Whitewash. Ethel Watts Mumford

to their feet and departed with hope in their hearts and microbes in their systems. For the most part, the throng was earnest and silent. Once only a woman shrieked, casting the bandages from her wounded head. Her eyes, burning with fever, stared like two mad stars in her haggard, drawn face, as she struggled with her stalwart sons, who at last led her away, muttering and calling. A momentary hush fell upon the crowd at the fountain, a shade of doubt crept from face to face as the sound of the woman's ravings grew ​fainter, then, with renewed vigor, they washed and bottled and drank.

      "And the miracle is," Victoria said, slowly, "that they won't all die before morning."

      Miss Bently turned from the scene a trifle pale. "It is rather sickening, but I suppose if you get a good new microbe to fight your own bacilli, they have a chance of killing each other. I don't doubt there are any number of cures from that cause."

      "I'm coming down to-morrow morning early," Shorty announced, "to photograph that. No one would believe us if we told about it—it's too unspeakably awful."

      "Look at this, girls," Sonia interrupted, pointing to a billboard, on which, amidst the usual notice to "Beware of pickpockets," were the announcements of special indulgences—"For each step of the Scala Santa on the knees with two 'Aves' and 'a Pater,' one hundred years of purgatory remitted; for the entire Scala, ten thousand years; 'Stations of the Cross,' with 'Paters,' and 'Aves,' one thousand years."

      "Haven't you seen those before?" Shorty ex​claimed, with superiority. "There's a beautiful framed announcement at the foot of the holy stairs, which are just jammed full of people taking advantage of the indulgences. It makes one's knees sore to see them. Heavens! there's a whole covey of Englishwomen over there."

      "Oh, that reminds me," Victoria spoke up, "I lost my bet, Boston, my love. We asked the chambermaid about the man you thought was English. It seems his name is O'Farrell, and he speaks very bad French, so I suppose that settles it—but," and she shook her head, "somehow it doesn't go; maybe he's half-and-half, perhaps his mother was French or Italian, or something. I flatter myself I'm a good guesser, and certainly he does not spell 'English' to me."

      "Oh! you're too sharp," Shorty laughed, as they returned to the hotel entrance.

      They had hardly crossed the threshold when they became aware of the advancing presence of the swarthy Madame Vernon-Château-Lamion. With a well-bred haughtiness she inclined her dark head, and addressed herself directly to Sonia, including Victoria in the same glance. Boston ​and Shorty she ignored magnificently, turning by instinct to her social equals.

      "I am informed that I am indebted to you ladies for the suite I now occupy. I assure you that were it not for my daughter's critical condition I should at once seek lodgings elsewhere. As it is, I must, most unwillingly, impose upon your kindness."

      "Madame," returned Victoria, "we are glad to contribute to your daughter's comfort."

      "We trust," added Sonia, with unexpected gentleness, "that your prayers for her may be heard."

      The mother crossed herself. "May God so will! My thanks!" she added, with a return of her frigid politeness, and with another slight bow she left them.

      "What a very aristocratic old blackbird," remarked Shorty, after a pause, piqued that her blonde prettiness had attracted no acknowledgment of her existence from the gaunt countess.

      "Yes," Sonia gravely assented, "she has blue blood, as you say."

      "I don't say anything of the sort," Miss Bently ​sharply objected. "I should, from her appearance, suggest Caw's Jet Black Ink, or stove polish."

      Though early, the dining-room was already crowded, which necessitated an irritating wait, but the four were at last settled at a small table, and the conversation returned to the countess.

      "Did you see the lace she wore? Antique Venetian, and a gem of a piece!" Victoria spoke with a sort of detached envy.

      Sonia nodded. "Yes; but what made me want to break the—what number Commandment is it, about envy?—was her pin. Did you notice it?"

      "Rather!" and Victoria's face glowed with appreciation. "What was it? I never saw anything like it."

      "Nor I," continued Sonia, "though I've seen—" Here she checked herself, and added, lamely, "a great deal. It was sixteenth century, I'm certain. Those pendants were unmistakable; and I think I never saw such an emerald—the size, the color!"

      "It had a big flaw, though," and Victoria took ​up the description. "It was the marvellous delicacy of the setting and the design that struck me. I don't believe its intrinsic value is so great, even with the emerald, but the art of it, the art of it! It makes the modern work seem absolutely pot-boiling; there were old masters in jewelry as well as in paint and stone."

      "I think," Sonia continued, "the two gold dolphins that surround the centre stone must have been heraldic. I believe it was a sort of acrostic of a coat-of-arms. I've seen such pieces in Russia, and I know they were used in Spain."

      "Oh, stop talking like a pair of antiquaries," Shorty interrupted. "You don't know anything about it, and you re missing the circus—just look at the freaks in this—salle à manger."

      The great bare room did, in fact, present an extraordinary assortment of humanity. At the upper end, a long table accommodated fifteen or twenty priests, whose black garments made a dark spot in the otherwise bright hall. Next to them, a gaily dressed, chattering party of women and men, just arrived in their automobiles from the estates of Kerkonti and Merone. The ​main body consisted of wealthy Breton peasants, dressed in all the gorgeousness of their feast-day clothes, and obviously uncomfortable. Here and there the inevitable, fat, greasy, commercial traveller serenely bulked, and the equally fat and oily bourgeoise-women shopkeepers of Lorient, and the other adjoining commercial cities, wielded ready knives. A few elegant but soberly dressed families attested that the aristocracy of France is by no means devoid of the faith that animated its distant forbears. An eminent journalist from Paris took notes obviously from his position by the fireplace, a well-known painter, accompanied by his equally well-known model, sat in the corner. A lonesome looking English boy, who was "doing" Brittany on his wheel, yawned by the window, and a party of very old gentlemen, who seemed to have no particular reason for attending the festival, unless, as Victoria suggested, they hoped for a Faust-like renewal of youth, completed the company.

      "I don't see my Englishman," Miss Bently observed.

      "Evidently his headache has come on again, ​and he's having his supper in his room. The chambermaid said he hadn't been well," Sonia explained.

      The meal dragged on indefinitely, the frantic serving-wenches vainly trying to cope with the number of their charges. Every dish was cold or poor. Soup arrived after the meat, and vegetables with the pudding. But there was little objection. Every one was either too devout or too interested to trouble about food for the time being. The four dissimilar girls were probably as much of an incongruity as the other guests or the distorted meal. Theirs was one of those oddly combined friendships, evolved in studios, with which all dwellers in France have become familiar. At bottom there is always the stratum of common ambitions, appreciation, and Bohemianism, in spite of unbridgeable divergencies of character and traditions.

      Just now the four were equally delighted. Miss Bently and Sonia with the paintable qualities of the pilgrimage; Shorty, with the photographic possibilities, and Victoria with the human passion of excitement and faith that ran riot in and about ​her. Although her training had been in the field of applied art, she was slowly but certainly turning toward the alluring fields of literature, her short experience with newspaper work having bred ambitions. Now, unconsciously, she groped for words into which to translate the pictures and the emotions of the hour, and went about with sentences speaking themselves in her head—so good sometimes that she longed to jot them down, yet never quite dared because of a curious self-consciousness that made her hate to explain her occupation to her companions. "Hysteria, the most instantly contagious of diseases," she caught herself murmuring, as, supper finished, they again sought the square and its picturesque gatherings. "I wonder, if it is possible for any one in his senses to remain unmoved