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"I'D LIKE TO KNOW WHERE YOU THINK YOU ARE," SHE SAID, CRISPLY

Instantly her eyes welled, brimmed. Lo, she was one of those women whose eye can brim and never leak. Admirable creatures. For between that brimming and that leaking a man's heart can slip away, nor find the trail return.

"Champain County," said Mamie oh, wistful.

"Little lonely?" Arpeggio inquired.
She nodded, looking down.
"Farm, was it?" he divined.

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It was a farm. Mamie told about it. The spring, the dairy, the herd, the orchard, the school-house dances, the bareback rides. She was, then, that frequent Middle West phenomenon (it would seem so much more feminine to say phenomena!)-the daughter of a country landowner who has become such a devoted beast of burden that the yoke is an heirloom. And since to have graduated from eighth grade is acknowledged to fit young women for something

VOL. CXXXVI.-No. 811.-9

better than life on the hill farm, these find for themselves in the towns opportunities to "work out."

"Little homesick for the farm?" Arpeggio at length deduced. "I tell you what. How'd you like to go out and spend a day by yourself on some farm around? Sure. I can fix it. I'll speak to Miss Granger," added Arpeggio. Mamie palpitated. "Sure," Arpeggio sustained it.

More than an hour had passed in talk. Two hours had passed since Arpeggio's arrival. The sweet May day went on about its concerns of perfume and wisdom. Wagons went by, dogs trotted and barked, some one was beating a carpet. Over on the next street a band of strolling musicians, with May in their blood, throbbed and breathed in rhythms.

Arpeggio leaned back in his chair and rocked, and smiled at Mamie. "Gosh! this is nice," he observed.

The word brought her fluttering back from her absorbed contemplation of commissionerhood. She must go. "Oh, set still," Arpeggio besought her. "I want you should tell me what books you'd like to like to read."

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When the Angelus sounded on the rich air, Arpeggio reluctantly rose. "Well," he said, you c'n tell Miss Granger I come. Yes, Shadd. Tell her I'll happen in again. And, Mamie-'

Yes? She was tiptoe, shining, and, oh, so pink!

"Don't you go and forget I'm goin' to send you out to the farm for a day!"

Was she likely to forget?

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needed volume. It being all a person can do to live in a place when same does not yield a public liberary.

it being very necessary, I am, indeed, Hopeing this will not interfere with you,

A. SHADD, City Commissioner.

He walked down to the post-office, holding his letter and humming. This ought to start the subject of a library naturally. This would permit him to repeat his visit without it looking as if something was meant. Returning, he walked round by the Granger home. It was brightly lighted, and bore an air of pleasant preoccupation in a multitude of affairs-that air which effectually shuts out the casual passer from participation. What delicate things were they doing? What was she doing? Arpeggio recalled her smile, her white, white glove. She had a pleasing hand to shake. But he had not taken her hand! That hand was Mamie's. He passed the house and slipped within the May night, dreaming

"Tell you what: If you want a little country, you go over some time and see my garden. I got a big gardennice strawberry-bed in it. Nobody 'd be there. Just drop in on it if you want.' Oh, but she'd like that. Indeed she would. She bloomed anew at any thought for her. "Good-by, Mamie!" He put out his miscellaneous dreams. hand.

She touched it, withdrew, fled.

Arpeggio strolled to the gate and up the golden road. "Wasted the hull afternoon," he thought-"and what of it?"

He stepped into the kitchen of his home just as his mother set hot johnnycake on the table.

"Ma," he said, "I been to call on Miss Granger."

"That's nice," she observed, placidly -and in that instant christened her first grandchild. "What kind of a girl has she got to be?"

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Pretty," said Arpeggio, dreamily. "Little. Shy. Her upper lip smiles first. Her name's Mamie

"I thought her name was Edith," said his mother, as one who now remembered that she was wrong.

"Nope," said Arpeggio. "Mamie." After supper he lifted the bracketlamp to an end of the dining-table, spread a newspaper, found the ink on the clock-shelf and the pen in a shaving-mug in the cupboard, brought sheets of paper and envelopes from under the big Bible, and set himself to write a letter.

MISS GRANGER, MY DEAR FRIEND [he said]: -Understanding that you have quite considerable of a liberary in your home, beg your leave to look through same for a much

He

When three days had passed without reply, Arpeggio took account of himself. What was the matter with him, anyway? Women! Women had no part in his life. He was forty-six. He was absorbed in that part of his commissionership which had to do with the people— not the mathematics of his town. was intent on his doves and his strawberries. What had set him thinking about Edith Granger, anyway? He put on his old hat and went down to the office, business in his eye, his gait, his air. Women, indeed-and he a commissioner.

Stack Mayhew stood over the commissioners' table with a letter whose superscription he was frankly scrutinizing.

"Here's some female wants her taxes dawdled down to nothin'," Stack hazarded, and tossed the letter.

Arpeggio caught, divined, retired to at window and rapturously read: She had been in town for a few days. Certainly he was free to use the library whenever he wished. Perhaps they might talk of this matter of a town library?

A delicious interval of wistful waiting having brought him no confidence,

Stack lost his hold. “That's it. Grin like a Cheshire cheese and keep your mouth shut," he grumbled.

"It can't be done, Stack. It's ag'in' nature," Arpeggio earnestly refuted this charge.

Two o'clock found Arpeggio on his way to the Grangers'-cravat red side out as before. As before, Mamie answered his summons and glowed softly. Oh yes, Miss Granger had said that he was to be shown straight to the library.

A pleasant room, with not enough books to put one in some helpless minority, he felt. Open windows, softly stirring muslin curtains, on the table a basket of colored work. Her work!

"All right, Mr. Shadd?" Mamie inquired.

Oh yes; all right. Oh, right indeed!

Left alone, Arpeggio wandered from shelf to shelf, breathing the air of the room, staring at the pictures. Her house. He had not asked for her. Arpeggio's conception of a house was a place whose inmates wander through all the rooms at any moment. That was the way his mother did. He remained in momentary expectation. A dozen times he started, turned to the door, let his smile die. Where was she? In half an hour the door did indeed open. It admitted a box of odorous polishing stuff and Mamie.

"Will I bother you if I do the andirons?" she asked, demurely.

"No, no," he said, and took down a book at random.

Mamie went on her knees before the empty fireplace. Over the top of his volume Arpeggio watched her and waited for Edith Granger.

The book which he had elected to consult proved to be Savings and Saving Institutions. That, he found, was its fascinating title. Arpeggio loathed figures, and his attention wandered. He devised ways in which to open and continue conversations regarding the founding of public libraries in

66

cities of the second class. What an opportunity for the expression of public spirit. What a benefit to the town to come. What a delicious little knot of hair above a delicately white neck. . . .

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DO YOU LIKE IT-THIS KIND OF A JOB?"

Arpeggio paused. The deduction did not seem direct, but it was absolute. He was staring at the symbols.

"Mamie," said Arpeggio, abruptly, "how about that day at the farm?"

The delicious knot of hair disappeared and her bright face was there. "Oh," she said, "that 'll be all right."

No reply at all. But the uses of a reply are not merely to reply.

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What's this you're doing?" he would know, and walked to the empty fireplace and stared down at the andirons winking under her deft hands.

"A-polishing 'em," she explained. She did not say why this process should be necessary at this moment. She only polished, absorbedly.

"So," said Arpeggio, musing, "you're a trained one, are you? Do you like itthis kind of a job?"

"Why, no sir!" She lifted a surprised face. "Like this? No, sir." (There came the "sir" at last, of which she had been capable all along.)

"What all do you want to do?" Arpeggio looked down at her, and there crossed his mind something of the infinite pathos and the infinite glory of all the little pink-and-white spots in the world liking to do something.

"I want to raise plants," said Mamie, "and see 'em grow."

"Bless me!" said Arpeggio.

Now there is a community of feeling between two who discover each other to love Japanese prints, to follow mountainclimbing, to collect old furniture, to believe in a better democracy, but these are as nothing compared to that well of feeling uncovered when two recognize in each other the natural lover of the soil. Arpeggio had never dreamed of this in a woman. To be sure, his mother pottered among her flower-pots, but hers was no passion. Here was a passion.

"You must come and see my strawberry-bed," he said.

Mamie looked up, looked down, polished. The door opened and Arpeggio whirled. But there advanced no one whose look, whose bow, whose air made memories. A gray lady was this, gray of gown, of hair, of manner, who paused inquiringly before this tableau.

"Mrs. Granger," said Arpeggio, and his ease became exaggerated and billowed about him as a cloak. "Mrs. Granger, I am Shadd, one of the town commissioners." And, as usual, he all but whispered that word "commissioners." "Your daughter says I can "

me

"Ah, yes," said the lady. "She tells

that you, too, are interested in the possibilities of a library for Banning."

Arpeggio leaped within the opening. He was, he was. If only somebody would set it going. He couldn't set it going himself. He had set too many things going already. But if some disinterested party, now, was to circulate a petition, get signers, raise some money

why, then, he, Shadd, would tend to the commission end of it fair and plenty. Fair and plenty, he impressively repeated.

Not

Mrs. Granger listened, nodded. She was a brisk little being, for all her grayness. As she listened, a dawn broke in her face for hers was one of the faces of earth on which dawns can break, and these faces are not numerous. nearly so numerous, indeed, as the dawns which would break were there enough positive faces to act, so to say, as negatives. It was not that she was publicspirited, either. It was chiefly that she was brisk. Many brisk ladies pass for ladies of public spirit. With many brisk business men it is the same. Mrs. Granger listened exactly as she might have listened to a new recipe. To both she could respond-by reason of her briskness.

"I don't know," she said, "but that might be something that I could do. But," she added, "you must not let me interrupt you. Mamie, you might have taken some other time

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"Not at all," said Arpeggio in general.

The lady took up the basket of colored work (not her work at all, then) and departed. Arpeggio stood blindly looking along the backs of books. Was it possible that he was not to see her?

It was the possible, the realized. He did not see her. He lingered shamelessly, fingering many leaves. And as he lingered, and fingered, he talked idly with Mamie, polishing. Ah, how she polished!

"When will you come to see my garden?" said he.

"Thursday's my day out," replied Mamie, with startling directness, and Arpeggio was surprised into saying: "Then-this Thursday?"

Yes, this Thursday. That much was

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