A Rose of Yesterday

is room to sleep, for he slept a great deal, or to amuse himself after his fashion, and she did not ask him whe

with him, and of which he always had the key in his pocket. It took up a good deal

some tin soldiers, much the worse for wear, for he was ashamed to buy new ones, and a small and gaudily painted tin cart, in which an impossible lady and gentleman of papier-maché, dressed in

s on each side of it for sentinels. He had played the same game a thousand times already, but the satisfaction had not diminished. One day in a hotel he had forgotten to lock the door, and his mother had opened it by mistake, thinking

and the tin soldiers, and the little papier-maché lady and gentleman. He felt that they understood what he meant and would answer him if they could speak, and would expect no more of him than he could give. Grown people always seemed to expect a great deal more, and looked at him strangely when he called Berlin the ca

ould add and subtract, for instance, with the bits of wood, and, by a laborious method, he could even do simple multiplication, quite beyond him with paper and pencil. Above a

single block, he pulled it down with a crash. But he did not at once begin another. On the contrary, he sat looking at th

ud. "But of course Sylvia would think me

key into his pocket. Then he went and looked through the half-closed bl

thinks!" he exclaimed. "I'

looking infantry soldier, erect, broad shouldered, bright eyed, spotless, and scrupulously neat, comes marching along and excites one's admiration for a moment. Then, when close to him, one misses something which ought to go with such manly bearing. The fellow is only a country lout, perhaps, hardly able to read or write, and possessed of an intelligence not much beyond the highest development of instinct. D

audy awnings of the provincially smart shops. At first he only looked along the pavement, searching among the many people who passed. Then as he remembere

d, and his eyes glared oddly as he stood motionless outside, under the awning, looki

uk

th his eyes. He could see that Sylvia was buying a hat. She turned a little each way as she tried it on before

of that shyness about entering a women's establishment, like a milliner's, which most boys a

ay! Miss Sylvia--

rely caught sight of him when he asked it. When she ha

dear," said Miss Wimpole, in

pleasantly as she gave her hand. "But where in the world di

in to say how do you do. There's no harm in my coming in

ght that Sylvia felt

el. "It's all right--I mean--I wish you would go away now,

ppealing to the latter. "I want to stay and talk to her. We are awfully old friends, you kn

Sylvia laughed a little. "

do as she wished. "I say," he began again with a sudden

young one, turned to the glass again, settled the

mpole, and quite forgetting Archie Harmon's presence. "Yes, of course they

dy at the desk, where a young woman in black received t

m to stick up just right, will you? The way she wants them. How much did you say the hat

and there was still some surprise in her sour face when he was already on the pavement outside. He stopped under the awning again, and peered through the window for a last look at the grey figure before the mirror, but he fled precipitately whe

ng quite quietly on a chair by the window, and thinking how

nt joy, if he had been looking through the windows of the shop, instead of sitting in h

at he had actually paid for the hat, and the angry blood rushe

ed Miss Wimpole. "Take the hat, and I wi

xtreme youth. "'That all who view the idiot in his glory'--" As the rest of the quotati

ve Mademoiselle pleasure," suggested the mil

And it's the only one of all those hats that I could wear! Oh, Aunt Rachel, what shall I do? I can't possibly take the

e the money by to-night, since she is here. Your Uncle Richard will go and see her at once, of course, and he can manage it. They ar

l," answered the young girl. "Why don't you say that they ar

observed Miss Wimpole, as tho

c rushed into a shop and paid for your gloves, or your shoes, or your hat, and the

hotel," suggested Aunt Rachel, not paying the lea

like a human being," said Sylvia. "That is, if you will re

nd as she had never broken her word in her life

led sweetly, and

the pretty hat on her head, "it is an outrageous piece of im

ow," said Miss Wimpole, with a sort of sever

the young girl. "Of course--it's all right, Aunt Rachel, and I'm

hard, my dear. He is so fond of Archie's mother that he wil

out herself, I should understand--but abou

it, everything that has

arrayed in blue serge knickerbockers, patent-leather walking-boots, and a very shiny high hat. But there were also occasional specimens of what she called the human being--men in the ordinary garments of civilization, and not provided with opera-glasses. There were, moreover, young and middle-aged women in short skirts, boots with soles half an inch thick, complexions in which the hue of the boiled lobster vied with the deeper tone of the stewed cherry, bearing alpenstocks that rang and clattered on the pavement; women who, in the state of life to which Heaven had called them, would have gone to Margate or Staten Island for a Sunday outing, but who had rebelled against providence, and forced the men of their families to bring the

he sprouting shoots of the gold-tree, beings predestined never to enjoy, because they will be always able to buy what strong men fight for, and will never learn to enjoy what is really to be had only for money; and the measure of value will not be in their hands and heads, but in bank-books, out of which their manners have been bought with mingled affection and vanity. Surely, if anything is more intolerable than a vulgar woman, it is a vulgar child. The poor little thing is produced by all nations and races, from th

ppy, and she began to wonder how many of the men and women in the street had what she had heard called a 'secret care.' Her eyes had been red when she had at last yielded to Miss Wimpole's entreaties to open the door, but the redness was gone already, and when she had tried on the hat before the glass she had seen with a little vanity, mingled with a little disap

that they are brought up by the head, by the imagination, or by the heart, and one might infer that their subsequent lives are chiefly determined by that one of the three which has been the leading-string. Sylvia's imagination had generally had the upper hand, and it had been largely fed and cultivated by her guardian, though quite unintentionally on his part. His love of artistic things led him to talk of them, and his

er all, is the world as we inherit it, to love it, or hate it, or be indifferent to it, but to live with it, whether we will or not. He fulfilled her ideal, because it was an ideal which he himself h

w the aridity of the elderly maiden lady's existence, and dreaded anything like it. But it was very simple and logical and actual. Miss Wimpole had loved a man who had been killed. Of course she had

the word 'unfaithful,' which spoke itself in her sensitive conscience with the cruel power to hurt which such words have against perfect innocence. Besides, it was

fled from the room in tears, though he had seen her on the bridge. She wished that she

very confused state of mind and heart, and was beginning to w