK the Spring, Eirene left the house of Mr. Mallane and went to live with her friend, Tilda Stade, in the family of Brother Goodlove, John Mallane's fore man. Prom the advent of the store and the pictures, Eirene felt that she must go away from the presence of Mrs. Mal lane, for she had every reason to feel that she was only a tolerated member of that lady's household. " She dislikes me," said the child, " be cause she thinks that I am trying to make myself more than God intended I should be. And she thinks that is the trouble with all my poor family, that we are not contented with our condition, and yet are not efficient enough to .better it. ' Poor and shiftless,' she called us ; tliat sounds hard. Poor father don't know how to get on, but he has always work ed hard ; sowed, and others have reap ed his harvests. Oh, if he could only get on well once ! But I must go away from here. It hurts me to stay where I am not wanted. Father thought it would be so nice for me to live here, be cause Mr. Mallane seemed so pleasant. Mr. Mallane is pleasant ; he doesn't seea to think so poorly of us. I noticed he was very kind to father the other day ; urged him to stay to dinner. I said nothing, because I feared that Mrs. Mal lane would not like it. I will go to the boarding-house. I have dreaded to go there because it is so noisy. But I will give up my French. I can give it up, although I like it so well. I never stud ied it because I thought it fine, but be cause I love the language. I will tell Tilda, to-morrow, and see if I can room with her." Tilda Stade worked next to Eirene in the shop. She was a good girl a zealous Methodist, whose piety held her apart from her more rude and boister ous companions. Although she regard ed Eirene as an unconverted sinner, still " in the gall of bitterness and bonds of iniquity," she had become personally warmly attached to her. Her gentle ness and refinement, showing in such striking contrast to many of those around her, were very attractive to Tilda, and from the first she establish ed herself as the uncompromising friend A WOMAN'S EIGHT. 47 of the new hand upon every possible occasion. When Eirene told her that she was going to leave the house of Mr. Mallane, she replied that she was glad of it, and there was something better in store for her than that wicked boarding-house, where she herself could scarcely find a moment's quiet for secret meditation and prayer. Brother Goodlove had of fered her the front chamber in his house, and she had only been waiting to find a quiet girl to share it with her, so that she could afford to take it. Eirene, who had a terror of the board ing-house, was made quite happy by this proposition. Thus, one May evening not long after, Brother Goodlove himself carried her small trunk across the street to his story- and-a-half house, which stood in a gay little garden beside the shops. Eirene followed, carrying Moses Loplolly's par rot, which, for the sake of the giver, she had named Momo. Momo was as pret ty and prating as ever, and, greatly to Eirene's discomfiture, went out of the house crying : " Paul ! Paul ! Pretty Rene! Mother 1 mother! no you don't ! Pretty Paul 1 " Mrs. Mallane had never objected to the presence of Momo, because he af forded much amusement to the children. He had a remarkably facile tongue even for a parrot, and caught new words and phrases from the little ones every day. Tabitha Mallane had heard him sing out " Paul," hundreds of times, but it never sounded as it did to-night, coming back through the street, and even from Brother Goodlove's door. She stood in the open window, with the baby in her arms, watching Eirene's departure. And as she heard the par rot's cry, her whole face darkened. " Oh, the hateful huzzy, to teach the bird such talk as that ! And she'll hang the little wretch in her window, to call my boy in, will she ! " " Mother ! mother 1 no you don't ! " screamed the parrot. " She taught it that in my own house ! " Tabitha Mallane, in her anger, was entirely forgetful of the fact that Momo had learned this precious bit of satire from her youngest son, her own little impish Jack. " Well, she's gone," the mother went on, " out of my house, at least, but only across the street. She is cunning. She knows that she will have a better chance to see him there than here. But you have a long head, young lady, if you think you will outwit me." If Tabitha Mallane's hate had allow ed her reason any action, her own good sense would have told her that all her accusations were false. She knew bet ter even when she made them. She knew enough of the simplicity of this girl's nature, to know that she had laid no traps to entice her son ; that all such devices were unknown to her thoughts. She knew, in her inmost heart, that she only hated Eirene because there was that in her face and in her nature which would be attractive to Paul ; that she hated her because she was lovely, and because her loveliness was in the way ; and the more conscious she felt of her own injustice, the more bitterly she ac cused its object. Eirene reached her little chamber, with Mr. Momo screaming at his utmost voice. She gave the cage a very hu mane and positive little shake as she set it down, and said : " Momo, how can you how can you be so naughty ? " Momo, conscious that he was in dis grace, thrust his bill into his breast, shook his head, and blinked solemnly, first with one eye, then with the other, and at last said, in a very subdued voice, " Pretty Paul ! " " Who taught him that ? " asked Til da, abruptly. " He learned it of the children. You can't think how soon he picks up words. The first thing we know, he will be re peating our talk." " Well, if I were you, I would rather have him repeat any thing than ' Paul.' In my estimation, Mr. Paul Mallane is a very wicked young man, and I shouldn't want any bird of mine calling out his name." " Oh, I hope he is not wicked," said 48 EIBENE : Eirene, with feeling, as she looked at the two pictures which he had sent her, already hanging in their assigned places. " His father and mother seem to live in him ; they would never get over it, if he were to disappoint them." " Oh, he won't disappoint them ! Haven't they brought him up to be what he is ? though, how they can, they both praying and speaking in meeting, is more than I can understand. If Sister Mallane had spent her time praying for his soul and fitting him for the itinerant ministry, instead of bring ing him up as she has done, then she would have done her duty. Jack's to be the minister, I believe. They'll give the first son to the world and the devil, and the last one to the Lord." " How do you mean that they have brought him up ? " asked Eirene, doubt fully. Notwithstanding his thoughtful kindness to her, she felt an unwilling consciousness that Mr. Paul Mallaiie might not be quite as good as he ought to be, and she was naturally anxious to lay the fault to his parental training. "I mean," said Tilda, "that they have always indulged him in every thing. They have made him feel that nobody else is quite aa handsome or quite as smart as he is. He has grown to think that nothing in the world is quite good enough for him, and has come to look down even on his own flesh and blood. If the other girls felt as I do, they wouldn't seem so pleased and flattered every time he comes into the shop and notices them. His very notice there is an insult, for he never speaks to one of them outside of it. He knows better than to make any of his fine speeches to me. I want nobody to speak to me in the shop, that can't speak to me out of it. I don't believe he'd turn his white hand over to help a shop-girl if she were dying."