The Project Gutenberg eBook, Sunny Slopes, by Ethel Hueston, Illustrated
by Arthur William Brown


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Title: Sunny Slopes


Author: Ethel Hueston



Release Date: May 20, 2006  [eBook #18426]

Language: English

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SUNNY SLOPES

by

ETHEL HUESTON

Author of
Prudence of the Parsonage, Prudence Says So, Etc.

Illustrated by Arthur William Brown







[Frontispiece: "A minister's wife!  You look more like a little girl's
baby doll."]




Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers -------- New York
Copyright 1917
The Bobbs-Merrill Company




  This Book
  Is Written in Memory of My Husband
  Eager in Service, Patient in Illness
  Unfaltering in Death, and
  Is Dedicated to
  The St. Louis Presbytery
  To Which I Owe a Debt of Interest
  Of Sympathy and of Unfailing Friendship
  I Can Ever Hope to Pay




CONTENTS


CHAPTER

     I  THE BEGINNING
    II  MANSERS
   III  A BABY IN BUSINESS
    IV  A WOMAN IN THE CHURCH
     V  A MINISTER'S SON
    VI  THE HEAVY YOKE
   VII  THE FIRST STEP
  VIII  REACTION
    IX  UPHEAVAL
     X  WHERE HEALTH BEGINS
    XI  THE OLD TEACHER
   XII  THE LAND O' LUNGERS
  XIII  OLD HOPES AND NEW
   XIV  NEPTUNE'S SECOND DAUGHTER
    XV  THE SECOND STEP
   XVI  DEPARTED SPIRITS
  XVII  RUBBING ELBOWS
 XVIII  QUIESCENT
   XIX  RE-CREATION
    XX  LITERARY MATERIAL
   XXI  ADVENTURING
  XXII  HARBORAGE
 XXIII  THE SUNNY SLOPE
  XXIV  THE END




ILLUSTRATIONS


   "A minister's wife!  You look more
     like a little girl's baby doll." . . . . . _Frontispiece_

   "Silly old goose," she murmured.

   Carol, with an inarticulate sob,
     gathered her baby in her arms.

   "I beg your pardon," she said, sweetly,
     unsmilingly, "I did not mean to be rude."




SUNNY SLOPES


CHAPTER I

THE BEGINNING

Back and forth, back and forth, over the net, spun the little white
ball, driven by the quick, sure strokes of the players.  There was no
sound save the bounding of the ball against the racquets, and the thud
of rubber soles on the hard ground.  Then--a sudden twirl of a supple
wrist, and--

"Deuce!" cried the girl, triumphantly brandishing her racquet in the
air.

The man on the other side of the net laughed as he gathered up the
balls for a new serve.

Back and forth, back and forth, once more,--close to the net, away back
to the line, now to the right, now to the left,--and then--

"Ad out, I am beating you, David," warned the girl, leaping lightly
into the air to catch the ball he tossed her.

"Here is a beauty," she said, as the ball spun away from her racquet.

The two, white-clad, nimble figures flashed from side to side of the
court.  He sprang into the air to meet her ball, and drove it into the
farthest corner, but she caught it with a backward gesture.  Still he
was ready for it, cutting it low across the net,--yes, she was there,
she got it,--but the stroke was hard,--and the ball was light.

"Was it good?" she gasped, clasping the racquet in both hands and
tilting dangerously forward on tiptoe to look.

"Good enough,--and your game."

With one accord they ran forward to the net, pausing a second to glance
about enquiringly, and then, one impulse guiding, kissed each other
ecstatically.

"The very first time I have beaten you, David," exulted the girl.
"Isn't everything glorious?" she demanded, with all of youth's
enthusiasm.

"Just glorious," came the ready answer, with all of mature manhood's
response to girlish youth.  Clasping the slender hands more tightly, he
added, laughing, "And I kiss the fingers that defeated me."

"Oh, David," the buoyant voice dropped to a reverent whisper.  "I love
you,--I love you,--I--I am just crazy about you."

"Careful, Carol, remember the manse," he cautioned gaily.

"But this is honeymooning, and the manse hasn't gloomed on my horizon
yet.  I'll be careful when I get installed.  I am really a Methodist
yet, and Methodists are expected to shout and be enthusiastic.  When we
move into our manse, and the honeymoon is ended, I'll just say, 'I am
very fond of you, Mr. Duke.'"  The voice lengthened into prim and prosy
solemnity.

"But our honeymoon isn't to end.  Didn't we promise that it should last
forever?"

"Of course it will."  She dimpled up at him, snuggling herself in the
arm that still encircled her shoulders.  "Of course it will."  She
balanced her racquet on the top of his head as he bent adoringly over
her.  "Of course it will,--unless your grim old Presbyterians manse all
the life out of me."

"If it ever begins, tell me," he begged, "and we'll join the Salvation
Army.  There's life enough even for you."

"I beat you," she teased, irrelevantly.  "I am surprised,--a great big
man like you."

"And to-morrow we'll be in St. Louis."

"Yes," she assented, weakening swiftly.  "And the mansers will have me
in their deadly clutch."

"The only manser who will clutch you is myself."  He drew her closer in
his arm as he spoke.  "And you like it."

"Yes, I love it.  And I like the mansers already.  I hope they like me.
I am improving, you know.  I am getting more dignified every day.
Maybe they will think I am a born Presbyterian if you don't give me
away.  Have you noticed how serious I am getting?"  She pinched
thoughtfully at his chin.  "David Duke, we have been married two whole
weeks, and it is the most delicious, and breathless, and amazing thing
in the world.  It is life--real life--all there is to life, really,
isn't it?"

"Yes, life is love, they say, so this is life.  All the future must be
like this."

"I never particularly yearned to be dead," she said, wrinkling her
brows thoughtfully, "but I never even dreamed that I could be so happy.
I am awfully glad I didn't die before I found it out."

"You are happy, aren't you, sweetheart?"

She turned herself slowly in his arm and lifted puckering lips to his.

"Hey, wake up, are you playing tennis, or staging Shakespeare?  We want
the court if you don't need it."

Mr. and Mrs. Duke, honeymooners, gazed speechlessly at the group of
young men standing motionless forty feet away, then Carol wheeled about
and ran swiftly across the velvety grass, over the hill and out of
sight, her husband in close pursuit.

Once she paused.

"If the mansers could have seen us then!" she ejaculated, with awe in
her voice.




CHAPTER II

MANSERS

The introduction of Mrs. David Arnold Duke, née Methodist, to the
members of her husband's Presbyterian flock, was, for the most part,
consummated with grace and dignity.  Only one untoward incident
lingered in her memory to cloud her lovely face with annoyance.

In honor of his very first honeymoon, hence his first opportunity to
escort a beautiful and blushing bride to the cozy little manse he had
so painstakingly prepared for her reception, the Reverend David
indulged in the unwonted luxury of a taxicab.  And happy in the
consciousness of being absolutely correct as to detail, they were
driven slowly down the beautifully shaded avenues of the Heights, one
of the many charming suburbs of St. Louis,--aware of the scrutiny of
interested eyes from the sheltering curtains of many windows.

Being born and bred in the ministry, Carol acquitted herself properly
before the public eye.  But once inside the guarding doors of the
darling manse, secure from the condemning witness of even the least of
the fold, she danced and sang and exulted as the very young, and very
glad, must do to find expression.

Their first dinner in the manse was more of a social triumph than a
culinary success.  The coffee was nectar, though a trifle overboiled.
The gravy was sweet as honey, but rather inclined to be lumpy.  And the
steak tasted like fried chicken, though Carol had peppered it twice and
salted it not at all.  It wasn't her fault, however, for the salt and
pepper shakers in her "perfectly irresistible" kitchen cabinet were
exactly alike,--and how was she to know she was getting the same one
twice?

Anyhow, although they started very properly with plates on opposite
sides of the round table, by the time they reached dessert their chairs
were just half way round from where they began the meal, and the salad
dishes were so close together that half the time they ate from one and
half the time from the other.  And when it was all over, they pushed
the dishes back and clasped their hands promiscuously together and
talked with youthful passion of what they were going to do, and how
wonderful their opportunity for service was, and what revolutions they
were going to work in the lives of the nice, but no doubt prosy
mansers, and how desperately they loved each other.  And it was going
to last forever and ever and ever.

So far they were just Everybride and Everygroom.  Their hearts sang and
the manse was more gorgeous than any mansion on earth, and all the
world was good and sweet, and they couldn't possibly ever make any kind
of a mistake or blunder, for love was guiding them,--and could pure
love lead astray?

David at last looked at his watch and said, rather hurriedly:

"By the way, I imagine a few of our young people will drop in to-night
for a first smile from the manse lady."

Carol leaped from her chair, jerked off the big kitchen apron, and flew
up the stairs with never a word.  When David followed more slowly, he
found her already painstakingly dusting her matchless skin with velvety
powder.

"I got a brand new box of powder, David, the very last thing I did,"
she began, as he entered the room.  "When this is gone, I'll resort to
cheaper kinds.  You see, father's had such a lot of experience with
girls and complexions that he just naturally expects them to be
expensive--and would very likely be confused and hurt if things were
changed.  But I can imagine what a shock it would be to you right at
the start."

David assured her that any powder which added to the wonder of that
most wonderful complexion was well worth any price.  But Carol shook
her head sagely.

"It's a dollar a box, my dear, and very tiny boxes at that.  Now don't
talk any more for I must fix my hair and dress, and--I want to look
perfectly darling or they won't like me, and then they will not put
anything in the collections and the heathens and we will starve
together.  Oh, will you buckle my slippers?  Thanks.  Here's half a
kiss for your kindness.  Oh, David, dear, do run along and don't bother
me, for suppose some one should get here before I am all fixed, and--
Shall I wear this little gray thing?  It makes me look very, very
sensible, you know, and--er--well, pretty, too.  One can be pretty as
well as sensible, and I think it's a Christian duty to do it.  David, I
shall never be ready.  I can not be talked to, and make myself
beautiful all at once.  Dear, please go and say your prayers, and ask
God to make them love me, will you?  For it is very important, and--
If I act old, and dignified, they will think I am appropriate at least,
won't they?  Oh, this horrible dress, I never can reach the hooks.
Will you try, David, there's my nice old boy.  Oh, are you going down?
Well, I suppose one of us ought to be ready for them,--run along,--it's
lonesome without you,--but I have to powder my face, and--  Oh, that
was just the preliminary.  The conclusion is always the same.  Bye,
dearest."  Then, solemnly, to her mirror, she said, "Isn't he the
blessedest old thing that ever was?  My, I am glad Prudence got married
so long ago, or he might have wanted her instead of me.  I don't
suppose the mansers could possibly object to a complexion like mine.  I
can get a certificate from father to prove it is genuine, if they don't
believe it."

Then she gave her full attention to tucking up tiny, straying curls
with invisible hair pins, and was quite startled when David called
suddenly:

"Hurry up, Carol, I am waiting for you."

"Oh, bless its heart, I forgot all about it.  I am coming."

Gaily she ran down the stairs, parted the curtains into the living-room
and said:

"Why are you sitting in the dark, David?  Headache, or just plain
sentimental?  Where are you?"

"Over here," he said, in a curious, quiet voice.

She groped her way into the center of the room and clutched his arms.
"David," she said, laughing a little nervously, "here goes the last
gasp of my dear old Methodist fervor."

"Why, Carol--" he interrupted.

"Just a minute, honey.  After this I am going to be settled and solemn
and when I feel perfectly glorious I'll just say, 'Very good, thank
you,' and--"

"But, Carol--"

"Yes, dear, just a second.  This is my final gasp, my last explosion,
my dying outburst.  Rah, rah, rah, David.  Three cheers and a tiger.
Amen!  Hallelujah!  Hurrah!  Down with the traitor, up with the stars!
Now it's all over.  I am a Presbyterian."

David's burst of laughter was echoed on every side of the room and the
lights were switched on, and with a sickening weakness Carol faced the
young people of her husband's church.

"More Presbyterians, dear, a whole houseful of them.  They wanted to
surprise you, but you have turned the tables on them.  This is my wife,
Mrs. Duke."

Slowly Carol rallied.  She smiled the irresistible smile.

"I am so glad to meet you," she said, softly, "I know we are going to
like each other.  Aren't you glad you got here in time to see me become
Presbyterian?  David, why didn't you warn me that surprise parties were
still stylish?  I thought they had gone out."

Carol watched very, very closely all that evening, and she could not
see one particle of difference between these mansers and the young
folks in the Methodist Church in Mount Mark, Iowa.  They told funny
stories, and laughed immoderately at them.  The young men gave the
latest demonstrations of vaudeville trickery, and the girls applauded
as warmly as if they had not seen the same bits performed in the
original.  They asked David if they might dance in the kitchen, and
David smilingly begged them to spare his manse the disgrace, and to
dance themselves home if they couldn't be more restrained.  The young
men put in an application for Mrs. Duke as teacher of the Young Men's
Bible Class, and David sternly vetoed the measure.  The young ladies
asked Carol what kind of powder she used, and however she got her hair
up in that most marvelous manner.

And Carol decided it was not going to be such a burden after all, and
thought perhaps she might make a regular pillar in time.

When, as she later met the elder ones of the church, and was invariably
greeted with a smiling, "How is our little Methodist to-day," she
bitterly swallowed her grief and answered with a brightness all assumed:

"Turned Presbyterian, thank you."

But to David she said:

"I did seriously and religiously ask the Lord to let me get introduced
to the mansers without disgracing myself, and I am just a teeny bit
disappointed because He went back on me in such a crisis."

But David, wise minister and able exponent of his faith, said quickly:

"He didn't go back on you, Carol.  It was the best kind of an
introduction, and He stood by you right through.  They were more afraid
of you than you were of them.  You might have been stiff and reserved,
and they would have been cold and self-conscious, and it would have
been ghastly for every one.  But your break broke the ice right off.
You were perfectly natural."

"Hum,--yes--natural enough, I suppose.  But it wasn't dignified, and
why do you suppose I have been practising dignity these last ten years?"




CHAPTER III

A BABY IN BUSINESS

"Centerville, Iowa.

"Dear Carol and David--

"Please do not call me the baby of the family any more.  I am in
business, and babies have no business in business.  Very good, wasn't
it?  I am practising verbosity for the book I am going to write some
day.  Verbosity is what I want to say, isn't it?  I am never sure
whether it is that or obesity.  But you know what I mean.

"To begin at the beginning, then, you would be surprised how sensible
father is turning out.  I can hardly understand it.  You remember when
I insisted on studying stenography, Aunt Grace and Prue, yes, and all
the rest of you, were properly shocked and horrified, and thought I
ought to teach school because it is more ministerial.  But I knew I
should need the stenography in my writing, and father looked at me, and
thought a while, and came right out on my side.  And that settled it.

"Of course, when I wanted to cut college after my second year so I
could get to work, father talked me out of it.  But I am really
convinced he was right that time, even though he wasn't on my side.
But after I finished college, when they offered me the English
Department in the High School in Mount Mark at seventy-five per, and
when I insisted on coming down here to Centerville to take this
stenographic job with Messrs.  Nesbitt and Orchard, at eight a week,
well, the serene atmosphere of our quiet home was decidedly murky for a
while.  I said I needed the experience, both stenographic and literary,
and this was my opportunity.

"Aunt Grace was speechless.  Prudence wept over me.  Fairy laughed at
me.  Lark said she just wished you were home to take charge of me and
teach me a few things.  But father looked at me again, and thought very
seriously for a while, and said he believed I was right.

"Consequently, I am at Centerville.

"Isn't it dear of father?  And so surprising.  The girls think he needs
medical attention, and honestly I am a little worried over him myself.
It was so unexpected.  Really, I half thought he would 'put his foot
down,' as the Ladies Aiders used to want Prudence to do with us.  He
was always resigned, father was, about giving the girls up in marriage,
but every one always said he would draw the line there.  He is
developing, I guess.

"Do you remember Nesbitt and Orchard?  Mr. Nesbitt was a member of the
church when we lived here, but it was before I was born, so I don't
feel especially well acquainted on that account.  But he calls me
Connie and acts very fatherly.

"He is still a member of the church, and they say around town that he
is not a bit slicker outside the church than he was when father was his
pastor.  He hurt me spiritually at first.  So I wrote to father about
it.  Father wrote back that I must be charitable--must remember that
belonging to church couldn't possibly do Mr. Nesbitt any harm, and for
all we knew to the contrary, might be keeping him out of the electric
chair every day of his life.  And Mr. Nesbitt couldn't do the
Christians any harm--the Lord is looking after them.  And those outside
who point to the hypocrites inside for excuses would have to think up
something new and original if we eliminated the hypocrites on their
account,--'so be generous, Connie,' wrote father, 'and don't begrudge
Mr. Nesbitt the third seat to the left for he may never get any nearer
Paradise than that.'

"Father is just splendid, Carol.  I keep feeling that the rest of you
don't realize it as hard as I do, but you will laugh at that.

"Mr. Nesbitt likes me, but he has--well, he has what a minister should
call a 'bad disposition.'  I'll tell you more about it in German when I
meet you.  German is the only language I know that can do him justice.

"I have been in trouble of one kind or another ever since I got here.
Mr. Nesbitt owns a lot of houses around town, and we have charge of
their rental.  One day he gave me the address of one of his most tumble
down shacks, and promised me a bonus of five dollars if I rented it for
fifteen dollars a month on a year's lease.  About ten days later, sure
enough I rented it, family to take possession immediately.  Mr. Nesbitt
was out of town, so I took the rent in advance, turned over the keys,
and proceeded to spend the five dollars.  I learned that system of
frenzied finance from you twins in the old days in the parsonage.

"Next morning, full of pride, I told Mr. Nesbitt about it.

"'Rented 800 Stout,' he roared.  'Why, I rented it myself,--a three
years' lease at eighteen a month,--move in next Monday.'

"'Mercy,' says I.  'My family paid a month in advance.'

"'So did mine.'

"'My family is already in,' says I.  That was a clincher.

"He raved and he roared, and said I got them in and I could get them
out.  But when he grew rational and raised my bonus to ten dollars, I
said I would do my best.  He agreed to refund the month's rent, to pay
the moving expenses both in and out, to take over their five dollar
deposit for electric lights, and to pay the electric and gas bill
outstanding, which wouldn't be much for two or three days.

"So off marches the business baby to the conflict.

"They didn't like it a bit, and talked very crossly indeed, and said
perfectly horrible, but quite true, things about Messrs. Nesbitt and
Orchard.  But finally they said they would move out, only they must
have until Friday to find a new house.  They would move out on
Saturday, and leave the keys at the office.

"Mr. Nesbitt was much pleased, and said I had done nicely, gave me the
ten dollars and a box of chocolates and we were as happy as cooing
doves the rest of the day.

"But my family must have been more indignant than I realized.  On
Saturday, at one o'clock, Mr. Nesbitt told me to go around by the house
on my way home to make sure the front door was locked.  It was locked
all right, but I noticed that the electric lights were burning.  Mr.
Nesbitt had not sent the key with me, as it was an automatic lock, and
it really was none of my business if folks moved out and left the
lights on.  Still it seemed irregular, and when I got home I tried to
get Mr. Nesbitt on the phone.  But he and Mr. Orchard had left the
office and gone out into the country for the afternoon.
Business,--they never go to the country for pleasure.  So I comfortably
forgot all about the electric lights.

"But Monday afternoon, Mr. Nesbitt happened to remark that his family
would not move in until Wednesday.  Then I remembered.

"I said, 'What is the idea in having the electric lights burning down
there?'

"'What?' he shouted.  He always shouts unless he has a particular
reason for whispering.

"'Why, the electric lights were burning in the house when I went by
Saturday.'

"'All of them?'

"'Looked it from the outside.'

"'Did you turn them off?'

"'I should say not.  I hadn't the key.  Besides I didn't turn them on.
I didn't know who did, nor why.  I just left them alone.'

"That meant a neat little electric bill of about six dollars, and Mr.
Nesbitt talked to me in a very un-neutral way, and I got my hat and
walked off home.  He called me up after a while and tried to make
peace, but I said I was ill from the nervous shock and couldn't work
any more that day.  So he sent me a box of candy to restore my
shattered nerves, and the next day they were all right.

"One day I got rather belligerent myself.  It was just a week after I
came.  One of his new tenants phoned in that Nesbitt must get the
rubbish out of the alley back of his house or he would move out.  Mr.
Nesbitt tried to evade a promise, but the man was curt.  'You get that
rubbish out to-day, or I get out to-morrow.'

"Mr. Nesbitt was just going to court, so he told me to call up a
garbage man and get the rubbish removed.

"I didn't know the garbage men from the ministers, and they weren't
classified in the directory.  So I went to Mr. Orchard, a youngish sort
of man, very pleasant, but slicker than Nesbitt himself.

"I said, not too amiably, 'Who are the garbage haulers in this town?'

"He said: 'Search me,' and went on writing.

"I dropped the directory on his desk, and said, "'Well, if Mr. Nesbitt
loses a good tenant, I should worry.'

"Then he looked up and said: 'Oh, let's see.  There's Jim Green, and
Softy Meadows, and--and--Tully Scott--and--that's enough.'

"So I called them up.  Jim Green was in jail for petty larceny.  Softy
Meadows was in bed with a broken leg.  Tully Scott would do it for
three fifty.  So I gave him the number and told him to do it that
afternoon without fail.

"Pretty soon Mr. Nesbitt came home.  'How about that rubbish?'

"'I got Tully Scott to do it for three fifty.'

"He fairly tore his hair.  'Three fifty!  Tully Scott is the biggest
highway robber in town, and everybody knows it!  Why didn't you get the
mayor and be done with it?  Three fifty!  Great Scott!  Three fifty!
You call his lordship Tully Scott up and ask him if he'll haul that
rubbish for a dollar and a half, and if he won't you can call off the
deal.'

"I called him up, quietly, but inwardly raging.

"'Will you haul that rubbish for a dollar and a half?'

"'No,' he drawled through his nose, 'I won't haul no rubbish for no
dollar and a half, and you can tell old Skinflint I said so.'

"He hung up.  So did I.

"'What did he say?'

"I thought the nasal inflection made it more forceful, so I said, 'No,
I won't haul no rubbish for no dollar and a half, and you can tell old
Skinflint I said so.'

"Mr. Orchard laughed, and Mr. Nesbitt got red.

"'Call up Ben Moore and see if he can do it.'

"I looked him straight in the eye.  'Nothing doing,' I said, with
dignity.  'If you want any more garbage haulers, you can get them.'

"I sat down to the typewriter.  Mr. Orchard nearly shut himself up in a
big law book in his effort to keep from meeting anybody's eye.  But
Nesbitt went to the phone and called Ben Moore.  Ben Moore had a four
days' job on his hands.  Then he called Jim Green, and Softy Meadows,
and finally in despair called the only one left.  John Knox,--nice
orthodox name, my dear.  John Knox would do it for the modest sum of
five dollars, and not a--well, I'll spare you the details, but he
wouldn't do it for a cent less.  Nesbitt raved, and Nesbitt swore, but
John Knox, while he may not be a pillar in the church, certainly stood
like a rock.  Nesbitt could pay it or lose his tenant.  He paid.

"Mr. Orchard got up and put on his hat.  'Miss Connie wants some
flowers and some candy and an ice-cream soda, my boy, and I want some
cigars, and a coca cola.  It's on you.  Will you come along and pay the
bill, or will you give us the money?'

"'I guess it will be cheaper to come along,' said Nesbitt, looking
bashfully at me, for I was very haughty.  But I put on my hat, and it
cost him just one dollar and ninety cents to square himself.

"But they both like me.  In fact, Mr. Orchard suggested that I marry
him so old Nesbitt would have to stop roaring at me, but I tell him
honestly that of the two evils I prefer the roaring.

"No, Carol, I am not counting on marriage in my scheme of life.  Not
yet.  Sometimes I think perhaps I do not believe in it.  It doesn't
work out right.  There is always something wrong somewhere.  Look at
Prudence and Jerry,--devoted to each other as ever, but Jerry's
business takes him out among men and women, into the life of the city.
And Prudence's business keeps her at home with the children.  He's out,
and she's in, and the only time they have to love each other is in the
evening,--and then Jerry has clubs and meetings, and Prudence is always
sleepy.  Look at Fairy and Gene.  He is always at the drug store, and
Fairy has nothing but parties and clubs and silly things like that to
think about,--a big, grand girl like Fairy.  And she is always looking
covetously at other women's babies and visiting orphans' homes to see
if she can find one she wants to adopt, because she hasn't one of her
own.  Always that sorrow behind the twinkle in her eyes!  If she hadn't
married, she wouldn't want a baby.  Take Larkie and Jim.  Always Larkie
was healthy at home, strong, and full of life.  But since little Violet
came, Lark is pale and weak, and has no strength at all.  Aunt Grace is
staying with her now.  Why, I can't look at dear old Larkie without
half crying.

"Take even you, my precious Carol, perfectly happy, oh, of course, but
all your originality, your uniqueness, the very you-ness of you, will
be absorbed in a round of missionary meetings, and prayer-meetings, and
choir practises, and Sunday-school classes.  The hard routine, my dear,
will take the sparkle from you, and give you a sweet, but un-Carol-like
precision and method.  Oh, yes, you are happy, but thank you, dear, I
think I'll keep my Self and do my work, and--be an old maid.

"Mr. Orchard offers himself as an alternative to the roars every now
and then, and I expound this philosophy of mine in answer.  He shouts
with laughter at it.  He says it is so, so like a baby in business.  He
reminds me of the time when gray hairs and crow's-feet will mar my
serenity, and when solitary old age will take the lightness from my
step.  But I've never noticed that husbands have a way of banishing
gray hairs and crow's-feet and feeble knees, have you?  Babies are
nice, of course, but I think I'll baby myself a little.

"I do get so homesick for the good old parsonage days, and all the
bunch, and--  Still, it is nice to be a baby in business, and think how
wonderful it will be when I graduate from my baby-hood, and have brains
enough to write books, big books, good books, for all the world to read.

"Lovingly as always,

"Baby Con."


When Carol read that letter she cried, and rubbed her face against her
husband's shoulder,--regardless of the dollar powder on his black coat.

"A teeny bit for father," she explained, "for all his girls are gone.
And a little bit for Fairy, but she has Gene.  And quite a lot for
Larkie, but she has Jim and Violet."  And then, clasping her arm about
his shoulders, which, despite her teasing remonstrance, he allowed to
droop a little, she cried exultantly: "But not one bit for me, for I
have you, and Connie is a poor, poverty-stricken, wretched little waif,
with nothing in the world worth having, only she doesn't know it yet."




CHAPTER IV

A WOMAN IN THE CHURCH

And there was a woman in the church.

There always is,--one who stands apart, distinct, different,--in the
community but not with it, in the church but not of it.

The woman in David's church was of a languorous, sumptuous type, built
on generous proportions, with a mass of dark hair waving low on her
forehead, with dark, straight-gazing, deep-searching eyes, the kind
that impel and hold all truanting glances.  She was slow in movement,
suggesting a beautiful and commendable laziness.  In public she talked
very little, laughing never, but often smiling,--a curious smile that
curved one corner of her lip and drew down the tip of one eye.  She had
been married, but no one knew anything about her husband.  She was a
member of the church, attended with most scrupulous regularity,
assisted generously in a financial way, was on good terms with every
one, and had not one friend in the congregation.  The women were afraid
of her.  So were the men.  But for different reasons.

Those who would ask questions of her, ran directly against the concrete
wall of the crooked smile, and turned away abashed, unsatisfied.

Carol was very shy with her.  She was not used to the type.  There had
been women in her father's churches, but they had been of different
kinds.  Mrs. Waldemar's straight-staring eyes embarrassed her.  She
listened silently when the other women talked of her, half admiringly,
half sneeringly, and she grew more timid.  She watched her fascinated
in church, on the street, whenever they were thrown together.  But one
deep look from the dark eyes set her a-flush and rendered her
tongue-tied.

Mrs. Waldemar had paid scant attention to David before the advent of
Carol, except to follow his movements with her eyes in a way of which
he could not remain unconscious.  But when Carol came, entered the
demon of mischief.  Carol was young, Mrs. Waldemar was forty.  Carol
was lovely, Mrs. Waldemar was only unusual.  Carol was frank as the
sunshine, Mrs. Waldemar was mysterious.  What woman on earth but might
wonder if the devoted groom were immune to luring eyes, and if that
lovely bride were jealous?

So she talked to him after church.  She called him on the telephone for
directions in the Bible study she was taking up.  She lounged in her
hammock as he returned home from pastoral calls, and stopped him for
little chats.  David was her pastor, she was one of his flock.

But Carol screwed up her face before the mirror and frowned.

"David," she said to herself, when a glance from her window revealed
David leaning over Mrs. Waldemar's hammock half a block away, doubtless
in the scriptural act of explaining an intricate passage of Revelation
to the dark-eyed sheep,--"David is as good as an angel, and as innocent
as a baby.  Two very good traits of course, but dangerous,
tre-men-dous-ly dangerous.  Goodness and innocence make men wax in
women's hands."  Carol, for all her youth, had acquired considerable
shrewdness in her life-time acquaintance with the intricacies of
parsonage life.

She looked from her window again.  "There's the--the--the dark-eyed
Jezebel."  She glanced fearfully about, to see if David might be near
enough to hear the word.  What on earth would he think of the manse
lady calling one of his sheep a Jezebel?  "Well, David," she said to
herself decidedly, "God gave you a wife for some purpose, and I'm slick
if I haven't much brains."  And she shook a slender fist at her image
in the mirror and went back to setting the table.

David was talkative that evening.  "You haven't seen much of Mrs.
Waldemar, have you, dear?  People here don't think much Of her.  She is
very advanced,--too advanced, of course.  But she is very broad, and
kind.  She is well educated, too, and for one who has had no training,
she grasps Bible truths in a most remarkable way.  She has never had
the proper guidance, that's the worst of it.  With a little wise
direction she will be a great addition to our church and a big help in
many ways."

Carol lowered her lashes reflectively.  She was wondering how much of
this "wise direction" was going to fall to her precious David?

"I imagine our women are a little jealous of her, and that blinds them
to her many fine qualities."

Carol agreed, with a certain lack of enthusiasm, and David continued
with evident relish.

"Some of her ideas are dangerous, but when she is shown the weakness of
her position she will change.  She is not one of that narrow school who
holds to a fallacy just because she accepted it in the beginning.  The
elders objected to her teaching a class in Sunday-school because they
claimed her opinions would prove menacing to the young and uninformed.
And it is true.  She is dangerous company for the young right now.  But
she is starting out along better lines and I think will be a different
woman."

"Dangerous for the young."  The words repeated themselves in Carol's
mind.  "Dangerous for the young."  Carol was young herself.  "Dangerous
for the young."

The next afternoon, Carol arrayed herself in her most girlishly
charming gown, and with a smile on her lips, and trepidation in her
heart, she marched off to call on her Jezebel.  The Jezebel was
surprised, no doubt of that.  And she was pleased.  Every one liked
Carol,--even Jezebels.  And Mrs. Waldemar was very much alone.  However
much a woman may revel in the admiration of men, there are times when
she craves the confidence of at least one woman.  Mrs. Waldemar led
Carol up-stairs to a most seductively attractive little sitting-room,
and Carol sat at her feet, as it were, for two full hours.

Then she tripped away home, more than ever aware of the wonderful charm
of Mrs. Waldemar, but thanking God she was young.

When David came in to dinner, a radiant Carol awaited him.  In the
ruffly white dress, with its baby blue ribbons, and with a wide band of
the same color in her hair, and tiny curls clustering about her pink
ears, she was a very infant of a minister's wife.

David took her in his arms appreciatively.  "You little baby," he said
adoringly, "you look younger every day.  Will you ever grow up?  A
minister's wife!  You look more like a little girl's baby doll."

Carol giggled, and rumpled up his hair; When she took her place at the
table she artfully snuggled low in her chair, peeping roguishly at him
from behind the wedding-present coffee urn.

"David," she began, as soon as he finished the blessing, "I've been
thinking all day of what you said about Mrs. Waldemar, and I've been
ashamed of myself.  I really have avoided her.  She is so old, and
clever, and I am such a goose, and people said things about her,
and--but after last night I was ashamed.  So to-day I went to see her,
all alone by myself, without a gun or anything to protect me."

David laughed, nodding at her approvingly.  "Good for you, Carol," he
cried in approbation.  "That was fine.  How did you get along?"

"Just grand.  And isn't she interesting?  And so kind.  I believe she
likes me.  She kept me a long time and made me a cup of tea, and begged
me to come again.  She nearly hypnotized me, I am really infatuated
with her.  Oh, we had a lovely time.  She is different from us, but it
does us good to mix with other kinds, don't you think so?  I believe
she did me good.  I feel very emancipated to-night."

Carol tossed her blue-ribboned, curly head, and the warm approval in
David's eyes cooled a little.

"What did she have to say?" he asked curiously.

"Oh, she talked a lot about being broad, and generous, and not allowing
environment to dwarf one.  She thinks it is a shame for a--a--girl of
my--well, she called it my 'divine sparkle,' and she said it was a
compliment,--anyhow, she said it was a shame I should be confined to a
little half-souled bunch of Presbyterians in the Heights.  She has a
lot of friends down-town, advanced thinkers, she calls them,--a poet,
and some authors, and artists, and musicians,--folks like that.  They
have informal meetings every week or so, and she is going to take me.
She says I will enjoy them and that they will adore me."

Carol's voice swelled with triumph, and David's approval turned to ice.

"She must have liked me or she wouldn't have been so friendly.  She
laughed at the Heights,--she called it a 'little, money-saving,
heart-squeezing, church-bound neighborhood.'  She said I must study new
thoughts and read the new poetry, and run out with her to grip souls
with real people now and then, to keep my star from tarnishing.  I
didn't understand all she said, but it sounded irresistible.  Oh, she
was lovely to me."

"She shouldn't have talked to you like that," protested David quickly.
"She is not fair to our people.  She can not understand them because
they live sweet, simple lives where home and church are throned.  New
thought is not necessary to them because they are full of the old, old
thought of training their babies, and keeping their homes, and
worshiping God.  And I know the kind of people she meets down-town,--a
sort of high-class Bohemia where everybody flirts with everybody else
in the name of art.  You wouldn't care for it."

Carol adroitly changed the subject, and David said no more.

The next day, quite accidentally, she met Mrs. Waldemar on the corner
and they had a soda together at the drug store.  That night after
prayer-meeting David had to tarry for a deacons' meeting, and Carol and
Mrs. Waldemar sauntered off alone, arm in arm, and waited in Mrs.
Waldemar's hammock until David appeared.

And David did not see anything wonderful in the dark, deep eyes at
all,--they looked downright wicked to him.  He took Carol away
hurriedly, and questioned her feverishly to find out if Mrs. Waldemar
had put any fresh nonsense into her pretty little head.

Day after day passed by and David began going around the block to avoid
Mrs. Waldemar's hammock.  Her advanced thoughts, expressed to him, old
and settled and quite mature, were only amusing.  But when she poured
the vials of her emancipation on little, innocent, trusting Carol,--it
was--well, David called it "pure down meanness."  She was trying to
make his wife dissatisfied with her environment, with her life, with
her very husband.  David's kindly heart swelled with unaccustomed fury.

Carol always assured him that she didn't believe the things Mrs.
Waldemar said,--it was interesting, that was all, and curious, and gave
her new things to think about.  And minister's families must be broad
enough to make Christian allowance for all.

But, curiously enough, she grew genuinely fond of Mrs. Waldemar.  And
Mrs. Waldemar, in gratitude for the girlish affection of the little
manse lady, left David alone.  But one day she took Carol's dimpled
chin in her hand, and turned the face up that she might look directly
into the young blue eyes.

"Carol," she said, smiling, "you are a girlie, girlie wife, with
dimples and curls and all the baby tricks, but you're a pretty clever
little lady at that.  You were not going to let your darling old David
get into trouble, were you?  And quite right, my dear, quite right.
And between you and me, I like you far, far better than your husband."
She smiled the crooked smile and pinched Carol's crimson cheek.  "The
only way to keep hubby out of danger is to tackle it yourself, isn't
it?  Oh, don't blush,--I like you all the better for your little trick."




CHAPTER V

A MINISTER'S SON

"Centerville, Iowa.

"Dear Carol and David:

"I am getting very, exceptionally wise.  I am really appalled at
myself.  It seems so unnecessary in one so young.  You will remember,
Carol, that I used to say it was unfair that ministers' children should
be denied so much of the worldly experience that other ordinary humans
fall heir to by the natural sequence of things.  I resented the
deprivation.  I coveted one taste of every species of sweet, satanic or
otherwise.

"I have changed my mind.  I have been convinced that ordinaries may
dabble in forbidden fires, and a little cold ointment will banish every
trace of the flame, but ministers' children stay scarred and charred
forever.  I have decided to keep far from the worldly blazes and let
others supply the fanning breezes.  For you know, Carol, that the
wickedest fires in the world would die out if there were not some
willing hands to fan them.

"There is the effect.  The cause--Kirke Connor.

"Carol, has David ever explained to you what fatal fascination a
semi-satanic man has for nice, white women?  I have been at father many
times on the subject, and he says, 'Connie, be reasonable, what do I
know about semi-satanics?'  Then he goes down-town.  See if you can get
anything out of David on the subject and let me know.

"Kirke is a semi-satanic.  Also a minister's son.  He has been in
trouble of one kind or another ever since I first met him, when he was
fourteen years old.  He fairly seethed his way through college.  Mr.
Connor has resigned from the active ministry now and lives in Mount
Mark, and Kirke bought a partnership in Mr. Ives' furniture store and
goes his troubled, riotous way as heretofore.  That is, he did until
recently.

"A few weeks ago I missed my railway connections and had to lay over
for three hours in Fairfield.  I checked my suit-case and started out
to look up some of my friends.  As I went out one door, I glimpsed the
vanishing point of a man's coat exiting in the opposite direction.  I
started to cut across the corner, but a backward glance revealed a
man's hat and one eye peering around the corner of the station.  Was I
being detected?  I stopped in my tracks, my literary instinct on the
alert.  The hat slowly pivoted a head into view.  It was Kirke Connor.
He shuffled toward me, glancing back and forth in a curious, furtive
way.  His face was harrowed, his eyes blood-shot.  He clutched my hand
breathlessly and clung to me as to the proverbial straw.

"'Have you seen Matters?' he asked.

"'Matters?'

"'You know Matters,--the sheriff at Mount Mark.'

"I looked at him in a way which I trust became the daughter of a
district superintendent of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

"He mopped his fevered brow.

"'He has been on my trail for two days.'  Then he twinkled, more like
himself.  'It has been a hot trail, too, if I do say it who shouldn't.
If he has had a full breath for the last forty-eight hours, I am
ashamed of myself.'

"'But what in the world--'

"'Let's duck into the station a minute.  I know the freight agent and
he will hide me in a trunk if need be.  I will tell you about it.  It
is enough to make your blood run cold.'

"Honestly, it was running cold already.  Here was literature for the
asking.  Kirke's wild appearance, his furtive manner, the searching
sheriff--a plot made to order.  So I tried to forget the M. E.
Universal, and we slipped into the station and seated ourselves
comfortably on some egg boxes in a shadowy corner where he told his
sad, sad tale.

"'Connie, you keep a wary eye on the world, the flesh and the devil.  I
know whereof I speak.  Other earth-born creatures may flirt with sin
and escape unscathed.  But the Lord is after the minister's son.'

"'I thought it was the sheriff after you?' I interrupted.

"'Well, so it is, technically.  And the devil is after the sheriff, but
I think the Lord is touching them both up a little to get even with me.
Anyhow, between the Lord and the devil, with the sheriff thrown in,
this world is no place for a minister's son.  And the rule works on
daughters, too.

"'You know, Connie, I have received the world with open hands, a loving
heart, a receptive soul.  And I got gloriously filled up, too, let me
tell you.  Connie, shun the little gay-backed cards that bear diamonds
and hearts and spades.  Connie, flee from the ice-cold bottles that
bubble to meet your lips.  Connie, turn a cold shoulder to the gilded
youths who sing when the night is old.'

"'For goodness' sake, Kirke, tell me the story before the sheriff gets
you.'

"'Well, it is a story of bottles on ice.'

"'Mount Mark is dry.'

"'Yes, like other towns, Mount Mark is dry for those who want it dry,
but it is wet enough to drown any misguided soul who loves the damp.  I
loved it,--but, with the raven, nevermore.  Connie, there is one thing
even more fatal to a minister's son than bottles of beer.  That thing
is politics.  If I had taken my beer straight I might have escaped.
But I tried to dilute it with politics, and behold the result.  My
father walking the floor in anguish, my mother in tears, my future
blasted, my hopes shattered.'

"'Kirke, tell me the story.'

"'Matters is running for reelection.  I do not approve of Matters.  He
is a booze fighter and a card shark and a lot of other unscriptural
things.  As a Methodist and a minister's son I felt called to battle
his return to office.  So I went out electioneering for my friend and
ally, Joe Smithson.  You know, Connie, that in spite of my wandering
ways, I have friends in the county and I am a born talker.  I took my
faithful steed and I spent many hours, which should have been devoted
to selling furniture, decrying the vices of Matters, extolling the
virtues of Smithson.  Matters got his eye on me.

"'He had the other eye on that office.  He saw he must make a strong
bid for county favor.  The easiest way to do that in Mount Mark is to
get after a boot-legger.  There was Snippy Brown, a poor old harmless
nigger, trying to earn an honest living by selling a surreptitious
bottle from a hole in the ground to a thirsting neighbor in the dead of
night.  Plainly Snippy Brown was fairly crying to be raided.  Matters
raided him.  And he got a couple of hundred of bottles on ice.'

"'Served him right,' I said, in a Sabbatical voice.

"'To be sure it did.  And Matters put him in jail and made a great fuss
getting ready for his trial.  I had a friend at court and he tipped me
off that Matters was going to disgrace the Methodist Church in general
and the Connors in particular by calling me in as a witness, making me
tell where I bought sundry bottles known to have been in my possession.
Picture it to yourself, sweet Connie,--my white-haired mother, my
sad-eyed father, the condemning deacons, the sneering Sunday-school
teachers, the prim-lipped Epworth Leaguers,--it could not be.  I left
town.  Matters left also,--coming my way.  For two days we have been at
it, hot foot, cold foot.  We have covered most of southeastern Iowa in
forty-eight hours.  He has the papers to serve on me, but he's got to
go some yet.'

"Kirke stood up and peered about among the trunks.  All serene.

"'I am nearly starved,' he said plaintively.  'Do you suppose we could
sneak into some quiet joint and grab a ham sandwich and a cup of
coffee?'

"I was willing to risk it, so we sashayed across the Street, I swirling
my skirts as much as possible to help conceal unlucky Kirke.

"But alas!  Kirke had taken just one ravenous gulp at his sandwich when
he stopped abruptly, leaning forward, his coffee cup upraised.  I
followed his wide-eyed stare.  There outside the window stood Matters,
grinning diabolically.  He pushed open the door, Kirke leaped across
the counter and vaulted through the side window, crashing the screen.
Matters dashed around the house in hot pursuit, and I--well, consider
that I was a reporter, seeking a scoop.  They did not beat me by six
inches.  Only I wish I had dropped the sandwich.  I must have looked
funny.

"Kirke flashed behind a shed, Matters after him, I after Matters.
Kirke zigzagged across a lawn dodging from tree to tree,--Matters and
I.  Kirke turned into an alley,--Matters and I.  Woe to the erring son
of a minister!  It was a blind alley.  It ended in a garage and the
garage was locked.

"Matters pulled out a revolver and yelled, 'Now stop, you fool; stop,
Kirke!'  Kirke looked back; I think he was just ready to shin up the
lightning rod but he saw the revolver and stopped.  Matters walked up,
laughing, and handed him a paper.  Kirke shoved it in his pocket.  I
clasped my sandwich in both hands and looked at them tragically,--sob
element.  Then Matters turned away and said, 'See you later, Kirke.  I
congratulate the county on securing your services.  Just the kind of
witness we like, nice, respectable, good family, and all.  Makes it
size up big, you know.  Be sure and invite your friends.'

"For a second I thought Kirke would strike him.  I shook the sandwich
at him warningly and he answered with a wave of his own,--yes, he had
his sandwich, too.  Then he said in a low voice, 'All right, Matters.
But you call me in that trial and I'll get you.'

"'Oh, oh, Sonny, you must not threaten an officer of the law,' said
Matters, in a hateful, chiding voice.  He turned and sauntered away.
Kirke and I watched him silently until he was out of sight.  Then we
turned to each other sympathetically.

"'Let's go back after that coffee,' said Kirke bravely.

"He took a bite of his sandwich thoughtfully, and I did of mine, trying
to eat the lump in my throat with it.  An hour later we went our
separate ways.

"I heard nothing further for two weeks, then Mr. Nesbitt was called
East on business and said I might go home if I liked.  Imagine my
ecstasy.  I found the family, as well as all Methodists in general,
quite uplifted over the strange case of Kirke Connor.  From a
semi-satanic, he had suddenly evoluted into a regular pillar, as became
the son of his saintly mother and his orthodox father.  He attended
church, he sang in the choir, he went to Sunday-school, he was
prominent at prayer-meeting.  Every one was full of pious satisfaction
and called him 'dear old Kirke,' and gave him the glad hand and invited
him to help at ice-cream socials.  No one could explain it, they
thought he was a Mount Mark edition of Twice Born Men in the flesh.

"So the first afternoon when he drove around with his speedy little
brown horse and his rubber tired buggy and asked me to go for a drive,
father smiled, and Aunt Grace demurred not.  Maybe I could give him a
little more light.  I watched him pretty closely the first mile or so.
He had nothing to say until we were a mile out of town.  He is a
good-looking fellow, Carol,--you remember, of course, because you never
forget the boys, especially the good-looking ones.  His eyes were clear
and slightly humorous, as if he knew a host of funny things if he only
chose to tell.  Finally in answer to my reproachful gaze, he said:

"'Well, I didn't have anything to say about it, did I?  I did not ask
to be born a minister's son.  It was foreordained, and now I've got to
live up to it in self-defense.  There may be forgiveness for other
erring ones, but I tell you our crowd is spotted.'

"I had nothing to say.

"'Well, you might at least say, "Good for you, my boy.  Here's luck?"'
he complained.

"I was still silent.

"'It is good business, too,' he continued belligerently.  'I am selling
lots of furniture.  I have burned the black and white cards.  I have
broken the ice-cold bottles.  I have shunned the gilded youths with
mellow voices.  I go to church.  I sell furniture.  I sleuth Matters.'

"'You what?'

"'I am trailing Matters.  Turn about.  Where he goeth, I goeth.  Where
he lodgeth, I lodgeth.  His knowledge is my knowledge, and his tricks,
my salvation.'

"'You make me sick, Kirke.  Why don't you talk sense?'

"'He is crooked, Connie, and everybody knows it.  But it is no cinch
catching him at it.  Smithson is going to be elected and Matters knows
it.  But the only way I can keep out of that trial is to get something
on Matters.  So whenever he is out, I am out on the same road.  He is
going toward New London this afternoon and so are we.  I have got just
five more days and you must be a good little scout and go driving with
me, so he won't catch on that I am sleuthing him.  He will think I am
just beauing you around in the approved Mount Mark style.'

"Sure enough after a while we came across Matters talking to a couple
of farmers on the cross roads, and Kirke and I stopped a quarter of a
mile farther down and ate sandwiches and told stories, and when Matters
passed us a little later he could have sworn we were there just for our
joy in each other's company.  But we did not learn anything.

"The next day we were out again, with no better luck.  But the third
day about four in the afternoon, Kirke called me on the telephone.
There was subtle excitement in his voice.

"'Come for a drive, Connie?' he asked; common words, but there was a
world of hidden invitation, of secret lure, in his voice for me.

"'Yes, gladly,' I said.  Father did not nod approvingly and Aunt Grace
did not smile this time.  Three days in succession was a little too
warm even for a newly made pillar, but they said nothing and Kirke and
I set out.

"'He raided Jack Mott's last night and has about three hundred bottles
to smash this afternoon.  The old fellow is pretty fond of the ice-cold
bottles himself and it is common report that he raids just often enough
to keep himself supplied.  So I think I'll keep an eye on him to-day.
He started half an hour ago, south road, and he has Gus Waldron with
him,--his boon companion, and the most notoriously ardent devotee of
the bottles in all dear dry Mount Mark.  Lovely day for a drive, isn't
it?'

"'Yes, lovely.'  I was very happy.  I felt like a princess of old,
riding off into danger, and I felt very warm and friendly toward Kirke.
Remember that he is very good-looking and just bad enough in spite of
his new pillar-hood, to be spell-binding, and--it was lots of fun.
Kirke grabbed my hand and squeezed it chummily, and I smiled at him.

"'You are a glorious girl,' he said.

"I suppose I should have reminded him and myself that he was a
semi-satanic, but I did not.  I laughed and rubbed the back of his hand
softly with the tips of my nice pink finger nails, and laughed again.

"Then here came a light wagon,--Matters and Waldron,--going home, and
we realized we had been loitering on the job.  Kirke shook his head
impatiently.

"'You distracted me,' he said.  'I forgot my reputation's salvation in
the smile of your eye.'

"But we drove on to look the field over.  Less than half a mile down
the road we came to a low creek with rocky rugged banks.  The banks
were splashed and splattered with bits of glass, and over the glass and
over the rocks ran thin trickling streams of a pale brown liquid that
had a perfectly sickening odor.  I sniffed disgustedly as we walked
over to reconnoiter.

"'I guess he made good all right,' said Kirke in a disappointed voice,
inspecting the glass-splattered banks of the creek.  Then he leaped
across and walked lightly up the bank on the opposite side.  Stooping
down, he lifted an unbroken bottle and waved it at me, laughing.

"'They missed one.  Never a crack in it and still cold.' He looked at
it curiously, affectionately, then with resignation.  'I am a
minister's son,' he reminded himself sternly.  He lifted the bottle
above his head, and with his eye selected a nice rough rock half way
down the bank.  'Watch the bubbles,' he called to me.

"'Hay, mister,' interposed a voice, 'gimme half a dollar an' I'll show
you a whole pile of 'em that ain't broke.'

"Slowly we rallied from our stupefaction as we gazed at the slim,
brown, barefooted lad of the farm who was proudly brandishing a
forbidden cigarette of corn-silks.

"'A whole pile of 'em.  On the square?' asked Kirke with glittering
eyes.

"'Yes, sir.  A couple o' fellows come out in a light wagon a while ago
an' had a lot of bottles in boxes.  First they throwed one on the
rocks, an' then they throwed one up in the tall grass, one up an' one
down.  There's a whole pile of 'em that ain't broke at all.  An' the
little dark fellow says, "A good job, Gus.  We'll be Johnny-on-the-spot
as soon as it gets dark."'

"Kirke was standing over him, his eyes bright, his hands clenched.  'On
the level?' he whispered.

"'Sure, but gimme the half first.'  Kirke passed out a silver dollar
without a word and the boy snatched it from him, giggling to himself
with rapture.

"'Right up there, mister, in that pile of weeds.'

"Kirke took my hand and we scrambled up the bank, pulling back the tall
grass,--no need to stoop and look.  Bottle after bottle, bottle after
bottle, lay there snugly and securely, waiting for the sheriff and his
friend to rescue them after dark.

"The lad had already disappeared, smoking his corn-silks rapturously,
his dollar snug in the palm of his hand.  And Kirke and I, without a
word, began patiently carrying the bottles to the buggy.  Again and
again we returned to the clump of weeds, counting the bottles as we
carried them out,--a hundred and fifty of them, even.

"Then we got into the buggy, feet outside, for the bed of the buggy was
filled and piled high, covered with the robe to discourage prying eyes,
and turned the little brown mare toward town.

"'Connie, would you seriously object to kissing me just once?  I feel
the need of it this minute,--moral stimulus, you know.'

"'Ministers' daughters have to be very, very careful,' I told him in an
even voice.

"We were both silent then as we drove into town.  When he pulled up in
front of the house he looked me straight in the face, and he uses his
eyes effectively.

"'You are a darling,' he said.

"I said 'Thanks,' and went into the house.

"He told me next morning what happened that evening.  Of course he was
there to witness Matters' discomfiture.  He did not put in appearance
until the sheriff and his friend were climbing anxiously and sadly into
the light wagon to return home empty-handed.  Then he sauntered from
behind a hedge and lifted his hat in his usual debonair manner.

"'By the way, Mr. Sheriff,' he began in a quiet, ingratiating voice, 'I
hope I am not to be called as a witness in that boot-legging case.'

"Matters snarled at him.  'Pooh,' he said angrily, 'you can't blackmail
me like that.  You can't prove anything on me.  I reckon the people
around here will take the word of the sheriff of their county against
the booze fightin' son of a Methodist preacher.'

"Kirke waved his hand airily.  'Far be it from me to enter into any
defense of my father's son.  But a hundred and fifty bottles are pretty
good evidence.  And speaking of witnesses, I have a hunch that the
people of this county will fall pretty hard for anything that comes
from the lips of the baby daughter of the district superintendent of
the Methodist Church.'

"Matters hunched forward in his seat.  'Connie Starr,' he said, in a
hollow voice.

"Kirke swished the weeds with his cane,--he has all those graceful
affectations.

"Matters swallowed a few times.  'Old man Starr is too smart a man to
get his family mixed up in politics,' he finally brought out.

"'Baby Con is of age, I think,' said Kirke lightly.  'And she is very
advanced, you know, something of a reformer, has all kinds of
emancipated notions.'

"Matters whipped up and disappeared, and Kirke went to prayer-meeting.
Aunt Grace saw him; I wasn't there.

"The next day, I met Matters on the street.  Rather, he met me.

"'Miss Connie,' he said in a friendly, inviting voice, 'you know there
are a lot of things in politics that girls can't get to the bottom of.
You know my record, I've been a good Methodist since before you were
born.  Sure you wouldn't go on the witness stand on circumstantial
evidence to make trouble for a good Methodist, would you?'

"I looked at him with wide and childish eyes.  'Of course not, Mr.
Matters,' I said quickly.  He brightened visibly.  'But if I am called
on a witness stand I have to tell what I have seen and heard, haven't
I, whatever it is?'  I asked this very innocently, as one seeking
information only.

"'Your father wouldn't let a young girl like you get mixed up in any
dirty county scandal,' he protested.

"'If I was--what do you call it--subpoenaed--is that the word?'  He
forgot that I was working in a lawyer's office.  'If I was subpoenaed
as a witness, could father help himself?'

"Mr. Matters went forlornly on his way and that night Kirke came around
to say that the sheriff had informed him casually that he thought his
services would not be needed on that boot-legging case,--they had
plenty of other witnesses,--and out of regard for the family, etc., etc.

"Kirke smiled at him.  'Thank you very much.  And, Matters, I have a
hundred and fifty nice cold bottles in the basement,--if you get too
warm some summer evening come around and I'll help you cool off.'

"Matters thanked him incoherently and went away.

"That day Kirke and I had a confidential conversation.  'Connie Starr,
I believe I am half a preacher right now.  You marry me, and I will
study for the ministry.'

"'Kirke Connor,' I said, 'if any fraction of you is a minister, it
isn't on speaking terms with the rest of you.  That's certain.  And I
wouldn't marry you if you were a whole Conference.  And I don't want to
marry a preacher of all people.  And anyhow I am not going to get
married at all.'

"At breakfast the next morning father said, 'I believe Kirke Connor is
headed straight, for good and all.  Now if some nice girl could just
marry him he would be safe enough.'

"Aunt Grace looked at him warningly.  'But of course no nice girl could
do it, yet,' she interposed quickly.  'It wouldn't be safe.  He can't
marry until he is sure of himself.'

"'Oh, I don't know,' I said thoughtfully.  'Provided the girl were
clever as well as nice, she could handle Kirke easily.  Now I may not
be the nicest girl in the world, but no one can deny that I am clever.'

"Father swallowed helplessly.  Then he rallied.  'By the way, Connie,
won't you come down to Burlington with me for a couple of days?  I have
a lot of work to do there, and we can have a nice little honeymoon all
by ourselves.  What do you say?'

"'Oh, thank you, father, that is lovely.  Let's go on the noon train,
shall we?  I can be ready.'

"'All right, just fine.'  He flashed a triumphant glance at Aunt Grace
and she dimpled her approval.

"'Now don't tell any one we are going, father,' I cautioned him.  'I
want to surprise Kirke Connor.  He is going to Burlington on that train
himself, and it will be such a joke on him to find us there ready to be
entertained.  He is to be there several days, so he can amuse me while
you are busy.  Isn't it lovely?  He really needs a little boosting now,
and it is our duty, and--will you press my suit, Auntie?  I must fly or
I won't be ready.'

"Aunt Grace looked reproachfully at father, and father looked
despairingly at Aunt Grace.  But we had a splendid time in Burlington,
the three of us, for father never did one second's work all the time,
he was so deathly afraid to leave me alone with Kirke.

"Isn't it lots of fun to be alive, Carol?  So many thrilling and
interesting and happy things come up every day,--I love to dig in and
work hard, and how I love to drop my work at five thirty and run home
and doll up, and play, and flirt--just nice, harmless flirting,--and
sing, and talk,--really, it is a darling little old world, isn't it?

"Oh, and by the way, Carol, when you want a divorce just write me about
it.  Mr. Nesbitt and I specialize on divorces, and I can do the whole
thing myself and save you lots of trouble.  Just tell me when, and I
will furnish your motive.

"Lovingly as always,

"Connie."




CHAPTER VI

THE HEAVY YOKE

The burden of ministering rested very lightly on Carol's slender
shoulders.  The endless procession of missionary meetings, aid
societies, guilds and boards, afforded her a childish delight and did
not sap her enthusiasm to the slightest degree.  She went out of her
little manse each new day, laughing, and returned, wearily perhaps, but
still laughing.  She sang light-heartedly with the youth of the church,
because she was young and happy with them.  She sympathized
passionately with the old and sorry ones, because the richness of her
own content, and the blessed perfection of her own life, made her heart
tender.

Into her new life she had carried three matchless assets for a
minister's wife,--a supreme confidence in the exaltation of the
ministry, a boundless adoration for her husband, and a natural liking
for people that made people naturally like her.  Thus equipped, she
faced the years of aids and missions with profound serenity.

She was sorry they hadn't more time for the honeymoon business, she and
David.  Honeymooning was such tremendously good fun.  But they were so
almost unbelievably busy all the time.  On Monday David was down-town
all day, attending minister's meeting and Presbytery in the morning,
and looking up new books in the afternoon.  Carol always joined him for
lunch and they counted that noon-time hour a little oasis in a week of
work.  In the evening there were deacons' meetings, or trustees'
meetings, or the men's Bible class.  On Tuesday evening they had a
Bible study class.  On Wednesday evening was prayer-meeting.  Thursday
night, they, with several of their devoted workers, walked a mile and a
half across country to Happy Hollow where they conducted mad little
mission meetings.  Friday night Carol met with the young women's club,
and on Saturday night was a mission study class.

Carol used to sigh over the impossibility of having a beau night.  She
said that she had often heard that husbands couldn't be sweethearts,
but she had never believed it before.  Pinned down to facts, however,
she admitted she preferred the husband.

Mornings Carol was busy with housework, talking to herself without
intermission as she worked.  And David spent long hours in his study,
poring over enormous books that Carol insisted made her head ache from
the outside and would probably give her infantile paralysis if she
dared to peep between the covers.  Afternoons were the aid societies,
missionary societies, and all the rest of them, and then the endless
calls,--calls on the sick, calls on the healthy, calls on the pillars,
calls on the backsliders, calls on the very sad, calls on the very
happy,--every varying phase of life in a church community merits a call
from the minister and his wife.

The heavy yoke,--the yoke of dead routine,--dogs the footsteps of every
minister, and even more, of every minister's wife.  But Carol thought
of the folks that fitted into the cogs of the routine to drive it round
and round,--the teachers, the doctors' wives, the free-thinkers, the
mothers, the professional women, the cynics, the pillars of the
church,--and thinking of the folks, she forgot the routine.  And so to
her, routine could never prove a clog, stagnation.  Every meeting
brought her a fresh revelation, they amused her, those people, they
puzzled her, sometimes they made her sad and frightened her, as they
taught her facts of life they had gleaned from wide experience and
often in bitter tears.  Still, they were folks, and Carol had always
had a passion for people.

David worked too hard.  It was positively wicked for any human being to
work as he did, and she scolded him roundly, and even went so far as to
shake him, and then kissed him a dozen times to prove how very angry
she was at him for abusing himself so shamefully.

David did work hard, as hard as every young minister must work to get
things going right, to make his labor count.  His face, always thin,
was leaner, more intense than ever.  His eyes were clear, far-seeing.
The whiteness of his skin, amounting almost to pallor, gave him that
suggestion of spirituality not infrequently seen in men of passionate
consecration to a high ideal.  The few graying hairs at his temples,
and even the half-droop of his shoulders, added to his scholarly
appearance, and Carol was firmly convinced that he was the
finest-looking man in all St. Louis, and every place else for that
matter.

The mad little mission, so-called because of the riotous nature of the
meetings held there, was in a most flourishing condition.  Everything
was going beautifully for the little church in the Heights, and in
their gratitude, and their happiness, Carol and David worked harder
than ever,--and mutually scolded each other for the folly of it.

"I tell you this, David Arnold Duke," Carol told him sternly, "if you
don't do something to that cold so you can preach without coughing, I
shall do the preaching myself, and then where would you be?"

"Without a job, of course," he answered.  "But you wouldn't do it.  The
wind has chafed your darling complexion, and you wouldn't go into the
pulpit with a rough face.  Your devotion to your beauty saves me."

"All very well, but maybe you think a cold-sermon is effective."
Carol stood up and lifted her hand impressively.  "My dear brothers
and sisters,--hem-ah-hem-h-hh-em,--let us unite in reading
the--ah-huh-huh-huh.  Let us sing--h-h-h-h-hem--well, let us unite in
prayer then--ah-chooo! ah-choooooo!"

"Where did you put those cough-drops?" he demanded.  "But even at that
it is better than you would do.  'Just as soon as I powder my face we
will unite in singing hymn one hundred thirty-six.  Oh, excuse me a
minute,--I believe I feel a cold-sore coming,--I have a mirror right
here, and it won't take a minute.  Now, I am ready.  Let us arise and
sing,--but since I can not sing I will just polish my nails while the
rest of you do it.  Ready, go!'"

Carol laughed at the picture, but marched off for the bottle of cough
medicine and the powder box, and while he carefully measured out a
teaspoonful of the one for himself, she applied the other with gay
devotion.

"But I truly think you should not go to Happy Hollow to-night," she
said.  "Mr. Baldwin will go with me, bless his faithful old pillary
heart.  And you ought to stay in.  It is very stormy, and that long
walk--"

"Oh, nonsense, a little cough like this!  You are dead tired yourself;
you stay at home to-night, and Baldwin and I will go.  You really ought
to, Carol, you are on the jump every minute.  Won't you?"

"Most certainly not.  I haven't a cold, have I?  Maybe you want to keep
me away so you can flirt with some of the Hollowers while I am out of
sight.  Absolutely vetoed.  I go."

"Please, Carol,--won't you?  Because I ask it?"

She snuggled up to him at that and said: "It's too lonesome, Davie, and
I have to go to remind you of your rubbers, and to muffle up your
throat.  But--"

The ring of the telephone disturbed them, and she ran to answer.

"Mr. Baldwin?--Yes--Oh, that is nice of you.  I've been trying to coax
him to stay home myself.  David, Mr. Baldwin thinks you should not go
out to-night, with such a cold, and he will take the meeting, and--oh,
please, honey."

David took the receiver from her hand.

"Thanks very much, Mr. Baldwin, that is mighty kind of you, but I feel
fine to-night.--Oh, sure, just a little cold.  Yes, of course.  Come
and go with us, won't you?  Yes, be here about seven.  Better make it a
quarter earlier, it's bad walking to-night."

"David, please," coaxed Carol.

"Goosie!  Who but a wife would make an invalid of a man because he
sneezes?" David laughed, and Carol said no more.

But a few minutes later, as she was carefully arranging a soft fur hat
over her hair and David stood patiently holding her coat, there came a
light tap at the door.

"It is Mr. Daniels," said Carol.  "I know his knock.  Come in, Father
Daniels.  I knew it was you."

The old elder from next door, his gray hair standing in every direction
from the wind he had encountered bareheaded, his little gray eyes
twinkling bright, opened the door.

"You crazy kids aren't going down to that Hollow a night like this," he
protested.

They nodded, laughing.

"Well, David can't go," he said decidedly.  "That's a bad cold he's
got, and it's been hanging on too long.  I can't go myself for I can't
walk, but I'll call up my son-in-law and make him go.  So take off your
hat, Parson, and--  No you come over and read the Bible to me while the
young folks go gadding.  I need some ministerial attention myself,--I'm
wavering in my faith."

"You, wavering?" demanded David.  "If no one ever wavered any harder
than you do, Daniels, there wouldn't be much of a job for the
preachers.  And you say for me to let Carol go with Dick?  What are you
thinking of?  I tell you when any one goes gadding with Carol, I am the
man."  Then he added seriously: "But really, I've got to go to-night.
We're just getting hold of the folks down there and we can't let go.
Otherwise, I should make Carol stay in.  But the boys in her class are
so fond of her that I know she is needed as much as I am."

"But that cough--"

"Oh, that cough is all right.  It will go when spring comes.  I just
haven't had a chance to rest my throat.  I feel fine to-night.  Come on
in, Baldwin.  Yes, we are ready.  Still snowing?  Well, a little snow--
Here, Carol, you must wear your gaiters.  I'll buckle them."

A little later they set out, the three of them, heads lowered against
the driving snow.  There were no cars running across country, and
indeed not even sidewalks, since it was an unfrequented part of the
town with no residences for many blocks until one reached the little,
tumbledown section in the Hollow.  Here and there were heavy drifts,
and now and then an unexpected ditch in the path gave Carol a tumble
into the snow, but, laughing and breathless, she was pulled out again
and they plodded heavily on.

In spite of the inclement weather, the tiny house--called a mission by
grace of speech--was well and noisily filled.  Over sixty people were
crowded into the two small rooms, most of them boys between the ages of
twelve and sixteen, laughing, coughing, dragging their feet, shoving
the heavy benches, dropping song-books.  They greeted the snow-covered
trio with a royal roar, and a few minutes later were singing, "Yes,
we'll gather at the river," at the tops of their discordant voices.
Carol sat at the wheezy organ, painfully pounding out the rhythmic
notes,--no musician she, but willing to do anything in a pinch.  And
although at the pretty little church up in the Heights she never
attempted to lift her voice in song, down at the mission she felt
herself right in her element and sang with gay good-will, happy in the
knowledge that she came as near holding to the tune as half the others.

Most of the evening was spent in song, David standing in the narrow
doorway between the two rooms, nodding this way, nodding that, in a
futile effort to keep a semblance of time among the boisterous
worshipers.  A short reading from the Bible, a very brief prayer, a
short, conversational story-talk from David, and the meeting broke up
in wild clamor.

Then back through the driving snow they made their way, considering the
evening well worth all the exertion it had required.

Once inside the cozy manse, David and Carol hastily changed into warm
dressing-gowns and slippers and lounged lazily before the big
fireplace, sipping hot coffee, and talking, always talking of the
work,--what must be done to-morrow, what could be arranged for Sunday,
the young people's meeting, the primary department, the mission study
class.

And Carol brought out the big bottle and administered the designated
teaspoonful.

"For you must quit coughing, David," she said.  "You ruined two good
points last Sunday by clearing your throat in the middle of a phrase.
And it isn't so easy making points as that."

"Aren't you tired of hearing me preach, Carol?  We've been married a
whole year now.  Aren't you finding my sermons monotonous?"

"David," she said earnestly, resting her head against his shoulder,
partly for weariness, partly for the pleasure of feeling the rise and
fall of his breast,--"when you go up into the pulpit you look so white
and good, like an apostle or a good angel, it almost frightens me.  I
think, 'Oh, no, he isn't my husband, not really,--he is just a good
angel God sent to keep me out of mischief.'  And while you are
preaching I never think, 'He is mine.'  I always think, 'He is God's.'"

Tears came into her eyes as she spoke, and David drew her close in his
arms.

"Do you, sweetheart?  It seems a terrible thing to stand up there
before a houseful, of people, most of them good, and clean, and full of
faith, and try to direct their steps in the broader road.  I sometimes
feel that men are not fit for it.  There ought to be angels from
Heaven."

"But there are angels from Heaven watching over them, David, guiding
them, showing them how.  I believe good white angels are guiding every
true minister,--not the bad ones--  Oh, I know a lot about ministers,
honey,--proud, ambitious, selfish, vainglorious, hypocritical, even
amorous, a lot of them,--but there are others, true ones,--you, David,
and some more.  They just have to grow together until harvest, and then
the false ones will be dug up and dumped in the garbage."

For a while they were silent.

Finally he asked, smiling a little, "Are you getting cramped, Carol?
Are you getting narrow, and settling down to a rut?  Have you lost your
enthusiasm and your sparkle?"

Carol laughed at him.  "David, do you remember the first night we were
married, when we knelt down together to say our prayers and you put
your arm around my shoulder, and we prayed there, side by side?
Dearest, that one little fifteen minutes of confidence and humility and
heart-gratitude was worth all the sparkle and fire in the world.  But
have I lost it?  Seems to me I am as much a shouting Methodist as ever."

David laughed, coughing a little, and Carol bustled him off to bed,
sure he was catching a brand new cold, and berating herself roundly for
allowing this foolish angel of hers to get a chill right on her very
hands.




CHAPTER VII

THE FIRST STEP

It was Sunday night in mid-winter.  After church, David remained for a
trustees' meeting, and Carol walked home with some of the younger ones
of the congregation.  When they asked if she wished them to wait with
her for David she shook her head, smiling gratefully but with weariness.

"No, thank you.  I am going right straight to bed.  I am tired."

Into the little manse she crept, sinking into the first easy chair that
presented itself.  With slow listless fingers she removed her wraps,
dropping them on the floor beside her,--laboriously unbuttoned and
removed her shoes, and in the same lifeless manner loosened her dress
and took the pins from her hair.  Then, holding her garments about her,
she went in search of night dress, slippers and negligee.  A few
seconds later she returned and curled herself up with some cushions on
the floor before the fireplace.

"Ought to make some coffee,--David's so hungry after
church,--too--dead--tired--Ummmmm."  Her voice trailed off into a
murmur and she closed her eyes.

David found her so, soundly sleeping, her hair curling about her face.
He knelt down and kissed her.  She opened one eye.

"Coffee?" she queried automatically.

"I should say not.  Go to bed."  He sprawled full length on the floor,
his head against her arm.

"Worn out, aren't you, David?"

"Well, I'm ready for bed; Such a day!  Did you have time for Mrs.
Garder before Endeavor?"

"Yes, she knew me too.  I am glad I went.  She had been waiting for me.
They say it is only a few days now.  The way of a minister's wife is
hard sometimes.  She wanted me to sing _Lead Kindly Light_, and was so
puzzled and confused when I insisted I couldn't sing.  She thought
ministers' wives always sang.  I know she is disappointed in me now.
If the Lord foreknew that I was going to marry a minister, why didn't
He foreordain that I should sing?"

David laughed, but attempted no explanation.

"Did you get along all right at the Old Ladies' Home?"

"Oh, fine.  The girls sang beautifully, and I read the Bible lesson
without mispronouncing a single word.  Did the boys miss me at the
Hollow?"

"Yes, they said they needed you worse than the old ladies.  Maybe they
were right.  We must save your Sunday afternoons for them after this.
They do need you."

"Did you have supper with the Baldwins?"

"Yes.  You stayed with Mrs. Norris, didn't you?"

"Yes.  Um, I am sleepy."

David coughed slightly.

"Get up off this floor, David Duke," scolded Carol.  "Don't you know
that floors are always drafty?  I am surprised at you.  I wish Prudence
was here to make you soak your feet in hot water and drink peppermint
tea."

"You work too hard, Carol.  You are busy every minute."

"Yes.  I have to be, to keep in hailing distance of you.  You usually
do about three things at once."

"It's been a good year, Carol.  You've enjoyed it, spite of everything,
haven't you?"

"It's been the most wonderful year one could dream of.  Even Connie's
literary imagination could not conjure up a sweeter one."

"Always something to do, something to think of, some one to
see,--always on the alert, to-day crowded full, to-morrow to look
forward to."

"And best of all, David, always with you, working with you, taking care
of you,--always--  Oh, I am tired, but it is not so bad being tired out
when you've done your level best."

"Carol, it is fine, labor is, it is life.  I can't imagine an existence
without it.  Going to bed, worn out with the day, rising in the morning
ready to plunge in over one's ears.  It is the only real life there is.
How do people endure a drifting through the days, with never anything
to do and never worn enough to sleep?"

"I don't know," said Carol promptly.  "They aren't alive, that's sure.
But let's go to bed.  David, please get off that floor and stop
coughing."

David obediently got up, lightly dusting his trousers as he did so.
Then he lifted his arms high and breathed deeply.  "Anyhow it is better
to be tired than lazy, isn't it?"




CHAPTER VIII

REACTION

"Will you have this woman?"

David's clear, low voice sounded over the little church, and the bride
lifted confident, trusting eyes to his face.  The people in the pews
leaned forward.  They had glanced approvingly at the slender, dark-eyed
girl in her bridal white, but now every eye was centered on the
minister.  The hand in which he held the Book was white, blue veined,
the fingers long and thin.  His eyes were nervously bright, with faint
circles beneath them.

David looked sick.

So the glowing, sweet faced bride was neglected and the groom received
scant attention.  The minister cleared his throat slightly, and the
service went smoothly on to the end.

But the sigh of relief that went up at its conclusion betokened not so
much satisfaction that another young couple were setting forth on the
troubled, tempting waters of matrimony, as that David had finished
another service and all might yet be well.

Carol, half way back in the church, had heard not one word of the
service.

"David is an angel, but I do wish he were a little less heavenly," she
thought passionately.  "He--makes me nervous."

The carriage was at the door to take the minister and his wife to the
Daniels home for the bridal reception, but David said, "Tell him to
take us to the manse first, Carol.  I've got to rest a minute.  I'm
tired to-night."

In the living-room of the manse he carefully removed the handsome black
coat in which he had been graduated from the Seminary in Chicago, and
in which a little later he had been ordained for the ministry and
installed in his church in the Heights.  Still later he had worn it at
his marriage.  David hung it over the back of a chair, saying as he did
so:

"Wearing pretty well, isn't it?  It may be called upon to officiate in
other crises for me, so it behooves me to husband it well."

Then he dropped heavily on the davenport before the fireplace, with
Carol crouching on a cushion beside him, stroking his hand.

"Let's not go to the reception," she said.  "We've congratulated them a
dozen times already."

"Oh, we've got to go," he answered.  "They would be disappointed.
We'll only stay a few minutes.  Just as soon as I rest--I am played out
to-night--it is only a step."

They slipped among the guests at the reception quietly and
unobtrusively, but were instantly surrounded.

"A good service, David," said Mr. Daniels, eying him keenly.  "You make
such a pretty job of it I'd like to try it over myself."

"Now, Dan," expostulated his anxious little wife.  "Don't you pay any
attention to him, Mrs. Duke, he's always talking."

"I know it," said Carol appreciatively.  "I never pay attention."

"You need a vacation, Mr. Duke," broke in a voice impulsively.

"I know it," assented David.  "We'll take one in the spring,--and you
can help pay the expenses."

"You'd better take it now," suggested Mrs. Baldwin.  "The church can
get along without you, you know."

But the laugh that went up was not genuine.  Many of them, in their
devotion to David, wondered if the church really could get along
without him.

David gaily waved aside the enormous plate of refreshments that was
passed to him.  "I had my dinner, you know," he explained.  "Carol
isn't neglecting me."

"He had it, but he didn't eat it,--and it was fried chicken," said
Carol sadly.

A few minutes later they were at home again, and before Carol had
finished the solemn task of rubbing cold cream into her pretty skin,
David was sleeping heavily, his face flushed, his hands twitching
nervously at times.

Carol stood above him, gazing adoringly down upon him for a while.
Then shutting her eyes, she said fervently:

"Oh, God, do make David less like an angel, and more like other men."

Early the next morning she was up and had steaming hot coffee ready for
David almost before his eyes were open.

"To crowd out that mean little cough that spoils your breakfast," she
said.  "I shall keep you in bed to-day."

All morning David lounged around the house, hugging the fireplace, and
complained of feeling cold though it was a warm bright day late in
April, and although the fire was blazing.  In the afternoon he took off
his jacket and loosened his collar.

"It certainly is hot enough now," he declared.  "Open the windows,
Carol,--I am roasting."

"That is fever," she announced ominously.  "Do you feel very badly?"

"Well, nothing extra," he assented grudgingly.

"David, if you love me, let's call a doctor.  You are going to have the
grippe, or pneumonia, or something awful, and--if you love me, David."

The pleading voice arrested his refusal and he gave the desired
consent, still laughing at the silly notion.

So Carol sped next door to the home of Mr. Daniels, the fatherly elder.

"Mr. Daniels," she cried, brightly happy because David had consented to
a doctor, and a doctor meant health and strength and the end of that
hateful little cough.  "We are going to have a doctor see David.  What
is the name of that man down-town--the one you think is so wonderful?"

Mr. Daniels gladly gave her the name, warmly approving the move, but he
shook his head a little over David.  "I am no pessimist," he said, "but
David is not just exactly right."

"The doctor will fix him up," cried Carol joyously.  "I am so relieved
and comfortable now.  Don't try to worry me."

David looked nervous when Carol gave him the name of the physician she
had called.

"He is a Catholic,--and some of the members think--"

"Of course they do, but I am the head of this house," declared Carol,
standing on tiptoe and assuming her most lordly air.  "And Doctor
O'Hara is the best in town, and he is coming."

"Oh, all right, if you feel like that about it.  I don't suppose he
would give me strychnine just because I am a Presbyterian minister."

"Oh, mercy!" ejaculated Carol.  "I never thought of that.  Do you
suppose he would?"

But David only laughed at her, as he so often did.

When Carol met the doctor at the door, she found instant reassurance in
the strong, kind, clever face.

"It's a cold," she explained, "but it hangs on too long, and he keeps
running down-hill."

The doctor looked very searchingly into David's pale bright face.  And
Carol and David did not know that the extra joke and the extravagant
cheeriness of his voice indicated that things looked badly.  They took
great satisfaction in his easy manner, and when, after a brief
examination, he said:

"Now, into bed you go, Mr. Duke, and there you stay a while.  Get a
substitute for Sunday.  You've got to make a baby of a bad cold and pet
it a little."

David and Carol laughed, and when the doctor went away, and David was
safely in bed, Carol perched up beside him and they had a stirring game
of parcheesi.  But David soon tired, and lay very quietly all evening,
eating no dinner, and talking very little.  Telephone messages from
"the members" came thick and fast, with offers of all kinds of tempting
viands, and callers came streaming to the door.  But Father Daniels
next door turned them every one away.

"He can't talk any more," he said in his abrupt, yet kindly way.  "He's
just worn out talking to this bunch,--that's all that ails him."

Next day the doctor came again, gave another examination, and said
there was some little congestion in the lungs.

"Just do as I have told you,--keep the windows up, drink a lot of fresh
milk, and eat all the raw eggs you can choke down."

"He won't eat anything," said Carol.

"Let him fast then, and he'll soon be begging for raw eggs.  I'll see
you again to-morrow."

When he returned next day there was a little shadow in the kind eyes.
David lay on the cot, smiling, and Carol stood beside him.

"How do you feel to-day?"

"Oh, just fine," came the ready answer.

But the shadow in the doctor's eyes deepened.

"The meanest part of a doctor's work is handing out death blows to
hope," he said.  "But you two are big enough to take a hard knock
without flinching, and I won't need to beat around the bush.  Mr. Duke,
you have tuberculosis."

David winched a little and Carol clutched his hand spasmodically, yet
they smiled quickly, comfortingly into each other's eyes.

"That does not mean that your life is fanning out, by any means,"
continued the doctor in his easy voice.  "We've got a grip on the
disease now.  You are getting it right at the start and you stand a
splendid chance.  Your clean life will help.  Your laughing wife will
help.  Your confidence in a Divine Doctor will help.  Everything is on
your side.  If you can, I think I should go out west somewhere,--to New
Mexico, or Arizona.  It is low here, and damp,--lots of people chase
the cure here, and find it, but it is easier out there where the air is
light and fine and the temperature is even, and where doctors
specialize on lungs."

"Yes, yes, indeed, we shall go right away," declared Carol feverishly.
"Yes, indeed."

"Keep on with my treatment while you are here.  And get out as soon as
you can.  Stay in bed all the time, and don't bother with many
visitors.  I don't need to tell you the minor precautions.  You both
have brains.  Be sure you use them.  Now, don't get blue.  You've still
got plenty to laugh at, Mrs. Duke.  And I give you fair warning, when
you quit laughing there's the end of the fight.  You haven't any other
weapon strong enough to beat the germs."

It was hard indeed for Carol to see anything to laugh at just that
moment, but she smiled, rather wanly, at the doctor when he went away.

There was silence between them for a moment.

At last, she leaned over him and whispered breathlessly, "Maybe it is
really a good thing, David.  You did need a vacation, and now you are
bound to get it."

David smiled at her persistent philosophy of optimism.

Again there was silence.  Finally, with an effort he spoke.  "Carol,
I--I could have thanked God for letting us know this two years ago.
Then you would have escaped."

"David, don't say that.  Just this minute I was thanking Him in my
heart because we didn't know until we belonged to each other."

She lifted her lips to him, as she always did when deeply moved, and
instinctively he lowered his to meet them.  But before he touched her
he stopped, stricken by a bitter thought, and pushed her face away
almost roughly.

"Oh, Carol," he cried, "I can't.  I can never kiss you again.  I have
loved to touch you, always.  I have loved your cool, sweet, powdery
skin, and your lips,--I have always thought of your lips as a crimson
bow in a pale pink cloud,--I--I have loved to touch you.  I have always
adored your face, the look of it as well as the feel of it.  I have
_loved_ to kiss you."

Carol slipped an arm beneath his head and strove to pull his hand away
from his face.

"Go on and do it," she whispered passionately.  "I am not afraid.  You
kissed me yesterday and it didn't hurt me.  Kiss me, David,--I don't
care if I do get it."

He laughed at her then, uncertainly, brokenly, but he laughed.  "Oh, no
you don't, my lady," he said.  "You've got to keep strong and well to
take care of me.  You want to get sick so you'll get half the petting."

Like a flash came the revelation of what her future was to be.  "Oh, of
course," she cried, in a changed voice.  "Of course we must be
careful,--I forgot.  I'll have to keep very strong and rugged, won't I?
Indeed, I will be careful."

Then they sat silent again.

"Out west," he said at last dreamily.  "Out west.  I've always wanted
to go west.  Not just this way, but--maybe it is our chance, Carol."

"Of course it is.  We'll just rest and play a couple of months, and
then come back better than ever.  No, let's get a church out there and
stay forever.  That will be Safety First.  Isn't it grand we have that
money in the bank, David?  Think how solemn it would be now if we were
clear broke, as we were before we decided to economize and start a
bank-account."

David nodded, smiling, but the smile was grave.  The little
bank-account was very fine, but to David, lying there with the wreck of
his life about him, the outlook was solemn in spite of it.




CHAPTER IX

UPHEAVAL

"Forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty, fifty-one, fifty-two,
fifty-three,--for goodness' sake!--fifty-four, fifty-five."  Carol
looked helplessly at her dusty hands and mopped her face desperately
with her forearm.

David, watching her from the bed in the adjoining room, gave way to
silent laughter, and she resumed her solemn count.

"Forty-six, forty--"

"Fifty-six," he called.  "Don't try any trickery on me."

"Fifty-six, fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty."  She sighed
audibly.  "Sixty-one, sixty-two, sixty-three, sixty-four--sixty-four
perfectly fresh eggs," she announced, turning to the doorway and
frowning at her husband, who still laughed.  "Sixty-four perfectly
fresh eggs, all laid yesterday."

"Now, I give you fair warning, my dear, I am no cold storage plant, and
you can't make me absorb any sixty-four egg-nogs daily just to even up
the demand with the supply.  I drank seven yesterday, but this is too
much.  You must seek another warehouse."

"You are very clever and facetious, Davie, really quite entertaining.
But what am I to do with sixty-four fresh eggs?"

"And I may as well confess frankly that I consider a minister's wife
distinctly out of her sphere when she tries to corner the fresh egg
market, particularly at the present price of existence.  It isn't
scriptural.  It isn't orthodox.  I am surprised at you, Carol.  It must
be some more Methodism cropping out.  I never knew a Presbyterian to do
it."

"And as for milk--"

"There you go again,--milk.  Worse and worse.  Yesterday I had milk
toast, and milk custard, and fresh milk, and buttermilk.  And here you
come at me again first thing to-day.  Milk!"

"Seven whole quarts have arrived this morning,--bless their darling old
hearts."

"The cows?"

"The parishioners," Carol explained patiently.  "Ever since the doctor
said fresh milk and eggs, we've been flooded with milk and--"

"Pelted with eggs.  But you can't pelt any sixty-four eggs down me."

"David," she said reproachfully, "I must confess that you don't sound
very sick.  The doctor says, 'Take him west,' and I am taking you if I
ever get rid of these eggs.  But I do think it would be more
appropriate to take you to a vaudeville show where you might coin some
of this extravagant humor.  There's a market for it, you know."

"Here comes Mrs. Sater, with a covered basket," announced David,
glancing from the window.  "I just wonder if the dear kind woman is
bringing me a few fresh eggs.  You know the doctor advised me to eat
fresh eggs, and--"

Carol clutched her curly head in despair.  "Cock-a-doodle-doo," she
crowed.

"You mean, 'Cut-cut-cut-ca-duck-et,'" reproved David.

Mrs. Sater paused outside the manse door in blank astonishment.  Dear,
precious David so terribly ill, and poor little Carol getting ready to
take him away to a strange and awful country, and the world full of
sadness and weeping and gnashing of teeth, and yet--from the open
windows of the manse came the clear ring of Carol's laughter, followed
closely by David's deeper voice.  What in the world was there to laugh
at, since tuberculosis had rapped at the manse door?

They were young, of course, and they were still in love,--that helped.
And they had the deathless courage of the young and loving.  But Mrs.
Sater bet a dollar she wouldn't waste any time laughing if tuberculosis
were stalking through her home.

"Come in," said Carol, in answer to her second ring.  "We saw you from
the window, but I was laughing so I was ashamed to open the door.
David's so silly, Mrs. Sater.  Since he isn't obliged to strain his
mental capacity by thinking up sermons, he has developed quite a funny
streak.  Oh, did you bring us some nice fresh eggs?  How dear of you.
Yes, the doctor said he must eat lots of them."

"They were just laid yesterday," said Mrs. Sater complacently.  "And I
said to myself, 'Nice fresh eggs like these are too good for anybody
less than a preacher.'  So I brought them.  There's just half a
dozen,--he ought to eat that many in one day."

"Oh, yes, easily.  He is very fond of egg-nog."

David sputtered feebly among the pillows.  "Oh, easily," he echoed
helplessly.

"I knew a woman that ate eighteen eggs every day," said Mrs. Sater
encouragingly.  "She got well and weighed two hundred and thirty
pounds, and then she had apoplexy and died."

David turned on Carol reproachfully.  "There you see!  That's what
comes of eating raw eggs."  Then he added suspiciously, "Maybe you knew
it before and have been enticing me to raw eggs on purpose."

Both Carol and David seized this silly pretext to relieve their
feelings, and laughed so heartily that good Mrs. Sater was quite
concerned for them.  She had heard it sometimes affected folks like
that,--a great nervous or mental shock.  She looked at them very
anxiously indeed.

"Are you selling your furniture pretty well?" she asked nervously.

"Oh, just fine.  Mr. Barker at the drug store has promised to fumigate
everything after we are gone, so we won't scatter any germs in our
wake."  Carol spoke hurriedly, her heart swelling with pity as she saw
the sudden convulsive clutching of David's hands beneath the covers.
"Mr. Daniels has a list of 'who bought what,' and will see that
everything is delivered in good shape.  Only, we take the money
ourselves in advance.  Now look at this chair, Mrs. Sater,--a lovely
chair," she rattled, thinking wretchedly of that contraction of David's
hands and the darkening of his eyes.  "A splendid chair.  It isn't sold
yet.  It cost us eight seventy-five one year ago, and we are selling it
for the mere pittance of five dollars even,--we make it even because we
haven't any change.  A most beautiful chair, an article to grace any
home, a constant reminder of us, a chair in which great men have
sat,--Mr. Daniels, and Mr. Baldwin, and the horrible gas collector who
has made life wretched for every one in the Heights, and--all for five
dollars, Mrs. Sater.  Can you resist it?"

Carol's voice took on a new ring as she saw the shadow leave David's
eyes, and his lips curve into laughter again.

"Well, I swan, Mrs. Duke, if you don't beat all.  Yes, I'll take that
chair.  It may not be worth five dollars, but you are."

Carol ostentatiously collected the five dollars, doubled it carefully
into a tiny bit, and tied it in the corner of her handkerchief.

"My money, Mr. David Arnold Duke, and I shall buy candy and talcum with
it."

Then she ran into the adjoining room to answer the telephone.

Mrs. Sater looked about her hesitatingly and leaned forward.

"David," she said in a low voice, "Carol ought to go home to her
father.  It's dangerous for her to stay with you.  Everybody says so.
Make her go home until you are well.  She may get it too if she goes
along.  They'll take good care of you at the Presbyterian hospital out
there, you a minister and all."

The laughter, the light, left David's face at the first word.

"I know it," he said in a heavy voice.  "I have told her to go home.
But she won't even talk it over.  She gets angry if I mention it.
Every one tells me it is dangerous,--but Carol won't listen."

"Just until you get well, you know."

"I shall never get well unless she is with me.  But I am trying to send
her away.  What can I do?  I can't drive her off."  His hands closed
and then relaxed, lying helplessly on the covers.

When Carol returned she looked suspiciously from the stern white face
on the pillow to the disturbed one of her caller.

"David is tired, Mrs. Sater," she said gently.  "Let's go out in the
other room and visit.  I have made him laugh too much to-day, and he is
weak.  Come along and maybe I can sell you some more furniture."  Then
to David, brightly, "It was Mrs. Adams, David, she wanted to know if we
needed any nice fresh eggs."  She flashed a smile at him and his lips
answered, but his eyes were mute.  Carol looked back at him from the
doorway, questioning, but finally followed Mrs. Sater into the next
room.

"Mrs. Sater, you will excuse me now, won't you?" she said.  "But I have
a feeling that David needs me.  He looks so tired.  You will come in
again, and--"

"Certainly, my dear, David first by all means.  Run right along.  And
if you need any more fresh eggs, just let me know."

"Yes, thank you, yes."

"Carol," whispered the kindly woman earnestly, "why don't you go home
and stay with your father until David is better?  They will take such
good care of him at the hospital, and he will need you when he is well,
and it isn't safe, Carol, it positively is not safe.  Why won't you do
as he tells you?"

Carol stood up, very straight and very tall.  "Mrs. Sater," she said,
"you know I am an old-fashioned Methodist.  And I believe that God
wanted David to have me in his illness, when he is idle.  If He hadn't,
the illness would have come before our marriage.  But I think God
foresaw it coming and thought maybe I could do David good when he was
laid aside.  I know I am a silly little goose, but David loves me, and
is happy when I am with him, and enjoys me more than anything else in
the world.  I am going with him.  I know God expects me to do my part."

And Mrs. Sater went away, after kissing Carol's cheek, which already
was paling a little with anxiety.

Carol ran back to David and sat on the floor beside him, pulling his
hand from beneath the cover and kissing the white, blue-veined fingers.
She crooned and gurgled over him as a mother over a little child, but
did not speak until at last he turned to her and said abruptly:

"Carol, won't you go home until I get well?  Please dear, for my sake."

Carol kissed the thumb once more and frowned at him.  "You want to
flirt with the nurses when you get out there, and are trying to get me
out of the road.  Every one says nurses are dangerous."

"Carol, please."

"Mrs. Sater has been talking to you.  Oh, I knew it.  She is a nice,
kind, Christian woman, and loves us both, but, David, why doesn't God
teach some people to mind their own business?  She is a good Christian,
I know, dear, but I do believe there is still a little work of grace to
be done in her."

David smiled a little, sadly.

"Carol, it would break my heart if you got this from me."

"I won't get it.  They will teach us how to be careful and sanitary,
and take proper precautions, and things like that.  I am going to be
very, very careful.  Why, honey, I won't get it.  But, David, I would
rather get it than go away and leave you.  I couldn't do that.  I
should never be happy again if I left you when you were needing me."

David turned his face to the wall.  "Maybe, dear," he said very gently,
"maybe it would be better if you did go home,--better for me.  I need
perfect rest you know, and we talk and laugh so much and have such good
times together.  I don't know, possibly I might get well faster--alone."

For a long moment Carol gazed at him in horror.  "David," she gasped.
"Don't say that.  Dear, I will go home if it makes you worse to have
me.  I will do anything.  I only want to help you.  But I will be very
nice and quiet, like a mouse, and never say a word, and not laugh once,
if you take me with you.  David, do I make you feel sicker?  Does my
chatter weary you?  I thought I was helping to amuse you."

"Carol, I can't lie like that even to send you away from me.  Maybe I
ought to, but I can't.  Why, sweetheart, you are the only thing left in
the world.  You are the world to me now.  Dear, I said it for your
sake, not for mine, Carol, never for mine."

Slowly the smiles struggled through the anguish in her face, and she
resumed her kissing of his fingers.

"Silly old goose," she murmured; "big old silly goose.  Just because
he's a preacher he wants to boss all the time.  Can't boss me.  I won't
be bossed.  I like to boss myself.  I won't let my beautiful old David
go off out there to flirt with the nurses and Indian girls and whoever
else is out there.  I should say not.  I'll stick right along, and
whenever a woman turns our way, I'll shout, 'Married!  He is mine!'"

[Illustration: "Silly old goose," she murmured.]

David laughed at her passionate discussion to herself.

"Besides, I have been learning a lot of things.  I've been talking to
the doctor privately when you couldn't hear."

"Indeed!"

"Oh, yes, and we are great friends.  He says if we just live clean,
white, sanitary lives, I am safe.  I must keep strong and fat, and the
germs can't get a start.  And he has been telling me lots of nice
things to do.  David, I know I can help you.  The doctor said so.  He
says I must be happy and gay, and be positively sure you will be well
again in time, and I can do you more good than a tonic.  Yes, he said
that very thing, Doctor O'Hara did.  Now please beg my pardon, and
maybe I'll forgive you."

David promptly did, and peace was restored.

A committee of brotherly ministers was sent out from the Presbytery to
find how things were going in the little manse in the Heights.  Very
gently, very tenderly they made their inquiries of Carol, and Carol
answered frankly.

"With the furniture money we have six hundred dollars," she told them,
rather proudly.

"That's just fine.  It will take you to Albuquerque and keep you
straight for a few months, and by that time we'll have things in hand
back here.  You know, Mrs. Duke, you and David belong to us and we are
going to see you through.  And then when it is all over we'll get him a
church out there,--why, everything is going splendidly.  Now remember,
it may be a few months, or it may be ten years, but we are back of you
and we are going to see you through.  Don't ever wonder where next
month's board is to come from.  It will come.  It isn't charity, Mrs.
Duke.  It is just the big brotherhood of the church, that's all.  We
are going to be your brothers, and fathers, and--mothers, too, if you
will have us."

The devoted mansers rallied around them, weeping over them, giving them
good advice along with other more material, but not more helpful,
assistance and declaring they always knew David was too good to live.
And when Carol resentfully assured them that David was still very much
alive, and maybe wasn't as good as they thought, they retaliated by
suggesting that her life was in no danger on that score.

On the occasion of Doctor O'Hara's last visit, Carol followed him out
to the porch.

"You haven't presented your bill," she reminded him.  "And it's a good
thing for you we are preachers or we might have slipped away in the
night."

"I haven't any bill against you," he said, smiling kindly down at her.

Carol flushed.  "Doctor," she protested.  "We expected to pay you.  We
have the money.  We don't want you to think we can't afford it.  We
knew you were an expensive doctor, but we wanted you anyhow."

He smiled again.  "I know you have the money, but, my dear little girl,
you are going to need every cent of it and more too before you get rid
of this specter.  But I couldn't charge David anything if he were a
millionaire.  Don't you understand,--this is the only way we doctors
have of showing what we think of the big work these preachers are doing
here and there around the country?"

"But, doctor," said Carol confusedly, "we are--Presbyterians, you
know--we are Protestants."

The doctor laughed.  "And I am a Catholic.  But what is your point?
David is doing good work, not my kind perhaps, and not my way, but I
hope, my dear, we are big enough and broad enough to take off our hats
to a good worker whether he does things just our way or not."

Carol looked abashed.  She caught her under lip between her teeth and
kept her eyes upon the floor for a moment.  Finally she faced him
bravely.

"I wasn't big or broad,--not even a little teensy bit," she said
honestly.  "I was a little, shut-in, self-centered goose.  But I
believe I am learning things now.  You are grand," she said, holding
out her slender hand.

The doctor took it in his.  "Carol, don't forget to laugh when you get
to Albuquerque.  You will be sick, and sorry, and there will be sobs in
your heart, and your soul will cry aloud, but--keep laughing, for David
is going to need it."

Carol went directly to her husband.

"David, I am learning lots of perfectly wonderful things.  If I live to
be a thousand years old,--oh, David, I believe by that time I can love
everybody on earth, and have sympathy for all and condemnation for
none; and I will really know that nearly every one in the world is
_very good_, and those that are not are _pretty_ good."

David burst into laughter at her words.  "Poorly expressed, but finely
meant," he cried.  "Are you trying to become the preacher in our
family?"

"All packed up and ready to start," she said thoughtfully, "and
to-morrow night we leave our darling little manse, and our precious old
mansers and turn cowboy.  Aren't you glad you didn't send me home?"




CHAPTER X

WHERE HEALTH BEGINS

In a little white cottage tent, at the end of a long row of minutely
similar, little white cottage tents, sat David and Carol in the early
evening of a day in May, looking wistfully out at the wide sweep of
gray mesa land, reaching miles away to the mountains, blue and solemn
in the distance.

"Do--do you feel better yet, David?" Carol asked at last, desperately
determined to break the menacing silence.

David drew his breath.  "I can't seem to notice any difference yet," he
replied honestly.  "It doesn't look much like Missouri, does it?"

"It is pretty,--very pretty," she said resolutely.

"Carol, be a good Presbyterian and tell the truth.  Do you wish you had
gone home, to green and grassy Iowa?"

"David Duke, I am at home, and here is where I want to be and no place
else in the world.  It is big and bleak and bare, but--  You are going
to get well, aren't you, David?"

"Of course I am, but give me time.  Even Miracle Land can't transform
weakness to health in two hours."

"I must go over to the office.  Mrs. Hartley said she wanted to give me
some instructions."

Carol rose quickly and stepped outside the cottage.

Crossing the mesa she met three men who stopped her with a gesture.
They were of sadly similar appearance, tall, thin, shoulders stooped,
hair dull and lusterless, eyes dry and bright.  Carol thought at first
they were brothers, and so they were,--brothers in the grip of the
great white plague.

"Are you a lunger?" ejaculated one of them in astonishment, noting the
light in her eyes and the flush in her cheeks.

"A--lunger?"

"Yes,--have you got the bugs?"

"The bugs!"

"Say, are you chasing the cure?"

"Of course not," interrupted the oldest of the three impatiently.
"There's nothing the matter with her, except that she's a lunger's
wife.  Your husband is the minister from St. Louis, isn't he?"

"Yes,--I am Mrs. Duke."

"I am Thompson.  I used to be a medical missionary in the Ozarks.  How
is your husband?"

"Oh, he is doing nicely," she said brightly,--the brightness assumed to
hide the fear in her heart that some day David might look like that.

Thompson laughed disagreeably.  "Sure, they always do nicely at first.
But when the bugs get 'em, they're gone.  They think they're better,
they say they are getting well,--God!"

Carol looked at him with questioning reproach in the shadowed eyes.
"It does not hurt us to hope, at least," she said gently.  "It does no
harm, and it makes us happier."

"Oh, yes," came the bitter answer.  "Sure it does.  But wait a few
years.  Bugs eat hope and happiness as well as lungs."

Carol quivered.  "You make me afraid," she said.

"Thompson is an old croak," interrupted one of the younger men, smiling
encouragement.  "Don't waste your time on him,--talk to me.  He is such
a grouch that he gives the bugs a regular bed to sleep in.  He'd have
been well years ago if he hadn't been such a chronic kicker.  Cheer up,
Mrs. Duke.  Of course your husband will get along.  Got it right at the
start, didn't you?"

"Oh, yes, right at the very start."

"That's good.  Most people fool around too long and then it's too late,
and all their own fault.  Sure, your husband is all right.  It's too
bad Thompson can't die, isn't it?  He's got too mean a disposition to
keep on living with white folks."

"Oh, I shouldn't say that," disclaimed Carol quickly.  "He--he is just
not quite like the people I have known.  I didn't know how to take him.
He was only joking of course."  She smiled forgivingly at him, and
Thompson had the grace to flush a little.

"I am Jimmy Jones," said the second man.  "I was a bartender in little
old Chi.  Far cry from a missionary to a bartender, but I'll take my
chances on Paradise with Thompson any day."

"A--a bartender."  Carol rubbed her slender fingers in bewilderment.

"I am Arnold Barrows, formerly a Latin professor.  _Amo, mas, mat,_"
said the third man suddenly.  "I am looking for my Paradise right here
on earth, and I am sorry you are married.  My idea of Paradise is a
girl like you and a man like me, and everything else go hang."

Carol drew herself up as though poised for flight, a startled bird
taking wing.

Thompson and Jones laughed at her horrified face, but the professor
maintained his solemn gravity.

"He is just a fool," said the bartender encouragingly.  "Don't bother
about him.  It is not you in particular, he is nuts on all the girls.
Cheer up.  We're not so bad as we sound.  I have a cottage near you.
Tell the parson I'll be in to-morrow to give him the latest light on
the bonfires in perdition.  I know all about them.  Tell him we'll
organize a combination prayer-meeting; he can lead the prayer and I'll
give advanced lessons in bunny-hugs and fancy-fizzes."

"Good night,--good night,--good night," gasped Carol.

Forgetting her errand to the office, she rushed back to David, to
safety, to the sheltering folds of the little white cottage tent.

He questioned her curiously about her experience, and although she
tried to evade the harsher points, he drew every word from her
reluctant lips.

"Lunger,--and bugs,--and chasers,--it doesn't sound nice, David."

"But maybe it is the best thing after all.  We are not used to it yet,
but I suppose it is better for them to take it lightly and laugh and be
funny about it.  They have to spend a lifetime with the specter, you
know,--maybe the joking takes away some of the grimness."

Carol shivered a little.

"Aren't you going to the office?"

"No, I am not.  If Mrs. Hartley wants to see me, she can come here.  I
am scared, honestly.  Let's do something.  Let's go to bed, David."

It was a two-roomed cottage, a thin canvas wall separating the rooms.
There were window-flaps on every side, and conscientiously Carol left
them every one upraised, although she had goose-flesh every time she
glanced into the black wall of darkness outside the circle of their
lights, a wall only punctuated by the yellow rays of light here and
there, where the more riotous guests of the institution were
dissipating up to the wicked hour of nine o'clock.

"Good night, David,--you will call me if you want anything, won't you?"
And Carol leaped into bed, desperately afraid a lizard, or a scorpion
or a centipede might lie beneath in wait for unwary pink toes once the
guarding lights were out.

This was the land where health began,--the land of pure light air, of
clear and penetrating sunshine, the land of ruddy cheeks and bounding
blood.  This was the land which would bring color back to the pale face
of David, would restore the vigor to his step, the ring to his voice.
It was the land where health began.

She must love it, she would love it, she did love it.  It was a rich,
beautiful, gracious land,--gray, sandy, barren, but green with promise
to Carol and to David, as it had been to thousands of others who came
that way with a burden of weakness buoyed by hope.

A shrill shriek sounded outside the tent,--a dangerous rustling in the
sand, a crinkling of dead leaves in the corners of the steps, a ring, a
roar, a wild tumult.  Something whirled to the floor in David's room,
papers rattled, curtains flapped, and there was a metallic patter on
the uncarpeted floor of the tent.  Carol gave an indistinct murmur of
fear and burrowed beneath the covers.

It was David who threw back the blankets and turned on the lights.
Just a sand-storm, that was all,--a common sand-storm, without which
New Mexico might be almost any other place on earth.  David's Bible had
been whirled from the window-ledge, and fine sand was piling in through
the screens.

Carol withdrew from the covers most courageously when she heard the
comforting click of the electric switch, and the reassuring squeak of
David's feet on the floor of the room.

"Everything's all right," he called to her.  "Don't get scared.  Will
you help me put these flaps down?"

Carol leaped from her bed at that, and ran to lower the windows.  Then
she sat by David's side while the storm raged outside, roaring and
piling sand against the little tent.

After that, to bed once more, still determinedly in love with the land
of health, and praying fervently for morning.

Soon David's heavy breathing proclaimed him sound asleep.  But sleep
would not come to Carol.  She gazed as one hypnotized into the starry
brightness of the black sky as she could see it through the window
beside her.  How ominously dark it was.  Softly she slipped out of bed
and lowered the flaps of the window.  She did not like that darkness.
After the storm, David had insisted the windows must be opened
again,--that was the first law of lungers and chasers.

She was cold when she got back into bed, for the chill of the mountain
nights was new to her.  And an hour later, when she was almost dozing,
footsteps prowled about the tent, loitering in the leaves outside her
western window.  David was sleeping, she must not interfere with a
moment of his restoring rest.  She clasped her hands beneath the
covers, and moistened her feverish lips.  If it were an Indian lurking
there, his deadly tomahawk upraised, she prayed he might strike the
fatal blow at once.  But the steps passed, and she climbed on her knees
and lowered the flaps on the side where the steps sounded.

Later, the sudden tinkle of a bell across the grounds startled her into
sitting posture.  No, it wasn't David, after all,--somebody else,--some
other woman's David, likely, ringing for the nurse.  Carol sighed.  How
could David get well and strong out here, with all these other sick
ones to wring his heart with pity?  Were the doctors surely right,--was
this the land of health?

Again footsteps approached the tent, stirring up the dry sand, and
again Carol held her breath until they had passed.  Then she grimly
closed the windows on the third side of her room, and smiled to herself
as she thought, "I'll get them up again before David is awake."

But she crept into bed and slept at last.

Early, very early, she was awakened by the sunlight pouring upon the
flaps at the windows.  It was five o'clock, and very cold.  Carol
wrapped a blanket about her and peeked in upon her husband.

"Good morning," she greeted him brightly.  "Isn't it lovely and bright?
How is my nice old boy?  Nearly well?"

"Just fine.  How did you sleep?"

"Like a top," she declared.

"Were you afraid?"

"Um, not exactly," she denied, glancing at him with sudden suspicion.

"Did the wind blow all your flaps down?"

"How did you know?"

"Oh, I was up long ago looking in on you.  We'll get a room over in the
Main Building to-day.  It costs more, but the accommodations are so
much better.  We are directly on the path from the street, so we hear
every passing footstep."

Carol blushed.  "I am not afraid," she insisted.

"We'll get a room just the same.  It will be easier for you all the way
around."

Carol flung open the door and gazed out upon the land of health.  The
long desolate mesa land stretched far away to the mountains, now
showing pink and rosy in the early sunshine.  The little white tents
about them were as suggestively pitiful as before.  There were no
trees, no flowers, no carpeting grass, to brighten the desolation.

Bare, bleak, sandy slopes reached to the mountains on every side.
David sat up in bed and looked out with her.

"Just a long bare slope of sand, isn't it?" she whispered.  "Sand and
cactus,--no roses blooming here upon the sandy slopes."

"Yes, just sandy slopes to the mountains,--but Carol, they are
sunny,--bare and bleak, but still they are sunny for us.  Let's not
lose sight of that."




CHAPTER XI

THE OLD TEACHER

"Chicago, Illinois.

"Dear Carol and David--

"It is most remarkable that you two can keep on laughing away out there
by yourselves.  It makes me think perhaps there is something fine in
this being married business that sort of makes up for the rest of it.
I think it must take an exceptionally good eyesight to discern sunshine
on the slopes of sickness.  If I were traveling that route, I am
convinced I should find it led me through dark valleys and over stony
pathways with storm clouds and thunders and lightnings smashing all
around my head.

"You admonished me to talk about myself and leave you alone.  Well, I
suppose you know more about yourselves than I could possibly tell you,
and since it is your own little baby sister, I am sure you are more
than willing to turn your telescope away from the sunny slopes a while
for a glimpse of my business dabbles.

"This is Chicago.

"Aunt Grace was rendered more speechless than ever when I announced my
intention of coming, and Prudence was shocked.  But father and I talked
it over, and he looked at me in that funny searching way he has and
then said:

"'Good for you, Connie, you have the right idea.  Chicago isn't big
enough to swallow you, but it won't take you long to eat Chicago
bodily.  Of course you ought to go.'

"I know it is not safe to praise men too highly, they are so easily
convinced of their astounding virtues, but that time I couldn't resist
shaking hands with father and I said, and meant it:

"'Father, you are the only one in the world.  I don't believe even the
Lord could make your duplicate.'

"'Mr. Nesbitt was very angry because I left them'.  He said that after
he took me, a stupid little country ignoramus, and made something out
of me, my desertion was nothing short of rank ingratitude and religious
hypocrisy and treason to the land of my birth.  One might have inferred
that he picked me out of the gutter, brushed the dirt off, smoothed my
ragged looks, and seated me royally in his stenographic chair, and made
a business lady out of me.  But it didn't work.

"I came.

"Mr. Baker, the minister there, is back of it.  He met me on the street
one day.

"'I hear you are literary,' he said.

"'Well, I think I can write,' I answered modestly.

"Then he said he had a third-half-nephew by marriage, to whom, ground
under the heel of financial incompetency, he had once loaned the
startling sum of fifty dollars,--I say startling, because it startled
me to know a preacher ever had that much ready cash ahead of his
grocery bill.  Anyhow, the third-half-nephew, with the fifty dollars as
a nucleus,--I think Providence must have multiplied it a little, for
our fifty dollars never accomplished miracles like that,--but with that
fifty dollars as a starter he did a little plunging for himself, and is
now owner and editor of a great publishing house in Chicago.

"And Mr. Baker, the old minister, kept him going and coming, you might
say, by sending him at frequent intervals, bright and budding lights
with which to illuminate his publications.  It seems the
third-half-nephew by marriage, in gratitude for the fifty dollars,
never refused a position to any satellite his uncle chose to recommend.
And Mr. Baker glowed with delight that he had been able, from the
unliterary center of Centerville to send so many candles to shine in
the chandelier of Chicago.

"All I had to do was to come.

"As I said before, I came.

"I went out to Mrs. Holly's on Prairie Avenue and the next morning set
out for the Carver Publishing Company, and found it, with the
assistance of most of the policem