I'd see all wonders 'neath the stream, The tide should ripple welcomes low, I'd rest an hour the willows by, IV. Sunset. (The Wife speaks.) Sitting once in the twilight Red-glowing, and suddenly bright'ning It gave strange light and shadow, I had to learn you over again But when you broke the silence, Great poets have spent themselves to write, And to your voice made answer, Or autumn winds in swaying trees And rise; inspired by passion- Then, turning o'er the pages, But a little child in a garden, For years 'tween tarnished covers The hand that wrote it slept beneath And as you read, I loitered Under the shade of trees, Childlike, again I wondered What meant such sad, sore grief, A cross, and a date forgotten, In pale and faded ink, I could almost feel the summer wind Fresh from the river brink! You paused... 'Well, there's the song, love! My dreams. I answered: 'Forgive me, I But that this bright eve's glory May live again some day, Read me aloud some stirring story Or poet's sad, sweet lay. (The Husband speaks.) There in that leaf we shut it, An embalmed happiness! Now homewards, wife. Has there been melody? To-day? True eyes, confess. TOTTIE WYLDE'S DEVICE. IN THREE CHAPTERS. 'I CHAPTER I. A RACE DOWNHILL. WISH you wouldn't talk such rubbish, Eddie!' said pretty Tottie Wylde maliciously, as she lay one brilliant summer day busily digging holes with her parasol in the soft sward of the Down overlooking Seasurf on the Southern coast. Her younger brothers had wandered away to roll boulders down into the level below, and her cousin, Edwin Keiller, pined for her to say she loved and would marry him. 'It isn't rubbish, Tot,' he replied warmly; you know you like me, and yet you drive me wild with your childish ways. Can't you- 'No, I can't, sir; and I won'tI won't tie myself to any man. I'm going to be an old maid and travel about the country lecturing on Women's Rights with that dear Miss Faithfull. He chewed the end off his cigar with vexation as she chaffed him: 'I'll not ask you again, Tot; you must deliberately mean to make me miserable, or you wouldn't go on like that.' 'Oh yes, you will-you know you will-won't you, Eddie?' She laughed all over as, certain of her prey, she teased and petted him and put a tiny hand in his while making a little moue. 'I won't, I tell you-I'm not going to be made a fool of all my life, by Jove! I'll go back to town to-morrow and grind away at law.' 'Oh, Eddie, Eddie! and leave your own Tottie lamenting?' again she laughed outright, and looked bewitching, while the sweet south wind tossed her brown locks wildly. He got up in a rage, flung his cigar away, and turned as if to go down home. Tottie relented, but she could not help irritating him a little more: Eddie, Eddie!' she called, 'don't leave me; now come back here, there's a good boy! and I'll tell you what I'll do-I really will,' she pleaded as a brilliant idea flashed across her brain; and he could not help turning round to listen to the winning tones: 'I'll marry you, Eddie-there-if—if—but will you promise me you'll agree to what I say?' She acted capitally, did little Tottie Wylde, and she attracted his attention at once. He answered: 'I'll agree to anything, if you are in earnest.' 'I am in earnest. You promise?' 'I promise.' 'Very well. Now I'll tell you,' she said, jumping up from the grass as her eye sparkled with fun: But where are the boys? Oh, there they are, coming back. Well, Eddie (now mind, it's a bargain!), you are not to ask me any more if I win what I am going to tell you; and I'll promise to marry you whenever you like if you win-is it a bargain?' 'Yes, I promise,' he said, entering into the fun of the thing, and thinking that it must end to his advantage, whatever it was. 'Well, so do I, on my side. Now what I mean is, that we shall run a race for it down this hill, right to the bottom!' 'What bosh, Tottie! why, you'd fall on your head before you got ten yards, and then there'd be a nice row at the Royal!' he laughed at the absurdity of the idea. 'Would I indeed, Mr. Impertinence-we'll see. You've promised and I mean to keep you to it.' 'You are really in earnest?' 'Of course I am!' she answered, beating a wee foot determinedly on the ground. 'All right,' he laughed out gleefully, 'you're mine then!' 'Don't be so sure,' she smiled a little slyly; she knew what she could do on her own rugged Welsh mountains; she knew also pretty well what used to be her cousin's capabilities in the same locality; and experienced little fear for the result. The boys rolled on the turf in ecstasies of fun when they learned the terms of the bargain. 'By Jove, she'll beat you, Eddie!' said Jack, who rather looked down on his cousin as an athlete. That she won't-I bet you half-a-crown she won't!' So Henry. Edwin Keiller did not quite like it; the descent was very steep, broken in places with hollows that could not well be seen until one was just in them, and it was an immense distance to the level at the bottom, which rose again before culminating in the final cliff that overhung Seasurf. He had no fear whatever for himself, but he had on Tottie's account; she would not, however, be gainsaid, but kept him to the race and began to get ready: 'Now, Harry, you shall start us fairly; Jack, hold this for meand this,' handing him her fairy hat and delicate mantle. Then she tied her hair in a firm knot behind, shortened her petticoats with one tight hand, and kept the other free to balance herself. 'Oh, nonsense, Tottie! let us give it up-it's so silly,' said Keiller. 'You're afraid!' she laughed out, flushed with excitement. 'I'm not!' he retorted indignantly, placing himself in position. 'Are you ready?' asked Harry, in high glee; while Jack absolutely howled with delight. Ready!' they both answered. 'One, two, three-off!' he shouted, and away they bounded, the boys keeping a little behind. 'Run, Tottie! run! run!' they screamed; and Tottie, briskfooted maiden of seventeen as she was, hill-born, and limb-free as a fawn, did run her best; flying with shortened clothes down the rugged steep; bounding over furze bushes and intervening rocks; never shirking, never swaying, save once, when an ugly hollow yawned before her, from which she saved herself almost by a miracle; till she reached the bright green flat at the bottom, and turned triumphantly to see where the beaten Edwin was in the race. She could not see him; she could not see her brothers even; was it possible that they had all fallen in the treacherous hollow she had so narrowly escaped? So back up the steep hill she ran again in strange dismay, till she gained the brink of the pit wherein lay Edwin on his back, his face snow-white and laced with blood from a horrid ragged cut on the forehead; and by his side her two brothers kneeling as useless as boys always are in the presence of pain, sickness, or trouble. In a second she had gained the bottom of the hollow: 'Oh, Eddie, Eddie!' she cried, kneeling on the grass in a passion of tears, with the long brown hair now tumbling in confusion all over her sweet face: 'What have I done? oh, what has happened?' He did not speak; but the useless boys said in their ignorance: 'Oh nonsense, Tottie! he's not hurt-only shaken a bit.' She, girl-like, turned on them furiously: 'He's killed for all you know or care! Water! get some water-down there at the bottom, where I ran !' Jack bounded away, delighted to escape the fierce look, and soon returned with a hatful, to find Tottie supporting Edwin's head against her breast, while she wiped away with her dainty pocket-handkerchief the clotting blood from the wound on the forehead. Then she sprinkled his face with sharp dashes of the water until at length he came to and faintly smiled: 'You've beaten me, Tot,' he feebly uttered as he opened his eyes and saw whose arms were supporting him. She smiled through her now fastcoming tears: 'Oh, Eddie darling, I'm so sorry!' 'Never mind it, Tot,' he said; 'I'm all right now!' and in proof of the fact he turned to get up. A sharp yell of pain dispelled the idea the man's left arm was broken, and poor Tottie's heart was very sad as she and Henry helped him down to the Royal Hotel in Seasurf, where they all were staying-Jack having flown on ahead to have a surgeon in readiness. The Hon. Mark and Mrs. Wylde, with Tottie and the two boys, made up in all a strangely clever family. Proud and humble in a breath; despising wealth while they revelled in it; disliking poverty, and famous for the number of poor friends they cultivated; scorning society, and yet enjoying it with a keen zest; utterly uncontrolled by caste or its traditions, and at the same time proud of their high birth; they stalked, noble savages, in the huntinggrounds of fashion. The grand Welsh mountains, from whose stormy gorges they had emerged but a year or two back, had (their friends said) no little to do with this contempt for common Saxon customs; and had not Edwin Keiller been a constant visitor to the old castle in the troubled hills, as well as a bonâ-fide cousin, he would never have come to be called Eddie, darling!' by the only daughter, or hold the place he did in the family as a sort of tamed attaché whom Tottie was not unlikely to take it into her head to marry some fine day. 'Only I'm sure I don't know where you are to get bread and cheese from, Tottie, if you do,' said Mrs. Wylde one day (on their way to Seasurf) sitting half stifled in a gorgeous drawing-room of a Brook Street hotel. 'We can colour photographs, ma dear!' answered Tottie, laughing merrily at the folly. Not that she meant to marry Edwin or any one else; she was very fond of him as she was of her brother Jack or Harry-but she had no intention of being worried with a husband at all-that she hadn't, and told him so very plainly when for the thousandth time he tried to get her into a sentimental mood. The Wyldes (with Edwin for their guest) when they arrived at Seasurf took half the ground-floor at the 'Royal'-with wide French windows opening on mossy grass, gay flowers, with shrubs and greens of all shades; and below, the heaving violet sea, reaching away unbroken into an eternity of mists that sent, at times, deep growling echoes of warning back to murmur ceaselessly on the wave-worn beach. A glorious place for love-making, a glorious time, and a glorious prize. Hills and sea and flowers; and warmth with scented breezes; and calm and |