Part 7

"No, Paul, no, no. Don't let them know! Let us go away quietly, in the night. Please, please, Paul. I--I could not bear any other way!"

Durant kissed her and said no more. And if he understood, he never let her know that he did.

The First Laugh

_By Reuben F. Place_

In the life of every baby there is a continuous succession of first impressions and adventures. The first tooth, the first crawl, the first step, the first word, each mark a milestone in the child's career. But more interesting than any of these is the first laugh--the first genuine, sustained, prolonged, whole-hearted laugh. If it is a tinkling, bubbling, echoing laugh, it sends its merry waves in all directions--the kind that brings smiles to sober faces.

What hope springs up in the parents' breasts at the sound of that first laugh! How thoroughly it denotes the future!

A hearty laugh or no laugh in later years may mean the difference between fame and obscurity, fortune and poverty, friends and enemies.

"How much lies in laughter: the cipher key, wherewith we decipher the whole man!" wrote Carlyle.

A good laugh is a charming, invaluable attribute. It saves the day, maintains the health, makes friends, soothes injured feelings, and saves big situations.

Laughter is a distinguishing mark between man and beast. It is the sign of character and the mirror in which is reflected disposition.

To laugh is to live.

The babe's first laugh is a precious family memory. A load of responsibility goes with it. It should be guarded and guided and cultivated until it becomes "Laughter that opens the lips and heart, that shows at the same time pearls and the soul."

The Freighter's Dream

_By Ida M. Huntington_

"Squeak! Squ-e-a-k! Scr-e-e-ch!" The shrill, monotonous sound rent the hot noontide air like a wail of complaint.

"Thar she goes ag'in, a-cussin' of her driver!" grumbled old Hi, as he walked at the head of his lead oxen, Poly and Bony, with Buck and Berry panting behind them. "Jest listen at her! An' 'twas only day afore yistiddy that I put in a hull half hour a-greasin of her. Wal, she'll hev to fuss till mornin'. We ain't got no time to stop a minute in this hot place. If we make the springs afore the beasteses gin out 'twill be more'n I look fer!"

Old Hi anxiously gazed ahead, trying to see through the shimmering haze of the desert the far-distant little spot of ground where bubbled up the precious spring by which they might halt for rest and refreshment. "G'lang, Poly! That's right, Bony! Keep it up, ol' fellers!" Hi strove to encourage the patient oxen as they plodded wearily along through the fearful heat and the suffocating clouds of fine alkali dust.

For weeks the long train of covered wagons had moved steadily westward over the dim trails. Starting away back in Ohio, loaded with necessities for the prospectors in the far West, they had crossed the fertile prairies, stuck in the muddy sloughs, forded the swollen rivers, rumbled over the plains and wound in and out the mountain passes. Now they were crawling over the desert, man and beast almost exhausted, even the seasoned wagons seeming to protest against the strain put upon them.

All that afternoon Hi walked with his oxen, talking and whistling, as much to keep up his own courage as to quicken their pace. For a few moments at a time they would rest, and then onward again towards the springs indicated on the map by which they traveled.

Half blind and dizzy from the dust and heat, sometimes Hi stumbled and staggered and nearly fell. He dared not turn to see how it fared with the men and teams behind him. Wrecks of wagons and bones of oxen by the side of the trail told an all-too-plain story. Some there were in every train who dropped by the way; men who raved in fever and died calling for water; faithful oxen who were shot to put them out of misery. Wagons were abandoned with their valuable freight when the teams could no longer pull them.

All afternoon they crept forward; the reiterating "Squeak! Squ-e-a-k! Scr-e-e-ch!" of the wagon sounded like a maddened human voice to poor Hi, fevered and half delirious.

At last the sun sank like a ball of fire in the haze. A cool breath of air sighed across the plain. The prairie dogs barked from their burrows. The coyotes yapped in the distance. But not yet could the long train stop, for rest without water meant death.

Far into the night the white-topped wagons crept on like specters. No sound was heard except that of the plodding feet of the oxen, the rumble of the heavy wagons and the "Squeak! Squ-e-a-k! Scr-e-e-ch!" that had troubled Hi since noon. Suddenly the oxen lifted their heads, sniffed the air eagerly, and without urging quickened their pace.

"What is it, ol' fellers?" asked Hi, as hope revived. "Is it the water ye are smellin'? Stiddy, thar! Stiddy!"

A few moments more, and Hi gave a shout of joy that was taken up and sounded down the line. "The spring! The spring!"

A halt was made. Every drop of the precious water was carefully portioned out so that each might have his share. Preparations were made for the night. The wagons were pulled up in a circle. The oxen were carefully secured that they might not wander away. Here and there a flickering little fire was seen as the scanty "grub" was cooked. After Hi had bolted his share he wrapped himself in his blanket and lay down near his wagon. The large white top loomed dimly before him in the darkness.

A little while he stretched and twisted and turned uneasily until his tired muscles relaxed. In his ears yet seemed to sound the "Squeak! Squ-e-a-k! Scr-e-e-ch!" of the complaining wagon as it had bothered him all afternoon. "Darn ye! Won't ye ever shet up?" he muttered as he drifted off to sleep.

"Won't I ever shet up? I won't till I git good and ready!" The sharp, shrill voice made Hi open his eyes with a start. Above him leaned the huge form of an old woman in a white cap drawn close about her wrinkled, seamed face, only partly distinguishable in the darkness. As he lay blinking, trying to see her more plainly, the high falsetto voice continued its plaint.

"Won't I ever shet up? A nice way thet is to talk to me, Hi Smith! Do I iver grumble and snarl when ye treat me right? Hain't I been faithful to ye through thick an' thin? Hain't I made a home fer ye all this hull endurin' trip? Hain't I looked after yer grub and yer blankets and done ever'thin' I could to make ye comfortable? Hain't I kep' the rain offen ye at night? An' thet time the Injuns was after ye, didn't I stand atween ye an' the redskins and pertect ye? Didn't I keep ye from gittin' drownded when ye crossed thet river whar the current swep' the beasteses offen their feet? Didn't I watch over ye and shield ye from the sun when ye lay sick of the fever and hadn't nary wife to look after ye? Hain't I follered after them dumb beasteses through mud and water and over gravel and through clouds of alkali dust thick enough to choke a person, and niver said a word? An' now, jest bekase I'm fair swizzled up with the heat and ye fergit to give me some grease to rub on my achin' j'ints, ye cuss me! Yis, I heerd ye! Ye needn't deny it! A-cussin' of me who has taken the place of home an' mother to ye fer years! I heerd ye! I he-e-rd ye! What d'ye mean, I say!" And the tirade ended in a perfect screech of anger.

Thoroughly aroused, Hi rolled over and jumped hastily to his feet. He looked all around. The old woman had mysteriously vanished. A coyotte sneaked past him. Day was breaking in the east. The first gleam of light fell on the white-topped wagon drawn up beside him.

He rubbed his eyes. "Wal, I swan!" he muttered, as he gazed bewilderedly at the close-drawn white top looming above him. "Glad I woke up airly! I'll hev time ter grease that thar wagon afore we start!"

A Box From Home

_By Helen Cowles LeCron_

I'll send to you in France, my dear, A box with treasures in it: The patch of sky that meets our hill And changes every minute, The grape-vine that you taught to grow-- My pansies young with dew, The plum-tree by the kitchen door-- These things I'll send to you.

I'll pack with care our fragile dawn-- The dawn we laughed to greet; I'll send the comfort of the grass That once caressed your feet. No yearning love of mine I'll send To tear your heart in two-- Just earth-peace--home-peace--still and strong-- These things I'll send to you.

For you must tire of flags, and guns, And courage high, and pain, And long to rest your heart upon The common things again, And so I'll send no prayers, no tears, No longings--only dew And garden-rows, and goldenrod And country roads to you!

Since life has given you to know The gentle tenderness Of growing things, I cannot think That death would give you less! Hold fast, hold fast within your heart The earth-sweet hours we knew, And keep, my dear, where'er you are These things I send to you.

The Spirit of Spring

_By Laura L. Hinkley_

Margaret Hazeltine sat on her porch with the spring wind blowing over her elusive wafts of fragrance--plum-blossom, apple-blossom, young grass, budding wood scents, pure, growing earth-smells.

"It is like breathing poetry," Margaret thought.

She was sewing, but now and then her hands fell in her lap while she lifted her head, catching in some wandering sweetness with a sharp breath, like a sigh.

It was four o'clock in the afternoon. Sunshine mellowed the new greenness of short, tender grass on the lawns. It shone upon all the bare, budded branches up and down the street, seeking, caressing, stimulating. It lay kindly, genially, on the mid-road dust.

Margaret's father was pottering about the garden. He was a very old man, with stooping shoulders, but tall and slender like his daughter. He came up to the porch and stood leaning on his hoe. The wind fluttered his shabby garden-coat and thin, white beard. He rested his wrinkled old hands on the top of his hoe handle, and cast up his faded, sunken eyes to the intense young blue of the sky with its fleecy clouds floating.

Mr. Hazeltine addressed his daughter in the strain of conversational piety habitual with him, and in a voice which age and earnestness made tremulous:

"Seems like every spring I get more certain of my eternal home up yonder!"

Margaret smiled acquiescently. Long since she had silently drifted outside the zone of her father's simple, rigid creed; but to-day its bald egoism did not repel her. It seemed at one with the sweet will to live all about them.

Mr. Hazeltine went back to the garden. A girl appeared on the porch of the house opposite. The Hazeltine house was small and old and not lately painted. The house opposite was large, fresh, trim, and commodious in every visible detail. White cement walks enclosed and divided its neatly kept lawns and parking. Its fruit-trees breathed out of the unfolding whiteness of their bosoms the sweetest of those perfumes that drifted across to Margaret. The girl on the porch pushed the wicker chairs about for a moment, then, disdaining them all, sat down on the cement steps and rested her chin in her palm.

After a quick look and smile Margaret sewed busily, affecting not to see the other. She felt a little sympathetic flutter of pleasure and suspense. "Jean is waiting for Frank," she said to herself.

A piano began to play in a house up the street. Through the open windows rang joyous, vibrant music. White moths fluttered across the street and the lawn and parking opposite, veering vaguely over scattered yellow dandelion heads. Around the house opposite on the cement walk strutted a very young kitten on soft paws, its short tail sticking straight up, its gray coat still rough from its mother's tongue.

"Me-ow!" said the kitten plaintively, appalled at its own daring.

Jean sprang up, laughing, snatched up the kitten and carried it back to her seat, cuddling it under her chin.

Down the street came a young girl wheeling a baby's cab. The girl was but just past childhood, and she had been a homely child. But of late she had bloomed as mysteriously and almost as quickly as the plum-trees. She wore a light summer dress with a leaf-brown design upon it, in which her girlish form still half-confessed the child. Her complexion was clear and bright, the cheeks flushed; and the strongly-marked features seemed ready to melt and fuse to a softer mould. Her brown eyes had grown wistful and winning.

As they advanced, Margaret ran down the rickety wooden walk.

"Oh, is that the new baby?" she cried delightedly. "May I look?"

The girl smiled assent.

Softly Margaret drew back the woolly carriage robe and gazed adoringly. The baby was about six weeks old. Its tiny face was translucent, pinky white, the closed eyelids with their fringe of fine lashes inconceivably delicate. Its wee hands cuddled about its head; the curled, pink fingers, each tipped with its infinitesimal, dainty nail, were perfection in miniature. The formless mouth, pinker than the rest of the face, moved in sleep, betraying the one dream the baby knew.

Margaret drew a long, still breath of rapture, hanging over the little pink pearl of humanity.

"Will he wake if I kiss him?" she pleaded.

The girl smiled doubtfully. "Maybe," she said.

She was equally indifferent to the baby and to Margaret. Her wistful eyes wandered eagerly down the street, watching each sidewalk, and the glow in her cheeks and eyes seemed to kindle and waver momently.

Margaret did not kiss the baby. She only bent her head close over his, close enough to feel his warm, quick breathing, to catch the rhythm of his palpitating little life.

When she came back to her porch, after the girl had gone on, Margaret saw that Jean's caller had come.

The young man sat beside Jean. His head was bare, his black hair brushed stiffly up from his forehead pompadour-fashion, his new spring suit palpably in its original creases. He and Jean talked eagerly, sometimes with shouts of young laughter, at which Margaret smiled sympathetically; sometimes with swift, earnest interchange; sometimes with lazy, contented intervals of silence. Occasionally he put out his hand to pat or tease the kitten which lay in Jean's lap. She defended it. Whenever their fingers chanced to touch they started consciously apart--covertly to tempt the chance again.

Two little girls came skipping down the street, their white dresses tossed about their knees. Their loose hair, of the dusky fairness of brunette children, tossed about their shoulders and an immense white ribbon bow quivered on the top of each little bare head. Their dress and their dancing run gave them the look and the wavering allure of butterflies.

They were on Jean's side of the street. They fluttered past the house unnoticed by the two on the porch, who were in the midst of an especially interesting quarrel about the kitten. The little girls passed over the crossing with traces of conscientious care for their white slippers, and came up on Margaret's side. Opposite her they paused in consultation.

"Won't you come in," she called to them, "and talk to me a minute?"

The two advanced hesitatingly and stood before her at a little distance on the young grass in attitudes clearly tentative. They were shy little misses, and had not lived long on that street.

"Someone told me," said Margaret, "that your names were Enid and Elaine. Which is which?"

The taller one pointed first to her embroidered bosom, then to her sister.

"I'm Enid; she's Elaine."

"I've read about you in a book of poetry," observed Margaret--"it must have been you! I suppose if you had a little sister her name would be Guinevere?"

The large dark eyes of the two exchanged glances of denial. The small Elaine shook her head decidedly.

"We _got_ a little sister!" announced Enid, "but her name ain't that; it's Katherine."

They were both pretty with the adorable prettiness of small girls, half baby's beauty, and half woman's. But Enid's good looks would always depend more or less upon happy accident--her time of life, her flow of spirits, her fortune in costume. Her face was rather long, with chin and forehead a trifle too pronounced. But the little Elaine was nature's darling. Her softly rounded person and countenance were instinct with charm. Even her little brown hands had delicacy and character. Her white-stockinged legs, from the fine ankles to the rounded knees at her skirt's edge, were turned to a sculptor's desire. Beside them, Enid's merely serviceable legs looked like sticks. The white bows in their hair shared the ensemble effect of each: Enid's perched precisely in the middle, its loops and ends vibrantly and decisively erect; Elaine's drooped a little at one side, its crispness at once confessing and defying evanescence and fragility.

Margaret thrilled with the child's loveliness, but for some subtle reason she smiled chiefly on Enid.

That little lady concluded she must be a person worthy of confidence.

"My doll's name is Clara," she imparted. "An' hers is Isabel, only she calls it 'Ithabel'!"

The color deepened in Elaine's dainty cheek. She was stung to protest; which she did with all the grace in the world, hanging her head at one side and speaking low.

"I don't either!" she murmured. "I thay Ithabel!"

"Either way is very nice," Margaret hastened to say.

"We've been to Miss Eaton's Sunday school children's party," Enid informed her. "These are our best dresses, and our white kid slippers. Don't you think they're pretty? Mine tie with ribbons, but hers only button like a baby's."

Elaine looked down grievingly at the offensively infantile slippers, turning her exquisite little foot.

"I'm going to speak a piece for Easter," Enid pursued, "all alone by myself; and she's going to speak one in concert with a class."

"Oh, I hope you will come and speak them for me some time," Margaret invited; "and bring Clara and Isabel."

"Maybe we will," answered Enid. "We must go now. Come on, Elaine."

Margaret watched them until they stopped beside a flowerbed along the sidewalk where the first tulips of the season were unfolding. Elaine bent over to examine them. Margaret reproached herself that, though Elaine had spoken but once, it was her image that lingered uppermost. Why should she add even the weight of her preference to that child in whose favor the dice were already so heavily loaded? For in Margaret's eyes, beauty was always the chief gift of the gods.

As she resumed her sewing, a sudden, fantastic fear shot across her thoughts--the fear that Elaine would die. She recognized it, in a moment, for the heart's old, sad prevision of impermanence in beauty, its rooted unbelief in fortune's constancy.

A quick glance up the street showed Elaine still stooping over the tulip bed, her stiff little skirts sticking out straight behind her. The grotesqueness was somehow reassuring. Margaret smiled, half at the absurd little figure, half at her own absurdly tragic fancy.

On the other porch Frank was taking his leave--a process of some duration. First he stood on the lower steps talking at length with Jean who stood on the top step. Then he raised his cap and started away, only to remember something before he reached the corner and to run back across the lawn. There he stood talking while Jean sat on the porch railing, suggesting a faint Romeo and Juliet effect. The next time, Jean called him back. They met halfway down the cement walk and conversed earnestly and lengthily.

With an exquisite sympathy Margaret watched these maneuvers from under discreet eyelids. She was glad for them both, with a clear-souled, generous joy. And yet she felt a sensitive pleasure that walked on the edge of pain. In the young man especially she took a quick delight--in his supple length of limb, the spread of his shoulders, his close-cropped black hair, his new clothes, the way he thrust his hands deep in his trousers' pockets while he swung on the balls of his feet, the attentive bend of his head toward Jean; she reveled in all his elastic, masculine youth which she knew for the garb of a straight, strong, kindly, honorable soul. But out of the revel grew a trouble, as if some strange spirit prisoned in her own struggled to tear itself free, to fling itself, wailing, in the dust.

"Egotism!" said Margaret to herself, curling her lip, sewing very fast. The fluttering spirit lay tombed and still.

When Frank was finally gone, Jean sauntered across the street to Margaret's porch. She perched on the rail and pulled at the leafless vine-stems beside her, talking idly and desultorily of things she was not interested in.

She was an attractive girl, more wholesome than beautiful. Her bronze-brown hair coiled stylishly about her head, gleamed in the late sun. There were some tiny freckles across her nose. She wore a pale blue summer-dress with short sleeves out of which her young arms emerged, fresh and tender from their winter seclusion.

The two maidens circled warily about the topic they were both longing to talk of. Margaret noted in Jean a new aloofness. Every time she threw Frank's name temptingly into the open Jean purposely let it lie.

At last, with a little gasp of laughter, looking straight before her, Jean exclaimed: "I guess I'm sort of scared!"

"What I like about Frank," said Margaret, "is that he's so true and reliable. He's a fellow you can trust!"

"Yes," assented Jean. "Don't you think he looks--nice in that new suit?"

"Splendid! Frank's a handsome boy."

"Isn't he?" sighed Jean.

"He'll always be constant to anyone he cares for. And, I think--he does care for someone."

"What makes _you_ think so?" demanded Jean, her blue eyes suddenly intent on Margaret.

"What makes you think so?" Margaret parried.

Jean sat up instantly very straight and stiff.

"Who said I thought anything?"

"Oh, no, no!" Margaret disclaimed hastily. "I didn't mean that. I meant anyone would think so!"

Jean lapsed into a placated limpness, resting her lithe young figure in its summer blue against the dingy house-wall.

"Isn't it funny," she mused, "how you can resolve you won't think, and keep yourself from thinking, and really not think, because you've made up your mind you wouldn't--and all the time you _know_!"

Margaret was searching in her mind for some tenderest phrase of warning when Jean anticipated her.

"Well, it's a good thing I don't care!--I thought at first I didn't like his hair that way, but I do now--better than the other way. He was telling about college."

"He finishes this year, doesn't he?"

"Yes. He's going in with his father next year--unless he makes up his mind to go to Yale. But he doesn't think he will. His father wants him here; and he's about decided that's best."

"Marg'ret," called a thin, querulous, broken voice from within the house; "ain't it time you was gettin' supper?"

Margaret opened the door to call back in a loud, clear voice: "Not yet, Mother."

Jean slipped off the railing. "I must go."

"It really isn't time yet. Mother gets nervous, sitting all day. And she doesn't care to read any more. Stay a little longer."

These snatches of Jean's confidence were delicious to her.

"Oh, I've got to go."

Jean suddenly put both arms around Margaret's waist and clasped her in a swift embrace.

"I wish," she said, "some awfully nice old widower or bachelor would come along and marry you!"

As Jean crossed the street with the lowering sun making a nimbus in her chestnut-golden hair, she began to sing. The words sprang joyous and clear as a bobolink's note--

"What's this dull town to me? Robin's not here!"

But a sudden waft of consciousness smote them to a vague humming that passed swiftly into--

"My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream; Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream."