V. V.s Eyes | Page 9

was that she and mamma had not
positively decided on this recuperative excursion (though they had
practically decided) until after the arrival of Cousin Willie Kerr's
notelet at breakfast: in which notelet Willie mentioned laconically that
he and Mr. Canning were themselves going Beachward by the three
o'clock train, and concluded his few lines with verbum sap, which is a
Latin quotation.
Standing idly at the window, the girl had indeed been thinking of Mr.
Canning before her mother spoke; and thinking with most pleasurable
speculations. Truly he was worth a thought, was Mr. Canning, proud
stranger within the gates--"house-guest," as the society column prefers
it--for whom, if reports were true, many ladies fair had sighed, sickened,
and died. And she, alone in her maidenly coterie, had already met the
too exclusive metropolitan--four days ago, by the lucky fluke of turning
in at the Country Club at an out-of-the-way morning moment, when she
might have motored straight on home, and had been within an ace of
doing so. An omen, wasn't it? Five minutes she and Mr. Canning had
talked, over so-called horses' necks provided by his sedate host, and
before the end of that time she had perceived an interest dawning in the
young man's somewhat ironic eyes. With the usual of his sex one could
have counted pretty definitely on the thing's being followed up.
However, Mr. Canning, the difficult, had merely saluted her
fascinatingly, and retired to re-maroon himself in the rural villa of his
kinsmen, the Allison Paynes, where he halted for a week or two on his
health-seeking progress southward.
It looked like a parting forever, but wasn't, owing to that help which
comes ever to those who help themselves....
To the sensible query, Mrs. Heth, lightening, replied: "Of course, the
gray crepe-de-chine."
"I think so, too. Only there's a rip at the bottom. I'm sure Flora hasn't
touched it since Mr. Avery put his large foot straight through it."
Having turned from the window, Carlisle yawned and glanced at the
clock. The two ladies conversed desultorily of draped effects,
charmeuse, and why Mattie Allen imagined that she could wear pink.
Mrs. Heth ran on through the "Post." Carlisle put up "Pickwick," by

Dickens, sticking in a box of safety matches to keep the place. Then she
examined herself in the mirror over the mantel, and became intensely
interested in a tiny redness over her left eyebrow. She thought that
rubbing in a little powder, and then rubbing it right off, would help the
redness, and it did.
"I asked Mattie why she said such long prayers in the mornings. That
was what made me late for breakfast. Her feelings were quite hurt. Isn't
her devoutness quaint, though?"
"She uses my house," murmured Mrs. Heth, "like a hotel. One would
think it might occur to her that if she must mummer like a deacon she
ought to get up--"
She broke off, her wandering eye having just then fallen upon the
Arraignment.
"She didn't like our packing her off right after breakfast a bit either....
I'm devoted to her," said Carlisle, gently rubbing off the powder, "but
there's no denying there's a great deal of the cat in Mats."
"Hmph!... Why, this is outrageous! I never read such a thing!"
"What is it?" said the daughter, not turning, clearly not interested.
"Here's a man saying he visited the Works with the Labor
Commissioner, and that conditions there are _homicidal!_ I never!
Mmm-m-m. Here! 'I speak particularly of the Heth Cheroot Works, but
all four stand almost equally as burning blots upon the conscience of
this community'--"
Carlisle's attention was not diverted from her eyebrow. "The Works!
He's crazy.... Who is the man?"
"A piece in the paper here--let me see. Yes, here's his name. Vivian. _V.
Vivian_! There's no such man!..."
"Oh," said the girl, absently, "it's only some notoriety-seeking nobody....
Like the man who threw the brick at papa that election night."
"But nobodies haven't any right to publish such untruths!" said Mrs.
Heth, more grammatical than she sounded. "They ought to be punished,
imprisoned for it. 'Public opinion is the grandfather of statute-book
law.' Where's the sense in that?..."
"It's probably one of those Socialistic things.... They said the man who
threw the brick at papa was a Socialist."
"'Shameless egoists of industry--grow rich by homicide!' I'm greatly
surprised at Mr. West for printing such fanatical stuff. I trust your

father did not see this. He gave forty dollars to the tuberculosis fund,
and this is his reward."
She fumed and interjected awhile further, but her daughter's thought
had dreamed far away. From her childhood days she had carried a
mind's-eye picture of the dominant fourth member of the family, the
great Works, lord and giver of her higher life, which completely refuted
these occasional