When a Man Marries | Page 7

that he was
very handsome. He had what one might call a resolute nose and chin,
and a pleasant, rather humorous, mouth. And he had blue eyes that
were, at that moment, wandering with interest over the lot of us.
Somebody shouted his name to me above the Tristan and Isolde music,
and I held out my hand.
Instantly I had the feeling one sometimes has, of having done just that
same thing, with the same surroundings, in the same place, years before,
I was looking up at him, and he was staring down at me and holding
my hand. And then the music stopped and he was saying:
"Where was it?"
"Where was what?" I asked. The feeling was stronger than ever with
his voice.
"I beg your pardon," he said, and let my hand drop. "Just for a second I
had an idea that we had met before somewhere, a long time ago. I
suppose--no, it couldn't have happened, or I should remember." He was
smiling, half at himself.
"No," I smiled back at him. "It didn't happen, I'm afraid--unless we
dreamed it."
"We?"
"I felt that way, too, for a moment."
"The Brushwood Boy!" he said with conviction. "Perhaps we will find
a common dream life, where we knew each other. You remember the

Brushwood Boy loved the girl for years before they really met." But
this was a little too rapid, even for me.
"Nothing so sentimental, I'm afraid," I retorted. "I have had exactly the
same sensation sometimes when I have sneezed."
Betty Mercer captured him then and took him off to see Jim's newest
picture. Anne pounced on me at once.
"Isn't he delicious?" she demanded. "Did you ever see such shoulders?
And such a nose? And he thinks we are parasites, cumberers of the
earth, Heaven knows what. He says every woman ought to know how
to earn her living, in case of necessity! I said I could make enough at
bridge, and he thought I was joking! He's a dear!" Anne was
enthusiastic.
I looked after him. Oddly enough the feeling that we had met before
stuck to me. Which was ridiculous, of course, for we learned afterward
that the nearest we ever came to meeting was that our mothers had been
school friends! Just then I saw Jim beckoning to me crazily from the
den. He looked quite yellow, and he had been running his fingers
through his hair.
"For Heaven's sake, come in, Kit!" he said. "I need a cool head. Didn't I
tell you this is my calamity day?"
"Cook gone?" I asked with interest. I was starving.
He closed the door and took up a tragic attitude in front of the fire. "Did
you ever hear of Aunt Selina?" he demanded.
"I knew there WAS one," I ventured, mindful of certain gossip as to
whence Jimmy derived the Wilson income.
Jim himself was too worried to be cautious. He waved a brazen hand at
the snug room, at the Japanese prints on the walls, at the rugs, at the
teakwood cabinets and the screen inlaid with pearl and ivory.

"All this," he said comprehensively, "every bite I eat, clothes I wear,
drinks I drink--you needn't look like that; I don't drink so darned
much--everything comes from Aunt Selina--buttons," he finished with
a groan.
"Selina Buttons," I said reflectively. "I don't remember ever having
known any one named Buttons, although I had a cat once--"
"Damn the cat!" he said rudely. "Her name isn't Buttons. Her name is
Caruthers, my Aunt Selina Caruthers, and the money comes from
buttons."
"Oh!" feebly.
"It's an old business," he went on, with something of proprietary pride.
"My grandfather founded it in 1775. Made buttons for the Continental
Army."
"Oh, yes," I said. "They melted the buttons to make bullets, didn't they?
Or they melted bullets to make buttons? Which was it?"
But again he interrupted.
"It's like this," he went on hurriedly. "Aunt Selina believes in me. She
likes pictures, and she wanted me to paint, if I could. I'd have given up
long ago--oh, I know what you think of my work--but for Aunt Selina.
She has encouraged me, and she's done more than that; she's paid the
bills."
"Dear Aunt Selina," I breathed.
"When I got married," Jim persisted, "Aunt Selina doubled my
allowance. I always expected to sell something, and begin to make
money, and in the meantime what she advanced I considered as a loan."
He was eyeing me defiantly, but I was growing serious. It was evident
from the preamble that something was coming.
"To understand, Kit," he went on dubiously, "you would have to know

her. She won't stand for divorce. She thinks it is a crime."
"What!" I sat up. I have always regarded divorce as essentially
disagreeable,