Page:Wilson - The Boss of Little Arcady (1905).djvu/334

 And, curiously, since Miss Lansdale did not appear formidable to masculine Little Arcady—with one negligible exception—she seemed to try perversely not to be so. She was amazingly gracious to it—still with one exception. She melted to frivolity and the dance of mirth. She affected joy in its music and confessed to a new feeling for Jerusalem after attending a lawn party at which Eustace Eubanks did his best to please. She spoke of this to Eustace with a crafty implication that it had remained for him to interpret the antique graces of that storied place to a world all too heedless. Eustace himself felt not only a renewed interest in the land exploited by his magic lantern, but he began to view all the rest of the world in a new and rosy light, of which Miss Lansdale was the iridescent globe that diffused and subdued it to the mellow hue of romance.

It is impossible to believe that Eustace was ever at any pains to conceal the effects of this astral phenomenon from his family, for its members were very quickly excited. If in that vale the woman-call could be heard by ears attuned to its haunting cadences, so also did the frightened mother-call echo its equally primitive note, accompanied by the less well-known sister-call of warning and distress.

The truth is that Eustace was becoming harder to manage with each recurring crisis. For testimony in the present instance, I need only adduce that he wrote poetry, more or less, after meeting Miss Lansdale but a scant half-dozen times. This came to me