Edith Wharton: New Year's Day, False Dawn, The Old Maid & The Spark (4 Books in One Edition). Edith Wharton

down tonight.”

      Lewis seemed mildly to weigh the proposal. “Thank you very much, Sarah Anne,” he said at length. “I’m touched . . . touched and . . . and surprised . . . that you and John should have made this offer. But perhaps, before I decline it, you will accept MINE: simply to show you my pictures. When once you’ve looked at them I think you’ll understand — ”

      Mrs. Huzzard drew back hastily, her air of majesty collapsing. “Look at the pictures? Oh, thank you . . . but I can see them very well from here. And besides, I don’t pretend to be a judge . . . ”

      “Then come up and see Treeshy and the baby,” said Lewis quietly.

      She stared at him, embarrassed. “Oh, thank you,” she stammered again; and as she prepared to follow him: “Then it’s NO, really no, Lewis? Do consider, my dear! You say yourself that hardly any one comes. What harm can there be in closing the place?”

      “What — when tomorrow the man may come who understands?”

      Mrs. Huzzard tossed her plumes despairingly and followed him in silence.

      “What — Mary Adeline?” she exclaimed, pausing abruptly on the threshold of the nursery. Treeshy, as usual, sat holding her baby by the fire; and from a low seat opposite her rose a lady as richly furred and feathered as Mrs. Huzzard, but with far less assurance to carry off her furbelows. Mrs. Kent ran to Lewis and laid her plump cheek against his, while Treeshy greeted Sarah Anne.

      “I had no idea you were here, Mary Adeline,” Mrs. Huzzard murmured. It was clear that she had not imparted her philanthropic project to her sister, and was disturbed at the idea that Lewis might be about to do so. “I just dropped in for a minute,” she continued, “to see that darling little pet of an angel child — ” and she enveloped the astonished baby in her ample rustlings and flutterings.

      “I’m very glad to see you here, Sarah Anne,” Mary Adeline answered with simplicity.

      “Ah, it’s not for want of wishing that I haven’t come before! Treeshy knows that, I hope. But the cares of a household like mine . . . ”

      “Yes, and it’s been so difficult to get about in the bad weather,” Treeshy suggested sympathetically.

      Mrs. Huzzard lifted the Raycie eyebrows. “Has it really? With two pairs of horses one hardly notices the weather . . . Oh, the pretty, pretty, PRETTY, baby! . . . Mary Adeline,” Sarah Anne continued, turning severely to her sister, “I shall be happy to offer you a seat in my carriage if you’re thinking of leaving.”

      But Mary Adeline was a married woman too. She raised her mild head and her glance crossed her sister’s quietly. “My own carriage is at the door, thank you kindly, Sarah Anne,” she said; and the baffled Sarah Anne withdrew on Lewis’s arm. But a moment later the old habit of subordination reasserted itself. Mary Adeline’s gentle countenance grew as timorous as a child’s, and she gathered up her cloak in haste.

      “Perhaps I was too quick . . . I’m sure she meant it kindly,” she exclaimed, overtaking Lewis as he turned to come up the stairs; and with a smile he stood watching his two sisters drive off together in the Huzzard coach.

      He returned to the nursery, where Treeshy was still crooning over her daughter.

      “Well, my dear,” he said, “what do you suppose Sarah Anne came for?” And, in reply to her wondering gaze: “To buy me off from showing the pictures!”

      His wife’s indignation took just the form he could have wished. She simply went on with her rich cooing laugh and hugged the baby tighter. But Lewis felt the perverse desire to lay a still greater strain upon her loyalty.

      “Offered to double my allowance, she and John, if only I’ll take down the sign!”

      “No one shall touch the sign!” Treeshy flamed.

      “Not till I do,” said her husband grimly.

      She turned about and scanned him with anxious eyes. “Lewis . . . YOU?”

      “Oh, my dear . . . they’re right . . . it can’t go on forever . . . ” He went up to her, and put his arm about her and the child. “You’ve been braver than an army of heroes; but it won’t do. The expenses have been a good deal heavier than I was led to expect. And I . . . I can’t raise a mortgage on the pictures. Nobody will touch them.”

      She met this quickly. “No; I know. That was what Mary Adeline came about.”

      The blood rushed angrily to Lewis’s temples. “Mary Adeline — how the devil did SHE hear of it?”

      “Through Mr. Reedy, I suppose. But you must not be angry. She was kindness itself: she doesn’t want you to close the gallery, Lewis . . . that is, not as long as you really continue to believe in it . . . She and Donald Kent will lend us enough to go on with for a year longer. That is what she came to say.”

      For the first time since the struggle had begun, Lewis Raycie’s throat was choked with tears. His faithful Mary Adeline! He had a sudden vision of her, stealing out of the house at High Point before daylight to carry a basket of scraps to the poor Mrs. Edgar Poe who was dying of a decline down the lane . . . He laughed aloud in his joy.

      “Dear old Mary Adeline! How magnificent of her! Enough to give me a whole year more . . . ” He pressed his wet cheek against his wife’s in a long silence. “Well, dear,” he said at length, “it’s for you to say — do we accept?”

      He held her off, questioningly, at arm’s length, and her wan little smile met his own and mingled with it.

      “Of course we accept!”