Mrs. Tree. Richards Laura Elizabeth Howe

brilliant against the panels of satin-wood; the floor was a mosaic of bits from Captain Tree's woodpile, as he had been used to call the tumbled heap of precious fragments which grew after every voyage to southern or eastern islands. The room was lighted by candles; Mrs. Tree would have no other light. Kerosene she called nasty, smelly stuff, and gas a stinking smother. She liked strong words, especially when they shocked Miss Phœbe's sense of delicacy. As for electricity, Elmerton knew it not in her day.

      The shabby man seemed in a kind of dream. Half unconsciously he put the old lady into her seat and pushed her chair up to the table; then at a sign from her he took the seat opposite. He laid the damask napkin across his knees, and winced at the touch of it, as at the caress of a long-forgotten hand. Mrs. Tree talked on easily, asking questions about the roads he travelled and the people he met. He answered as briefly as might be, and ate sparingly. Still in a dream, he took the cup of tea she handed him, and setting it down, passed his finger over the handle. It was a tiny gold Mandarin, clinging with hands and feet to the side of the cup. The man gave another helpless laugh, and looked about him as if for a door of escape.

      Suddenly, close at his elbow, a voice spoke; a harsh, rasping voice, with nothing human in it.

      "Old friends!" said the voice.

      The man started to his feet, white as the napkin he held.

      "My God!" he said, violently.

      "It's only the parrot!" said Mrs. Tree, comfortably. "Sit down again. There he is at your elbow. Jocko is his name. He does my swearing for me. My grandson and a friend of his taught him that, and I have taught him a few other things beside. Good Jocko! speak up, boy!"

      "Old friends to talk!" said the parrot. "Old books to read; old wine to drink! Zooks! hooray for Arthur and Will! they're the boys!"

      "That was my grandson and his friend," said the old lady, never taking her eyes from the man's face. "What's the matter? feel faint, hey?"

      "Yes," said the man. He was leaning on the back of his chair, fighting some spasm of feeling. "I am – faint. I must get out into the air."

      The old lady rose briskly and came to his side. "Nothing of the sort!" she said. "You'll come up-stairs and lie down."

      "No! no! no!" cried the man, and with each word his voice rang out louder and sharper as the emotion he was fighting gripped him closer. "Not in this house. Never! Never!"

      "Cat's foot!" said Mrs. Tree. "Don't talk to me! Here! give me your arm! Do as I say! There!"

      "Old friends!" said the parrot.

      "I'm going to loose the bulldog, Mis' Tree," said Direxia, from the foot of the stairs; "and Deacon Weight says he'll be over in two minutes."

      "There isn't any dog in the house," said Mrs. Tree, over the balusters, "and Deacon Weight is at Conference, and won't be back till the last of the week. That will do, Direxia; you mean well, but you are a ninnyhammer. This way!"

      She twitched the reluctant arm that held hers, and they entered a small bedroom, hung with guns and rods.

      "My grandson's room!" said Mrs. Tree. "He died here – hey?"

      The stranger had dropped her arm and stood shaking, staring about him with wild eyes. The ancient woman laid her hand on his, and he started as at an electric shock.

      "Come, Willy," she said, "lie down and rest."

      He was at her feet now, half-crouching, half-kneeling, holding the hem of her satin gown in his shaking clutch, sobbing aloud, dry-eyed as yet.

      "Come, Willy," she repeated, "lie down and rest on Arthur's bed. You are tired, boy."

      "I came – " the shaking voice steadied itself into words, "I came – to rob you, Mrs. Tree."

      "Why, so I supposed, Will; at least, I thought it likely. You can have all you want, without that – there's plenty for you and me. Folks call me close, and I like to do what I like with my own money. There's plenty, I tell you, for you and me and the bird. Do you think he knew you, Willy? I believe he did."

      "God knows! When – how did you know me, Mrs. Tree?"

      "Get up, Willy Jaquith, and I'll tell you. Sit down; there's the chair you made together, when you were fifteen. Remember, hey? I knew your voice at the door, or I thought I did. Then when you wouldn't look at the bead puppy, I hadn't much doubt; and when I said 'Cat's foot!' and you laughed, I knew for sure. You've had a hard time, Willy, but you're the same boy."

      "If you would not be kind," said the man, "I think it would be easier. You ought to give me up, you know, and let me go to jail. I'm no good. I'm a vagrant and a drunkard, and worse. But you won't, I know that; so now let me go. I'm not fit to stay in Arthur's room or lie on his bed. Give me a little money, my dear old friend – yes, the parrot knew me! – and let me go!"

      "Hark!" said the old woman.

      She went to the door and listened. Her keen old face had grown wonderfully soft in the last hour, but now it sharpened and hardened to the likeness of a carved hickory-nut.

      "Somebody at the door," she said, speaking low. "Malvina Weight."

      She came back swiftly into the room. "That press is full of Arthur's clothes; take a bath and dress yourself, and rest awhile; then come down and talk to me. Yes, you will! Do as I say! Willy Jaquith, if you try to leave this house, I'll set the parrot on you. Remember the day he bit you for stealing his apple, and served you right? There's the scar still on your cheek. Greatest wonder he didn't put your eyes out!"

      She slipped out and closed the door after her; then stood at the head of the stairs, listening.

      Mrs. Ephraim Weight, a ponderous woman with a chronic tremolo, was in the hall, a knitted shawl over her head and shoulders.

      "I've waited 'most an hour to see that tramp come out," she was saying. "Deacon's away, and I was scairt to death, but I'm a mother, and I had to come. How I had the courage I don't know, when I thought you and Mis' Tree might meet my eyes both layin' dead in this entry. Where is he? Don't you help or harbor him now, Direxia Hawkes! I saw his evil eye as he stood on the doorstep, and I knew by the way he peeked and peered that he was after no good. Where is he? I know he didn't go out. Hush! don't say a word! I'll slip out and round and get Hiram Sawyer. My boys is to singing-school, and it was a Special Ordering that I happened to look out of window just that moment of time. Where did you say he – "

      "Oh, do let me speak, Mis' Weight!" broke in Direxia, in a shrill half-whisper. "Don't speak so loud! She'll hear ye, and she's in one of her takings, and I dono – lands sakes, I don't know what to do! I dono who he is, or whence he comes, but she – "

      "Direxia Hawkes!" barked Mrs. Tree from the head of the stairs.

      "There! you hear her!" murmured Direxia. "Oh, she is the beat of all! I'm comin', Mis' Tree!"

      She fled up the stairs; her mistress, bending forward, darted a whispered arrow at her.

      "Oh, my Solemn Deliverance!" cried Direxia Hawkes.

      "Hot water, directly, and don't make a fool of yourself!" said Mrs. Tree; and her stick tapped its way down-stairs.

      "Good evening, Malvina. What can I do for you? Pray step in."

      Mrs. Weight sidled into the parlor before a rather awful wave of the ebony stick, and sat down on the edge of a chair near the door. Mrs. Tree crossed the room to her own high-backed armchair, took her seat deliberately, put her feet on the crimson hassock, and leaned forward, resting her hands on the crutch-top of her stick, and her chin on her hands. In this attitude she looked more elfin than human, and the light that danced in her black eyes was not of a reassuring nature.

      "What can I do for you?" she repeated.

      Mrs. Weight bridled, and spoke in a tone half-timid, half-defiant.

      "I'm sure, Mis' Tree, it's not on my own account I come. I'm the last one to intrude, as any one in this village can tell you. But you are an anncient woman, and your neighbors are bound to protect you when need is. I see that tramp come in here with my own eyes, and he's here for no good."

      "What tramp?" asked Mrs. Tree.

      "Good