The Tinder-Box

dale is to be the scene of this bloodless revolution of mine-it would be awful to carry out such an undertaking anywhere but under the protection of ancestral traditions-I have oper

izenship with him, by telling him how much his two years' friendship across the waters had meant to me, while we studied the same profession under the same masters, drew at

t, of my new attitude towards his sex, and before

icate with your relatives for the summer, and fly the bats in your belfry at the old moss-backs, while I am getting this Cincinnati and Gulf Sta

raging tilt for

izing signals. I wonder if that might get to be the case of humanity at large if women do undertake the tactics I am to experiment with, and a dearth of any kind of loving and claiming at all

t I can select what looks like data for the young from these soul squirmings, and only let her hav

much comedy, dashed with tragedy, that I'm a little breathle

. Old Harpeth had just come into sight, as we rounded into the valley and Providence Knob rested back against it, in a pink glow that I knew came from the honeysuckle in bloom all over it like a mantle. I traveled fast into the twilight, and I saw all the stars smile out over the ridge, in answer to the hearth stars in th

me and my five trunks, with such hurried emphasis that I felt I was being planted in t

the little ten-foot platform, that didn't quite reach to my sleeper steps, I felt as sm

nowhere, I was brought to my senses by a loud boohoo, and then a snubby choke, whi

her face all over again. And Cousin James, he's as slow as molasses, and I couldn't dress two twins

uence in its heredity, was turned on by the station-agent, who was so slow that I perceived the influence of a descent fro

lly and defiantly unshod save for a dusty white rag around one pink toe. A cunning little straw bonnet, with an e

it here for?" she demanded of me, with both s

oung-gallant-home-from-the-war mood I had intended to assume towards

a funeral. And Cousin James, he's worse. He corned for us ten minutes behind the town clock, and Mammy Dilsie had phthisic, so I had to fix the two twins

ntinued, with the pained cont

hey had not, just two minutes earlier, beheld their train go relentlessly on down the valley to Hillsboro and the wedding c

at I remembered to have always thought like a swan in no hurry,

lack and wheezing, fanning herself with a genteel t

hand, and his gray felt hat set on the back of his shock of black hair at an angle of deep desperation, though patience shone from every line of his strong, gaunt body, and I could see in the half light that there were no lines of irritation about his

he spoke he dropped both babies on the platform in a bunch, and the small trunk on the other side. Then he just stood and looked, and I ha

launched, Sallie bustled in

ost hospitable of arms, and bestowed a slightly powdery kiss on both my cheeks. I weakly and femininely enj

t got a bit of sense, or she wouldn't," answered the

sawed the train go by?" she further demanded, with a

ssness. "Please don't mind her, Evelina. I don't understand her being my child, and nobod

ate black draperies, relieved by the filmy exquisiteness of white c

t of Sallie's family and baggage, both animate and inanimate, and the laugh that

a young widow's announcement of her sorrow in such an unfeeling manner. To cover my embarrassment and still further struggles with the laugh that never

James gently, and I could see that the bil

in his tiny shop down by the post-office, though now that Father is dead he probably only does it for Cousin James. The two of them had been his only customers for years. And as I looked, I saw that the locks that curled in an ante-bellu

of Sallie's family and baggag

ied unsuccessfully on Richard Hall at the Astor, not forty-eight hours ago, but two thousand miles away. And it got a response that puzzles me to think of yet. It was just a look, but there was a th

e in Henrietta's positive and executive tones. "Let's go and take the strange lady with

uthers, and I never shall unless Jane Mathers marries an

t if I thus once give myself up to the conventions that by Saturday night they would have me nicely settled with his relicts, or in my home with probably two elderly widows and a maiden cousin or so to look after me. And then, by the end of the next week, they would have the most suitable per

Dilsie and one twin with her on the back seat. Henrietta scrouged down at my feet, and I fearingly, but accommodatingly, acc

pile of time-grayed brick and stone, sat back in the moonlight, in its tangle of a garden, under its tall roof maples, with a dignity that went straight to my heart. There is nothing better in France or England, and I feel sure that there are not two hundred houses in Americ

d and style, I knew that if I did not escape into its emptiness before I got into Cousin Martha's comfortable arms, surr

pose I will have to call the young animal,-from her mother and started on up the walk in the lead of the return expedit

c. "I'll go tell Cousin Martha you are here, while Cousin James unpacks your satchel and things." And she hurri

'm not up to arguing the question to-night, for the trip has been a long one, and this is the first time I have been home since-Ju

strange light of comprehension came from them into min

you,

as I glanced across the road at the grim, dark old pile that towered against th

I always carry it in my pocket. Your Father's candle is on the mantel. You sh

t least in my heart, I went quickly along the front walk with its rows of blush peonies, nodding along either edge. The two old purple lilacs beside the front steps have grown so large they seemed to be

rough the big front door, as I opened it, and then hastened

ed moonlight from its pewter sides from the tall mantel-shelf. The old hooks melted into the dusk of their cases along th

terror-stricken woman that ever found herself alone any where on any other edge of the world, and then as suddenly found myself in a complete condition of fright prostration, crouched on

need to be

a tall, gray figure, pacing slowly up and down the road. Then it was that fear came into me, stiffened my muscle

which opens off the living-room, so I could go to bed by candle-light in the bed in which he and I

preciation when my humor came to the rescue. I might just as well have gone on and slept between Henrietta and the wall, as was becoming my feminine situation

s I turned my face into the pillow, that was faintly scented from the lavender in which Mother had always kept her linen.