A HAPPIER couple than Fenie and could not be found in all New York. This must be true, for both of them said so one evening while they were the only occupants of Trif's , while Trif and her husband were out, making a short call.  
Harry had just told Fenie that while he was very happy about his sister and Jermyn, because he thought them suited to each other, he was also very sorry for them, for naturally love could not be so to Jermyn as to him, for was not the officer at least ten years the older. Ten years, to Harry, seemed time enough to transform a young man into a person of middle age.
 
Fenie said she never would have mentioned such things if Harry had not begun it, but she was dreadfully sorry for Kate, for the dear girl, being much older than she—six or seven years older—could not know the of youth that gives itself to thoughts of love.
 
Harry did not like to hear any made to the age of his sister, for Kate had always seemed to him, until he met Fenie, the embodiment of everything girlishly delightful. Was she not the merriest of the family? Was it not she who always brought him out of his brown studies? Did she not play with the younger children as if she herself was still in short dresses?
 
By a natural coincidence, Jermyn and Kate, only a few squares away, were congratulating themselves that they were not young things like Harry and Fenie. They had seen much of the world; they knew men and women well; they had gone through many illusions from start to finish, but now they had found each other, the world might move on in its orbit, or out of its orbit, with no end of trouble to all concerned—except them. They were one in soul and purpose for all time, and, they hoped, for all .
 
About this time a bell rang somewhere in the house, but neither of them it. Why should they? Were they not sitting and looking as if Jermyn had merely dropped in for an evening call? Kate was pretending to do some "fancy work," and Jermyn was admiring the movements of her pretty hands, and wishing that his pay or his were so good that the aforesaid pretty hands might never have to do anything more or less becoming, and thinking he had been a to propose to such a woman when he had only his pay, nearly two thousand a year, and a thousand or two dollars he had saved, when the current of his thoughts was disturbed by the appearance of Trixy, who stood before him in a cloak and a face covered with tears.
 
 
"Trixy!" exclaimed Jermyn. "What has happened to you?"
 
"They're havin' an awful row," the child.
 
"They? Not your father and mother?"
 
"No, indeed! They never fight—aren't you ashamed of yourself! It's the other two—Aunt Fee and Harry. She says she never loved him much anyhow, and she didn't ask him to go down South and bother her, and he said he didn't believe she knew her own mind, and she said she wished he had any mind worth knowin', and she wished he was half as much of a man as Jermyn, that he'd been abusin'. She said you was a man, and he wasn't nothin' but a boy. And papa and mamma was gone out, and I was awful frightened, and I got the cook to bring me around here, so I could ask Miss Trewman if somethin' couldn't be done for 'em."
 
"Why should he have abused me?" asked Jermyn of no one in particular.
 
"Why should she compare him with you?" asked Kate. "Jermyn," she exclaimed, "did you ever make love to Fenie Wardlow?"
 
"Never! Upon my honor, my dear."
 
"Then I'm sure I don't know——"
 
"Neither do I. Suppose I go around with Trixy and find out?"
 
"I shall go with you," said Kate. There was something in her voice that Jermyn had never heard before, and it distracted his thoughts about Harry and Fenie. Nevertheless the two quickly left the house together, and Jermyn [Pg 182]talked to Trixy rather than to Kate, and Kate was made so uncomfortable that she talked to Trixy, which mystified Jermyn greatly, although Kate's hand grasped his arm tightly all the while.
 
On their way they chanced to meet Harry, to whom Jermyn said quickly:
 
"Well met, old chap! Come along with us. We are going to make a call and would like to have you with us; we can promise that you shall have a pleasant time."
 
"I'd be glad if something pleasant would happen on this particular evening—confound it!" replied Harry in the gruff tone which some very young men, despite good breeding and association, sometimes indulge in. When they reached the Highwoods' house and started up the steps Harry shrank backward and said:
 
"Not there, thank you. Not this evening."
 
He started quickly away, but Jermyn, with Kate still clinging to his arm, soon overtook him, grasped his shoulder as a policeman might seize a prisoner, and said, enough:
 
"My dear fellow, I've seen a score of clever youngsters through lovers' quarrels, and I'm going to see you through one this evening—now, or I'm going to break your neck. Which do you prefer?"
 
Harry answered nothing, although he acted like a surly criminal led by a jailor. Meanwhile Kate was grasping Jermyn's arm tightly and pressing close to his side. What had becom............