At breakfast next day, Rose came in late.

“What, overslept yourself?” said her father, as she went the round of the table with her morning kisses.

“Yes; I couldn’t get to sleep.”

“And what kept you awake?” said Miss Anne, who still, to the surprise of all, appeared almost daily at the morning meal. “A penny for your thoughts.”

“I was guessing a riddle; but I took it into my sleep unanswered.”

“A good many riddles have been answered in sleep,” said Miss Anne. “Was yours?”

“No. Oh, no, Master Ned; I shall not tell it.”

“That’s the hardest riddle ever was,” cried the boy. “I have to guess what the riddle is, and then what the answer is.”

“You will never, never know.”

“May we ask twenty questions about it?” said Dick. “Animal, vegetable, or mineral?”

“I should be puzzled. To what kingdom do morals belong?”

“Why, who ever heard of mineral or vegetable morals?”

“The last might admit of illustration,” said Miss 129Anne; and she began to consider within herself the people she knew who had what she called vegetable morals.

“Is there a man in your riddle?” cried Jack.

“A Boss-town man,” said Dick, with a grin.

“Pinch him, Jack,” said Rose.

“Oh!” cried Dick, responsive to the promptly applied punishment, and making a wry face. “You would be awfully good at a Jersey courtship, Rose, especially if you got Jack to help.”

“A good friend at a pinch,” said Jack. And so these foolish people rattled on, and by and by Mrs. Lyndsay said:

“Rose, you have not told us anything about Mrs. Maybrook and those poor Colketts. I did not ask you last night, you were so sleepy.”

“Don’t ask me now,” said Rose. “I never saw such a horrible creature as that woman.”

“But her child is dead!” said Mrs. Lyndsay, with gentle inconsequence.

“I think her altogether hateful,” insisted Rose.

“Altogether hateful?” cried Anne. “I like these complete natures. It must simplify things in life so satisfactorily. Amiability would become so useless an effort. To be altogether and hopelessly aside from the possibilities of affection or respect might save a deal of moral exertion.”

“I don’t think I understand,” said Mrs. Lyndsay; “or, if I do, I am very sure that it isn’t a nice thing to say. “Wouldn’t it be as simple and better to be altogether lovable?”

“No, no,” cried Anne; “you have tried that, and 130does it really pay, dear?” Margaret was a trifle uncertain as to the compliment, and Anne, much delighted at her game of what she called mental cat’s-cradle, was about to go on, when Pierre came in.

“Ah, here is the mail,” said Lyndsay, and emptied out the bag on a side-table.

“I have been yearning for a newspaper,” said Anne.

“Not I,” cried her brother, as he walked around the table distributing the letters. “Ah,” he said, “my friend North. He was to have joined us with his wife next week, Anne; but Clayborne is dead. You will all be sorry to hear that. North says—it is, as usual, interesting. Shall I read it?”

“Oh, certainly, Archie,—all of it. I am very sorry. It will be a great loss to Dr. North.”

“And to our too small world of letters,” added Lyndsay.

“He says, ‘We—that is, Vincent and I—had spent two hours with our old friend in that great book-clad room we all know. We came away talking of his vast knowledge of medieval men and things. I had chanced to say I wondered how a gentleman in the fifteenth century spent a day, and he had at once told it all in curious detail—as to hours, dress, diet, and occupations. I left Vincent and went back for a book I had meant to borrow. When I entered, Clayborne was seated as usual with a little book in his hand. As he did not stir, I went up to him. The book was kept open by his palm. I stooped over him and saw that the book was Fulke Greville’s on Democracy. He was dead. He had noiselessly gone out, without 131stir of a finger. He must have been receiving ideas, dealing with them, and then—’ See, Margaret, this is his symbol of death. ‘I suppose, dear Lyndsay, you will think it strange that I sat still a half-hour beside my dead friend. I never felt the other world so close; it seemed within touch. At last—as the great frame began to stiffen—the book fell. I took it, marked the place, and put it in my pocket.’

“The rest,” said Lyndsay, “is of less interest.”

“A happy exit,” said Anne.

“I cannot think that,” returned Margaret. “I should want to know that I was dying.”

“One rarely does,” said her husband. “You get muddled, and say and do foolish and ill-bred things. I sympathize with a friend of mine who gave orders that he was to be left to die alone.”

“How horrible! How unnatural!”

“No, no,” cried Anne; “it is you who are ‘un-natured.’ But imagine dying with such a dull book in hand! I was wondering what book I should want to have last seen on earth.”

“I can think of but one, Anne.”

“Oh, that is not one book. Why call it a book? It is the books of many men. Besides,—and this is terrible, Margaret,—I should like it to have been some very earthsome book,—I had to coin an adjective,—and I should like it to be like Ned’s friend—several.”

Margaret was critically silent. All this was in a way unpleasant to her, as the unusual is always to some people.

“I do not think,” said Lyndsay, “I know with what thoughts I should like to go hand in hand out of life. 132He was a fine, irritable old fellow. The critics won’t bother him now.”

“Who can tell? There may be archangelic critics, for all we know,” returned Anne. “However, perhaps one won’t mind it. You know what Hafiz says: ‘Happy are the dead, for they shall inherit the kingdom of indifference.’”

“Anne! Anne!” exclaimed Mrs. Lyndsay.

“Between papa’s Aurelius and Aunt Anne’s Persian poets,” said Rose, in haste to intervene, “the fairy-land of bewilderment is never far away.”

“I have the wicked worldliness, brother, to want to know how Mr. Clayborne left his money. Wasn’t he rich?”

“Yes. Wait a moment. He divided it, North says, between him—that is North, dear; I am glad of that; it will be in wise hands—and, really, that queer creature, St. Clair; but he was clever enough to put his share in trust.”

“I am very glad. That too delightful man!” exclaimed Rose. “Do you remember, Aunt Anne, the morning we spent with him at the Louvre? It was like walking about with some Greek sculptor. He seemed to be away in Athens while he talked.”

“It was certainly interesting,” said her aunt. “A trifle naturalistic at times, I thought.”

“Was he? I don’t know. We used to wonder, mama, if he ever really cared for Alice Leigh. After that morning I made up my mind he never did. He spent ten minutes comparing her head and neck to that of the Diana.”

“What a feminine test!” said Lyndsay. “If a man 133were to tell you that you looked like the Venus of Melos, Rose, would you say, ‘No, sir; you can’t care for me. It is impossible. I shall always,’ etc., etc.—the usual formula?”

“You are too bad, Pardy! My convictions are unshaken. Mr. St. Clair told me; he did not tell her. If he had told her, I know he would have said it in that soft, convinced way. She would have liked it.”

“I see,” said Lyndsay; “it becomes clearer.”

“Why do men sneer at him? I think him—well, I think him indescribably attractive. The word ‘fascinating’ would answer. And I am sorry for poor Mrs. North; oh, I am! Fascinating—yes, that is what I should call him, and oddly unconventional.”

“I think you young folks are too apt to use that word ‘fascinating,’” said her mother. “I have no liking for these men who can fascinate, and can’t hold fast to the affections of any one.”

At this Anne burst into inextinguishable laughter, and, with one hand pressed on the aching side which was so apt to check her wilder mirth, she held out the other to the astonished Mrs. Lyndsay, exclaiming:

“A forfeit—a pun from Margaret. Five cents—ten cents; a forfeit!”

“And what did I say?”

“Oh!” cried Rose.—“the dear mama! She said—she said a man who could fascinate and not hold on to one. Oh, mama, how could you?”

“But I didn’t. I never meant such a thing.”

“Yes! yes!” they cried; and, laughing, got up from table amidst continued protests from the innocent punster.

134Rose followed her father on to the porch.

“Mrs. Maybrook will be over at ten. She wants to see you. I told her you would not fish to-day.”

“What is it she wants?”

“I do not know. Something serious, I fancy.”

“No new trouble for her, I hope. By the way, old Polycarp’s bowman is sick to-day and cannot go with you. Anne, for a wonder, wishes to go on the water. Ned shall take Pierre. Not to disappoint you, I sent Polycarp early up to the clearings to get a bowman. He will be back shortly. Good luck to you!” And he went in to his letters, while Rose arranged her fishing-basket, put in it a couple of books, and sat down to look over the bright assortment of feathered lures in her father’s fly-book. Now and then she glanced up the river, but no boat appeared.

Meanwhile Mrs. Maybrook came, and went. Rose heard her father say to her, as she went out:

“No; it must not be left in doubt.” He was of opinion that it might mean little; but it might, on the other hand, mean much. Many are tempted, and few fall. The idea of crime on this quiet river seemed almost absurd to him. He added, “I shall mention it, you may feel sure of that, Mrs. Maybrook. A Lady Macbeth in business up here is queer enough.”

“I certainly do think he ought to be told,” said Dorothy.

These bits of talk much puzzled Rose. As to Dorothy, she lingered a while to chat with Anne, who sat with her hands in her lap in that entire idleness which more than any other thing on earth exasperated Margaret Lyndsay. Below, on the beach, Ned was preparing, 135a little troubled because the other boys were not to go with him, while they, quite reconciled to the decree of parental fate, were gaily launching their canoe, and singing, as they poled up-stream:
“I would not gi’e my bonny Rose,
My bonny Rose-a-Lyndsaye,
For all the wealth the ocean knows,
Or the wale of the lands of Lyndsaye.”

Then Rose waved her handkerchief, and, much disappointed, again took her field-glass and still saw no canoe. At last Mrs. Lyndsay came out, and they sat in the pleasant sunshine, the mother sewing with even constancy, which as seriously annoyed Anne as her own absence of all manual employ did the little mother.

Very soon Anne became engaged in her usual amusement of recklessly tangling some one in the toils of statements, arguments, and opinions in which she herself had no serious belief; since, I should add, this bright, humorous, and strangely learned creature was, under all, a woman of strong views and deliberately won religious beliefs.

When Rose, distracted from her regrets at the loss of the forenoon fishing, began to hear the talk, Anne had just said:

“I don’t see how the world could go on at all without fibs.”

Upon which Mrs. Lyndsay, despite years of acquaintance with her sister-in-law, pricked her finger and dropped her thimble, and took to her fan.

“You see, there is no commandment against it, Margaret.”

136“But, Anne, ‘Thou shalt not hear false witness,’” said Mrs. Lyndsay.

“But suppose I tell a harmless fib about myself, or praise some one I should like to—to slap?”

“It’s all false witness, I reckon,” said Dorothy. “If I ain’t my own neighbor, I’d like to know who is?”

Anne smiled. That this fly was not easily meshed in her sophistical web only excited the spi............