Page:Wilson - The Boss of Little Arcady (1905).djvu/305

 But I had convinced her. She admitted as much in words almost joyous, so that Miss Caroline went to be with her—to fetch her when she should be strong enough for the adventure of travel.

There were three weeks of my neighbor's absence—three weeks in which Clem "cleaned house," polished the battered silver, "neated" the rooms, and tried to arrange the remaining furniture so that it would look like a great deal of furniture indeed; three weeks in which Little Arcady again decked itself with June garlands and seemed not, at first glance, to belie its rather pretentious name; three weeks when I studied a calendar which impassively averred that I was thirty-five, a mirror which added weight to that testimony, and the game which taught me with some freshness at each failure that the greater game it symbolizes is not meant to be won—only to be played forever with as eager a zest, as daring a hope, as if victory were sure.

The season at hand found me in sore need of this teaching. It was then that errant impulse counselled rebellion against the decrees of calendar and looking-glass. If vatted wine in dark cellars turns in its bed and mutters seethingly at this time, in a mysterious, intuitive sympathy with the blossoming grape, a man free and above ground, with eyes to behold that miracle, may hardly hope to escape an answering thrill to its call.

Wherefore I played the game diligently, torn by the need of its higher lessons. And at last I was