Argosy, Vol. 117, No. 2 — page 125: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

YELLOW those days as a substitute for an eye-glass, Philip?” No, he did not mean that, he explained, while Frances inspected the tiny object. “T think it’s cute,’ she pronounced. “That little figure on it looks like a min- now. Doesn’t it?” Philip Carpenter was rather careful of his English. He especially deplored the use of the word “cute”; but to-day he heard it without a shudder. He even looked on its utterer, and smiled. “Tf you are at all interested,” he said ‘“T should be most happy to show you a few bits I have here with me—a mummy label, some scarabs, and a bracelet. ‘That, by the way, is the finest thing I have. It is of no great value, my small collection, but it gives me pleasure.” “Td love it,” said Frances. will you show it to me?” “ To-morrow morning, some time. Would that suit?” he said. “The small carvings are indistinct, and the morning light is, I think, best.” Frances nodded, and the talk turned other ways. After a half hour more she got up to go. She kissed both the ladies, Philip Carpenter, for the first time in thirty-eight years, speculated on the quali- ties of a kiss. Heretofore the subject had been swallowed in scarabs, and_hiero- glyphics; he didn’t quite know why he thought upon it now. Miss Agnes rustled back in the room. ‘Philip, does she please you?” she asked tremulously. Had. he been less absorbed, her manner would have baffled him; but he was brazenly watching Frances Milton trip across the lawn, and he did not notice his aunt’s breathless suspense. “T think her quite charming,” he said, “quite charming. She is almost too pretty for good taste, but what a fascinating trans- gression! I enjoyed watching her. She uses her hands naturally and well, does ‘* When she not? Let me put~a cushion behind you, aunt. Would you like me to read to you?” Aunt refused his offer to read with flut- tering politeness, and they sat together, si- lent, looking at a small fire which fluttered too, as if it felt the spirit.of its little lady 275 owners. Miss Letitia watched her nephew, who seemed entirely absorbed. She nodded, and nodded until at last she went nodding to sleep. Philip looked down at a Beathed foot- stool, and as he looked he saw a shadow, who thought his eye of Horus cute. He smiled where heretofore ss had always shuddered. SOAP, Frances had gone home that afternoon to be assailed with the atmosphere of the house—shell, it had grown to be, for mag- nificent unhappiness. ‘There were remind- ers in almost every roonf of things which Frances would forget. In the hall was a broken andiron and, when Frances saw this, she saw a little close-haired dog, lying whimpering, while her white coat grew streaked with red. In the drawing-room, coldly furnished in that most terrible of periods—walnut striped with gold—in there, was always the sound of her father’s voice; confiding in attitude rather than words, confiding al- ways only just so much—enough to give the meanest of impressions—that voice, and the listener’s hum of sympathy. In the dining-room sat guests about the board; shadow guests, always there, that had come to Franklin Milton’s table, and: there had shown their disapproval of his erring wife and daughters. Up-stairs, in a long hall, she had been half frightened out.of her small senses, as a child, by hearing a woman’s wild sobbing; sometimes her strident entreaties, and then the voice she hated at that indiscriminating time, speaking harshly. In the room that had been her nursery, she saw Carlotta torn from her. In Julia’s she stood a child, and saw her older, very pretty sister, rush in the room, | sink sobbing to the bed, and there gasp broken sentences, and a man’s name. “ He has sent him away,” she had sobbed, “ sent him away. Ill never see him again.” The only room in the house that Frances did not hate was her own small sanctum, an unused one on the first floor, which she had. begged for. It had been a breakfast room and opened from the dining-room. Her piano stood there, her best loved books Gomichbooks EOL