Fanny Herself

things-that were to affect the whole tenor of her life. It is pleasant to predict thus. It gives a certain weight to a story and

then the tricked reader is likely to go on to the very final page, te

r, dreamily and almost automatically munching peanut brittle, her cheeks growing redder and redder in the close air of the ill-ventilated room, she would read, and read, and read. There

Wide, Wide World," and "Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates," and "Jane Eyre." All of which are merely mentioned as examples of her catholicism in literature. As she read she was unaware of the giggling boys and girls w

crunching the snow, her whole being filled with a vague and unchildish sadness and disquiet as she faced the tender rose, and orange, and mauve, and pale lemon of the winter sunset. There were times when her very heart ached with the beauty of that color-flooded sky; th

Perkins, at sight of the title, had glared disapproving

yourself?"

es

r little girls," sn

It was Zola's "The Ladies' Paradise" (Au Bonheur des Dames). The story of the shop girl, and the

cowardly as well as weak, and his name (oh, pity!) was Clarence-Clarence Heyl. There are few things that a mischievous group of small boys cannot do with a name like Clarence. They whined it, they catcalled it, they shrieked it in falsetto imitation of Clarence's mother. He was a wide-mouthed, sallow and pindling little boy, whose pipe-stemmed legs looked all the thinner for being contrasted with his feet, which were long and narrow. At that time he wore spectacles, too, to

-bespattered. His stockings were torn. His cap was gone and his hair was

potently, and shook with rage and terror. "Y

n at the pit of her stomac

r, and white teeth showing in a snarl. If she had fought fair, or if she had not taken them so by surprise, she would have been powerless among them. But she had sprung at them with the suddenness of rage. She kicked,

r of his going. Whereupon Fanny darted nimbly to one side, out of the way of boyish brown fists. In that moment she was transformed from a raging

p trembling ever so little. "Come on! Hit me! Afraid to fight anything b

sullen little boys stood an

business d' you have scratching around like

ter with his lungs, or something, and they're going to make him quit

k on Clar-ence! Fanny'

e it had flown at her first onslaught. "It's a lie!"

. But Mattie's keen eye detected the marks of battl

ook at your sweate

lice of cold veal from the platter, and mounted the back stairs to her room. It was a hungry business, this fighting. When Mrs. Brandeis

tch on your cheek from

p her hand.

ave felt it. How

ing," said Theodore with the intuitive know

"Some boys were picking on Clarence Heyl,

t na

nam

going to fight every ti

ttered Zola, the scratched cheek. "It is

ner arc-light. Fanny rarely brought books from school, and yet she seemed to get on rather brilliantly, especially in the studies she liked. During that winter following her husband's death Mrs. Brandeis had a way of playing sol

mpt for his sentiment, and his great ladies bored her. She did not know that this was because they were badly drawn. The humor she loved, and she read and reread the passages dealing with Samuel Weller, and Mr. Micawber, and Sairey Gamp, and Fanny Squeers. It was rather trying to read Dickens before supper, she h

en after a conference with Mattie, found her dau

ead this?" She held up

t it? That isn't the kind of thing for you t

ittle one, and everything. Like the thing you were talking to that man about the other day. You said it was kil

pete with it, when the farmers bought everything from a catalogue, and had whole box

d some traveling man or somebody like

r couch in the sitting-room. She must have been fearfully exhausted, mind and body. The house would be very quiet, except for Mattie, perhaps, moving about in the kitchen or in her corner room upstairs. Sometimes the weary woman on the couch would start suddenly from he

at, she would sit up, haggardly, and take the hairpins out of her short thick hair, and announce her intention of going to bed. She always insisted that the children go too, though they often

en," she woul

se just let me fi

w m

ttle bit. See

easonable woman, and she had the book-lover's know

uld read on, turning the leaves softly and swiftly, gulping the pages, cramming them down in an orgy of mental bolting, like naughty children stuffing cake when their mother's back is turned. But the very

! Come now! Not

ld try it again. "Just to the end of

ur chapters since I spoke to

n, waiting for the weary little figures to climb the stairs, would turn out th

essly and fitfully, her overwrought brain still surging with the day's problems. It was not like a household at res

ave guessed that the one was the reading of that book of social protest, though its writer has fallen into disfavor in these fickle days. The