The Builders. Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

has never been able to play with other children, and Doctor Boland thinks she has some serious trouble of the spine. I should not call her a disagreeable child, or hard to manage, just delicate and rather whining—at least she is whenever I see her, which is not often. Her mother is one of the loveliest creatures on earth, and I can imagine no greater privilege than living in the house with her. She is far from strong, but she seems never to think of her health, and all her time is devoted to doing good. Doctor Boland was telling me yesterday that he had positively forbidden her undertaking any more charitable work. He says her nerves are sensitive, and that if she does not stop and rest she will break down sooner or later. I cannot help feeling—though of course I did not say this to him—that her unhappy marriage is the cause of her ill health and her nervousness. She was married very young, and they were so desperately poor that it was a choice between marriage and school teaching. I cannot blame anybody for not wanting to teach school, especially if they have as poor a head for arithmetic as I have, but if I had been Angelica, I should have taught until the day of my death before I should have married David Blackburn. If she had not been so young it would be hard to find an excuse for her. Of course he has an immense fortune, and he comes of a good old family in southside Virginia—your mother will remember his father—but when you have said that, you have said all there is to his credit. The family became so poor after the war that the boy had to go to work while he was scarcely more than a child, and I believe the only education he has ever had was the little his mother taught him, and what he managed to pick up at night after the day's work was over. In spite of his birth he has had neither the training nor the advantages of a gentleman, and nothing proves this so conclusively as the fact that, though he was brought up a Democrat, he voted the Republican ticket at the last two Presidential elections. There is something black in a man, my dear old father used to say, who goes over to the negroes—— '"

      "Of course Lucy belongs to the old school," said Mrs. Meade. "She talks just as her father used to—but I cannot see any harm in a man's voting as he thinks right."

      "'I am telling you all this, my dear Caroline, in order that you may know exactly what the position is. The salary will be good, just what you make in other cases, and I am sure that Angelica will be kindness itself to you. As for David Blackburn, I scarcely think he will annoy you. He treats his wife abominably, I hear, but you can keep out of his way, and it is not likely that he will be openly rude to you when you meet. The papers just now are full of him because, after going over to the Republicans, he does not seem satisfied with their ways.

      "'Give my fondest love to your mother, and tell her how thankful I am that she and I are not obliged to live through a second war. One is enough for any woman, and I know she will agree with me—especially if she could read some of the letters my daughter writes from France. I feel every hour I live how thankful we ought to be to a kind Providence for giving us a President who has kept us out of this war. Robert says if there were not any other reason to vote for Mr. Wilson, that would be enough—and with Mr. Hughes in the White House who knows but we should be in the midst of it all very soon. David Blackburn is making fiery speeches about the duty of America's going in, but some men can never have enough of a fight, and I am sure the President knows what is best for us, and will do what he thinks is right.

      "'Be sure to telegraph me if you can come, and I will meet your train in Angelica's car.

      "'Your affectionate friend,

      LUCY COLFAX.

      "'I forgot to tell you that Doctor Boland says I am prejudiced against David Blackburn, but I do not think I am. I tell only what I hear, for the stories are all over Richmond.'"

      As Caroline finished the letter she raised her head with a laugh.

      "It sounds like a good place, and as for Bluebeard—well, he can't kill me. I don't happen to be his wife."

      Her figure, with its look of relaxed energy, of delicate yet inflexible strength, straightened swiftly, while her humorous smile played like an edge of light over her features. The old lady, watching her closely, remembered the way Caroline's dead father had laughed in his youth. "She is as like him as a girl could be," she thought, with her eyes on her daughter's wide white brow, which had always seemed to her a shade too strong and thoughtful for a woman. Only the softly curving line of hair and the large radiant eyes kept the forehead from being almost masculine. "She might be as pretty as Maud if only she had more colour and her brow and chin were as soft as her eyes. Her mouth isn't full and red like Maud's, and her nose isn't nearly so straight, but the girls' father used to say that the best nose after all is a nose that nobody remembers." Smiling vaguely at the recollection, Mrs. Meade readjusted her mental processes with an effort, and took up her work. "I hope Lucy is prejudiced against him," she observed brightly. "You know her father was once Governor of Virginia, and she can't stand anybody who doesn't support the Democratic Party."

      "But she says he treats his wife abominably, and that it's all over Richmond!" exclaimed Maud indignantly.

      Before this challenge Mrs. Meade quailed. "If she is prejudiced about one thing, she may be about others," she protested helplessly.

      "Well, he can't hurt me," remarked Caroline with firmness. "People can't hurt you unless you let them." Nothing, she felt, in an uncertain world was more certain than this—no man could ever hurt her again. She knew life now; she had acquired experience; she had learned philosophy; and no man, not even Bluebeard himself, could ever hurt her again.

      "There was something about him in the paper this morning," said Margaret, the serious and silent one of the family. "I didn't read it, but I am sure that I saw his name in the headlines. It was about an independent movement in politics."

      "Well, I'm not afraid of independent movements," rejoined Caroline gaily, "and I'm not like Mrs. Colfax—for I don't care what he does to the Democratic Party."

      "I hate to have you go there, my dear," Mrs. Meade's voice shook a little, "but, of course, you must do what you think right." She remembered the empty flour barrel, and the falling fence rails, and the habit of a merciful Providence that invariably came to her aid at the eleventh hour. Perhaps, after all, there was a design working through it, she reflected, as she recovered her sprightliness, and Providence had arranged the case to meet her necessities. "It seems disagreeable, but one never knows," she added aloud.

      "It isn't the first time I've had a disagreeable case, mother. One can't nurse seven years and see only the pleasant side of people and things."

      "Yes, I know, my child, I know. You have had so much experience." She felt quite helpless before the fact of her daughter's experience. "Only if he really does ill treat his wife, and you have to see it——"

      "If I see it, perhaps I can stop it. I suppose even Bluebeard might have been stopped if anybody had gone about it with spirit. It won't be my first sudden conversion." Her eyes were still laughing, but her mouth was stern, and between the arched black eyebrows three resolute little lines had appeared. Before her "unfortunate experience," Mrs. Meade thought sadly, there had been no grimness in Caroline's humour.

      "You have a wonderful way of bringing out the good in people, Caroline. Your Uncle Clarence was telling me last Sunday that he believed you could get the best out of anybody."

      "Then granting that Bluebeard has a best, I'd better begin to dig for it as soon as I get there."

      "I am glad you can take it like that. If you weren't so capable, so resourceful, I'd never be easy about you a minute, but you are too intelligent to let yourself get into difficulties that you can't find a way out of." The old lady brightened as quickly as she had saddened. After all, if Caroline had been merely an ordinary girl she could never have turned to nursing so soon after the wreck of her happiness. "If a man had broken my heart when I was a girl, I believe I should have died of it," she told herself. "Certainly, I should never have been able to hold up my head and go on laughing like that. I suppose it was pride that kept her up, but it is queer the way that pride affects people so differently. Now a generation ago pride would not have made a girl laugh and take up work. It would have killed her." And there flashed through her thoughts, with the sanguine irrelevance of her habit of mind, "What I have never understood is how