Dee

“ What's happened?"
"It's just Dee, deedling," called out Dum. "I shot the deer and now Dee's breaking her heart."
"O—h, O—h, but he recognized me just before he died!" sobbed Dee. "I could tell by the way he looked at me."
"It was a good thing he did 'recognize' you," grinned Jo Winn. "If he had not, he might have gored you. An injured buck is a right dangerous thing to fool with."
We comforted Dee as best we could and praised Dum for her shot. Soon we were gathered around our campfire, and then Uncle Peter and I came in for our share of praise for the good dinner we had cooked. ”

“ It was thought by the old crones that the wonderful boy had communings with more uncanny neighbours than these simple-minded people, who no more doubted the existence of witches and fairies than they doubted that the Dee flowed from the mountains to the sea. If report spoke true, he was often heard in conversation with intelligent beings, though to ordinary human eyes no other form but that of his own was seen. ”

“ Dee was an eminent mathematician, but the early bent of his mind was somewhat fanciful; an inextinguishable ambition to fix the admiration of the world worked on a restless temperament and a long vagrant course of life; and his generous impulses burst into the wild exuberances of the reveries of astrology, alchemy, and the cabbala. ”

“ Dee found from experience of the crystal that it was necessary that all the faculties of the soul should be concentrated upon it, otherwise the spirits did not appear. He also found that he could never recollect the conversations he had with the angels. He therefore determined to communicate the secret to another person, who might converse with the spirit while he (Dee) sat in another part of the room, and took down in writing the revelations which they made. ”

“ She said: "If the pen is mightier than the sword, surely the tongue is mightier than a pair of boxing gloves." She proved to Dee's perfect satisfaction that age was a matter of temperament and that yours was eternal youth. Dee was convinced and offered the amende honorable, confessing herself beaten in argument. I begin to think trial by combat not such a good way of settling things, after all. It seems to me a quiet debate is much the better way.
Write to us soon. I heard one of the Seniors say you were the most attractive-looking man [65] she ever saw. ”

“ Dee arrived on the same errand, and was introduced to the Pole.43 An interesting conversation ensued, which ended by the stranger inviting himself to dine with the astrologer at his house at Mortlake. Dee returned home in some tribulation, for he found he had not money enough, without pawning his plate, to entertain Count Laski and his retinue in a manner becoming their dignity. In this emergency he sent off an express to the Earl of Leicester, stating frankly the embarrassment he laboured under, and praying his good offices in representing the matter to her majesty. ”

“ When we found out that she did not think it was so terribly wicked of Dee, we felt we could tell her everything, even the middy ties over the transom and the fleas in Dee's bed.
"You poor girls must be nearly dead, aren't you?" she asked kindly.
"Page and I feel right scrooch-eyed, but after [89] the first feeding, Dum slept through it all," laughed Dee. "I have more sympathy than ever for poor Zebedee. That's what we call our Father, you know, Miss Peyton. He had to bring up Dum and me on bottles as our little Mother died when we were tiny babies. ”

“ Dee pursued a shadow which he believed to be a substance; Kelly knew that the shadow was nothing more than a shadow. Dee was a man of rare scholarship and considerable intellectual power, though of a credulous and superstitious temper; Kelly was superficial and ignorant, but clever, astute, and ingenious, and by no means prone to fall into delusions. The last experiment which he made on Dee’s simple-mindedness stamps the man as the rogue and knave he was; while it illustrates the truth of the preacher’s complaint that there is nothing new under the sun. ”

“ The luminous genius who had illustrated the demonstrations of Euclid was penetrating into the arcane caverns of the cabbalists, and in a state of spiritual elevation fell into many a dreamy trance. The soul of the mystic would have passed into the world of spiritual existences, but he was not yet blessed with theurgic faculties, and patiently awaited for the elect. If Dee had many reveries, he had also many disciples both of rank and of name. Whatever a mind thus preoccupied and predisposed earnestly seeks, it usually finds; its own infirm imagination aids the deception of the artful. ”

“ Allison is right, Dee," said Dum very solemnly, "and when we are unruly with Zebedee I know it is not the fault of our early training that we love to lay it on, but just plain lack of sense."
"Well, I'm going to try to be mighty good, then," exclaimed Dee. "If there is anything in the world I hate, it's stupidity." ”

“ And in a moment the Dee Water and its memories of malice were blotted out. The ripples played instead over the River that flows from about the Throne of God. I saw all the warrings of earth, the heart-burnings, the strifes, the little days and evil nights washed away in a broad flood of grace and mercy.
I was ready to go I knew not whither. It might be that there was a work greater and more enduring for me to do, my pilgrim staff in my hand, among the flowe-mosses and peaty wildernesses of the South-west than here in the well-sheltered strath of Dee. ”

“ He came a step nearer and put his hand on her wrist. “King Philip has spoken love to you.”
Their eyes contended. “Well, sir, and what was my answer?”
“You despise him,” said Dr. Dee slowly, and shrugged his shoulders. “A woman is apt to be in a hurry.”
“What would your wisdom have had me do?”
“I never make a man hate me for nothing. You might have played him till you were Queen and kept him here in your power.”
“Played him? With my sister dying beside me? I think they say well who say that art magic is of the devil.”
Dr. Dee put up his eyebrows. “Holy morality! ”

“ We were to keep on straight down the creek with Uncle Peter and Mr. Kent, who earnestly desired to stay and "take care" of the ladies.
"I'm going to change my loads for rabbits," said Dee, suiting the action to the word. "This big shot would tear a rabbit all to pieces and I believe we are more apt to see rabbits than deer."
Mr. Kent followed suit but Dum kept "loaded [232] fur b'ar," as she expressed it. Dee soon got a rabbit, which she wept over.
"She always does that," explained Dum. "She shoots things for the love of shooting and then bawls because she has taken an innocent life." ”

“ She opened it and showed the portrait of Philip and smiled at him. He was plainly puzzled. “How now? Is art magic dumb?”
“You take that and you laugh at him! Oh, you disappoint me. If it were his head you might be safe. Who else has seen that but me?”
“Only my sister,” Elizabeth smiled.
Dr. Dee came closer. “Did you hate her so much?” he said in a low voice.
“Sirrah, you are impudent!” she flushed.
Dr. Dee shrugged. “Oh, moralities, moralities! Well, he is gone out of England, then, he and his flames and his hangmen. The mind ranges free. ”

“ When we got back to school and went up to our room to take off our hats, etc., I noticed that Dee had very shining eyes and her dimple seemed to be deeper, but she did not divulge to Dum and me what she had up her sleeve, or rather her muff. I also noticed at supper that she swiped some bread and very adroitly concealed it in her middy blouse. She also very cleverly called the attention of every one [75] at our table to the autumn moon, that was peeping into the dining room window, and while they were looking the other way, she filled a little vial with milk from her glass. ”

“ THE FOUNDLING.
"Well, Miss Peyton is some mobilizer," sighed Dee as she snuggled down in her bed after our first study hall had been lived through at Gresham. "Just to think, here we are hard at work when we have been here only two days."
"Well, I'm glad, for one," said Dum. "If they work us hard enough, we won't get Zebedee-sick. That's what Dee and I call homesick. Wherever Zebedee is, is home for us." ”

“ Anthony à Wood, in his Athenæ, mentions that Arthur Dee, when an old man, spoke in full confidence of his father’s goodness and sincerity, and affirmed that in his youth, when he had initiated him in some of his mystical pursuits, he had seen enough to satisfy him that he had discovered many marvellous secrets, and only lacked the means to make them available. ”

“ I bumped over a high car track, and you know how indignant that makes old Henry. I was awfully glad I had just dumped my last fare. Not a soul saw my skirts." This was mumbled with a full mouth as Dee steadily stoked up, accomplishing in about ten minutes one of the largest meals I ever saw.
"Dee, I am afraid you will have apoplexy or something," Dum remonstrated.
But Dee declared that a workingman must eat a lot. She could easily digest anything she could accommodate, and she was not quite full yet. ”

“ Yet, meanwhile, Dee and Kelly were engaged in sharp contentions, because the spirits fulfilled none of the promises made by the latter, who, his invention (I suppose) being exhausted, resolved, in April, 1587, to resign his office of ‘skryer,’ and young Arthur Dee then made an attempt to act in his stead.
The conclusion I have arrived at, after studying the careers and characters of our two worthies, is that they were wholly unfitted for each other’s [Pg 83] society; a barrier of ‘incompatibility’ rose straitly between them. Dee was in earnest; Kelly was practising a sham. ”

“ There is one thing I want to say and that is: "the old man always knows best." A roommate is a great institution when she is as bully as Page Allison. I was awfully afraid Dee was going to be rude, but she hasn't been a bit. As for me, I have been a little tin angel. You can ask Dee if I haven't.
I am mighty sorry for Dee. She not only misses you just as much as I do, but she misses old Brindle almost as much as she does you. I don't see why they won't let a bulldog go to boarding school. ”

“ She seems to think both of us are me, lately, although at first she thought both of us were Dee. I kicked over the first condition, but Heaven knows the last is much more trying, as I get all of Dee's demerits; not that Dee does not behave like a perfect gentleman and insist on her share of blame and even more than her share. There is no use in arguing with Miss Plympton. She won't believe you if you say you didn't do a thing, and she won't believe you when you say you did. ”

“ I just know they have a hard time getting along," sighed Dee. "They look so frail and underfed. Just look back at their house! It is simply huge. And look at their porches! Big enough for skating rinks! Do you suppose those two little old ladies live there all by themselves?"
"I fancy they must have a lot of servants," ventured Dum.
"Of course they haven't any or they wouldn't be buying shrimps themselves. They live all alone in that great house and eat a dime's worth of shrimps a day. ”

“ Our cook was not to come until the next [27] day so we were very cautious in ordering, being well aware of our limitations in the culinary art. Dum wanted to have baked, stuffed red snapper the first night because Zebedee was so fond of it, but Dee and I vetoed it and we got Spanish mackerel to broil instead.
"We simply live on fish at the beach. I hope you like it, Page," said Dee, "because you fare pretty badly down here if you don't."
"Of course I do; and I am going to eat a lot of it so I can become fishy and learn to swim. It is a terrible mortification to me that I can't swim." ”

“ Mr. Disraeli, in his “Amenities of Literature,” rightly estimated the character of the “Wizard Warden” of Manchester when he remarked that “the imagination of Dee often predominated over his science—while both were mingling in his intellectual habits, each seemed to him to confirm the other. Prone to the mystical lore of what was termed the occult sciences, which in reality are no sciences at all, since whatever remains occult ceases to be science, Dee lost his better genius.” ”

“ No answer! My eye fastened on the door with No. 13 over it. All of us have [104] some superstitions, and anyone brought up by a colored mammy is certain to have many.
"No. 13 is sure to be right," I thought, and pushed open the door.
A strange sight met my gaze: Dee, with her arms thrown around a youth who crouched on the floor, his face buried in his hands while his whole frame was shaken with sobs! From the chandelier hung a rope with a noose tied in the dangling end, and under it a pile of bricks carefully placed as though some child had been building a house of blocks. ”

“ Dum had her brownies ranged in a line on the bureau and under each she had tucked one of her visiting cards, on which she had written something. Dee looked sad and Dum defiant. [279]
"I was just telling Dum," began Dee.
"Never mind what you were telling Dum," interrupted the outrageous girl. "It's none of your business nor is it Page Allison's if I get into scrapes. I reckon I'm old enough to take care of myself without the assistance of persons no older nor wiser than I am."
"So you are, but you owe a penny for interrupting Dee; that's twenty-five cents since the holidays," I said sternly. ”

“ We piled on the trolley and were back at the hotel in short order.
The good breeding of the Greens was very marked during this little mix-up. Never once by word or look did they show the slightest curiosity as to what we were talking about. They were kind and courteous and anxious to help Dee have her chill and get over the hysterics, but that was all.
"Hadn't I better get a doctor for Dee?" poor [183] Zebedee inquired, almost distracted, as he always was when one of his girls had anything the matter.
"I really do not think so," said Mrs. Green. ”