Bertram Copes Year | Page 7

me to that."
"I don't know what you have in mind; some wild goose chase, probably.
I expect your friends would like it better if you spent your time right
here."
"Probably. I presume I shall end by doing a thesis on the 'color-words'
in Keats and Shelley. A penniless devil was no luck."
"Anybody has luck who can form the right circle. Stay where you are.
A circle formed here would do you much more good than a temporary
one four thousand miles away."
Voices were heard in the front yard. "There they come, now," Mrs.

Phillips said. She rose, and one more of the wayward cushions went to
the floor. It lay there unregarded,--a sign that a promising tête-à-tête
was, for the time being, over.

3
COPE IS "ENTERTAINED"
Mrs. Phillips stepped to the front door to meet the half dozen young
people who were cheerily coming up the walk. Cope, looking at the
fallen cushions with an unseeing eye, remained within the
drawing-room door to compose a further paragraph for the behoof of
his correspondent in Wisconsin:
"Several girls helped entertain me. They came on as thick as spatter.
One played a few things on the violin. Another set up her easel and
painted a picture for us. A third wrote a poem and read it to us. And a
few sophomores hung about in the background. It was all rather too
much. I found myself preferring those hours together in dear old
Winnebago...."
Only one of the sophomores--if the young men were really of that
objectionable tribe--came indoors with the young ladies. The
others--either engaged elsewhere or consciously unworthy--went away
after a moment or two on the front steps. Perhaps they did not feel
"encouraged." And in fact Mrs. Phillips looked back toward Cope with
the effect of communicating the idea that she had enough men for
to-day. She even conveyed to him the notion that he had made the
others superfluous. But--
"Hum!" he thought; "if there's to be a lot of 'entertaining,' the more
there are to be entertained the better it might turn out."
He met Hortense and Carolyn--with due stress laid on their respective
patronymics--and he made an early acquaintance with Amy's violin.
And further on Mrs. Phillips said:

"Now, Amy, before you really stop, do play that last little thing. The
dear child," she said to Cope in a lower tone, "composed it herself and
dedicated it to me."
The last little thing was a kind of "meditation," written very simply and
performed quite seriously and unaffectedly. And it gave, of course, a
good chance for the arms.
"There!" said Mrs. Phillips, at its close. "Isn't it too sweet? And it
inspired Carolyn too. She wrote a poem after hearing it."
"A copy of verses," corrected Carolyn, with a modest catch in her
breath. She was a quiet, sedate girl, with brown eyes and hair. Her eyes
were shy, and her hair was plainly dressed.
"Oh, you're so sweet, so old-fashioned!" protested Mrs. Phillips,
slightly rolling her eyes. "It's a poem,--of course it's a poem. I leave it
to Mr. Cope, if it isn't!"
"Oh, I beg--" began Cope, in trepidation.
"Well, listen, anyway," said Medora.
The poem consisted of some six or seven brief stanzas. Its title was
read, formally, by the writer; and, quite as formally, the dedication
which intervened between title and first stanza,--a dedication to
"Medora Townsend Phillips."
"Of course," said Cope to himself. And as the reading went on, he ran
his eyes over the dusky, darkening walls. He knew what he expected to
find.
Just as he found it the sophomore standing between the big padded
chair and the book-case spatted his hands three times. The poem was
over, the patroness duly celebrated. Cope spatted a little too, but kept
his eye on one of the walls.
"You're looking at my portrait!" declared Mrs. Phillips, as the poetess

sank deeper into the big chair. "Hortense did it."
"Of course she did," said Cope under his breath. He transferred an
obligatory glance from the canvas to the expectant artist. But--
"It's getting almost too dark to see it," said his hostess, and suddenly
pressed a button. This brought into play a row of electric bulbs near the
top edge of the frame and into full prominence the dark plumpness of
the subject. He looked back again from the painter (who also had black
hair and eyes) to her work.
"I am on Parnassus!" Cope declared, in one general sweeping
compliment, as he looked toward the sofa where Medora Phillips sat
with the three girls now grouped behind her. But he made it a boreal
Parnassus--one set in relief by the cold flare and flicker of northern
lights.
"Isn't he the dear, comical chap!" exclaimed Mrs. Phillips, with unction,