The Tinder-Box

ure! Yes,

nature, and a great deal more than the average amount of human charm. However, he has got no more brains than I have, h

he is just biding his time to try me out and get me on his own terms. My heart aches for Nell, and I just couldn't see him murder her girlhood, and it will amount to that if he involves her heart any

n into his own hands, skilled in their woman-handling, "do you intend to

ed back at me for a long m

ak women's hea

them and deform them for life. But I intend to see that Nell's has no such t

er just exactly the things you have done to me all

nded, positively cold with

thy itself. I have held your hand and kissed it, instituting and not quenching a raging thirst thereby, as you are experienced enough to know. You have made yourself everything for me that is responsive and desirable and beautiful and worthy and have put me back

this?" I moaned from the depths of an almost broke

ly, cold coquetting. An awful spark has been struck out of the flint. I'm not worthy to experiment with this drea

an it." he said quickly in

e that would do away with the horror I heard Sallie's voice from my front walk, and s

have time to think before having this out with Polk. I sometimes feel ashamed o

the rest of this evening, but

the Harpeth Valley gives me the agony of

, mist-veiled, lilac-scented spring that nestled firmly in your hear

gardens and fields and hills, rich, lush colored, radiant, redolent, gorgeous, rose-scented and pulsing with a life that m

beginning to creep over the whole world, especially in the early mornings, which are so

slugs have begun to eat the tender buds that are forming for October blooming, and

rst crack of dawn and carefully search out each slug, remove it and des

things, also with an injured air of having been kept up all night. I didn't feel equal to making him go on with t

ptured the French art eye enough to get me my Salon mention. If I could get up to splash water-colors at that hour, I surely could rush to the

ifteen minutes, was something of a shock to me, though no reason in the world why it should have been. I can't remember that I ever speculated as to

half way down the garden path before I saw him or he saw me, and I mus

ruffled around his bare ankles, and across his bare heels that pro truded from his slippers. His hair was in heavy tousled black curls all over his head and his gray eyes were positiv

ect of his embarrassment when he should

s. Nobody in the wide world calls me Eve but just the Crag, and he does it in a queer, still w

ively control the desire to answer

examine the under side of each leaf carefully. He was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in the early light with his great chest bare and the blue of the pajamas melting into the bronze of his throat and calling out the g

sitively mysterious w

s the collars Cousin Martha makes him with her own fingers after the pattern she made his father's by, for the same reason, and lets Cousin Jasmine cut his hair because she always cut her father's, Colonel Horton's, until his death. That accounts for the ante-bellum curls and the irregular tags in the back. I almost laughed when Cous

Sallie attired him in any of t

I speculated to stop that thought off sharp as we crawled down the

nable hunt for them, didn't they?" he ask

o you so late last night that I didn't feel it was fair to come across after they left. But I wanted you s

" I answered crossly when I thought what a grand time I might have been having talking about real

hile I crawl after you like a worm

the rest of them could have easily been cut in blocks and used for cold storage purposes. They are just all down and out about it and no fight left. Of course, they all lose by the bond issue, but I can't see t

and, while I brought away a brown circle around my wrist that the responsive grasp

ission are all to be here as the guests of a private citizen, Glendale ought to entertain them publicly. There is no hope to get the line for us, but I would like those men at least to see what the beauty of that bluff road would be. The line across the river runs through the only ugly part of the valley, and while I know in the balance between dollars and scenery, scenery will go down and out, still it would be good for them to see it and at least get a vision of what might have been, to haunt them when they take their first trip through the swamps across the co

o crazy about it. We can have the barbecue up on the bluff, where we have always had it for the political rallies, and a fish-fry and the country people in their wagons with children tumbling all over everything and-and you will make a great speech with all of

ndale not-the Crag," he interr

r knew. I seem to think right out loud when I am with him and feel out loud, too. I ignored his

ast this place that is-humiliating-swimming with her head up

it all was to him and the rest of them, to be passed by an opportunity like

cessity that had called out the prayer the last time. It's awful on a woman to feel herself growing up stiff and sturdy by a man's side and then to get

r into and never seem to get to the bottom, no matter if the look does seem to last forever and you fee

ossession of my own sight. "And here I am with a hand out to you for assi

ing, and Cousin Jasmine have got the headache from waiting for her coffee. What do you want to fool with Evelina this time of day for anyway?"

your face," she continued sternly. "There'll be hell to pay with all th

rose to my feet, "I've asked you on

e rest are dead from hunger," and Cousin James skilfully interrupted the threatened feminine clash as he emptied my glass bowl into his tin can and stuck the sharp stick in

Cousin Marfy wanted to be polite to the Lord by saying just a little one and go on before we was all too hungry," answered Henrietta, i

ed Cousin James, as he hurri

lked up the path to the house, "didn't Mr. Haley talk to you just yesterday a

d agreed to open their campaign of reform on Henrietta by a pastoral

was to love Sallie that kind of way, he said, I would be so busy I couldn't do none of the things Sallie don't like to do herself and makes me do. 'Stid er saying, 'my precious mother, I love you and want to be good because you want me to,' about every hour, I had better wipe the t

to see what it was all about. Henrietta's statement of the case was a graphic and just one. Sallie has got a tendril around

all its six separate feminine breaths as one with a lone, supporting man, how was she to develop the biceps of strength of mind and soul, as well as body, to meet the conditions she was likely to have to meet? Still her comi

all brought up the rear, walking more deliberately and each carrying a baby, comparing some sort of white

and I worked on all the volatile fear and resentment and dislike I had ever had for her all my life, and I have succeeded in liquefying it into a genuine liking for the martial old personality. If Aunt Augusta had been a man she would hav

d have come up here to tell you, and them, that the men in Glendale are so lacking in sense and judgment that the time has come for women to stand forth and assume the responsibility of them and Glendale in general. As th

the Puppy baby, who happened to be the twin in her arms, so that she bubb

uld see that she was having light spasms of alarm,

pal disgrace." And as Aunt Augusta named the plague that was to come upon us, she looked as if sh

rocker as straight as Aunt Augusta did in her uncom promising seat. The rest

women must rise in their strength and avert it," sh

ps Hillsboro, and which is not in the class with a vulgarly rich, modern place like Bolivar, that has a soap-factory and streetcars, and was a mud-hole in the landscape when the first Shelby built this very house,-to the Commission of magnates who are to come down about the railroad lines that are to be laid near us. James agrees with her and urges that it is fitting and digni

s signal to get off into a nap. "But Ned said last night that he had lost so much in the bond subscription, that he didn't feel like spending any more money for a

d Aunt Augusta, witheringly, "Th

good whatever and probably be an embarrassment to the Commission, our putting in a pitiful bid li

sta snapped. "He said that licking those men's hands would turn his stomach, after swall

men in town to go when we are invited to Mrs. Henderson's tea for the big bugs, and dazzle 'em so t

the shops, even if it does mean a loss to us. What is material wealth in this world anyway when we can depend so on-" Sallie's expression was so beautiful

straight before her feminine tribunal, Aunt Martha beat her to it as she

ected"-with a glance at Sallie-"but it is to show them our friendliness, more Bolivar than the actual Commission, and our desire to rejoice with them in their good fortune. It would be ver

ious soap factory, and ask them to let us help take care of some of their delegates when they had the Methodist Conference? They sent one of the two bishops to you, you remember, Martha, and I am sure your enter tainment of him was so lavish that he went home ill. No man said us na

if they don't want to

r their hospitality?" answered Aunt Augusta, as she arose to her feet. "Are we free women, and have w

e same sensation I had when I saw the Goddess of Liberty loom up out of the mist as I sailed into the harbor of my own land from a foreign one. And what I was feeling I kn

gusta again demanded, and just th

od in ou

but I must go on writing about it

ms, but she stopped me with one glance of her cold, official

the proceedings of what I take to be an official meeting. Have I your permission to withdraw? I am Miss

my arms just h

led with cordiality that I hardly knew it, "it is the pleasure of the cha

an Jane did from my friends, for they had all heard about her, read with a

re of the newly proselyted in her face. Aunt Martha made her welcome in her dearest manner and Caroline beamed on her with the r

or her to get all the greetings over with, explain that she had sent me a letter telling me that she was comi

off our feet, and when she was ready to put the question again to us as to our willingness to embar

on through Miss Shelby's friend, Mr. Richard Hall," said Jane, when Aunt Augusta had called on her to give us her opinion of the situation in ge

g up devoutly at Jane, who had held young Ned against the stiff white linen s

ing to refuse your suggestion?" as

," trumpeted

invitation from the Commission and then extend them one to be present?" pronounce

der it so settled," answered

ynamite between her and a man, when she puts her head down under his chin or her cheek to his, but advanced women must suffer t

er the spirits of the meeting when Aunt Augusta luck

for a woman's nature, and that is why she is so happy when she gets out her family receipt book for a called rehearsal f

mised by instituting a campaign of wheedling, the like of which this town never suffered before, and then when this glorio

ht. Men work to all given points in straight, clear-cut, logical lines only to find women at the poin

is scheme in high finance of mine; and he is also in reality the silent sponsor for this unhatched r