The Brimming Cup

ife of Mr. Ormsb

15,

0 P

or, and examined it competently, its harmoniously disposed wide panels, the shapely fan-light over it, the small panes of greenish old glass on each side. "Beautiful old bits you get occasionally in these out-of-the-way holes," he remarked. But

autiful twigs of the leafless elms, in

n instant's pause the younger one asked if Mr. and Mrs. Crittenden were at home and could see callers. The lean, aged

d to each other with lifted eyebrows. "Well, what was that, do you suppose?" exclaimed the Younger. He seemed extremely interested and amused. "

oked about him still smiling, his pleasant old eyes full of a fresh satisfaction in what he saw. The room was charming to his gaze, cheerful and homey.

An oddly good room; stunning! Look at the color in those curtains and the walls, and the arrangement of those prints over that Chi

have lived to see it, all that aliveness that had bothered them so much, down at last where he's got his grip on it. And enough of it, plenty of it, oceans of it, left so that he is

s a chateau-fort I don't know!" he said with an abrupt accent. He added, with som

oing to have it. For all his fatigued pose in the old arm-chair, his heart beat faster at the idea. He hadn't got used to being free yet. He'd heard people say that when you were first married it was like that, you couldn't realize it. He'd heard one of the men at the office say that for a long time, every time he heard his bride's skirts rustle, he had to turn his head to make sure she was really there. Well, he would like now to get up and look out of that window and see if his garden was really there. His garden! He thought with a secret feeling, half pity and half shame, of those yellowed old seed catalogues which had come, varnished and brilliant and new, year after year, so long ago, which he'd looked at so hard and so long, in the evenings,

till giving to that room! Lord, how Vincent did love to get things all figured out! He probably had, by this time, an exact diagram of the owners of the house all drawn up in his mind and would pro

address of that man who made a specialty of gladioli? He ought to have noted it down. "Vincent," he asked, "do you remember the address of that Mr. Schwatzkummerer who grew nothing but gladioli?" Vincent was looking with an expression of extreme astonishment at the sheet of

that face. Maybe, after all, he hadn't got the owners of the house so well-plotted out as he thought he ought to. He himself, going on with his

" asked Vinc

merer," sai

ck Thursday on the night train. I won't leave the Grand Central without going to a telephone booth, looking

reat deal more than a little of Vincent's fun," he thought, "to make me feel anything but peaceable here." He was quite used to having people set him down as a harmless, worn-out

ager expression of attention. He really must have been stumped by something in the room,

and sank again into the arm-chair, as she motioned him to do. He had had a long experience in judging people quickly by the expression of their faces, and in that short length of time he had decided thankfully that he was really, just as he had hoped, going to like his new neighbor as much as all the rest of it. He gave her a propitiatory smile, hoping she might like him a little, too, and hoping also that she would not mind Vincent. Sometimes people did, especially nice ladies such as

n so very young any more, with a little gray in his thick hair, what people often called a good-looking man. How life did run between your fingers! Well, he would close his hand tight upon what was left to him. He noticed further that as Vincent talked, his eyes fixed on his interlocutor, his vigorous hands caressed with a slow circular motion the rounded arms of his chair. "What a three-ringed circus that fellow is," he thought. "I bet that the lady thinks he hasn't another idea in

murmured the older man

ring that hard period, near the beginning. You know, when all electrical businesses were so entirely on trial still. Nobody knew whether they were going to succeed or not. My father was one of the Directors from the first and I've

lish to Mrs. Crittenden. Vincent continued, "But of course that's of no great importance up here. What's more to the purpose is that Mr. Welles is a great lover of country life and growing things, and he's be

of the conversation. He wondered what Mrs. Crittenden would say, if Vincent ever got through his gabble and gave her a chance. S

I know for instance, . . ." she laughed and corrected herself, ". . . at least I've been told, what the purchase price of the house was. I know how Harry Wood's sister-in-law's friend told you about Ashley and the house in the first place. I know how many years you were in the service of the Company, and how your pension was voted unanimously by the Directors, and about the silver loving-cup your fellow employees in the office ga

this. Apparently she was going to "take" Vincent the right way. Some ladies were frightfully rubbed the wrong way by that strange great laugh of Vincent's. And what she knew about gardening! And not only about gardening in general, but about his own garden. He was astounded at her knowledge apparently of every inch of the quadrangle of soil back of his house, and at the revelations she made to him of what could lie sleeping under a mysterious blank surface of earth. Why, a piece of old ground was like a person. You

t house?" he asked her, respectf

eally married to humanity, for better or for worse, not just on speaking terms with it, as you are in the city. Why, I know about your garden because I have stood a thousand, thousand times leaning on my hoe in my own garden, discussing those peonies with old Mrs. Belham who lived there before you." This see

doesn't seem possible!" He felt shamed, knowing that he had burst out too violently. What could she know of what

aps she did make out, for she now said gently, "I believe you are going to like it, Mr. Welles. I believe you are go

ble that it was all true. That the long grind at the office was over, the business he had always hated and detested, and the long, hateful slavery at the flat finished at last, and that he had come to live out what was left to him

awfully brilliant eyes of his? Very likely he had seen the silly weak tears so near the surface, had caught the sentimental twitch of the mouth. Yes, quite certainly, for, now he was showing his tact

said, and paused, her e

wered her unspoken question violently. This made her laugh, opening her long eyes a l

ation. Vincent seemed to think so too, and curiously enough not to think it a very favorable comment. He looked, what he almost neve

It was built, you know, like the Cathedral at Bayonne, when the Plantagenets still held that country, but after they were practically pretty near English, and both the chateau and the Gothic

lf paid little attention to what she was now saying, because he could not keep his mind from the lingering sweet intonations of her voice. What difference did it make where she had lived as a little girl? She was going to live next door to him now; what an awfully nice woman she was, and quite a good-looking woman too, with a very nice figure, although not in her very first yo

d to listen to a great many more details from Mrs. Powers than from me, even those she knows nothing about. But of course you must be introduced to the Powers, in toto too. Old Mrs. Powers, a very lively old widow, lives on her farm nearly at the foot of Deer Hollow. Her married son and his family live with her. In this house, there is first of all my husband. I'm so sorry he is away in Canada just now, on lumbering business. He is Neale Crittenden, a Williams man, who in his youth had thoughts of exploring the world but who has turned out head of the 'Crittenden Manufacturing Company,' wh

laughed with him, their eyes, shining wit

mossy water-wheel. But since we took it over, we've had to put in modern machinery very prosaically and run it on its waste of slabs, mostly. All sorts of small, unimportant objects are manufactured there, things you never heard of pr

s always called her Miss Hetty till few people remember that she has another name. She was born there in the old house below 'the Burning,' and she has lived there for eighty years, and that is all her saga. You can't see her house

ted in them. "The Eagle Rock woods. T

ys throwing challenges, at everything. But by this time he had learned how to d

ghed. It made you laugh back. He risked another small attempt at facetiousness. "Go on with the census of Crittenden's," he tol

of good-humored mockery disappeared. For an instant her face changed into something quite different from what they had seen. Mr. Welles could not at all make out the expression which

e Mark went off this morning, for the first time, with his brother and sister. I have been alone until you came." She stopped for a moment. Mr. Welles wished that Vincent could get over his habit of staring at people so. She went on, "I have felt very queer indeed, all day. It's as though . . . you

g back at him, and would notice it. He could understand how a refined lady would feel as though somebody were almost trying to find a key-hole to look in at her,-to have anybody pounce on her so, with his eyes, as Vincent did. She couldn't know, of course, that Vincent went pouncing on ladies

in the valley. Her father and mother both died, and she was brought up by the old Great-uncle Crittenden's family. Then my husband's Uncle Burton inherited the house and brought his bride here, and Touclé just stayed on. She always makes herself useful enough to pay for her food and lodging. And when his wife died an elderly woman, Touclé still just stayed on, till he died, and then she went right on staying here in the empty house, till my husband and I got here. We were married in Rome, and made the long trip here with

han any lumberman or hunter or fisherman in Ashley. She often goes off and doesn't come back for days. I haven't the least idea where she stays. But she's very good to our children when she's here, and I like her capacity for monumental silence. It gives her very occasional remarks an oracular air, even though you know it's only because she doesn't often open her lips. She helps a little with the house-

posite side from the church-yard. They are Ashleyans of the oldest rock. Both of them were born here, and have always lived here. Mr. Bayweather is seventy-five years old and has never had any other parish. I do believe the very best thing I can do for you is to send you straig

Ashley?" exc

hley," she answe

hat a "side-wipe" had been exch

elevantly, "Do you go

d her head so that she looked down at her long hands in her lap, as she added, "

r she looked up, distinctly startled, really quite as though he had looked in through the key-hole. But Vincent went on laughing. He even said,

ard, with a certain

glancing over your music before you came in. And I can put two and two together. Who are you maki

r smooth oval cheeks. "That's one of Mrs. Bayweather's favorite maxi

d up. "Thank you very much for telling us about the minister and his wife, Mrs. Crittenden. I think we'll go right along down to the village now, and pay a call on them. There'll be time enough b

Welles, scandalized

y, that he stepped with an excess of his usual bounce. Evidently something had set him off into one of his fits of wild high spirits. You could almost

y, Mr. Marsh?" asked Mrs. Crittende

ger, Mrs. Crittenden, that there is one thing your Ashley underground news-service has not told you about us, and that is, that I've come up not only to help Mr. Welles install himself in his new h

You're worrying about Schwatzkummerer, I know. Never you fear. I'll get hold of his address, all right." He

y correction, and knew as he spoke that

k off his hat in a final salutation to Mrs. Crittenden, and grasping h