Missy by Dana Gatlin (page 5)

yet higher when she came; she felt a “secret, deep, interior urge” to show what she could do. The seductive May air stole into her blood, a stealthy, intoxicating elixir, and finally the Inspiration came, with such tumultuous swiftness that she could never have told whence or how. Passed on to her fellows, it was caught up with an ardour equally mad and unreckoning. One minute the unpastored flock of Mathematics III A were leaning out the windows, sniffing in the lilac scents wafted over from Mrs. Clifton’s yard; the next they were scurrying, tip-toe, flushed, laughing, jostling, breathless, out through the cloak-room, down the stairs, through the side-door, across the stretch of school-yard, toward a haven beyond Mrs. Clifton’s lilac hedge.

Where were they going? They did not know. Why had they started? They did not know. What the next step? They did not know. No thought nor reason in that, onward rush; only one vast, enveloping, incoherent, tumultuous impulse–away! away! Away from dark walls into the open; away from the old into the new; away from the usual into the you- don’t-know-what; away from “you must not” into “you may.” The wild, free, bright, heedless urge of Spring!

Behind their fragrant rampart they paused, for a second, to spin about in a kind of mental and spiritual whirlpool. Some began breaking off floral sprays to decorate hat-band or shirt-waist. But Missy, feeling her responsibility as a leader, glanced back, through leafy crevices, at those prison-windows open and ominously near.

“We mustn’t stay here!” she admonished. “We’ll get caught!”

As if an embodiment of warning, just then Mrs. Clifton emerged out on her front porch; she looked as if she might be going to shout at them. But Raymond waited to break off a lilac cluster for Missy. He was so cool about it; it just showed how much he was like the Black Prince–though of course no one would “understand” if you said such a thing.

The fragrantly beplumed company sped across the green Clifton yard, ruthlessly over the Clifton vegetable garden, to the comparative retreat of Silver Street, beyond. But they were not yet safe–away! away! Missy urged them westward, for no defined reason save that this direction might increase their distance from the danger zone of the High School.

Still without notion of whither bound, the runaways, moist and dishevelled, found themselves down by the railroad tracks. There, in front of the Pacific depot, stood the 10:43 “accommodation” for Osawatomie and other points south. Another idea out of the blue!

“Let’s go to Osawatomie!” cried Missy.

The accommodation was puffing laboriously into action as the last Junior clambered pantingly on. But they’d all got on! They were on their way!

But not on their way to Osawatomie.

For before they had all found satisfactory places on the red plush seats where it was hard to sit still with that bright balminess streaming in through the open windows–hard to sit still, or to think, or to do anything but flutter up and down and laugh and chatter about nothing at all–the conductor appeared.

“Tickets, please!”

A trite and commonplace phrase, but potent to plunge errant, winging fancies down to earth. The chattering ceased short. No one had thought of tickets, nor even of money. The girls of the party looked appalled–in Cherryvale the girls never dreamed of carrying money to school; then furtively they glanced at the boys. Just as furtively the boys were exploring into pockets, but though they brought forth a plentiful salvage of the anomalous treasure usually to be found in school-boys’ pockets, the display of “change” was pathetic. Raymond had a quarter, and that was more than anyone else turned out.

The conductor impatiently repeated:

“Tickets, please!”

Then Missy, feeling that financial responsibility must be recognized in a class president, began to put her case with a formal dignity that impressed every one but the conductor.

“We’re the Junior class of the Cherryvale High School–we wish to go to Osawatomie. Couldn’t we–maybe–?”

Formal dignity broke down, her voice stuck in her throat, but her eyes ought to have been enough. They were big and shining eyes, and when she made them appealing they had been known to work wonders with father and mother and other grown-ups, even with the austere Professor Sutton. But this burly figure in the baggy blue uniform had a face more like a wooden Indian than a human grown-up–and an old, dyspeptic wooden Indian at that. Missy’s eyes were to avail her nothing that hour.

“Off you get at the watering-tank,” he ordained. “The whole pack of you.”

And at the watering-tank off they got.

And then, as often follows a mood of high adventure, there fell upon the festive group a moment of pause, of unnatural quiet, of “let down.”

“Well, what’re we going to do now?” queried somebody.

“We’ll do whatever Missy says,” said Raymond, just as if he were Sir Walter Raleigh speaking of the Virgin Queen. It was a wonder someone didn’t start teasing him about her; but everyone was too taken up waiting for Missy to proclaim. She set her very soul vibrating; shut her eyes tightly a moment to think; and, as if in proof that Providence helps them who must help others, almost instantly she opened them again.

“Rocky Ford!”

Just like that, out of the blue, a quick, unfaltering, almost unconscious cry of the inspired. And, with resounding acclaim, her followers caught it up:

“Rocky Ford! Rocky Ford!”–“That’s the ticket!”–“We’ll have a picnic’.”–“Rocky Ford! Rocky Ford!”

Rocky Ford, home of nymphs, water-babies and Indian legend, was only half a mile away. Again it shone in all its old-time romantic loveliness on Missy’s inward eye. And for a fact it was a good Maytime picnic place.

That day everything about the spot seemed invested with a special kind of beauty, the kind of beauty you feel so poignantly in stories and pictures but seldom meet face to face in real life. The Indian maiden became a memory you must believe in: she had loved someone and they were parted somehow and she was turned into a swan or something. Off on either side the creek, the woods stretched dim and mysterious; but nearby, on the banks, the little new leaves stirred and sparkled in the sun like green jewels; and the water dribbled and sparkled over the flat white stones of the ford like a million swishing diamonds; and off in the distance there were sounds which may have been birds–or, perhaps, the legendary maiden singing; and, farther away, somewhere, a faint clanging music which must be cow- bells, only they had a remote heavenly quality rare in cow-bells.

And, all the while, the sun beaming down on the ford, intensely soft and bright. Why is it that the sun can seem so much softer and brighter in some places than in others?

Missy felt that soft brightness penetrating deeper and deeper into her being. It seemed a sort of limpid, shining tide flowing through to her very soul; it made her blood tingle, and her soul quiver. And, in some mysterious way, the presence, of Raymond Bonner, consciousness of Raymond–Raymond himself–began to seem all mixed up with this ineffable, surging effulgence. Missy recognized that she had long experienced a secret, strange, shy kind of feeling toward Raymond. He was so handsome and so gay. and his dark eyes told her so plainly that he liked her, and he carried her books home for her despite the fact that the other boys teased him. The other girls had teased Missy, too, so that sometimes she didn’t know whether she was more happy or embarrassed over Raymond’s admiration.

But, to-day, everyone seemed lifted above such childish rudeness. When Missy had first led off from the watering-tank toward Rocky Ford, Raymond had taken his place by her side, and he maintained it there masterfully though two or three other boys tried to include themselves in the class president’s group–“buttinskys,” Raymond termed them.

Once, as they walked together along the road, Raymond took hold of her hand. He had done that much before, but this was different. Those other times did not count. She knew that this was different and that he, too, knew it was different. They glanced at each other, and then quickly away.

Then, when they turned off into a field, to avoid meeting people who might ask questions, Raymond held together the barbed wires of the fence very carefully, so she could creep under without mishap. And when they neared the woods, he kicked all the twigs from her path, and lifted aside the underbrush lest it touch her face. And at each opportunity for this delicious solicitude they would look at each other, and then quickly away.

That was in many ways an unforgettable picnic; many were the unheard-of things carried out as soon as thought of. For example, the matter of lunch. What need to go hungry when there were eggs in a farmer’s henhouse not a half-mile away, and potatoes in the farmer’s store-house, and sundry other edibles all spread out, as if waiting, in the farmer’s cellar? (Blessings on the farmer’s wife for going avisiting that day!)

The boys made an ingenious oven of stones and a glorious fire of brush; and the girls made cunning dishes out of big, clean-washed leaves. Then, when the potatoes and eggs were ready, all was devoured with a zest that paid its own tribute to the fair young cooks; and the health of the fair young cooks was drunk in Swan Creek water, cupped in sturdy masculine hands; and even the girls tried to drink from those same cups, laughing so they almost strangled. A mad, merry and supremely delightful feast.

After she had eaten, for some reason Missy felt a craving to wander off somewhere and sit still a while. She would have loved to stretch out in the grass, and half-close her eyes, and gaze up at the bits of shining, infinite blue of the sky, and dream. But there was Raymond at her elbow–and she wanted, even more than she wanted to be alone and dream, Raymond to be there at her elbow.

Then, too, there were all the others. Someone shouted:

“What’ll we do now? What’ll we do, Missy?”

So the class president dutifully set her wits to work. Around the flat white stones of the ford the water was dribbling, warm, soft, enticing.

“Let’s go wading!” she cried.

Wading!

Usually Missy would have shrunk from appearing before boys in bare feet. But this was a special kind of day which held no room for embarrassment; and, more quickly than it takes to tell it, shoes and stockings were off and the new game was on. Missy stood on a stepping-stone, suddenly diffident; the water now looked colder and deeper, the whispering cascadelets seemed to roar like breakers on a beach. The girls were all letting out little squeals as the water chilled their ankles, and the boys made feints of chasing them into deeper water.

Raymond pursued Missy, squealing and skipping from stone to stone till, unexpectedly, she lost her slippery footing and went sprawling into the shallow stream.

“Oh, Missy! I’m sorry!” She felt his arms tugging at her. Then she found herself standing on the bank, red-faced and dripping, feeling very wretched and very happy at the same time–wretched because Raymond should see her in such plight; happy because he was making such a fuss over her notwithstanding.

He didn’t seem to mind her appearance, but took his hat and began energetically to fan her draggled hair.

“I wish my hair was curly like Kitty Allen’s,” she said.

“I like it this way,” said Raymond, unplaiting the long braids so as to fan them better.

“But hers curls up all the prettier when it’s wet. Mine strings.”

“Straight hair’s the nicest,” he said with finality.

He liked straight hair best! A wave of celestial bliss stole over her. It was wonderful: the big, fleecy clouds so serenely beautiful up in the enigmatic blue; the sun pouring warmly down and drying her dress in uneven patches; the whisperings of the green-jewelled leaves and the swishing of the diamond-bubbles on the stones; the drowsy, mysterious sounds from far away in the woods, and fragrance everywhere; and everything seeming delightfully remote; even the other boys and girls–everything and everybody save Raymond, standing there so patiently fanning the straight hair he admired.

Oh, the whole place was entrancing, entrancing in a new way; and her sensations, too, were entrancing in a new way. Even when Raymond, as he manipulated her hair, inadvertently pulled the roots, the prickly pains seemed to tingle on down through her being in little tremors of pure ecstasy.

Raymond went on fanning her hair.

“Curly hair’s messy looking,” he observed after a considerable pause during which, evidently, his thoughts had remained centred on this pleasing theme.

And then, all of a sudden, Missy found herself saying an inexplicable, unheard-of thing:

“You can have a lock-if you want to.”

She glanced up, and then quickly down. And she felt herself blushing again; she didn’t exactly like to blush–yet–yet–

“Do I want it?”

Already Raymond had dropped his improvised fan and was fumbling for his knife.

“Where?” he asked.

Missy shivered deliciously at the imminence of that bright steel blade; what if he should let it slip?–but, just then, even mutilation, provided it be at Raymond’s hand, didn’t seem too terrible.

“Wherever you want,” she murmured.

“All right–I’ll take a snip here where it twines round your ear–it looks so sort of affectionate.”

She giggled with him. Of course it was all terribly silly–and yet–

Then there followed a palpitant moment while she held her breath and shut her eyes. A derisive shout caused her to open them quickly. There stood Don Jones, grinning.

“Missy gave Raymond a lock of her hair! Missy gave Raymond a lock of her hair!”

Missy’s face grew hot; blushing was not now a pleasure; she looked up, then down; she didn’t know where to look.

“Gimme one, too! You got to play fair, Missy–gimme one, too!”

Then, in that confusion of spirit, she heard her voice, which didn’t seem to be her own voice but a stranger’s, saying:

“All right, you can have one, too, if you want it, Don.”

Don forthwith advanced. Missy couldn’t forebear a timid glance toward Raymond. Raymond was not looking pleased. She wished she might assure him she didn’t really want to give the lock to Don, and yet, at the same time, she felt strangely thrilled at that lowering look on Raymond’s face. It was curious. She wanted Raymond to be happy, yet she didn’t mind his being just a little bit unhappy–this way. Oh, how complicated and fascinating life can be!

During the remainder of their stay at the ford Missy was preoccupied with this new revelation of herself and with a furtive study of Raymond whose continued sulkiness was the cause of it. Raymond didn’t once come to her side during all that endless three-mile tramp back to Cherryvale; but she was conscious of his eye on her as she trudged along beside Don Jones. She didn’t feel like talking to Don Jones. Nor was the rest of the crowd, now, a lively band; it was harder to laugh than it had been in the morning; harder even to talk. And when they did talk, little unsuspected irritabilities began to gleam out. For now, when weary feet must somehow cover those three miles, thoughts of the journey’s end began to rise up in the truants’ minds. During the exalted moments of adventure they hadn’t thought of consequences. That’s a characteristic of exalted moments. But now, so to speak, the ball was over, the roses all shattered and faded, and the weary dancers must face the aftermath of to-morrow. . .

And Missy, trudging along the dusty road beside Don Jones who didn’t count, felt all kinds of shadows rising up to eclipse brightness in her soul. What would Professor Sutton do?–he was fearfully strict. And father and mother would never understand. . .

If only Don Jones would stop babbling to her! Why did he persist in walking beside her, anyway? That lock of hair didn’t mean anything! She wished she hadn’t given it to him; why had she, anyway? She herself couldn’t comprehend why, and Raymond would never, never comprehend.

The farther she walked, the less she saw the pleasanter aspects of Raymond’s jealousy and the more what might be the outcome of it. Perhaps he’d never have anything to do with her again. That would be terrible! And she’d have such a short time to try making it up. For in less than a month she’d have to go with Aunt Isabel to Colorado; and, then, she wouldn’t see Raymond for weeks and weeks. Colorado! It was like talking of going to the moon, a dreary, dead, far-off moon, with no one in it to speak to. Aunt Isabel? Aunt Isabel was sweet, but she was so old–nearly thirty! How could she, Missy, go and leave Raymond misunderstanding her so?

But who can tell how Fate may work to confound rewards and punishments!

It was to become a legend in the Cherryvale High School how, once on a day in May, a daring band ran away from classes and how the truant class, in toto, was suspended for the two closing weeks of the semester, with no privilege of “making up” the grades. And the legend runs that one girl, and the most prominent girl in the class at that, by reason of this sentence fell just below the minimum grade required to “pass.”

Yes; Missy failed again. Of course that was very bad. And taking her disgrace home–indeed, that was horrid. As she faced homeward she felt so heavy inside that she knew she could never eat her dinner. Besides, she was walking alone–Raymond hadn’t walked home with her since the wretched picnic. She sighed a sigh that was not connected with the grade card in her pocket. For one trouble dwarfs another in this world; and friendship is more than honours–a sacred thing, friendship! Only Raymond was so unreasonable over Don’s lock of hair; yet, for all the painfulness of Raymond’s crossness, Missy smiled the littlest kind of a down-eyed, secret sort of smile as she thought of it. . . It was so wonderful and foolish and interesting how much he cared that Missy began to question what he’d do if she got Don to give her a lock of his hair.

Then she sobered suddenly, as you do at a funeral after you have forgotten where you are and then remember. That card was an unpleasant thing to take home! . . . Just what did Raymond mean by giving Kitty Allen a lock of his hair? And doing it before Missy herself–“Kitty, here’s that lock I promised you”–just like that. Then he had laughed and joked as if nothing unusual had happened– only was he watching her out of the corner of his eye when he thought she wasn’t looking? That was the real question. The idea of Raymond trying to make her jealous! How simple-minded boys are!

But, after all, what a dear, true friend he had proved himself in the past–before she offended him. And how much more is friendship than mere pleasures like travel–like going to Colorado.

But was he jealous? If he was–Missy felt an inexplicable kind of bubbling in her heart at that idea. But if he wasn’t–well, of course it was natural she should wonder whether Raymond looked on friendship as a light, come-and-go thing, and on locks of hair as meaning nothing at all. For he had never been intimate with Kitty Allen; and he had said he didn’t like curly hair. Yet, probably, he had one of Kitty Allen’s ringlets. . . Missy felt a new, hideous weight pulling down her heart.

Of course she had given that straight wisp to Don Jones–but what else could she do to keep him from telling? Oh, life is a muddle! And here, in less than a week, Aunt Isabel would come by and whisk her off to the ends of the earth; and she might have to go without really knowing what Raymond meant. . .

And oh, yes–that old card! How dreary life can be as one grows older.

Missy waited to show the card till her father came home to supper– she knew it was terribly hard for father to be stern. But when Missy, all mute appeal, extended him the report, he looked it over in silence and then passed it on to mother. Mother, too, examined it with maddening care.

“Well,” she commented at last. “I see you’ve failed again.”

“It was all the fault of those two weeks’ grades,” the culprit tried to explain. “If it hadn’t been for that–“

“But there was ‘that.'” Mother’s tone was terribly unsympathetic.

“I didn’t think of grades–then.”

“No, that’s the trouble. I’ve warned you, Missy. You’ve got to learn to think. You’ll have to stay home and make up those grades this summer. You’d better write to Aunt Isabel at once, so she won’t be inconvenienced.”

Mother’s voice had the quiet ring of doom.

Tender-hearted father looked away, out the window, so as not to see the disappointment on his daughter’s face. But Missy was gazing down her nose to hide eyes that were shining. Soon she made an excuse to get away.

Out in the summerhouse it was celestially beautiful and peaceful. And, magically, all this peace and beauty seemed to penetrate into her and become a part of herself. The glory of the pinkish-mauve sunset stole in and delicately tinged her so; the scent of the budding ramblers, and of the freshly-mowed lawn, became her own fragrant odour; the soft song of the breeze rocking the leaves became her own soul’s lullaby. Oh, it was a heavenly world, and the future bloomed with enchantments! She could stay in Cherryvale this summer! Dear Cherryvale! Green prairies were so much nicer than snow-covered mountains, and gently sloping hills than sharp-pointing peaks; and much, much nicer than tempestuous waterfalls was the sweet placidity of Swan Creek. Dear Swan Creek. . .

The idea of Raymond’s trying to make her jealous! How simple-minded boys are! But what a dear, true friend he was, and how much more is friendship than mere pleasures like travel–or prominence or fine grades or anything. . .

It was at this point in her cogitations that Missy, seeing her Anthology–an intimate poetic companion–where she’d left it on a bench, dreamily picked it up, turned a few pages, and then was moved to write. We have borrowed her product to head this story.

Meanwhile, back in the house, her father might have been heard commenting on the noble behaviour of his daughter.

“Didn’t let out a single whimper–brave little thing! We must see to it that she has a good time at home–poor young one! I think we’d better get the car this summer, after all.”

CHAPTER IX

DOBSON SAVES THE DAY

It was two years after the Spanish war; and she was seventeen years old and about to graduate.

On the Senior class roster of the Cherryvale High School she was catalogued as Melissa Merriam, well down–in scholarship’s token– toward the tail-end of twenty-odd other names. To the teachers the list meant only the last young folks added to a backreaching line of girls and boys who for years and years had been coming to “Commencement” with “credits” few or many, large expectant eyes fixed on the future, and highly uncertain habits of behaviour; but, to the twenty-odd, such dead prosiness about themselves would have been inconceivable even in teachers.

And Missy?

Well, there were prettier girls in the class, and smarter girls-and boys, too; yet she was the one from all that twenty-odd who had been chosen to deliver the Valedictory. Did there ever exist a maid who did not thrill to proof that she was popular with her mates? And when that tribute carries with it all the possibilities of a Valedictory–double, treble the exultation.

The Valedictory! When Missy sat in the classroom, exhausted with the lassitudinous warmth of spring and with the painful uncertainty of whether she’d be called to translate the Vergil passage she hadn’t mastered, visions of that coming glory would rise to brighten weary hours; and the last thing at night, in falling asleep, as the moon stole in tenderly to touch her smiling face, she took them to her dreams. She saw a slender girl in white, standing alone on a lighted stage, gazing with luminous eyes out on a darkened auditorium. Sometimes they had poky old lectures in that Opera House. Somebody named Ridgely Holman Dobson was billed to lecture there now–before Commencement; but Missy hated lectures; her vision was of something lifted far above such dismal, useful communications. She saw a house as hushed as when little Eva dies–all the people listening to the girl up there illumined: the lift and fall of her voice, the sentiments fine and noble and inspiring. They followed the slow grace of her arms and hands–it was, indeed, as if she held them in the hollow of her hand. And then, finally, when she had come to the last undulating cadence, the last vibrantly sustained phrase, as she paused and bowed, there was a moment of hush–and then the applause began. Oh, what applause! And then, slowly, graciously, modestly but with a certain queenly pride, the shining figure in white turned and left the stage.

She could see it all: the way her “waved” hair would fluff out and catch the light like a kind of halo, and each one of the nine organdie ruffles that were going to trim the bottom of her dress; she could even see the glossy, dark green background of potted palms–mother had promised to lend her two biggest ones. Yes, she could see it and hear it to the utmost completeness–save for one slight detail: that was the words of the girlish and queenly speaker. It seemed all wrong that she, who wasn’t going to be a dull lecturer, should have to use words, and so many of them! You see, Missy hadn’t yet written the Valedictory.

But that didn’t spoil her enjoyment of the vision; it would all come to her in time. Missy believed in Inspiration. Mother did not.

Mother had worried all through the four years of her daughter’s high school career–over “grades” or “exams” or “themes” or whatnot. She had fretted and urged and made Missy get up early to study; had even punished her. And, now, she was sure Missy would let time slide by and never get the Valedictory written on time. The two had already “had words” over it. Mother was dear and tender and sweet, and Missy would rather have her for mother than any other woman in Cherryvale, but now and then she was to be feared somewhat.

Sometimes she would utter an ugly, upsetting phrase:

“How can you dilly-dally so, Missy? You put everything off!–put off–put off! Now, go and try to get that thesis started!”

There was nothing for Missy to do but go and try to obey. She took tablet and pencil out to the summerhouse, where it was always inspiringly quiet and beautiful; she also took along the big blue- bound Anthology from the living-room table–an oft-tapped fount; but even reading poetry didn’t seem able to lift her to the creative mood. And you have to be in the mood before you can create, don’t you? Missy felt this necessity vaguely but strongly; but she couldn’t get it across to mother.

And even worse than mother’s reproaches was when father finally gave her a “talking to”; father was a big, wise, but usually silent man, so that when he did speak his words seemed to carry a double force. Missy’s young friends were apt to show a little awe of father, but she knew he was enormously kind and sympathetic. Long ago–oh, years before–when she was a little girl, she used to find it easier to talk to him than to most grown-ups; about all kinds of unusual things–the strange, mysterious, fascinating thoughts that come to one. But lately, for some reason, she had felt more shy with father. There was much she feared he mightn’t understand–or, perhaps, she feared he might understand.

So, in this rather unsympathetic domestic environment, the class Valedictorian, with the kindling of her soul all laid, so to speak, uneasily awaited the divine spark. It was hard to maintain an easy assumption that all was well; especially after the affair of the hats got under way.

Late in April Miss Ackerman, the Domestic Science teacher, had organized a special night class in millinery which met, in turns, at the homes of the various members. The girls got no “credit” for this work, but they seemed to be more than compensated by the joy of creating, with their own fingers, new spring hats which won them praise and admiration. Kitty Allen’s hat was particularly successful. It was a white straw “flat,” faced and garlanded with blue. Missy looked at its picturesque effect, posed above her “best friend’s” piquantly pretty face, with an envy which was augmented by the pardonable note of pride in Kitty’s voice as she’d say: “Oh, do you really like it?–I made it myself, you know.”

If only she, Missy, might taste of this new kind of joy! She was not a Domestic Science girl; but, finally, she went to Miss Ackermanand- -oh,rapture!–obtained permission to enter the millinery class.

However, there was still the more difficult matter of winning mother’s consent. As Missy feared, Mrs. Merriam at once put on her disapproving look.

“No, Missy. You’ve already got your hands full. Have you started the thesis yet?”

“Oh, mother!–I’ll get the thesis done all right! And this is such a fine chance!–all the girls are learning how to make their own hats. And I thought, maybe, after I’d learned how on my own, that maybe I could make you one. Do you remember that adorable violet straw you used to have when I was a little girl?–poke shape and with the pink rose? I remember father always said it was the most becoming hat you ever had. And I was thinking, maybe, I could make one something like that!”

“I’m afraid I’ve outgrown pink roses, dear.” But mother was smiling a soft, reminiscent little shadow of a smile.

“But you haven’t outgrown the poke shape–and violet! Oh, mother!”

“Well, perhaps–we’ll see. But you mustn’t let it run away with you. You must get that thesis started.”

Not for nothing had Missy been endowed with eyes that could shine and a voice that could quaver; yes, and with an instinct for just the right argument to play upon the heart-strings.

She joined the special night class in millinery. She learned to manipulate troublesome coils of wire and pincers, and to evolve a strange, ghostly skeleton–thing called a “frame,” but when this was finally covered with crinoline and tedious rows-on-rows of straw braid, drab drudgery was over and the deliciousness began.

Oh, the pure rapture of “trimming”! Missy’s first venture was a wide, drooping affair, something the shape of Kitty Allen’s, only her own had a much subtler, more soul-satisfying colour scheme. The straw was a subtle blue shade–the colour Raymond Bonner, who was a classmate and almost a “beau,” wore so much in neckties–and the facing shell-pink, a delicate harmony; but the supreme ecstasy came with placing the little silken flowers, pink and mauve and deeper subtle-blue, in effective composition upon that heavenly background; and, in just the one place, a glimpse of subtle-blue ribbon, a sheen as gracious as achieved by the great Creator when, with a master’s eye, on a landscape he places a climactic stroke of shining blue water. Indeed, He Himself surely can view His handiwork with no more sense o gratification than did Missy, regarding that miracle of colour which was her own creation.

Oh, to create! To feel a blind, vague, ineffable urge within you, stealing out to tangibility in colour and form! Earth–nor Heaven, either–can produce no finer rapture.

Missy’s hat was duly admired. Miss Ackerman said she was a “real artist”; when she wore it to Sunday-school everybody looked at her so much she found it hard to hold down a sense of unsabbatical pride; father jocosely said she’d better relinquish her dreams of literary fame else she’d deprive the world of a fine milliner; and even mother admitted that Mrs. Anna Stubbs, the leading milliner, couldn’t have done better. However, she amended: “Now, don’t forget your school work, dear. Have you decided on the subject of your thesis yet?”

Missy had not. But, by this time, the hat business was moving so rapidly that she had even less time to worry over anything still remote, like the thesis–plenty of time to think of that; now, she was dreaming of how the rose would look blooming radiantly from this soft bed of violet straw; . . . and, now, how becoming to Aunt Nettie would be this misty green, with cool-looking leaves and wired silver gauze very pure and bright like angels’ wings–dear Aunt Nettie didn’t have much “taste,” and Missy indulged in a certain righteous glow in thus providing her with a really becoming, artistic hat. Then, after Aunt Nettie’s, she planned one for Marguerite. Marguerite was the hired girl, mulatto, and had the racial passion for strong colour. So Missy conceived for her a creation that would be at once satisfying to wearer and beholder. How wonderful with one’s own hands to be able to dispense pleasure! Missy, working, felt a peculiarly blended joy; it is a gratification, indeed, when a pleasing occupation is seasoned with the fine flavour of noble altruism.

She hadn’t yet thought of a theme for the Valedictory, and mother was beginning to make disturbing comments about “this hat mania,” when, by the most fortuitous chance, while she was working on Marguerite’s very hat–in fact, because she was working on it–she hit upon a brilliantly possible idea for the Valedictory.

She was rummaging in a box of discarded odds and ends for “trimmings.” The box was in mother’s store-closet, and Missy happened to observe a pile of books up on the shelf. Books always interested her, and even with a hat on her mind she paused a moment to look over the titles. The top volume was “Ships That Pass in the Night”–she had read that a year or so ago–a delightful book, though she’d forgotten just what about. She took it down and opened it, casually, at the title page. And there, in fine print beneath the title, she read:

Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, Only a signal shewn, and a distant voice in the darkness; So, on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, Only a look and a voice–then darkness again, and a silence.

Standing there in the closet door, Missy read the stanza a second time–a third. And, back again at her work, fingers dawdled while eyes took on a dreamy, preoccupied expression. For phrases were still flitting through her head: “we pass and speak one another” . . . “then darkness again, and a silence” . . .

Very far away it took you–very far, right out on the vast, surging, mysterious sea of Life!

The sea of Life!. . . People, like ships, always meeting one another–only a look and a voice–and then passing on into the silence. . .

Oh, that was an idea! Not just a shallow, sentimental pretense, but a real idea, “deep,” stirring and fine. What a glorious Valedictory that would make!

And presently, when she was summoned to supper, she felt no desire to talk; it was so pleasant just to listen to those phrases faintly and suggestively resounding. All the talk around her came dimly and, sometimes, so lost was she in hazy delight that she didn’t hear a direct question.

Finally father asked:

“What’s the day-dream, Missy?–thinking up a hat for me?”

Missy started, and forgot to note that his enquiry was facetious.

“No,” she answered quite seriously, “I haven’t finished Marguerite’s yet.”

“Yes,” cut in mother, in the tone of reproach so often heard these days, “she’s been frittering away the whole afternoon. And not a glimmer for the thesis yet!”

At that Missy, without thinking, unwarily said:

“Oh, yes, I have, mother.”

“Oh,” said her mother interestedly. “What is it?”

Missy suddenly remembered and blushed–grown-ups seldom understand unless you’re definite.

“Well,” she amended diffidently, “I’ve got the subject.”

“What is it?” persisted mother.

Everybody was looking at Missy. She poured the cream over her berries, took a mouthful; but they all kept looking at her, waiting.

“‘Ships That Pass in the Night,'” she had to answer.

“For Heaven’s sake!” ejaculated Aunt Nettie. “What’re you going to write about that?”

This was the question Missy had been dreading. She dreaded it because she herself didn’t know just what she was going to write about it. Everything was still in the first vague, delightful state of just feeling it–without any words as yet; and grown-ups don’t seem to understand about this. But they were all staring at her, so she must say something.

“Well, I haven’t worked it out exactly–it’s just sort of pouring in over me.”

“What’s pouring over you?” demanded Aunt Nettie.

“Why–the sea of Life,” replied Missy desperately.

“For Heaven’s sake!” commented Aunt Nettie again.

“It sounds vague; very vague,” said father. Was he smiling or frowning?–he had such a queer look in his eyes. But, as he left the table, he paused behind her chair and laid a very gentle hand on her hair.

“Like to go out for a spin in the car?”

But mother declined for her swiftly. “No, Missy must work on her thesis this evening.”

So, after supper, Missy took tablet and pencil once more to the summerhouse. It was unusually beautiful out there–just the kind of evening to harmonize with her uplifted mood. Day was ending in still and brilliant serenity. The western sky an immensity of benign light, and draped with clouds of faintly tinted gauze.

“Another day is dying,” Missy began to write; then stopped.

The sun sank lower and lower, a reddening ball of sacred fire and, as if to catch from it a spark, Missy sat gazing at it as she chewed her pencil; but no words came to be caught down in pencilled tangibility. Oh, it hurt!–all this aching sweetness in her, surging through and through, and not able to bring out one word!

“Well?” enquired mother when, finally, she went back to the house.

Missy shook her head. Mother sighed; and Missy felt the sigh echoing in her own heart. Why were words, relatively so much less than inspiration, yet so important for inspiration’s expression? And why were they so maddeningly elusive?

For a while, in her little white bed, she lay and stared hopelessly out at the street lamp down at the corner; the glow brought out a beautiful diffusive haze, a misty halo. “Only a signal shewn” . . .

The winking street lamp seemed to gaze back at her. . . “Sometimes a signal flashes from out the darkness” . . . “Only a look” . . . “But who can comprehend the unfathomable influence of a look?–It may come to a soul wounded and despairing–a soul caught in a wide- sweeping tempest–a soul sad and weary, longing to give up the struggle. . .”

Where did those words, ringing faintly in her consciousness, come from? She didn’t know, was now too sleepy to ponder deeply. But they had come; that was a promising token. To-morrow more would come; the Valedictory would flow on out of her soul–or into her soul, whichever way it was0-in phrases serene, majestic, ineffable.

Missy’s eyelids fluttered; the street lamp’s halo grew more and more irradiant; gleamed out to illumine, resplendently, a slender girl in white standing on a lighted stage, gazing with lumincus eyes out on a darkened auditorium, a house as hushed as when little Eva dies. All the people were listening to the girl up there speaking–the rhythmic lift and fall of her voice, the sentiments fine and noble and inspiring:

“Ships that pass in the night and speak each other in passing. . . So, on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another. . . Only a look and a voice. . . But who can comprehend the unfathomable influence of a look?. . . which may come to a soul sad and weary, longing to give up the struggle. . .”

When she awoke next morning raindrops were beating a reiterative plaint against the window, and the sound seemed very beautiful. She liked lying in bed, staring out at the upper reaches of sombre sky. She liked it to be rainy when she woke up–there was something about leaden colour everywhere and falling rain that made you fit for nothing but placid staring, yet, at the same time, pleasantly meditative. Then was the time that the strange big things which filter through your dreams linger evanescently in your mind to ponder over.

“Only a look and a voice–but who can comprehend the–the–the unfathomable influence of a look? It may come to a soul–may come to a soul–“

Bother! How did that go?

Missy shut her eyes and tried to resummon the vision, to rehear those rhythmic words so fraught with wisdom. But all she saw was a sort of heterogeneous mass of whirling colours, and her thoughts, too, seemed to be just a confused and meaningless jumble. Only her FEELING seemed to remain. She could hardly bear it; why is it that you can feel with that intolerably fecund kind of ache while THOUGHTS refuse to come?

She finally gave it up, and rose and dressed. It was one of those mornings when clothes seem possessed of some demon so that they refuse to go on right. At breakfast she was unwontedly cross, and “talked back” to Aunt Nettie so that mother made her apologize. At that moment she hated Aunt Nettie, and even almost disliked mother. Then she discovered that Nicky, her little brother, had mischievously hidden her strap of books and, all of a sudden, she did an unheard-of thing: she slapped him! Nicky was so astonished he didn’t cry; he didn’t even run and tell mother, but Missy, seeing that hurt, bewildered look on his face, felt greater remorse than any punishment could have evoked. She loved Nicky dearly; how could she have done such a thing? But she remembered having read that Poe and Byron and other geniuses often got irritable when in creative mood. Perhaps that was it. The reflection brought a certain consolation.

But, at school, things kept on going wrong. In the Geometry class she was assigned the very “proposition” she’d been praying to elude; and, then, she was warned by the teacher–and not too privately– that if she wasn’t careful she’d fail to pass; and that, of course, would mean she couldn’t graduate. At the last minute to fail!–after Miss Simpson had started making her dress, and the invitations already sent to the relatives, and all!

And finally, just before she started home, Professor Sutton, the principal, had to call her into his office for a report on her thesis. The manuscript had to be handed in for approval, and was already past due. Professor Sutton was very stern with her; he said some kind of an outline, anyway, had to be in by the end of the week. Of course, being a grown-up and a teacher besides, he believed everything should be done on time, and it would be useless to try to explain to him even if one could.

Raymond Bonner was waiting to walk home with her. Raymond often walked home with her and Missy was usually pleased with his devotion; he was the handsomest and most popular boy in the class. But, to-day, even Raymond jarred on her. He kept talking, talking, and it was difficult for her preoccupied mind to find the right answer in the right place. He was talking about the celebrity who was to give the “Lyceum Course” lecture that evening. The lecturer’s name was Dobson. Oh uninspiring name!–Ridgeley Holman Dobson. He was a celebrity because he’d done something-or-other heroic in the Spanish war. Missy didn’t know just what it was, not being particularly interested in newspapers and current events, and remote things that didn’t matter. But Raymond evidently knew something about Dobson aside from his being just prominent.

“I only hope he kisses old Miss Lightner!” he said, chortling.

“Kisses her?” repeated Missy, roused from her reveries. Why on earth should a lecturer kiss anybody, above all Miss Lightner, who was an old maid and not attractive despite local gossip about her being “man-crazy”? “Why would he kiss Miss Lightner?”

Raymond looked at her in astonishment.

“Why, haven’t you heard about him?”

Missy shook her head.

“Why, he’s always in the papers! Everywhere he goes, women knock each other down to kiss him! The papers are full of it–don’t say you’ve never heard of it!”

But Missy shook her head again, an expression of distaste on her face. A man that let women knock each other down to kiss him! Missy had ideals about kissing. She had never been kissed by any one but her immediate relatives and some of her girl friends, but she had her dreams of kisses–kisses such as the poets wrote about. Kissing was something fine, beautiful, sacred! As sacred as getting married. But there was nothing sacred about kissing whole bunches of people who knocked each other down–people you didn’t even know. Missy felt a surge of revulsion against this Dobson who could so profane a holy thing.

“I think it’s disgusting,” she said.

At the unexpected harshness of her tone Raymond glanced at her in some surprise.

“And they call him a hero!” she went on scathingly. “Oh, I guess he’s all right,” replied Raymond, who was secretly much impressed by the dash of Dobson. “It’s just that women make fools of themselves over him.”

“You mean he makes a fool of himself! I think he’s disgusting. I wouldn’t go to hear him speak for worlds!”

Raymond wisely changed the subject. And Missy soon enough forgot the disgusting Dobson in the press of nearer trials. She must get at that outline; she wanted to do it, and yet she shrank from beginning. As often happens when the mind is restless, she had an acute desire to do something with her hands. She wanted to go ahead with Marguerite’s hat, but mother, who had a headache and was cross, put her foot down. “Not another minute of dawdling till you write that thesis!” she said, and she might as well have been Gabriel–or whoever it is who trumpets on the day of doom.

So Missy once more took up tablet and pencil. But what’s the use commanding your mind, “Now, write!” Your mind can’t write, can it?– till it knows what it’s going to write about. No matter how much the rest of you wants to write.

At supper-time Missy had no appetite. Mother was too ill to be at the table, but father noticed it.

“Haven’t caught mamma’s headache, have you?” he asked solicitously.

Missy shook her head; she wished she could tell father it was her soul that ached. Perhaps father sensed something of this for, after glancing at her two or three times, he said:

“Tell you what!–Suppose you go to the lecture with me to-night. Mamma says she won’t feel able. What do you say?”

Missy didn’t care a whit to hear the disgusting Dobson, but she felt the reason for her reluctance mightn’t be understood–might even arouse hateful merriment, for Aunt Nettie was sitting there listening. So she said evasively:

“I think mother wants me to work on my thesis.”

“Oh, I can fix it with mother all right,” said father.

Missy started to demur further but, so listless was her spirit, she decided it would be easier to go than to try getting out of it. She wouldn’t have to pay attention to the detestable Dobson; and she always loved to go places with father.

And it was pleasant, after he had “fixed it” with mother, to walk along the dusky streets with him, her arm tucked through his as if she were a grown-up. Walking with him thus, not talking very much but feeling the placidity and sense of safety that always came over her in father’s society, she almost forgot the offensive celebrity awaiting them in the Opera House.

Afterward Missy often thought of her reluctance to go to that lecture, of how narrowly she had missed seeing Dobson. The narrow margins of fate! What if she hadn’t gone! Oh, life is thrillingly uncertain and interwoven and mysterious!

The Opera House was crowded. There were a lot of women there, the majority of them staid Cherryvale matrons who were regular subscribers to the Lyceum Course, but Missy, regarding them severely, wondered if they were there hoping to get kissed.

Presently Mr. Siddons, who dealt in “Real Estate and Loans” and passed the plate at the Presbyterian church, came out on the platform with another man. Mr. Siddons was little and wiry and dark and not handsome; Missy didn’t much care for him as it is not possible to admire a man who looks as if he ought to run up a tree and chatter and swing from a limb by a tail; besides he was well known to be “stingy.” But his soul must be all right, since he was a deacon; and he was a leading citizen, and generally introduced speakers at the Lyceum Course. He began his familiar little mincing preamble: “It gives me great pleasure to have the privilege of introducing to you a citizen so distinguished and esteemed–“

Esteemed!

Then the other man walked forward and stood beside the little table with the glass and pitcher of water on it. Missy felt constrained to cast a look at the Honourable Ridgeley Holman Dobson.

Well, he was rather handsome, in a way–one had to admit that; he was younger than you expect lecturers to be, and tall and slender, with awfully goodlooking clothes, and had dark eyes and a noticeable smile–too noticeable to be entirely sincere and spontaneous, Missy decided.

He began to speak, about something that didn’t seem particularly interesting to Missy; so she didn’t pay much attention to what he was saying, but just sat there listening to the pleasing flow of his voice and noting the graceful sweep of his hands–she must remember that effective gesture of the palm held outward and up. And she liked the way, now and then, he threw his head back and paused and smiled.

Suddenly she caught herself smiling, almost as if in response, and quickly put on a sternly grave look. This woman-kissing siren!–or whatever you call men that are like women sirens. Well, she, for one, wouldn’t fall for his charms! She wouldn’t rush up and knock other women down to kiss him!

She was flaunting her disapproval before her as a sort of banner when, finally, the lecturer came to an end and the audience began their noisy business of getting out of their seats. Missy glanced about, suspicious yet alertly inquisitive. Would the women rush up and kiss him? Her eyes rested on prim Mrs. Siddons, on silly Miss Lightner, on fat, motherly Mrs. Allen, Kitty’s mother. Poor Kitty, if her mother should so disgrace herself!–Missy felt a moment’s thankfulness that her own mother was safely home in bed.

A lot of people were pushing forward up the aisle toward the lecturer; some were already shaking hands with him–men as well as women.

Then Missy heard herself uttering an amazing, unpremeditated thing:

“Would you like to go up and shake hands with Mr. Dobson, father?”

The moment after, she was horrified at herself. Why had she said that? She didn’t want to shake hands with a repulsive siren!

But father was answering:

“What? You, too!”

Just what did he mean by that? And by that quizzical sort of smile? She felt her cheeks growing hot, and wanted to look away. But, now, there was nothing to do but carry it through in a casual kind of way.

“Oh,” she said, “I just thought, maybe, it might be interesting to shake hands with such a celebrity.”

“I see,” said father. He was still smiling but, taking hold of her arm, he began to elbow a slow progress toward the platform.

Just before they reached it, Missy felt a sudden panicky flutter in her heart. She shrank back.

“You go first,” she whispered.

So father went first and shook hands with Mr. Dobson. Then he said:

“This is my daughter.”

Not able to lift her eyes, Missy held out her hand; she observed that Mr. Dobson’s was long and slender but had hair on the back of it–he ought to do something about that; but even as she thought this, the hand was enclosing hers in a clasp beautifully warm and strong; and a voice, wonderfully deep and pleasant and vibrant, was heard saying:

“Your daughter?–you’re a man to be envied, sir.”

Then Missy forced her eyes upward; Mr. Dobson’s were waiting to meet them squarely–bright dark eyes with a laugh in the back of them. And, then, the queerest thing happened. As he looked at her, that half-veiled laugh in his eyes seemed to take on a special quality, something personal and intimate and kindred–as if saying: “You and I understand, don’t we?”

Missy’s heart gave a swift, tumultuous dive and flight.

Then he let go her hand, and patiently turned his eyes to the next comer; but not with the same expression–Missy was sure of that. She walked on after her father in a kind of daze. The whole thing had taken scarcely a second; but, oh! what can be encompassed in a second!

Missy was very silent during the homeward journey; she intensely wanted to be silent. Once father said:

“Well, the man’s certainly magnetic–but he seems a decent kind of fellow. I suppose a lot has been exaggerated.” He chuckled. “But I’ll bet some of the Cherryvale ladies are a little disappointed.”

“Oh, that!” Missy felt a hot flame of indignation flare up inside her. “He wouldn’t act that way! anybody could tell. I think it’s a crime to talk so about him!”

Father gave another chuckle, very low; but Missy was too engrossed with her resentment and with other vague, jumbled emotions to notice it.

That night she had difficulty in getting to sleep. And, for the first time in weeks, visions of Commencement failed to waft her off to dreams. She was hearing over and over, in a kind of lullaby, a deep, melodious voice: “Your daughter?–you’re a man to be envied, sir!”–was seeing a pair of dark bright eyes, smiling into her own with a beam of kinship ineffable.

Next day, at school, she must listen to an aftermath of gossipy surmise anent the disappointing osculatory hero. At last she could stand it no longer.

“I think it’s horrid to talk that way! Anybody can see he’s not that kind of man!”

Raymond Bonner stared.

“Why, I thought you said he was disgusting!”

But Missy, giving him a withering look, turned and walked away, leaving him to ponder the baffling contrarieties of the feminine sex.

A new form of listlessness now took hold of Missy. That afternoon she didn’t want to study, didn’t want to go over to Kitty Allen’s when her friend telephoned, didn’t even want to work on hats; this last was a curious turn, indeed, and to a wise observer might have been significant. She had only a desire to be alone, and was grateful for the excuse her thesis provided her; though it must be admitted precious little was inscribed, that bright May afternoon, on the patient tablet which kept Missy company in the summerhouse.

At supper, while the talk pivoted inevitably round the departed Dobson, she sat immersed in preoccupation so deep as to be conspicuous even in Missy. Aunt Nettie, smiling, once started to make a comment but, unseen by his dreaming daughter, was silenced by Mr. Merriam. And immediately after the meal she’d eaten without seeing, the faithful tablet again in hand, Missy wandered back to the summer-house.

It was simply heavenly out there now. The whole western sky clear to the zenith was laid over with a solid colour of opaque saffron rose; and, almost halfway up and a little to the left, in exactly the right place, of deepest turquoise blue, rested one mountain of cloud; it was the shape of Fujiyama, the sacred mount of Japan, which was pictured in Aunt Isabel’s book of Japanese prints. Missy wished she might see Japan–Mr. Dobson had probably been there– lecturers usually were great travellers. He’d probably been everywhere–led a thrilling sort of life–the sort of life that makes one interesting. Oh, if only she could talk to him–just once. She sighed. Why didn’t interesting people like that ever come to Cherryvale to live? Everybody in Cherryvale was so–so commonplace. Like Bill Cummings, the red-haired bank teller, who thought a trip to St. Louis an adventure to talk about for months! Or like old Mr. Siddons, or Professor Sutton, or the clerks in Mr. Bonner’s store. In Cherryvale there was only this settled, humdrum kind of people. Of course there were the boys; Raymond was nice–but you can’t expect mere boys to be interesting. She recalled that smiling, subtly intimate glance from Mr. Dobson’s eyes. Oh, if he would stay in Cherryvale just a week! Tf only he’d come back just once! If only–

“Missy! The dew’s falling! You’ll catch your death of cold! Come in the house at once!”

Bother! there was mother calling. But mothers must be obeyed, and Missy had to trudge dutifully indoors–with a tablet still blank.

Next morning mother’s warning about catching cold fulfilled itself. Missy awoke with a head that felt as big as a washtub, painfully laborious breath, and a wild impulse to sneeze every other minute. Mother, who was an ardent advocate of “taking things in time,” ordered a holiday from school and a footbath of hot mustard water.

“This all comes from your mooning out there in the summerhouse so late,” she chided as, with one tentative finger, she made a final test of the water for her daughter’s feet.

She started to leave the room.

“Oh, mother!”

“Well?” Rather impatiently Mrs. Merriam turned in the doorway.

“Would you mind handing me my tablet and pencil?”

“What, there in the bath?”

“I just thought”–Missy paused to sneeze–“maybe I might get an inspiration or something, and couldn’t get out to write it down.”

“You’re an absurd child.” But when she brought the tablet and pencil, Mrs. Merriam lingered to pull the shawl round Missy’s shoulders a little closer; Missy always loved mother to do things like this it was at such times she felt most keenly that her mother loved her.

Yet she was glad to be left alone.

For a time her eyes were on her bare, scarlet feet in the yellow mustard water. But that unbeautiful colour combination did not disturb her. She did not even see her feet. She was seeing a pair of bright dark eyes smiling intimately into her own. Presently, with a dreamy, abstracted smile, she opened the tablet, poised the pencil, and began to write. But she was scarcely conscious of any of this, of directing her pencil even; it was almost as if the pencil, miraculously, guided itself. And it wrote.

“Are you ready to take your feet out now, Missy?”

Missy raised her head impatiently. It was Aunt Nettie in the door. What was she talking about–feet?–feet? How could Aunt Nettie?

. . . . . .
“Oh! go away, won’t you, please?” she cried vehemently.

“Well, did you ever?” gasped Aunt Nettie. She stood in the doorway a minute; then tiptoed away. But Missy was oblivious; the inspired pencil was speeding back and forth again–“Then each craft passes on into the unutterable darkness–” and the pencil, too, went on and on.

. . . . . .

There was a sound of tiptoeing again at the door, of whispering; but the author took no notice. Then someone entered, bearing a pitcher of hot water; but the author gave no sign. Someone poured hot water into the foot-tub; the author wriggled her feet.

“Too hot, dear?” said mother’s voice. The author shook her head abstractedly. Words were singing in her ears to drown all else. They flowed through her whole being, down her arms, out through her hand and pencil, wrote themselves immortally. Oh, this was Inspiration! Feeling at last immeshed in tangibility, swimming out on a tide of words that rushed along so fast pencil could hardly keep up with them. Oh, Inspiration! The real thing! Divine, ecstatic, but fleeting; it must be caught at the flood.

The pencil raced.

And sad, indeed, is that life which sails on its own way, wrapped in its own gloom, giving out no signal and heeding none, hailing not its fellow and heeding no hail. For the gloom will grow greater and greater; there will be no sympathy to tide it over the rocks; no momentary gleams of love to help it through its struggle; and the storms will rage fiercer and the sails will hang lower until, at last, it will go down, alone and unwept, never knowing the joy of living and never reaching the goal.

So let these ships, which have such a vast, such an unutterable influence, use that influence for brightening the encompassing gloom. Let them not be wrapped in their own selfishness or sorrow, but let their voice be filled with hope and love. For, by so doing, the waters of Life will grow smoother, and the signals will never flicker.

The inspired instrument lapsed from nerveless fingers; the author relaxed in her chair and sighed a deep sigh. All of a sudden she felt tired, tired; but it is a blessed weariness that comes after a divine frenzy has had its way with you.

Almost at once mother was there, rubbing her feet with towels, hustling her into bed.

“Now, you must keep covered up a while,” she said.

Missy was too happily listless to object. But, from under the hot blankets, she murmured:

“You can read the Valedictory if you want to. It’s all done.”

Commencement night arrived. Twenty-odd young, pulsing entities were lifting and lilting to a brand-new, individual experience, each one of them, doubtless, as firmly convinced as the class Valedictorian that he–or she–was the unique centre round which buzzed this rushing, bewitchingly upsetting occasion.

Yet everyone had to admit that the Valedictorian made a tremendous impression: a slender girl in white standing alone on a lighted stage–only one person in all that assemblage was conscious that it was the identical spot where once stood the renowned Dobson–gazing with luminous eyes out on the darkened auditorium. It was crowded out there but intensely quiet, for all the people were listening to the girl up there illumined: the lift and fall of her voice, the sentiments fine, noble, and inspiring. They followed the slow grace of her arms and hands–it was, indeed, as if she held them in the hollow of her hand.

She told all about the darkness our souls sail through under their sealed orders, knowing neither course nor port–and, though you may be calloused to these trite figures, are they not solemnly true enough, and moving enough, if you take them to heart? And with that slim child alone up there speaking these things so feelingly, it was easy for Cherryvale in the hushed and darkened auditorium to feel with her. . .

Sometimes they pass oblivious of one another in the gloom; sometimes a signal flashes from out the darkness; a signal which is understood as though an intense ray pierced the enveloping pall and laid bare both souls. That signal is the light from a pair of human eyes, which are the windows of the soul, and by means of which alone soul can stand revealed to soul . . .

The emotional impression of this was tremendous on all these dear Souls who had sailed alongside of Missy since she was launched.

So let these ships, which have such a vast, such an unutterable influence, use that influence for brightening the encompassing gloom. . . For, by so doing, the waters of Life will grow smoother, and the signals will never flicker.

She came to the last undulating cadence, the last vibrantly sustained phrase; and then, as she paused and bowed, there was a moment of hush–and then the applause began. Oh, what applause! And then, slowly, graciously, modestly but with a certain queenly pride, the shining figure in white turned and left the stage.

Here was a noble triumph, remembered for years even by the teachers. Down in the audience father and mother and grandpa and grandma and all the other relatives who, with suspiciously wet eyes, were assembled in the “reserved section,” overheard such murmurs as: “And she’s seventeen!–Where do young folks get those ideas?”–and, “What an unusual gift of phraseology!” And, after the programme, a reporter from the Cherryvale Beacon came up to father and asked permission to quote certain passages from the Valedictory in his “write-up.” That was the proudest moment of Mr. Merriam’s entire life.

Missy had time for only hurried congratulations from her family. For she must rush off to the annual Alumni banquet. She was going with Raymond Bonner who, now, was hovering about her more zealously than ever. She would have preferred to share this triumphant hour with– with–well, with someone older and more experienced and better able to understand. But she liked Raymond; once, long ago–a whole year ago–she’d had absurd dreams about him. Yet he was a nice boy; the nicest and most sought-after boy in the class. She was not unhappy at going off with him.

Father and mother walked home alone, communing together in that pride-tinged-with-sadness that must, at times, come to all parents.

Mother said:

“And to think I was so worried! That hat-making, and then that special spell of idle mooning over something-or-nothing, nearly drove me frantic.”

Father smiled through the darkness.

“I suppose, after all,” mother mused on, surreptitiously wiping those prideful eyes, “that there is something in Inspiration, and the dear child just had to wait till she got it, and that she doesn’t know any more than we do where it came from.”

“No, I daresay she doesn’t.” But sometimes father was more like a friend than a parent, and that faint, unnoted stress was the only sign he ever gave of what he knew about this Inspiration.

CHAPTER X

MISSY CANS THE COSMOS

As far back as Melissa Merriam could remember, she had lived with her family in the roomy, rambling, white-painted house on Locust Avenue. She knew intimately every detail of its being. She had, at various points in her childhood, personally supervised the addition of the ell and of the broad porch which ran round three sides of the house, the transformation of an upstairs bedroom into a regular bathroom with all the pleasing luxuries of modern plumbing, the installation of hardwood floors into the “front” and “back” parlours. She knew every mousehole in the cellar, every spider-web and cracked window-pane in the fascinating attic. And the yard without she also knew well: the friendly big elm which, whenever the wind blew, tapped soft leafy fingers against her own window; the slick green curves of the lawn; the trees best loved by the birds; the morning-glories on the porch which resembled fairy church bells ready for ringing, the mignonette in the flower-beds like fragrant fairy plumes, and the other flowers–all so clever at growing up into different shapes and colours when you considered they all came from little hard brown seeds. And she was familiar with the summerhouse back in the corner of the yard, so ineffably delicious in rambler-time, but so bleakly sad in winter; and the chicken-yard just beyond she knew, too–Missy loved that peculiar air of placidity which pervades even the most clucky and cackly of chicken- yards, and she loved the little downy chicks which were so adept at picking out their own mothers amongst those hens that looked all alike. When she was a little girl she used to wonder whether the mothers grieved when their children grew up and got killed and eaten and, for one whole summer, she wouldn’t eat fried chicken though it was her favourite delectable.

All of which means that Missy, during the seventeen years of her life, had never found her homely environment dull or unpleasing. But, this summer, she found herself longing, with a strange, secret but burning desire, for something “different.”

The feeling had started that preceding May, about the time she made such an impression at Commencement with her Valedictory entitled “Ships That Pass in the Night.” The theme of this oration was the tremendous influence that can trail after the chancest and briefest encounter of two strangers. No one but herself (and her father, though Missy did not know it) connected Missy’s eloquent handling of this subject with the fleeting appearance in Cherryvale of one Ridgeley Holman Dobson. Dobson had given a “Lyceum Course” lecture in the Opera House, but Missy remembered him not because of what he lectured about, nor because he was an outstanding hero of the recent Spanish-American war, nor even because of the scandalous way his women auditors, sometimes, rushed up and kissed him. No. She remembered him because . . . Oh, well, it would have been hard to explain concretely, even to herself; but that one second, when she was taking her turn shaking hands with him after the lecture, there was something in his dark bright eyes as they looked deeply into her own, something that made her wish–made her wish–

It was all very vague, very indefinite. If only Cherryvale afforded a chance to know people like Ridgeley Holman Dobson! Unprosaic people, really interesting people. People who had travelled in far lands; who had seen unusual sights, plumbed the world’s possibilities, done heroic deeds, laid hands on large affairs.

But what chance for this in poky Cherryvale?

This tranquil June morning, as Missy sat in the summerhouse with the latest Ladies’ Home Messenger in her lap, the dissatisfied feeling had got deeper hold of her than usual. It was not acute discontent– the kind that sticks into you like a sharp splinter; it was something more subtle; a kind of dull hopelessness all over you. The feeling was not at all in accord with the scene around her. For the sun was shining gloriously; Locust Avenue lay wonderfully serene under the sunlight; the iceman’s horses were pulling their enormous wagon as if it were not heavy; the big, perspiring iceman whistled as if those huge, dripping blocks were featherweight; and, in like manner, everybody passing along the street seemed contented and happy. Missy could remember the time when such a morning as this, such a scene of peaceful beauty, would have made her feel contented, too.

Now she sighed, and cast a furtive glance through the leafage toward the house, a glance which reflected an inner uneasiness because she feared her mother might discover she hadn’t dusted the parlours; mother would accuse her of “dawdling.” Sighing again for grown-ups who seldom understand, Missy turned to the Messenger in her lap.

Here was a double-page of “Women Who Are Achieving”–the reason for the periodical’s presence in Missy’s society. There was a half-tone of a lady who had climbed a high peak in the Canadian Rockies; Missy didn’t much admire her unfeminine attire, yet it was something to get one’s picture printed–in any garb. Then there was a Southern woman who had built up an industry manufacturing babies’ shoes. This photograph, too, Missy studied without enthusiasm: the shoemaker was undeniably middle-aged and matronly in appearance; nor did the metier of her achievement appeal. Making babies’ shoes, somehow, savoured too much of darning stockings. (Oh, bother! there was that basket of stockings mother had said positively mustn’t go another day.)

Missy’s glance hurried to the next picture. It presented the only lady Sheriff in the state of Colorado. Missy pondered. Politics– Ridgeley Holman Dobson was interested in politics; his lecture had been about something-or-other political–she wished, now, she’d paid more attention to what he’d talked about. Politics, it seemed, was a promising field in the broadening life of women. And they always had a Sheriff in Cherryvale. Just what were a Sheriff’s duties? And how old must one be to become a Sheriff? This Colorado woman certainly didn’t look young. She wasn’t pretty, either–her nose was too long and her lips too thin and her hair too tight; perhaps lady Sheriffs had to look severe so as to enforce the law.

Missy sighed once more. It would have been pleasant to feel she was working in the same field with Ridgeley Holman Dobson.

Then, suddenly, she let her sigh die half-grown as her eye came to the portrait of another woman who had achieved. No one could claim this one wasn’t attractive looking. She was young and she was beautiful, beautiful in a peculiarly perfected and aristocratic way; her hair lay in meticulously even waves, and her features looked as though they had been chiselled, and a long ear-ring dangled from each tiny ear. Missy wasn’t surprised to read she was a noblewoman, her name was Lady Sylvia Southwoode–what an adorable name!

The caption underneath the picture read: “Lady Sylvia Southwoode, Who Readjusts–and Adorns–the Cosmos.”

Missy didn’t catch the full editorial intent, perhaps, in that grouping of Lady Sylvia and the Cosmos; but she was pleased to come upon the word Cosmos. It was one of her pet words. It had struck her ear and imagination when she first encountered it, last spring, in Psychology IV-A. Cosmos–what an infinity of meaning lay behind the two-syllabled sound! And the sound of it, too, sung itself over in your mind, rhythmic and fascinating. There was such a difference in words; some were but poor, bald things, neither suggesting very much nor very beautiful to hear. Then there were words which were beautiful to hear, which had a rich sound–words like “mellifluous” and “brocade” and “Cleopatra.” But “Cosmos” was an absolutely fascinating word–perfectly round, without beginning or end. And it was the kind to delight in not only for its wealth, so to speak, for all it held and hinted, but also for itself alone; it was a word of sheer beauty.

She eagerly perused the paragraph which explained the manner in which Lady Sylvia was readjusting–and adorning–the Cosmos. Lady Sylvia made speeches in London’s West End–wherever that was–and had a lot to do with bettering the Housing Problem–whatever that was–and was noted for the distinguished gatherings at her home. This alluring creature was evidently in politics, too!

Missy’s eyes went dreamily out over the yard, but they didn’t see the homely brick-edged flowerbeds nor the red lawn-swing nor the well-worn hammock nor the white picket fence in her direct line of vision. They were contemplating a slight girlish figure who was addressing a large audience, somewhere, speaking with swift, telling phrases that called forth continuous ripples of applause. It was all rather nebulous, save for the dominant girlish figure, which bore a definite resemblance to Melissa Merriam.

Then, with the sliding ease which obtains when fancy is the stage director, the scene shifted. Vast, elaborately beautiful grounds rolled majestically up to a large, ivy-draped house, which had turrets like a castle–very picturesque. At the entrance was a flight of wide stone steps, overlaid, now, with red carpet and canopied with a striped awning. For the mistress was entertaining some of the nation’s notables. In the lofty hall and spacious rooms glided numberless men-servants in livery, taking the wraps of the guests, passing refreshments, and so forth. The guests were very distinguished-looking, all the men in dress suits and appearing just as much at home in them as Ridgeley Holman Dobson had, that night on the Opera House stage. Yes, and he was there, in Missy’s vision, handsomer than ever with his easy smile and graceful gestures and that kind of intimate look in his dark eyes, as he lingered near the hostess whom he seemed to admire. All the women were in low-cut evening dresses of softly-tinted silk or satin, with their hair gleaming in sleek waves and long ear-rings dangling down. The young hostess wore ear-rings, also; deep-blue gems flashed out from them, to match her trailing deep blue velvet gown–Raymond Bonnet had once said Missy should always wear that special shade of deep blue.

Let us peep at the actual Missy as she sits there dreaming: she has neutral-tinted brown hair, very soft and fine, which encircles her head in two thick braids to meet at the back under a big black bow; that bow, whether primly-set or tremulously-askew, is a fair barometer of the wearer’s mood. The hair is undeniably straight, a fact which has often caused Missy moments of concern. (She used to envy Kitty Allen her tangling, light-catching curls till Raymond Bonner chanced to remark he considered curly hair “messy looking”; but Raymond’s approval, for some reason, doesn’t seem to count for as much as it used to, and, anyway, he is spending the summer in Michigan.) However, just below that too-demure parting, the eyes are such as surely to give her no regret. Twin morning-glories, we would call them-grey morning-glories!–opening expectant and shining to the Sun which always shines on enchanted seventeen. And, like other morning-glories, Missy’s eyes are the shyest of flowers, ready to droop sensitively at the first blight of misunderstanding. That is the chiefest trouble of seventeen: so few are there, especially among old people, who seem to “understand.” And that is why one must often retire to the summerhouse or other solitary places where one can without risk of ridicule let one’s dreams out for air.

Presently she shook off her dreams and returned to the scarcely less thrilling periodical which had evoked them. Here was another photograph–though not nearly so alluring as that of the Lady Sylvia; a woman who had become an authoritative expounder of political and national issues–politics again! Missy proceeded to read, but her full interest wasn’t deflected till her eyes came to some thought-compelling words:

“It was while yet a girl in her teens, in a little Western town (“Oh!” thought Missy), that Miss Carson mounted the first rung of the ladder she has climbed to such enviable heights. She had just graduated from the local high school (“Oh! oh!” thought Missy) and, already prodded by ambition, persuaded the editor of the weekly paper to give her a job. . .”

Once again Missy’s eyes wandered dreamily out over the yard. . .

Presently a voice was wafted out from the sideporch:

“Missy!–oh, Missy! Where are you?”

There was mother calling–bother! Missy picked up the Ladies’ Home Messenger and trudged back to bondage.

“What in the world do you mean, Missy? You could write your name all over the parlour furniture for dust! And then those stockings–“

Missy dutifully set about her tasks. Yet, ah! it certainly is hard to dust and darn while one’s soul is seething within one, straining to fly out on some really high enterprise of life. However one can, if one’s soul strains hard enough, dust and dream; darn and dream. Especially if one has a helpful lilt, rhythmic to dust-cloth’s stroke or needle’s swing, throbbing like a strain of music through one’s head:

Cosmos–Cosmos!–Cosmos–Cosmos!

Missy was absent-eyed at the midday dinner, but no sooner was the meal over before she feverishly attacked the darning-basket again. Her energy may have been explained when, as soon as the stockings were done, she asked her mother if she might go down to the Library.

Mother and Aunt Nettie from their rocking-chairs on the side-porch watched the slim figure in its stiffly-starched white duck skirt and shirt-waist disappear down shady Locust Avenue.

“I wonder what Missy’s up to, now?” observed Aunt Nettie.

“Up to?” murmured Mrs. Merriam.

“Yes. She hardly touched her chop at dinner and she’s crazy about lamb chops. She’s eaten almost nothing for days. And either shirking her work, else going at it in a perfect frenzy!”

“Growing girls get that way sometimes,” commented Missy’s mother gently. (Could Missy have heard and interpreted that tone, she might have been less hard on grown-ups who “don’t understand.”) “Missy’s seventeen, you know.”

“H’m!” commented Aunt Nettie, as if to say, “What’s THAT to do with it?” Somehow it seems more difficult for spinsters than for mothers to remember those swift, free flights of madness and sweetness which, like a troop of birds in the measurable heavens, sweep in joyous circles across the sky of youth.

Meanwhile Missy, the big ribbon index under her sailor-brim palpitantly askew, was progressing down Locust Avenue with a measured, accented gait that might have struck an observer as being peculiar. The fact was that the refrain vibrating through her soul had found its way to her feet. She’d hardly been conscious of it at first. She was just walking along, in time to that inner song:

“Cosmos–cosmos–cosmos–cosmos–“

And then she noticed she was walking with even, regular steps, stepping on every third crack in the board sidewalk, and that each of these cracks she stepped on ran, like a long punctuation, right through the middle of “cosmos.” So that she saw in her mind this picture: |Cos|mos| |cos|mos| |cos|mos| |cos|mos|

It was fascinating, watching the third cracks punctuate her thoughts that way. Then it came to her that it was a childish sort of game– she was seventeen, now. So she avoided watching the cracks. But “Cosmos” went on singing through her head and soul.

She came to Main Street and, ignoring the turn eastward which led to the Public Library, faced deliberately in the opposite direction.

She was, in fact, bound for the office of the Beacon–the local weekly. And thoughts of what tremendous possibilities might be stretching out from this very hour, and of what she would say to Ed Martin, the editor, made her feet now skim along impatiently, and now slow down with sudden, self-conscious shyness.

For Missy, even when there was no steadily nearing imminence of having to reveal her soul, on general principles was a little in awe of Ed Martin and his genial ironies. Ed Martin was not only a local celebrity. His articles were published in the big Eastern magazines. He went “back East” once a year, and it was said that on one occasion he had dined with the President himself. Of course that was only a rumour; but Cherryvale had its own eyes for witness that certain persons had stopped off in town expressly to see Ed Martin– personages whose names made you take notice!

Missy, her feet terribly reluctant now, her soul’s song barely a whisper, found Ed Martin shirt-sleeved in his littered little sanctum at the back of the Beacon office.

“Why, hello, Missy!” he greeted, swinging round leisurely in his revolving-chair. Ed Martin was always so leisurely in his movements that the marvel was how he got so much accomplished. Local dignitaries of the most admired kind, perhaps, wear their distinction as a kind of toga; but Ed was plump and short, with his scant, fair hair always rumpled, and a manner as friendly as a child’s.

“Haven’t got another Valedictory for us to print, have you?” he went on genially.

Missy blushed. “I just dropped in for a minute,” she began uneasily. “I was just thinking–” She hesitated and paused.

“Yes,” said Ed Martin encouragingly.

“I was just thinking–that perhaps–” She clasped her hands tightly together and fixed her shining eyes on him in mute appeal. Then:

“You see, Mr. Martin, sometimes it comes over you–” She broke off again.

Ed Martin was regarding her out of friendly blue eyes.

“Maybe I can guess what sometimes comes over you. You want to write- -is that it?”

His kindly voice and manner emboldened her.

“Yes–it’s part that. And a feeling that–Oh, it’s so hard to put into words, Mr. Martin!”

“I know; feelings are often hard to put into words. But they’re usually the most worth while kind of feelings. And that’s what words are for.”

“Well, I was just feeling that at my age–that I was letting my life slip away–accomplishing nothing really worth while. You know–?”

“Yes, we all feel like that sometimes, I guess.” Ed Martin nodded with profound solemnity.

Oh, Ed Martin was wonderful! He DID understand things! She went ahead less tremulously now.

“And I was feeling I wanted to get started at something. At something REALLY worth while, you know.”

Ed Martin nodded again.

“And I thought, maybe, you could help me get started–or something.” She gazed at him with open-eyed trust, as if she expected him with a word to solve her undefined problem.

“Get started?–at writing, you mean?”

Oh, how wonderfully Ed Martin understood!

He shuffled some papers on his desk. “Just what do you want to write, Missy?”

“I don’t know, exactly. When I can, I’d like to write something sort of political–or cosmic.”

“Oh,” said Ed Martin, nodding. He shuffled the papers some more. Then: “Well, when that kind of a germ gets into the system, I guess the best thing to do is to get it out before it causes mischief. If it coagulates in the system, it can cause a lot of mischief.”

Just what did he mean?

“Yes, a devil of a lot of mischief,” he went on. “But the trouble is, Missy, we haven’t got any job on politics or–or the cosmos open just now. But–“

He paused, gazing over her head. Missy felt her heart pause, too.

“Oh, anykind of a writing job,” she proffered quaveringly.

“I can’t think of anything here that’s not taken care of, except”– his glance fell on the ornate-looking “society page” of the Macon City Sunday Journal, spread out on his desk–“a society column.”

In her swift breath of ecstasy Missy forgot to note the twinkle in his eye.

“Oh, I’d love to write society things!” Ed Martin sat regarding her with a strange expression on his face.

“Well,” he said at last, as if to himself, “why not?” Then, addressing her directly: “You may consider yourself appointed official Society Editor of the Cherryvale Beacon.”

The title rolled with surpassing resonance on enchanted ears. She barely caught his next remark.

“And now about the matter of salary–“

Salary! Missy straightened up.

“What do you say to five dollars a week?” he asked.

Five dollars a week!–Five dollars every week! And earned by herself! Missy’s eyes grew big as suns.

“Is that satisfactory?”

“Oh, YES!”

“Well, then,” he said, “I’ll give you free rein. Just get your copy in by Wednesday night–we go to press Thursdays–and I promise to read every word of it myself.”

“Oh,” she said.

There were a thousand questions she’d have liked to ask, but Ed Martin, smiling a queer kind of smile, had turned to his papers as if anxious to get at them. No; she mustn’t begin by bothering him with questions. He was a busy man, and he’d put this new, big responsibility on HER–“a free rein,” he had said. And she must live up to that trust; she must find her own way–study up the problem of society editing, which, even if not her ideal, yet was a wedge to who-knew-what? And meanwhile perhaps she could set a new standard for society columns–brilliant and clever . . .

Missy left the Beacon office, suffused with emotions no pen, not even her own, could ever have described.

Ed Martin, safely alone, allowed himself the luxury of an extensive grin. Then, even while he smiled, his eyes sobered.

“Poor young one.” He sighed and shook his head, then took up the editorial he was writing on the delinquencies of the local waterworks administration.

Meanwhile Missy, moving slowly back up Main Street, was walking on something much softer and springier than the board sidewalk under her feet.

She didn’t notice even the cracks, now. The acquaintances who passed her, and the people sitting contentedly out on their shady porches, seemed in a different world from the one she was traversing.

She had never known this kind of happiness before–exploring a dream country which promised to become real. Now and then a tiny cloud shadowed the radiance of her emotions: just how would she begin?– what should she write about and how?–but swiftly her thoughts flitted back to that soft, warm, undefined deliciousness. . .

Society Editor!–she, Melissa Merriam! Her words would be immortalized in print! and she would soar up and up. . . Some day, in the big magazines . . . Everybody would read her name there–all Cherryvale–and, perhaps, Ridgeley Holman Dobson would chance a brilliant, authoritative article on some deep, vital subject and wish to meet the author.

She might even have to go to New York to live–New York! And associate with the interesting, delightful people there. Maybe he lived in New York, or, anyway, visited there, associating with celebrities.

She wished her skirts were long enough to hold up gracefully like Polly Currier walking over there across the street; she wished she had long, dangling ear-rings; she wished . . .

Dreamy-eyed, the Society Editor of the Cherryvale Beacon turned in at the Merriam gate to announce her estate to an amazed family circle.

Aunt Nettie, of course, ejaculated, “goodness gracious!” and laughed. But mother was altogether sweet and satisfying. She looked a little startled at first, but she came over and smoothed her daughter’s hair while she listened, and, for some reason, was unusually tender all the afternoon.

That evening at supper-time, Missy noticed that mother walked down the block to meet father, and seemed to be talking earnestly with him on their way toward the house. Missy hadn’t much dreaded father’s opposition. He was an enormous, silent man and the young people stood in a certain awe of him, but Missy, somehow, felt closer to him than to most old people.

When he came up the steps to the porch where she waited, blushing and palpitant but withal feeling a sense of importance, he greeted her jovially. “Well, I hear we’ve got a full-fledged writer in our midst!”

Missy’s blush deepened.

“What _I_ want to know,” father continued, “is who’s going to darn my socks? I’m afraid socks go to the dickens when genius flies in at the window.”

As Missy smiled back at him she resolved, despite everything, to keep father’s socks in better order than ever before.

During supper the talk kept coming back to the theme of her Work, but in a friendly, unscoffing way so that Missy knew her parents were really pleased. Mother mentioned Mrs. Brooks’s “bridge” Thursday afternoon–that might make a good write-up. And father said he’d get her a leather-bound notebook next day. And when, after supper, instead of joining them on the porch, she brought tablet and pencil and a pile of books and placed them on the dining-table, there were no embarrassing comments, and she was left alone with her thrills and puzzlements.

Among the books were Stevenson’s “Some Technical Considerations of Style,” George Eliot’s “Romola” and Carlyle’s “Sartor Resartus”; the latter two being of the kind that especially lifted you to a mood of aching to express things beautifully. Missy liked books that lifted you up. She loved the long-drawn introspections of George Eliot and Augusta J. Evans; the tender whimsy of Barrie as she’d met him through “Margaret Ogilvie” and “Sentimental Tommy”; the fascinating mysteries of Marie Corelli; the colourful appeal of “To Have and To Hold” and the other “historical romances” which were having a vogue in that era; and Kipling’s India!–that was almost best of all. She had outgrown most of her earlier loves–Miss Alcott whom she’d once known intimately, and “Little Lord Fauntleroy” and “The Birds’ Christmas Carol” had survived, too, her brief illicit passion for the exotic product of “The Duchess.” And she didn’t respond keenly to many of the “best sellers” which were then in their spectacular, flamboyantly advertised heyday; somehow they failed to stimulate the mind, stir the imagination, excite the emotions–didn’t lift you up. Yet she could find plenty of books in the Library which satisfied.

Now she sat, reading the introspections of “Romola” till she felt her own soul stretching out–up and beyond the gas table-lamp glowing there in such lovely serenity through its gold-glass shade; felt it aching to express something, she knew not what.

Some day, perhaps, after she had written intellectual essays about Politics and such things, she might write about Life. About Life itself! And the Cosmos!

Her chin sank to rest upon her palm. How beautiful were those pink roses in their leaf-green bowl–like a soft piece of music or a gently flowing poem. Maybe Mrs. Brooks would have floral decorations at her bridge-party. She hoped so–then she could write a really satisfying kind of paragraph–flowers were always so inspiring. Those pink petals were just about to fall. Yet, somehow, that made them seem all the lovelier. She could almost write a poem about that idea! Would Mr. Martin mind if, now and then, she worked in a little verse or two? It would make Society reporting more interesting. For, she had to admit, Society Life in Cherryvale wasn’t thrilling. Just lawn-festivals and club meetings and picnics at the Waterworks and occasional afternoon card-parties where the older women wore their Sunday silks and exchanged recipes and household gossip. If only there was something interesting–just a little dash of “atmosphere.” If only they drank afternoon tea, or talked about Higher Things, or smoked cigarettes, or wore long ear-rings! But, perhaps, some day– in New York . . .

Missy’s head drooped; she felt deliciously drowsy. Into the silence of her dreams a cheerful voice intruded:

“Missy, dear, it’s after ten o’clock and you’re nodding! Oughtn’t you go up to bed?”

“All right, mother.” Obediently she took her dreams upstairs with her, and into her little white bed.

Thursday afternoon, all shyness and importance strangely compounded, Missy carried a note-book to Mrs. Brooks’s card-party. It was agreeable to hear Mrs. Brooks effusively explain: “Missy’s working on the Beacon now, you know”; and to feel two dozen pairs of eyes upon her as she sat writing down the list of guests; and to be specially led out to view the refreshment-table. There was a profusion of flowers, but as Mrs. Brooks didn’t have much “taste” Missy didn’t catch the lilt of inspiration she had hoped for.

However, after she had worked her “write-up” over several times, she prefixed a paragraph on the decorations which she hoped would atone for the drab prosiness of the rest. It ran:

“Through the softly-parted portieres which separate Mrs. J. Barton Brooks’s back-parlour from the dining room came a gracious emanation of scent and colour. I stopped for a moment in the doorway, and saw, abloom there before me, a magical maze of flowers. Flowers! Oh, multifold fragrance and tints divine which so ineffably enrich our lives! Does anyone know whence they come? Those fragile fairy creatures whose housetop is the sky; wakened by golden dawn; for whom the silver moon sings lullaby. Yes; sunlight it is, and blue sky and green earth, that endow them with their mysterious beauty; these, and the haze of rain that filters down when clouds rear their sullen heads. Sun and sky, and earth and rain; they alone may know– know the secrets of these fairy-folk who, from their slyly-opened petals, watch us at our hurrying business of life. . . We, mere humans, can never know. With us it must suffice to sweeten our hearts with the memory of fragrant flowers.”

She was proud of that opening paragraph. But Ed Martin blue- pencilled it.

“Short of space this week,” he said. “Either the flowers must go or ‘those present.’ It’s always best to print names.” “Is the rest of it all right?” asked Missy, crest-fallen.

“Well,” returned Ed, with whom everything had gone wrong that day and who was too hurried to remember the fluttering pinions of Youth, “I guess it’s printable, anyhow.”

It was “printable,” and it did come out in print–that was something! For months the printed account of Mrs. Brooks’s “bridge” was treasured in the Merriam archives, to be brought out and passed among admiring relatives. Yes, that was something! But, as habitude