CHAPTER I

As Mrs. Shillaber often said, the one good thing about her old house was the fact that "you could throw the dining-room into the poller" when you wanted to give parties or funerals or weddings or such things. You had only to fold up the accordeon-pleated doors, push the sofa back against the wall, and lay a rug over the register.

To-night she had thrown the dining-room into the poller and filled both rooms with guests. There were so many guests that they occupied every seat in the house, including the up-stairs chairs and a large batch of camp-stools from Mr. Crankshaw's, the undertaker's.

In Carthage it was never a real party or an important funeral unless those perilous old man-traps of Mr. Crankshaw's appeared. They always added a dash of excitement to the dullest evening, for at a critical moment one of them could be depended upon to collapse beneath some guest, depositing him or her in a small but complicated woodpile on the floor.

Less dramatic, but even droller, was the unfailing spectacle of the solemn man who entered a room carrying one of these stools neatly folded, proceeded to a chosen spot, and there attempted vainly to open the thing. This was sure to happen at least once, and it gave an irresistibly light touch even to the funerals. The obstinacy of some of Mr. Crankshaw's camp-stools was so diabolic that it almost implied a perverse intelligence. And the one that was not to be solved generally fell to the solemnest man in the company.

To-night at Mrs. Shillaber's the evening might be said to be well under way; fat Mr. Geggat had already splashed through his camp-stool, and Deacon Peavey was now at work on his; a snicker had just sneezed out of the minister's wife (of all people!), and the Deacon himself had breathed an expletive dangerously close to profanity.

The party was held in honor of Mrs. Shillaber's girlhood friend, Birdaline Nickerson (now Mrs. Phineas Duddy). Birdaline and Mrs. Shillaber (then Josie Barlow) had been fierce rivals for the love of Asaph Shillaber. Josie had got him away from Birdaline, and Birdaline had married Phin Duddy for spite, just to show certain people that Birdaline could get married as well as other people and to prove that Phin Duddy was not inconsolable for losing Josie, whom he had courted before Asaph cut him out.

Luck had smiled on Birdaline and Phin. They had moved away-to Peoria, no less! And now they were back on a visit to his folks.

When Birdaline saw what Time had done to Asaph she forgave Josie completely. It was Josie who did not forgive Birdaline, for Peoria had done wonders for Phin. Everybody said that; and Birdaline also brought along a grown-up daughter who was evidently beautiful and, according to her mother, highly accomplished. Why, one of the leading vocal teachers in Peoria (and very highly spoken of in Chicago) had heard her sing and had actually told her that she ought to have her voice cultivated; he had, indeed; fact was he had even offered to cultivate it himself, and at a reduced rate from his list price, too!

It seemed strange to Birdaline and Josie to meet after all these years and be jealous, not of each other, but of daughters as big as they themselves had been the last time they had seen each other. Both women told both women that they looked younger than ever, and each saw the pillage of time in the opposite mien, the accretion of time in the once so gracile figure. It was melancholy satisfaction at best, for each knew all too well how her own mirror slapped her in the face with her own image.

When Birdaline bragged of her daughter's voice, Josie had to be loyal to her oldest girl's own piano-playing. Birdaline, perhaps with serpentine wisdom, insisted on hearing Miss Shillaber play the piano; it was sure, she thought, to render the girl unpopular. But the solo annoyed the guests hardly at all, for they could easily talk above the feeble clamor of that old Shillaber piano, in which even the needy Carthage tuner had refused to twist another wrest-pin these many years.

After the piano had ceased to spatter staccato discords, and people had applauded politely, of course Josie had to ask Birdaline's daughter to sing. And the girl, being of the new and rather startling school of manners which accedes without undue urging, blushingly consented, provided there was any music there that she could sing and some one would play her accompa'ment.

A tattered copy of "The Last Rose of Summer" was unearthed, and Mr. Norman Maugans, who played the melodeon at the Presbyterian prayer-meetings, was mobbed into essaying the accompa'ment. He was no great shucks at sight-reading, he said, but he would do his durnedest.

The news that the pretty and novel Miss Buddy would sing brought all the guests forward in a huddle like cattle at home-coming time. Even Deacon Peavey gave up his vow to open that camp-stool or die and sat down in a draught to listen. The perspiration cooled on him and he caught a terrible cold, but that was Mrs. Peavey's business, not ours.

Miss Pamela Duddy sidled into the elbow of the piano with a most attractive kittenishness and waited for the prelude to be done. This required some time, since the ancient sheet-music had a distressing habit of folding over and, as it were, swooning from the rack into the pianist's arms. Besides, Mr. Maugans was so used to playing the melodeon that instead of tapping the keys he was continually squeezing them, and nothing came. And when he wished to increase his volume of tone he would hold his hands still and slowly open his knees against swell-levers that were not there. This earnest futility gave so much amusement to Josie's youngest daughter that she had to be eyed out of the room by her mother.

Miss Pamela saved the day by a sudden inspiration, a recollection of what she had seen done by one of the leading sopranos from Indianapolis at a recital in the Star course at Peoria; Miss Pamela bent her pretty head and took from her juvenile breast one big red rose and held it in her hands while she sang. During the final stanza she plucked away its petals one by one and at the end let the shredded core fall upon the highly improbable roses woven in Josie's American Wilton carpet.

The girl's features and her attitudes were sheer Grecian; her accent was the purest Peoria. Now and then she remembered to insert an Italian "a," but she forgot to suppress the Italian "r," which is exactly the same as that of Illinois, but lacks its context or prestige. Her fresh, uncultivated voice was less faithful to the key than to her exquisite throat. To that same exquisite throat clung one fascinated eye of Mr. Maugans's, whose other orb angrily glowered at the music as if to overawe it. Had he possessed a third eye it might have guided his hands along the keyboard with more accuracy, but this detail could have affected the result but little, since his hands were incessantly compelled to clutch the incessantly deciduous music and slap it back on the rack.

Two stanzas had thus been punctuated before a shy old maid named Deborah Larrabee ventured to rise and stand at the piano, supporting the music. This compelled her to a closer proximity to a nice young man than she had known for so many years that she almost outblushed the young girl.

Deborah was afraid to look at anybody, yet when she cast her eyes downward she had to watch those emotional knees of Mr. Maugans's slowly

## parting in the crescendo that never came.

It was an ordeal for everybody-singer, pianist, and music-sustainer. But the audience was friendly, and the composer and the poet were too dead to gyrate in their distant graves. The song, therefore, had unmitigated success, and the words were so familiar that everybody knew pretty well what Pamela was driving at when she sang:

'Tis thuh lah-ha-ha strow zof sum-mah Le-ef' bloo-oo-hoo-minnng uh-lone; Aw lur lu-uh-uh vlee come-pan-yun Zah-har fay-ay-yay dud ahnd gawn- No-woe flow-wurr rof her kinn-drud, No-woe ro-hose buh dis ni-eye-eye-eye-eye-eye To re-fle-eh-ec' bah-cur blu-shuzz Aw-hor gi-yi-hiv su-high for su-high!

There was hardly a dry eye or a protesting ear in the throng as she reached the climax:

Thu-us ki-yine-dlee I scat-tur-r-r Thy-hi lea-heave zore thuh be-eh-eh-eh-eh-head Whur-r-r thy may-hay-yate zuv thuh gar-r-dun-n-n-n Lie-eye sceh-eh-entluss ahnd dead, Whur-r thy may-YAH-YAH-yah thuh gah-dah Lie-eye sceh-heh-hen-less ahnd-ah dead-ah.

The girl's mother was not hard to find among the applauding auditors. She looked like the wrecked last September's rose of which her daughter was the next June's bud. The softened mood of Birdaline and the tears that bedewed her cheeks gave her back just enough of the beauty she had had to emphasize how much she had lost.

And Josie, her quondam rival in the garden, was sweetened by melancholy, too. It was not hospitality alone, nor mere generosity, but a passing sympathy that warmed her tone as she squeezed Birdaline's arm and told her how well her daughter had sung.

A number of matrons felt the same attar of regret in the air. They had been beautiful in their days and in their ways, and now they felt like the dismantled rose on the floor. The common tragedy of beauty belated and foredone saddened everybody in the room; the old women had experienced it, the young women foresaw it, the men knew it as the destruction of the beauties they loved or had loved. Everybody was sad but Deborah Larrabee.

That homely little old spinster slipped impudently into the elbow of the piano-into the place still warm from the presence of Pamela-and she railed at the sorrow of her schoolmates, Josie and Birdaline. Her voice was as sharp as the old piano-strings:

"That song's all wrong, seems to me, girls. Pretty toon and nice words, but I can't make out why ever'body feels sorry for the last rose of summer. It's the luckiest rose in the world. The rest of 'em have bloomed too soon or just when all the other roses are blooming, or when people are sort of tired of roses. But this one is saved up till the last. And then, when the garden is all dying out and the bushes are just dead stalks and the other roses are wilted and brown and folks say, 'I'd give anything for the sight of a rose,' along comes this rose and-blooms alone!

"It's that way in my little yard. There's always a last rose that comes when the rest have gone to seed, and that's the one I prize. Seems to me it has the laugh on all the rest. The song's all wrong, I tell you, girls!"

This heresy had the usual success of attacks on sacred texts-the orthodox paid no heed to the value of the argument; they simply resented its impudence. But all they said to Deborah was an indulgent "That's so, Debby," and a polite "I never thought of that."

As Deborah turned away, triumphant, to repeat what she had just said to Mr. Maugans, she overheard Birdaline murmur to Josie in a kinship of contempt, "Poor old Debby!"

And Josie consented: "She can't understand! She never was a rose."

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