Myrtle Reed - At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern стр 2.

I thought youd forgotten, she smiled back at him. I feel like an old married woman, already.

You dont look it, he returned, gently. Few would have called her beautiful, but love brings beauty with it, and Harlan saw an exquisite loveliness in the deep, dark eyes, the brown hair that rippled and shone in the firelight, the smooth, creamy skin, and the sensitive mouth that betrayed every passing mood.

None the less, I am, she went on. Ive grown so used to seeing Mrs. James Harlan Carr on my visiting cards that Ive forgotten there ever was such a person as Miss Dorothy Locke, who used to get letters, and go calling when she wasnt too busy, and have things sent to her when she had the money to buy them.

I hope Harlan stumbled awkwardly over the words I hope youll never be sorry.

I havent been yet, she laughed, and its four whole weeks. Come, lets go on an exploring expedition. Im dry both inside and out, and most terribly hungry.

Each took a candle and Harlan led the way, in and out of unexpected doors, queer, winding passages, and lonely, untenanted rooms. Originally, the house had been simple enough in structure, but wing after wing had been added until the first design, if it could be dignified by that name, had been wholly obscured. From each room branched a series of apartments a sitting-room, surrounded by bedrooms, each of which contained two or sometimes three beds. A combined kitchen and dining-room was in every separate wing, with an outside door.

I wonder, cried Dorothy, if weve come to an orphan asylum!

Heaven knows what weve come to, muttered Harlan. You know I never was here before.

Did Uncle Ebeneezer have a large family?

Only Aunt Rebecca, who died very soon, as I told you. Mother was his only sister, and I her only child, so it wasnt on our side.

Perhaps, observed Dorothy, Aunt Rebecca had relations.

One, two, three, four, five, counted Harlan. There are five sets of apartments on this side, and three on the other. Lets go upstairs.

From the low front door a series of low windows extended across the house on each side, abundantly lighting the two front rooms, which were separated by the wide hall. A high, narrow window in the lower hall, seemingly with no purpose whatever, began far above the low door and ended abruptly at the ceiling. In the upper hall, a similar window began at the floor and extended upward no higher than Harlans knees. As Dorothy said, one would have to lie down to look out of it, but it lighted the hall, which, after all, was the main thing.

In each of the two front rooms, upstairs, was a single round window, too high for one to look out of without standing on a chair, though in both rooms there was plenty of side light. One wing on each side of the house had been carried up to the second story, and the arrangement of rooms was the same as below, outside stairways leading from the kitchens to the ground.

I never saw so many beds in my life, cried Dorothy.

Seems to be a perfect Bedlam, rejoined Harlan, making a poor attempt at a joke and laughing mirthlessly. In his heart he began to doubt the wisdom of marrying on six hundred dollars, an unexplored heirloom in Judson Centre, and an overweening desire to write books.

For the first time, his temerity appeared to him in its proper colours. He had been a space writer and Dorothy the private secretary of a Personage, when they met, in the dreary basement dining-room of a New York boarding-house, and speedily fell in love. Shortly afterward, when Harlan received a letter which contained a key, and announced that Mr. Judsons house, fully furnished, had been bequeathed to his nephew, they had light-heartedly embarked upon matrimony with no fears for the future.

Two hundred dollars had been spent upon a very modest honeymoon, and the three hundred

and ninety-seven dollars and twenty-three cents remaining, as Harlan had accurately calculated, seemed pitifully small. Perplexity, doubt, and foreboding were plainly written on his face, when Dorothy turned to him.

Isnt it perfectly lovely, she asked, for us to have this nice, quiet place all to ourselves, where you can write your book?

Woman-like, she had instantly touched the right chord, and the clouds vanished.

Yes, he cried, eagerly. Oh, Dorothy, do you think I can really write it?

Write it, she repeated; why, you dear, funny goose, you can write a better book than anybody has ever written yet, and I know you can! By next week well be settled here and you can get down to work. Ill help you, too, she added, generously. If youll buy me a typewriter, I can copy the whole book for you.

Of course Ill buy you a typewriter. Well send for it to-morrow. How much does a nice one cost?

The kind I like, she explained, costs a hundred dollars without the stand. I dont need the stand we can find a table somewhere that will do.

Two hundred and ninety-seven dollars and twenty-three cents, breathed Harlan, unconsciously.

No, only a hundred dollars, corrected Dorothy. I dont care to have it silver mounted.