Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-70.djvu/64

54 There must have been some fatal spirit abroad in the air that night, for but a few minutes later Ethelwyn came to me.

"You knew that—Mr. Smith," she began, running her finger absently around the tray where I was washing the breakfast silver.

"I believe that I do," I responded.

Ethelwyn picked up one of the forks and examined the pattern with extreme interest.

"I'm afraid—he won't—be coming here any more," she said with difficulty.

"Oh Ethelwyn," I cried, "how could you!"

She turned at that, her face flushed and her eyes full of tears.

"I couldn't help it, could I?" she protested. "And I liked him so much, and I'd talked and talked to him about that pretty Miss Pollard, and told him how lovely she was and all, and—Cousin Persis, what makes people go and spoil things so?"

I don't understand it. The child was really hurt over something. I'm afraid we haven't yet seen the last of Mr. Smith. I shouldn't put it that way—he's a thoroughly nice fellow—I asked Roger about him. If only he had a name!

Oh, the wonder of the golden world! We had thought autumn never was coming. Day after day we woke to green hills and summer winds, and the trees, the middle of October, still held their black-green shadows. Then suddenly, all in a breath, it changed. The trees on our sunset hill stood out entrancingly like great bubbles of color. The tulip down in the hollow flamed like a golden torch, and the beeches—there is no word to tell the magic of the beeches. The "How to Know" books grow dusty on the shelves while day after day we walk or sit still and wonder.

We do such happy, idle, foolish things. We spend hours gathering chestnuts—though neither of us eats them, even with the inducement of an open fire by which to roast them. But how else can we get such a delicious sense of sunlight, and the beauty of the copper-colored ground, and the joy of rustling through dead leaves, and the thrill of rapture when you find a specially fat prize, and all the thousand indescribable scents and sounds and memories that make an autumn day? So every night the pile of shining brown treasures in the garret grows larger. Of course, we're not going to waste them. Some day—the plan is Ethelwyn's—we are going to hire a push-cart and get Peter to take the load down to some of the city alleys and scatter autumn's largess. I suggested to Ethelwyn that she needn't think that she could do such a simple thing as give away a few bushels of nuts without changing the world thereby. Who knows how many nickels she would divert from worthy and voluble Italians, who likewise have their pushcarts laden