Chapter XXVI. "Kling! Klang! to the Luck of Edenhall."

While toiling assiduously at his medical practice in Sabinnia, making the the lame to walk and the blind to see, running the gauntlet of prairie fires page 188and dangers of accidents which often occurred on the road with his spirited horses, battling against and striving to silence the same incipient scandal that had been like an incubus upon him and weighed him down in his work at Galveston—the scandal of infelicities between himself and his wife—the country residence of Edenhall was the gayest of the gay. It was the open house of all open houses, the house where light-hearted buoyancy and prévenances² filled the air of the renovated rooms, and where the country coquettes and exquisites loved to linger at night. The young grass-widow kept the ball hopping as long as she occupied the house. Had it not been for the extravagant and maniacal appearance of the thing, she would gladly have invited her friends to a musical evening or a dance every night, as long as she reigned there, turning night into day.

From Augusta the jeunesse dorée³ came to enjoy themselves for the evenings, and now and then to stay for a few days' recreation afterwards. The Collard and Collard piano that had served the purpose of the tobacco-planter for ten years, flat, untunable and out of date, was relegated to a lumber-room outside the house, and was replaced by her father with a new semi-grand Hölling and Spangenberg. For two hours together in the day-time she would labour in the practice of some new piece ordered from the great music warehouse, Chappel and Co. of London, in order to attune the ears of her patrons and friends at night. The undeveloped alto voice which she inherited was consigned to the tuition of a professor of singing, who came every morning to instruct the bird of Paradise in its development, and never left without complimenting her upon the marvellous progress which she was making in the art of singing. Artistic cookery was the programme for her supervision for half-an-hour every afternoon, where she endeavoured to emulate the professional cook from town in the making of œufs à l'aurore, crème au caramel, crème brulëe, crème renversée, and petit fours. On most afternoons, however, archery was the greater attraction, and her large circle of friends and admirers were provided with seats around an improvised archery-stand, to feast their eyes on the agility of the bird of the sun and her mates.

The walls of the music halls of Edenhall were decorated in quite a unique and tropical style, by an arrangement of large plants of orchids and tulips hanging down in picturesque confusion, and looking as if they had just been torn up by the roots; added to these were tangled briars, among which might be seen a few birds of gaudy plumage. Large, wide, pink silk shades covered with paler pink gauze, embroidered with silver, others of pale silk and chiffon, were caught up with delicate little bunches of down, while square shields edged with lace and adorned with pale roses and bright red ones with sprays of jasmine, made up a congenial region for the Paradisal bird.

Chief among the guests, coming all the way from Cocklebrook was the merchant's clerk whom the doctor had threatened on the steam-boat pier at Galveston. He was the most unabashed and favored visitor at the home of the gay.

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Playing about among the long grass in the garden together sat Whitworth's children, all day long basking in the sunshine of the pure mountain air, and carelessly attended by a nurse-girl, while the bird of Heaven gambolled amongst the flirts and coxscombs from anear and afar. When she was a girl at school she was the most conspicuous flirt of them all—the flirt whom it was alleged her father had taken from school and removed to her home on account of her giddiness; while with her husband, since her marriage, she had shown that she had been merely flirting with him. She married him in the gloss of her devotion, and now, in the presence of her children, as they amused themselves in their innocent and pretty little ways amongst the waving grass and the wild flowers of the field, she was the most audacious flirt in the gathering.

During her stay at Edenhall the seam of the Agamemnon mine of the great and mighty Gould was found. The news spread like wildfire, and in a short space of time the town was in a drunken uproar. The fading fortunes of the indomitable owner were now revived, and a fresh impetus was given to his manifold speculations abroad. It was a particularly welcome event, coming as it did after the bursting of the Diamantino Tin Mine bubble; it relieved to a large extent the distress of mind which he had experienced since he had been enfettered in the clutches of Brick Bore, Toynbee, Catchpole and other adventurous companions. It brought more gaiety within the reach of Marvel, and so turned her already averted head against the memory of the man who would have knelt down before her and kissed the hem of her garment. An increase of working miners was necessitated by the great discovery, and a great influx of mining men of all grades took place into the township of Maconville. Big speculators and dilletante investors patronised the courageous Julian Gould; whereas, theretofore, most of them would not have nodded to him in the street and some would have spat on his coffin.

No parvenu⁴ of a lucky quartz-reefer⁵ was Julian Jasper Gould. He had made fortunes before and had spent them on machinery; his good luck he accepted with the same grace as the bad—no alteration in his demeanour or his workmanlike attire, no toadyism or undue deference to his superiors, no change of bearing towards the less fortunate was ever perceived in Gould. He forged on as if nothing extraordinary had happened, ordering new machinery or taking broken portions of it in the bag to the city foundries for repair.

To the magical Marvel the effect of the find was electrical—it developed still further and propagated her coquetting proclivities; it afforded her more materiél for the life of pleasure which she was leading, and it made her look down upon her conscientious, easy-going husband all the more.

During the inroads of the strangers to Maconville, a cashier in the Metropolitan savings' bank had been shifted to the local bank, and being of a speculative and acquiring turn of mind he by slow degrees found his way through the medium of the master himself into the holy of holies of the house of the king. He was a man under average height, but an page 190awkward, bloated man with a lumbering gait, and a remarkably keen eye for business. Simon Ernest Bubtitt was a lantern-jawed, middle-aged boy, weak-kneed but very broad in the beam — a bald-headed animal with large teeth and whiskers like a billygoat, wisps of hair of the colour of cocoa-nut matting and a nose like a satyr, dilated wide at the nostrils. His little eyes were the size of two little glass marbles—they could go through an offer of scrip like a gimlet through a half-inch board, and he often made it a boast that they were the proper sort for a duststorm, as they were so little exposed to the wind. He seemed to be a martyr to a palpitating heart, arising from some fatty or flabby degeneration of the organ, which communicated its cumbersome disease to his powers of respiration. His breathing on the slightest unusual exertion become so laborious that he was commonly diagnosed as another case of the "snuffles," while all the miners imagined that there was a bolt loose in the pumping engine and air-compressors within his flabby ribs. He hailed from London. His face was covered with pock-marks but Sukey who had been born in Kansas was heavily freckled by way of contrast. He could not walk up a hill, or a quarter of a mile on the level road without feeling the greatest fatigue, and yet it was stated that his brother had been a champion oarsman, and a prize Indian-club-slinger his day. His athletic brother had been killed by a man in Texas.

The brother of the champion oarsman and prize Indian-club slinger in his day practised the ars amatoria on the niece of the mighty coal-king—the veritable female monster and private pimp who had detected and telegraphed the doctor's liaisons, and had caught him flagrante delicto at his capers in the city and with the widow at the wedding—the young lady with the turned-up, inquisitorial bit-of-putty nose—Sukey Mouchard, on whose thirty-fifth birthday the sun had set for ever. Simon followed her about all over the village like a great Newfoundland dog with her reticule in his mouth.

Most of the time during which he was supposed by his employers to be storing away in the Milner safes the vaults and caverns under the bank the dollars and cent pieces of the savings' bank depositors, the old lady was busily employing herself in hounding the trail of the naughty roving king in the city, so that the new Lothario had no difficulty from that quarter, as the doctor had had before him. They had the house to themselves almost entirely for three months, inasmuch as while the old woman was in red - hot pursuit of the king, Sukey from Sunnyside, Augusta, was asked to take charge of the Maconville house. Accordingly, after much philandering and innumerable love-passages under the patriarchal roof of the rover, where hearts, arrows and darts were the chief items in the catalogue, the brother of the champion oarsman and Indian-club-slinger in his day became formally betrothed to the clumsy, inquisitorial niece with the putty nose, who was the third daughter of the asthmatical woman with the ozœnatous page 191nose, that married a second husband in the dwarf that fed the ducks and peacocks.

The marriage of the maiden all forlorn took place in Augusta in the Wesleyan Church, and the knot was tied by the Methodist minister, Sukey being one of the Reverend Ezekiel Band's pet lambs, inasmuch as she had often assisted at other people's tables in the church bazaars and once made some flowered chintz which she sold at a rainbow bazaar conducting the Bruce auction herself. If Marvel had spent most of the days during her transition state in trysts with Eugene in the Augusta gardens, the daughter of the ozœnatous woman spent most of that time in the home of the king at Maconville. Sukey had quarreled with her mother for marrying Augustus. There was nothing particularly noticeable about the wedding from first to last beyond the deplorable fact that Sukey had the toothache all the blessed day. Sukey wore the triumphant air of a conquering heroine, while Simon, the subjugated subject of the capitulation, with the dejected head and the distinguishing frown of a man about to be immolated and buried, walked phlegmatically like a lamb to the sacrifice on the altar. The happy couple were regaled before a small sprinkling of acquaintances in Sunnyside, at the expense of the man who fed the ducks, and who had married auntie five years before. The old auntie had been left very rich by her first husband, but she was very mean, and the dwarf, although he was only a cotton expert, was a wealthy man and in expenditure a man after the heart of "auntie." Having spent portion of her time in the home of the king, it was generally surmised that Sukey would some day be an heiress in connection with the coal-king himself, to whom she was much attached, as well as the only beneficiare when her mother and step-father died. Sukey had a good supply of brains for that distinction, which nobody could deny. Casual observers were heard to exclaim during the ceremony—"Who would marry her?" "he's only after the tin," and such like; while when the toast of the brother of the champion oarsman and club-slinger in his day had been proposed by the mealy-mouthed parson and drunk by the twenty-five guests present, the bridegroom rose to respond; but probably as the result of the panting heart and the snuffles he no sooner stood up with his heart beating against his shirt-front to respond than he straightway sat down again, and the response was considered as made. Simon was tongue-tied. At the Cinderella dance in the evening Sukey would allow nobody else to dance with the invertebrate Simon, and for fully an hour they skurried around the room like two cockchafers⁶ spitted on one skewer, Sukey wearing two large ear-drops like little kerosene lamps, and dropping her oily fatness wherever she shambled around. At the railway station they were sent off by some boys who raised a sarcastic cheer, and soon afterwards they settled down to an industrious but squally future when Sukey had finally carried Simon off into bondage.

By dint of log-rolling and wire-pulling in the ministerial offices and by unremitting bothering of the inside out of the garrulous member—who page 192was uncommonly shrewd in trimming his sails when he had an axe to grind—the new benedict was by short stages drafted from the subordinate post in Maconville to a slight promotion in the city, where his appointment was quite a sinecure, inasmuch as all he had to do was to sit reading the newspaper and superintending the work of two others on similar duty in one of the saving' bank concerns. This occupation, however, taking into consideration the maladies from which he suffered, and which were almost as bad as his mother-in-law's, was a highly congenial and health-giving one for Simon Ernest Bubtitt. Simon was altogether a perfect gaby⁷ of a husband, and he was only fit for an easy post, because he always had a sore thumb in a finger-stall and a sling. The principal lesson which he had learned during the celebration of the marriage ceremony was that it was ordained for the procreation of children, which duty, as far as mere numbers counted, the brother of the man with the athletic pedigree, with the help of the private mouchard, religiously carried out, and one or two babies were sent into the valley of tears once regularly every year. It was always very early in April that Sukey fell due, so that in a short space of time and in geometrical procession there came one little, two little, three little—thirteen little Bubtitts. All but the last were boys, and each little boy had legs like sticks of red sealing-wax and a face like a watch. Simon Ernest was present at the births of them all, holding Sukey's hand. Bubtitt was an ardent advocate of the Greek theory of marriage—that it was a means provided by the gods for the propagation of children, and happy was the man who had his quiver full of them. In point of quality, fibre and calibre the result however was egregiously disappointing, inasmuch as every one of the thirteen children born during the consecutive years turned out to be a measly little imp, surlily maintaining its muddy and sickly appearance after it grew out of the snuffles with which it was born, and generally betraying the doubt if it were not tainted with scrofula. They were born without any hair on their heads—little suety heads; although their mother had worn a wavy bandeau night and day for ten years antecedent to her marriage and after. Still, the dust-storm periwinkle eyes, the putty nose and the snuffles were enough to convince Simon Ernest that they were the genuine article, and so he was satisfied and pleased with what he got.

When newly married and living in Maconville the happy couple were frequently the guests of the bird of Paradise; for quite a couple of months her cousin joined with the others in the games of croquet and blind man's buff. Sukey was an adept on the accordion, but she had never been taught the piano. This was too plebeian for paradise; Sukey, therefore, invariably hid her light under the bushel of her tête-à-tête with some other unrefined lady keeping up a running commentary in Yankee twang on everything going on in the room, while the bounteous Marvel delighted the ears of her hearers with music, flirtation and song.

Through the agency of the bride of Sunnyside, the society-hunting Madame had wormed her way into the music-halls of the Paradisal bird, page 193and conveniently growing rusty on the subject of etiquette for the drawing-room, she sometimes came without an invite. She would also attempt an old-fashioned song. "Comin' thro' the rye" was her favorite; it was sung and enacted with great chic and strict attention to the drawing-room uses of the fan. It was not merely a song—it was more like a song and a dance. She would peep over the brim of the fan, make sheep's eyes with the fan, shut in her voice with the fan, remove the fan from her lips in the nick of time, and wind up the song with a big top note and a glorious shout at the finish. The grande dame of the parabolic salutations and the eternal smile, the lady of culture and social aplomb, who could talk de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis⁸, sang "When other lips" and other songs in a high-low, up-and-down, see-saw sort of style, albeit quite affetuouso. With the Ayer's almanac rising-sun smile and gingerly planted footsteps she would daintily cross the room and seat herself on the ottoman beside the Lothario from the caverns. Rival as she was in this respect, she sometimes incurred the deep censure of Marvel, and did everything she could to outwit her and outstrip her in the flirtations of the drawing-room, on the subject of which Marvel had recently purchased a book.

She knew the bride well, and, while Marvel played or sang, she confided in her a volume as follows:—"Do you know my dear Mrs. Bubtitt although I don't know as how it is right and I am saying it that shouldn't it has sometimes occurred to me when I have had the felicity and the pleasure of listening to the rich tones and the artistic touches of your cousin's playing and singing as I have often of late had such pleasure and felicity that joyful memory takes me back to a time when I can imagine somebody else also listened alone to those sweet strains of the martingale who howsomever when 1 courteously asked him to call at my house some years ago he although it was under different circumstances from the present neglected to pay the visit which I need hardly say is scarcely in keeping with any ordinary knowledge of etiquette but I am going away from the subject which I was going to say is that if somebody else were here tonight it would surprise somebody else to see me as nobody knows but myself." She leaned back and raised the fan to her lips to wait for the explosion of the mine, while Sukey looked at her yellow shoe which gave everybody the impression that she had just walked through the California gold mine in which the dwarf was largely interested.

"Oh! I can guess who you mean," slily responded Sukey, who was a native of Kansas and to the manner born– "that beast. What do you opinionate, Madam? He had not been, a month married when he got into a style of visiting that horrible Mrs. Downtail, and her father had to pay five thousand dollars to make him quit his visits on thar: I saw him with my own eyes look her up after he was supposed to have dropped her, on two separate occasions, once in New Orleans and once in Augusta. What's more, I guess when he came to these parts last he kinder got drunk and fell down page 194the bank; when he backed off home he chased my cousin out of their ranche, and told her not to fall back again, and that he hated her—the scoundrel that he is—the beast. Marvel is a kinder too much for him—she ought to have stayed on and married a right down noble lord."

Sukey from Kansas stopped, and Madame, who had vainly endeavoured to stop her before and get a few objections in edgeways, in repressed indignation said at last:—"Oh! my dear Mrs. Bubtitt in sweet remembrance of my old friend although he neglected to call upon me what reason I can't tell I can scarcely believe but what you are falsely deceiving yourself about Dr. Whitworth. He was always so kind and good and clever as I can prove of my own knowledge for do you know I taught him dancing but as for my dear friend Mrs. Downward I am sure you can't mean her she's old enough to be his mother. I know everything that happened that day wordbatim. There is not a better or more virtuous and pious woman in all the world and I am sure nobody conld speak the truth and utter a breath of scandal about the pure name and character of my dear old friend Mrs. Downward."

Sukey was a thorough-bred, low-down Yankee. "Stop it off thar, Madame," came more Kansas slang; "blood ain't thicker then water—ain't it, cockey? you ken't help believing on what you twig with your own eye—it kinder strikes me so, any 'ow."

During the rendering of "In the merry Maytime" by the bird of Heaven herself, who had been chased out of her earthly Paradise in the shady Elms, a lull occurred in the conversation, while the fascinating article from Cocklebrook stood by her side drinking the honeyed tones about the petals of red roses perfumed with nightly dews, and striking an attitude for the delectation of the other drawing-room flirts, together with the giddy whirlpool of coquettes around the ottoman and among the lyre, shield and uprooted orchid decorations on the walls of Edenhall. The allegro and the pose plastique⁹ being achieved in proper fashion, the usual chorus of "thank-yous" rang its changes around the room, and after a briet interval, during which from dearth of brain-power the conversation was but feebly sustained, the nabobs and élégantes were invited by the paradisal Marvel into the dining-room. Cocklebrook took the pas of all the others in the procession to the dining-room, for he had ecrasèd all rivals, and was hand-in-glove with Marvel now. A gorgeous repast appeared on a table, decorated in a rococo style with gaudy parrot tulips and croton foliage of the same colour; stands at the sides as usual and light delicate sprays upon the cloth from a deep rich crimson to a pale cool cream, amongst which glinting Salviati decanters filled with bright and varied wines made the room look like a little fairyland. Conspicuous among the luxuries were the Croutades Marie Louise made by the paradisal hands, crème renversée and créme à la menagèrie, while out of the scrimmage all poor little Pearly and Valentine got was a bon-bon each. The rest had been nearly all snapped off by their mother and the Don Juan from Cocklebrook, as in their little bed they lay asleep and Eugene dreamt of them as encircled each with a nimbus of affection for him.

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After supper Cocklebrook called upon snivelling Mag for a song. Not at all backward in coming forward, the old auntie was duly conducted by Augustus of cotton-blight and fowl-yard fame to the pianoforte candle-lights, where amidst breathless silence she selected a song which all in the room anticipated would be a song for a broncho-asthmathical voice; but no, it was one equally suitable, and its title was "Three blind mice," a song with a chorus. Auntie sang "The three blind mice" song moderato, poco piu lento; but notwithstanding the fact that there was intended to be a chorus the snivelling songster warbled it all herself. Long breaths were thickly interspersed between the harsh and jarring tones in the cadences of the indescribable voice; it sounded as if somebody was sea-sick and anxious to sing at the same time—there was, as the impudent Don Juan himself put it, a hole in the ballad at every line, but still it evoked the feu de joie of the "thank you" chorus again.

The blundering booby of blight and fowl-yard fame was shortly afterwards called upon for a sing-song. He babbled out a string of lame-looking but in reality valid and logical subterfuges—"Birds as can sing and won't sing ought to be made to sing; I can't," he said and blushed all over. He also smiled but it was the smile of the baboon. He also volunteered to relate to the company a story as a substitute. It was about a fowl. A Chinaman had bought a fowl from him for half a dollar—a pure bred Dorking hen; next day the idiot returned with the pure bred Dorking hen and said to the story-teller 'Him chuck no damn good; him no talk at all: wantum 'nother chuck all'e same.' The story fell quite flat as there was a scarcity of perceptive power in the tout ensemble, and there was no chorus of "thank yous" at all. Soon after the company rose with a sociable biscuit in every hand; assuming their hats and wrappers they left the festive scene after a night had been appointed for the next meeting of the flirting school. Madame, however, who had kept her tongue in her cheek since the song of "In the merry May-time," left the little section which she accompanied on the pretext of forgetting her fan, before they reached the gate, and reentered the room in search of the Heavenly bird.

"Oh! Mrs. Whitworth," she said: "I'm sorry to hear and I never could have believed it if I had not heard it from your cousin's lips that one whom I am in some doubt as to forgiving for neglecting to fulfil a promise to me which however in fond remembrance I think I shall and will do. I am sorry to think that you were not properly treated by him and that you are obliged to live away up here and away from him and I am so sorry to hear the name of my respected friend Mrs. Downward drawn into context with his in what I am sure and certain and in confidence between ourselves is an unjust way as if it comes to that people might say the same of me my own self."

Madame had made a mistake. The name of Downward was to Marvel like a red rag to a mad bull. The keen black eyes gleamed at Madame, as, straightening up the music and picking it up off the floor, "It's quite true," she said: "I don't tell lies and never did, and that is why I came page 196to stay here away from the wretch. He is always running after that abominable woman, and he stayed out all night once with her. My father gave him five thousand dollars to stop it, but it only made him worse, and besides he got drunk with her after her step-daughter's wedding."

"Oh! my dear Mrs. Whitworth," burst out the indignant Madame: "It is not true. It is false. It is a deliberate lie."

"Well, never mind if it is," coolly replied the bird: "he got drunk and she pushed him down on the ground, and he came home and kicked me and the children out of the house so that he could bring her into it."

"Oh! is it possible? is it possible?" said Madame half to herself and half to the floor. "It is a lie, Mrs Whitworth," gnashing her teeth and hurling her indignant words into the false set of the bird of Heaven, as she stared her full in the face: "it is a downright wicked lie, and you are a liar."

"No voice, however feeble, lifted up for truth dies: no effort, however small, put forth in the right cause fails of its effect."

Leaving the room, without either saying another word, Madame hied away to the train, while the bird of the empyreal heavens stood check-mated and disconcerted; but on further reflection she consoled herself with the thoughts that it made no pecuniary difference to her; that her father would believe anything she told him: when he died she would get bought the house and had turned it from a ruin into a palace.

Within a week after the party, the bright morning came in all its glory, and the magnamrnous and fortunate gold king after brooding over his promise to the doctor for more than four months, or more likely forgetting about it altogether, found his way to the halls of Edenhall. He pointed out to his daughter the wrong-doing of staying away so long from her husband, who had begged him to speak to her and persuade her to go home.

"He's a good house in Sabinnia and a good position," he said, "and he's doing first-rate in every way; you don't want two places, Birdie, and he's just as well able to keep you as I am. What more do you want?"

Non-plussed again, the cornered bird fluttered its gorgeous wings, and working herself into a tearful and emotional passion she endeavoured to strike the chord of the coal-king's sympathies. "He's always drunk, father, and he has been drunk night and day ever since he left the hospital—he never sees a patient at all. He won't give me any money: it all goes for that woman and her children, and I hate the very sight of him," wiping the smelling-salt tears away.

"Tut, tut, tut," said the sensible father: "Marvel, ye ought to be ashamed o' yersel'. I never saw or heard of the man bein' drunk but once, and that wasn't much. My opinion is that he is a good many cuts above that sloberin' molly-caddle o' your cousin's. So pick up your duds and page 197be ready to go with me in the morning. I promised to take ye, and I am going to do it."

The children, seeing the crocodile tears of their mother, and opining that there was occasion for a general lamentation, began to follow suit, and clung to their nurse-girl's apron in the scare at the mighty coal-king: but he silenced the forts with a dollar shell and left the distressful scene, while Marvel regretted that she had forgotten to ask a solatium¹⁰ cheque for herself, as her husband's hundred dollars had gone. Her passivity was the result of a final fatigue in mental resistance and the decisive command whose observance could not be delayed.

Next morning the enforced migration occurred, and they all set sail in the train for the city en route to the herb-clad slopes, the children amusing their old grandfather on the way. At the half-way station he scratched out a telegram to the doctor, ate a hurried breakfast, which he had brought in the bag, and hurried away in the train to town.

There they met the doctor waiting upon the platform. As they alighted he carried the children off in his arms, while his wife did not think it worth her while to even offer him her hand She vehemently protested about walking to the suburban station, and became very importunate about geting two hansom cabs.

"Why can't ye walk?" said the king with a frown: "it's quite close, your mother wanted no cabs to carry her last wick. Dochther, I want ye to have a look at my back—come in here," and they all adjourned to the Savannah Hotel, where a waiter brought in some whisky and lemonade. The king pulled off his coat and shirt, and displayed a back as red as fire with an erisypelatous crimson blush. The doctor wrote out a prescription and left with his wife and children to catch the afternoon train to the town by the Sabine River.

"It is so far from New Orleans," said Marvel in a sullen mood, which she affected all the way from the city, "and nobody to see when I do get there;" to which her husband replied that Edenhall was nearly ten times as far away from the city; that she would see plenty of well-conducted people in the Sabine district; and that they were far more hospitable and sociable than the grandees who held aloof in Galveston. The fretful Marvel made no reply, and all the way maintained a far-away look through the carriage window, or else pretended to sleep in the train. At last the bird of the sun entered her proper Paradise; the children wandered all over its nooks and corners and stacked beside their swinging cots whatever they could collect in the shape of a toy to play with in the morning at 'Bendemeer.' After scrutinising every corner in the house and overhauling everything in the cupboards and drawers, she felt inclined to believe there was nothing upon which she could hang a suspicion. She gave unwonted credit to the statement that he had bought the new furniture himself, and showed signs of assimilation with her new and really charming surroundings.

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"I do hope Mrs. Bubtitt comes here: father said her husband might be shifted here soon." she said with a wearied sigh of resignation.

Eugene said nothing to that, but prayed in his heart that Simon Bubtitt would be kept at the work of gazing where he was at the newspapers. That silent prayer was never answered: the logs and axes were soon at work again. Within a month from the migration of Marvel, the brother of the illustrious oarsman was shifted to the Sabine River branch of the Savings' Bank, and the meddlesome private informer, who had seen so much with her own par-boiled eyes, followed as a matter of course with all the picaninnies, whose sickly plaintive cries oft disturbed the air of the solemn and stilly night in the home of the rattle-snake, the wild mustangs, and the pine.