to suggest that you did wrong when you were seventeen and I was threeand-twenty? Surely, you wouldn't say that, Millicent ?"

The corners of Grandmother's mouth quivered into a faint, reluctant smile. "But the times have changed, Richard. The times have changed greatly. At seventeen I was a woman grown."

"And did your Grandmother think so?" suggested Grandfather softly. Then he turned to Miss Betty, who was waiting in polite silence for enlight

enment.

"Are you going to let her off?" he asked.

"If you please, Grandmother dear," begged Miss Betty, "What did you do when you were seventeen?"

"Nothing, dear-not a thing," Grandmother responded placidly, holding up the fluffy shawl in front of her and measuring it with a critical eye. "It was all Richard's doing. You must ask him."

Grandfather chuckled. "You'd have thought so, Betty; you'd have thought it was all my doing, if you'd seen her in those days. She had more dimples than you, I mind me, and little gold ringlets that shook when she moved, and big blue eyes, and the tiniest little waist. Ah, you should have seen her, Betty! And always four or five of us ready to pick up her handkerchief, and turn her spinet music, and make the dimples show and the little curls bob. Yes, it was all my doing, I don't doubt."

"Richard!" Grandmother's tone was gently reproachful.

"As if a girl

could help the color of her hair or the size of her waist!" And she glanced at the dainty portrait over the fireplace, and then quickly back at her knitting work, in the hope that Betty had not seen.

But-"Was it painted then?" asked the watchful Betty.

"No, not till after I was married; I was more slender as a girl," came Grandmother's demure answer.

"Well, as I was saying," began Grandfather once more, "the trouble was, you could never get her alone. There were generally four or five moths

around her, and always two-” · "Richard," cut in Grandmother, "you exaggerate. Of course I had callers now and then, like any other girl."

"And always two," pursued Grandfather imperturbably. "I was one, and the other was Jim Rogers. Do you remember Jim, Millicent, my dear?" When "Millicent, my dear" smiled, she looked more than ever as Trumbull had painted her. She smiled now. "Ah, yes indeed," she said musingly, ་- though it's forty odd years since I saw him. Poor James!" Grandfather laughed. "You did lead him a life," he said. Betty, for the story. One afternoon I came to call on your Grandmother, with a very particular reason for wanting to see her alone. I was on my horse, of course-we always went calling on horseback in those days."

"And now,

"Yes," cut in Grandmother, flushing prettily, "and you wore your new ruffled shirt from London. I can see you now, Richard, as you cantered up the lane."

"Yes," broke in Grandfather, "I cantered three miles in the sun, and found Jim Rogers's horse hitched to the post."

"Oh!" cried Betty breathlessly. "What did you do? Was there a duel?"

"No, Betty; we didn't fight duels in Cambridge in those days. No, I— well, you ask your Grandmother what I did. She was sitting by the

window."

66

'Richard," said Grandmother severely, "I did not see. I told you at the time that I did not see. From the way you laughed afterwards I guessed that you loosed James's horse, but all I saw was a horse galloping down the road."

"Exactly," said Grandfather.

"That was just what I saw, and when I came in and found Jim with you,-a complete surprise, of course,-I asked him if he didn't sometimes ride a brown filly, and if it could be she I had seen running like mad towards Boston. She wasn't much of a mare, but she ran well that day."

There was a little pause. “And then-?" suggested Miss Betty politely. "And then," Grandfather took her up, "I asked pretty Millicent Preston to be my wife, and she said yes, Betty, if you'll believe me; and when Jim got back from Boston way on that sweating brown mare, we made him give us his blessing. Poor Jim! But we can't all get what we want."

"No," chimed in Grandmother significantly, "we can't, and if I'd guessed the trick you played, Richard, I declare I should have said no."

"Then how lucky you didn't guess," murmured little Miss Betty, with an arm around the brave lover's neck. "And to think that you were just my age! How I wish such things happened nowadays!"

Her eyes sparkled suddenly as she came back to the present with a bound. "And I may go to my dance?" she said.

EDITH KELLOGG DUNTON '97.

Of course they were all women. Who but women would join a class which met "for the purpose of studying the methods, aims and results of Ruskin's teachings"; a class that was part of a UniThe Ruskin Class versity Extension movement, which had moved as far as the little town of Putnam, a class which held from four until six, and finally, which met in the darkest corner of the Town Hall, a spot known as the Lecture Room. This was lighted with gas, and wainscoted in black walnut, without air or daylight save through a narrow transom-altogether a grewsome place in which to study The Seven Lamps of Architecture. It was furnished, furthermore, with an unprepossessing floor covering, uncompromising chairs, and a disused clothes-press, which had a habit of creaking dismally and unexpectedly, much to the disturbance of æsthetic moods. In the middle of the room stood a superannuated diningtable, whose large dark polished top suggested that it had known brighter days and had reflected merrier things than a gas jet. But all such frivolities were now of the past; in the days of the Ruskin class the table was set out with note-books instead of plates, ink-bottles for glasses, and fountainpens and pencils in place of knives and forks. At the head of the table presided the instructor. Before her was a mound of large, fat books, generous slices from which she dealt out in lecture form to the class, who, insatiate, ever passed their plates in recurring courses for more. Never was a feast of reason a more literal imitation and mockery of a banquet.

Of the guests who sat at this jovial board, the place of honor was held, as has been said, by the instructor, Miss Myers. She was a little, hard-working woman from the neighboring college of South Greece, who came unfailingly, her "Boston bag" bulging with note-books. Her earnestness needed no further attestation than her presence. No flippant-minded person would have considered the game of the pittance offered by the Extensionists worth the candle of the weekly journey by the local train, which carried the virtue of accommodation to the point of a vice.

At her right sat the School Teacher, weary but eager-eyed, a young woman who would have been pretty were she once thoroughly rested-if such a thing were conceivable. The reason why, after a long day in the schoolroom, she felt impelled to spend the two remaining hours of daylight in the Lecture Room, probably no one but a pedagogue could explain. Possibly it was that she found pleasure in being instructed, in the same mood that an actor might enjoy watching the stage from the front, or a clergyman find refreshment in regarding the pulpit from the point of view of the pew. At all events there she was, the rôle of leader dropped and that of follower assumed with hasty sincerity.

Next sat a good house-mother, Mrs. Ames, endeared to all by her beaming good nature. Many times that winter, when Stones of Venice had left the class discouraged pilgrims, had she cheered them with matter-of-fact crullers while feet were warmed at a comfort-giving and hideous register, and her hearty laugh over Ruskin's fulminations against railroads, the while he availed himself of their presence, was the closest approach to a breath of fresh air that the room knew.

Beyond her was Miss Briggs, a maiden lady, who lodged near the Town Hall, and who, having nothing to do from morning till night, conceived herself to be so busy that she was invariably tardy. Miss Briggs paintedin water-colors on smooth paper with a pointed brush. Having heard that Turner was the artist and Ruskin his apostle, she had once made a pilgrimage to see a few of the Turner paintings, but she had returned undisconcerted to the study of Ruskin and to the paper-doll order of painting. For, as she reasoned, if Ruskin had admired such rude beginnings as were shown in Turner's untidy daubs, how much greater satisfaction would he have taken in her neat productions.

Opposite the acknowledged artist of the group sat a pretty, fluffy little won nan, lately wed, who came to the class in lieu of other social day-time gatherings to which her more sophisticated home had been accustomed, but of which Putnam was as yet blissfully ignorant. She carried little whitebound volumes, and took notes on ivory tablets, pinching a silver pencil between her plump, ringed fingers; and such was the force of her pretty formalities and her fresh frocks, that it infused the spirit of an afternoon tea into a room where the hour was apparently midnight and ink the only bev

erage.

Her neighbor was a girl bent over her note-book. The crude light showed how broad and fair was her brow, how straight the delicate line of parting in her smooth, dark hair. Her eyes were calm and grave, and the corners of her mouth drooped slightly, not with petulance, but with the seriousness

which is the birthright of the New England girl. In Martha Potter's case this seriousness had not been lessened by a college course. She had regarded those four care-free years as "an opportunity and a privilege", and had striven that each moment should be strung with diamonds and pearls. Yet her earnestness was of the diffident sort, which would have hesitated to tamper with the welfare of the souls of others, even if the state of her own had not demanded constant attention. Ever since her graduation she had been given to tormenting herself lest what improvement she had made should be lost. With all the enthusiasm of a pugilist she devoted herself to keeping in good intellectual trim. Anything that savored of the laborious and the didactic attracted her docilely, arduously industrious temper. In the old schoolroom habit of scribbling down notes she was quietly happy; and at the prospect of reading before the next meeting Fors Clavigera, not as an indulgence, but as a piece of prescribed work, her eyes were full of a mild anticipation.

It was without any thrills of romantic joyousness that Martha realised that John Perry was waiting in the hall-way, and that when he heard the welcome sound of snapping ink-wells he would be at the door to take her books and walk home with her. Her love for John and his for her were among the sacred, solemn things which life held. They were all the more solemn, because John was not given to solemnity, because he was wont to read over her note-book with jeers, to beg her to invite to her house classmates with pretty faces rather than with noble missions, and to exclaim “Bother opportunities!" when on the way home from weekly prayer-meeting her meditations were inclined to grow introspective to the point of boredom. To Martha's mind, John was a man-that was the conclusion of the whole matter. Of course he was the best of men, but by the same dispensation which had created him masculine, he was freed from the responsibilities which beset the feminine pathway. She regarded him wonderingly but unreproachfully, even as the female bird might watch the exuberance of her

mate.

At the last meeting of the term, which expired, as the practical-minded member of the class remarked, in time for spring house-cleaning, there was an especially long session. John leaned back on the hard bench in the hallway, his dog's nose pushed under his arm, listened to the fragments of æsthetic lore which floated out by way of the transom, and wished that the sign of "No Smoking Allowed" were in German. For, as he had pointed out to Martha, German was to him an unknown tongue. He cheered himself with the remembrance of her prompt offer to instruct him, to which he had responded with such a roar of laughter that the querulous old janitor had come hobbling down the stairs, alarmed by the unaccustomed sound. How adorable Martha's bewilderment had been! But then, any act of Martha's was accepted by John with mingled philosophy and admiration. Even that on this sweet spring evening she should be one of the women dallying in the gas-lighted Lecture Room, was to him no more inexplicable, no more blameworthy, than that to keep the same tryst she should have braved both December blizzards and March freshets. Now the air was full of the fragrance of damp earth, sprouting green things, swelling tree-buds, and the sound of

bird-twitters. Only a block away from the Town Hall were gravel paths, accepted immemorially as sidewalks, where wayside weeds were pricking through the damp earth. Beneath the whitewashed boards of the Creek bridge the busy water was hurrying away that last trace of winter, the ragged white line of snow-capped earth still clinging to the water's edge. And yet, thought John, Martha was in the band of devotees who had journeyed to that dark chilly little cell, the only spot in the town where nature was completely foiled. But, although he marvelled, he did not criticise.

I

The teacher was buckling her well-worn bag, and the class, with notebooks full of written sheets instead of blank paper as a tangible result of the course, realized that they had "done" Ruskin, and that the moment for parting was come. At this point Mrs. Ames, with beaming face, rose to say, "Now, before you get to putting on your rubbers, let me put in a word. want all the Ruskin class to come to my house next Friday night, and we'll have a real sociable time. After working so hard the whole winter, it seems to me that we ought to pleasure ourselves a mite. I want you all to come early, and we'll talk over all we've been studying."

Mrs. Ames's hospitality was not of the order which serves pale tea in triangular cups with flat souvenir spoons, and thin rolled sandwiches tied with a red ribbon that leaves a pink streak on the bread. With a spontaneity which was a credit to the class, they availed themselves as one woman of this opportunity to form a synopsis of the term's work.

Miss Myers then hurried off that the train might not be kept waiting on her account, but Mrs. Ames, unheeding John's impatient tattoo on the door, again detained the class. "Miss Myers is a real smart girl, isn't she?" she inquired. "And she's worked pretty hard too. I used to know her mother. And I think it would be nice if we gave something to show our appreciation, don't you?"

Each member, after her fashion, signified her assent.

"But now, what shall it be?"

"Oh, Mrs. Ames, we'll leave that to you," said the fluffy little woman. "Bless your heart, I shouldn't know what to give a college teacher, unless a square meal. Some of you choose."

"No, Mrs. Ames," said Martha, with the authority of conviction, "it's your idea and you ought to choose. Maybe Miss Briggs, who is herself an artist,” she went on with all the seriousness with which she accepted the assertions of others, "would work with you." Martha had a hazy idea that it was a rul e of parliamentary order to refer to pleasant little commissions of this kind as work. At all events, her suggestion in the matter of the gift was unanimously accepted, and that its presentation should be at Mrs. Ames's party.

From the steps sounded the resentful barking of John's fox terrier, a cheerful little brute, whom hunger alone reduced to gravity. Martha hurried out. "Oh, come on, quick," John greeted her, "there's a grand sunset going on that you've been missing, and I'm hungry as a bear."

"I've made you late to supper," said Martha, conscience-stricken.

"Well, that's easily remedied by your asking the pup and me to go home

with you. And see the flowers I picked for you while you were improving