Harry Leon Wilson

“ I tried twice before I succeeded in finding my voice.
"I've told you," I said desperately; "can't you see—that queen isn't free?"
Swiftly—I regret to say, almost with a show of temper—she snatched the four of diamonds from its lawful place and laid it brazenly far outside the game.
"The creature is free," she said crisply—but at once her arrogance was gone and she drooped visibly in weakness.
So quickly did I rise from the table that the cards of the game were hurled into a meaningless confusion. I stood at her side. I had lost myself. ”

“ Again the verse came—
"If she's not here to take your part go choose another with all your heart!"
I heard wheels then, nearer than the singing,— the clumsy rumble of our big yellow 'bus. Voices were borne to me,—Clem's voice, Miss Caroline's and another not like her's, a voice firmer, yet a dusky-warm woman's voice. That was all I could think of at the time: perhaps the night suggested it; they had qualities in common. It was a woman's voice, but a determined woman's. ”

“ He will continue through the ages to be an impossible boy. Miss Lansdale feels the same way about him. Poor Fatty or Horsehead or whatever they call him stands off and glares at her, and can't say his lesson when he catches her eye—only he seldom does catch it, because she's so busy with other boys of more spirit who crowd about her and snatch hair ribbons and sing 'My lady sleeps' until no one else can. ”

“ If he weren't an A No. 1 dreamer, he'd be too serious to live, but he goes dreaming and maundering along—dreaming that things are about as he would like to have them. He sees your face and Miss Lansdale's, and then they get mixed up in a queer way, and Miss Kate's face comes out of the picture with such a look in the eyes that a man of ordinary spirit would call her 'Little Miss' right off without ever stopping to think ”

“ And, since the game had taught me that yielding—where opposition is fated to avail not—is graceful in proportion to its readiness, I surrendered as quietly as might be.
One woman face had been wholly mine for hidden cherishing through all the years. A woman face, be it understood, not the face of a woman. ”

“ I suspect that she had found cause in the past to rank her mother with Clem as a weigher and disburser of moneys. I noticed that she chose to accept Miss Caroline's earliest letters about their good fortune with a sort of half-tolerant attention, as an elder listens to the wonder-tales of an imaginative child, or as I had long listened to Clem's own dreamy-eyed recital of the profits already his from "brillions" of chickens not yet come even to the egg-stage of their careers. ”

“ I dealt eight more cards and became, to outward seeming, I hope, absorbed in the new aspect of the game.
"Perseverance will be rewarded," she said kindly. "You can't expect to learn it all at once."
"You might try not to make it harder for me."
Again had I been a third person of fair discernment, I believe I should have sworn that I caught in her eyes a gleam of hardened, relentless determination; but she only pointed to a four of hearts which I was neglecting to play up.
"Why not play the game to win?" ”

“ You are a woman bereft of all her yesterdays. Let your daughter have had her day—let her have come to an incredible maturity. But you stay here in to-day with me. We won't be fit companions for her, but she shall not lack for company. Uncle Jerry Honeycutt is now ninety-four, and he has a splendid new ear-trumpet—he will be rarely diverting for Miss Lansdale. ”

“ But there was no sign of fear in the look she held me with, and I knew she had not sensed her danger.
"You should play your stupid game to win," she repeated terribly. "You are too ingenious at finding balm in defeat." That little golden roughness in her voice seemed to grate on my bared heart. I left her eyes with a last desperate appeal to the game. My hand shook as it laid down the final eight cards. ”

“ If vatted wine in dark cellars turns in its bed and mutters seethingly at this time, in a mysterious, intuitive sympathy with the blossoming grape, a man free and above ground, with eyes to behold that miracle, may hardly hope to escape an answering thrill to its call. ”

“ I pretended always to have been a perfect devil of a fellow among the dogs, and professed loftily not to have divined the secret of my innumerable and unvarying conquests.
"Dogs are so foolishly faithful," remarked Miss Lansdale, with polite acerbity. ”

“ Whereas, her daughter was a person readily to be understood in all parts of the world where men have eyes—as well by the homekeeping as by the travelled. Eustace Eubanks, more or less a man of the world by virtue of that adventurous trip to the Holy Land, understood her at one glance, as did Arthur Updyke, who had fared abroad to the college of pharmacy and knew things. ”

“ I looked quickly up, but again there was that strange gleam in her eyes, a gleam of sternest resolve I should have called it under other circumstances.
"You see!" I exclaimed, pointing with a trembling but triumphant finger at the cards. "You see! I am beaten now, in this game that seemed easy up to the
"That will do," I said severely. "Remember there is a gentleman present."
very last moment. What could I hope for in a game where the cards fell wretchedly from the very start? If I hoped now, I'd be a hopeless fool, indeed!" ”

“ I have reason to believe that she would have mastered this fear, but at that instant Miss Caroline coughed rather alarmingly.
"You should do something for that right away," I said, as we struck ourselves apart. "You let a cough like that run along and you don't know what it may end in." Whereupon, having kissed no one on this occasion, I now kissed Miss Caroline,—without difficulty, I may add. ”

“ If he gets up to recite about geography, or about 'a gentleman sent his servant to buy ten and five-eighths yards of fine broadcloth,' or anything of that sort, and if he happens to catch your eye at the moment, he flounders like a caught fish, stares hard at the map of North America on the wall, and sits down in disgrace. ”

“ I suggested.
"Can you imagine that young woman daring to trifle with Eustace Eubanks?" she demanded.
I could, as a matter of fact; but as her query seemed to repel such a disclosure, I lied.
"True," I said, "she would never dare. I didn't think of that."
"With all her frivolity and lightness of manner and fondness for dress, she must have some sense of fitness—"
"She must, indeed!" ”

“ I conceded; "that fellow thinks I am the most beautiful person in all the world."
She said "Indeed?" with an inflection and a sweeping glance at me which I found charged with meaning. But I knew well enough that I had for all time mastered a certain measure of her difficult respect. ”

“ I said. "I can often force him to notice people whom I like, especially if they are clever enough to let him see that they like me rather well."
"It would be almost worth while," she remarked with a longing look at Jim but none at me.
"Many have found it quite so," I said, ordering Jim to charge at my feet, "but it's a great bore, I assure you." ”

“ It seemed, indeed, opportune to remember at the moment that, while this alleged Little Miss was the daughter of Miss Caroline, she was likewise—and even more palpably, as I could note by fugitive swift glimpses of her face—the daughter of a gentleman whose metal had been often tried; one who had won his reputation as much by self-possession under difficulties as by the militant spirit that incurred them.
"Kate has little of the Peavey in her,—she is every inch a Lansdale," Miss Caroline found occasion to say ”

“ But I added: "Of course, if you let him alone, he may come back to his better self. Perhaps the young lady herself may prove to be your ally."
"Indeed not! She has set out deliberately to ensnare my poor Euty," said the mother, with an incisive drawing in of her expressively thin lips. ”