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who was the limp indoor-dweller, and he who was the ruddy ranger; that as he had admired her at Flathead Lake, so now it was hers to admire, and his to be serenely heroic. She was not far from the worshiping sub-deb in her sighing, "How _did_ you get the scar?" "That? Oh, nothing." "Please tell me." "Really and truly. Nothing at all. Just a drunken fellow with a knife, playing the fool. I didn't have to touch him--quite sure he could have given me a frightful beating and all that sort of thing. It was the Big Chief who got rid of him." "He--cut you? With a kniiiiiife? Ohhhhhhh!" She ran to him, pityingly stroked the scar, looked down at him with filmy eyes. Then she tried to retreat, but he retained her hand, glanced up at her as though he knew her every thought. She felt weak. How could she escape him? "Please!" she begged flutteringly. If he held her hand another moment, she trembled, she'd be on his lap, in his arms--lost. And he was holding it. He was---- Oh, he was too old for her. Yes, and too paternal. But still---- Life with Jeff would be protected, kindly, honorable. Yet all the time she wanted, and stormily knew she wanted, to be fleeing to the boy Milt, her mate; to run away with him, hand in hand, discovering all the colored world, laughing at life, not afraid of losing dignity. In fear of Jeff's very kindliness and honor, she jerked her hand free. Then she tried to smile like a clever fencer. As she retreated to her chair she stammered, "Did you---- Was Alaska interesting?" He did not let her go, this time. Easy, cat-like for all his dry gravity, he sauntered after her, and with a fine high seriousness pleaded his case: "Claire dear, those few weeks of fighting nature were a revelation to me. I'm going to have lots more of it. As it happens, they need me there. There's plenty of copper, but there's big transportation and employment problems that I seem better able to solve than the other chaps--though of course I'm an absolute muff when it comes to engineering problems. But I've had certain training and--I'm going to arrange things so that I get up there at least once a year. Next summer I'll make a much longer trip--see the mountains--oh, glorious mountains--and funny half-Russian towns, and have some fishing---- Wandering. The really big thing. Even finer than your superb plucky trip through----" "Wasn't plucky! I'm a cry baby," she said, like a bad, contradictory little girl. He didn't argue it. He smiled and said "Tut!" and placidly catalogued her with, "You're the pluckiest girl I've ever seen, and it's all the more amazing because you're not a motion-picture Tomboy, but essentially exquisite----" "I'm a grub." "Very well, then. You're a grub. So am I. And I like it. And when I make the big Alaskan trip next year I want you to go along! Claire! Haven't you any idea how terribly close to me the thought of you has been these weeks? You've guided me through the wilderness----" "It's---- I'm glad." She sprang up, beseeching, "Jeff dear, you're going to stay for tea? I must run up and powder my nose." "Not until you say you're glad to see me. Child dear, we've been ambling along and---- No. You aren't a child any more. You're a woman. And if I've never been quite a man, but just a dusty office-machine, that's gone now. I've got the wind of the wilderness in my lungs. Man and woman! My woman! That's all I'm going to say now, but---- Oh my God, Claire, I do need you so!" He drew her head to his shoulder, and for an instant she rested there. But as she looked up, she saw coming age in the granulated skin of his throat. "He needs me--but he'd boss me. I'd be the cunning child-wife, even at fifty," she worried, and "Hang him, it's like his superiority to beat poor Milt even at adventuring--and to be such a confounded Modest Christian Gentleman about it!" "You'd--you're so dreadfully managing," she sighed aloud. For the first time in all their acquaintanceship, Jeff's pride broke, and he held her away from him, while his lips were pathetic, and he mourned, "Why do you always try to hurt me?" "Oh, my dear, I don't." "Is it because you resent the decent things I have managed to do?" "I don't understand." "If I have an idea for a party, you think I'm 'managing.' If I think things out deeply, you say I'm dull." "Oh, you aren't. I didn't mean----" "What are you? A real woman, or one of these flirts, that love to tease a man because he's foolish enough to be honestly in love?" "I'm not--hon-estly I'm not, Jeff. It's---- You don't quite make me---- It's just that I'm not in love with you. I like you, and respect you terribly, but----" "I'm going to make you love me." His clutching fingers hurt her arm, and somehow she was not angry, but stirred. "But I'm not going to try now. Forget the Alaskan caveman. Remember, I haven't even used the word 'love.' I've just chatted about fjords, or whatever they are, but one of these days---- No. I won't do it. I want to stay here in Seattle a few days, and take you on jolly picnics, but---- Would you rather I didn't even do that? I'm----" He dropped her arm, kneaded his forehead with the heel of his palm. "I can't stand being regarded as a bothersome puppy. I can't stand it! I can't!" "Please stay, Jeff! We'll have some darling drives and things. We'll go up Rainier as far as we can." He stayed. He was anecdotal and amusing at tea, that afternoon. Claire saw how the Gilsons, and two girls who dropped in, admired him. That made her uneasy. And when Mrs. Gilson begged him to leave his hotel and stay with them, he refused with a quick look at Claire that hurt her. "He wants me to be free. He's really so much more considerate than Milt. And I hurt him. Even his pride broke down. And I've spoiled Milt's life by meddling. And I've hurt the Gilsons' feelings. And I'm not much of a comfort to father. Oh, I'm absolutely no good," she agonized. CHAPTER XXX THE VIRTUOUS PLOTTERS Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, in Alaskan tan and New York evening clothes and Piccadilly poise, was talking to the Eugene Gilsons while Claire finished dressing for the theater. Mrs. Gilson observed, "She's the dearest thing. We've become awfully fond of her. But I don't think she knows what she wants to do with life. She's rather at loose ends. Who is this Daggett boy--some university student--whom she seems to like?" "Well, since you speak of him---- I hadn't meant to, unless you did. I want to be fair to him. What did she tell you about him?" Jeff asked confidentially. "Nothing, except that he's a young engineer, and frightfully brave and all those uncomfortable virtues, and she met him in Yellowstone Park or somewhere, and he saved her from a bear--or was it a tramp?--from something unnecessary, at any rate." "Eva, I don't want to be supercilious, but the truth is that this young Daggett is a rather dreadful person. He's been here at the house, hasn't he? How did he strike you?" "Not at all. He's silent, and as dull as lukewarm tea, but perfectly inoffensive." "Then he's cleverer than I thought! Daggett is anything but dull and inoffensive, and if he can play that estimable r le----! It seems that he is the son of some common workman in the Middlewest; he isn't an engineer at all; he's really a chauffeur or a taxi-driver or something; and he ran into Claire and Henry B. on the road, and somehow insinuated himself into their graces--far from being silent and commonplace, he appears to have some strange kind of charm which," Jeff sighed, "I don't understand at all. I simply don't understand it! "I met him in Montana with the most gorgeously atrocious person I've ever encountered--one Pinky Westlake, or some such a name--positively, a crook! He tried to get Boltwood and myself interested in the commonest kind of a mining swindle--hinted that we were to join him in cheating the public. And this Daggett was his partner--they actually traveled together. But I do want to be just. I'm not _sure_ that Daggett was aware of his partner's dishonesty. That isn't what worries me about the lad. It's his utter impossibility. He's as crude as iron-ore. When he's being careful, he may manage to be inconspicuous, but give him the chance---- "Really, I'm not exaggerating when I say that at thirty-five he'll be dining in his shirt-sleeves, and sitting down to read the paper with his shoes off and feet up on the table. But Claire--you know what a dear Quixotic soul she is--she fancies that because this fellow repaired a puncture or something of the sort for her on the road, she's indebted to him, and the worse he is, the more she feels that she must help him. And affairs of that kind---- Oh, it's quite too horrible, but there have been cases, you know, where girls as splendid and fine and well-bred as Claire herself have been trapped into low marriages by their loyalty to cadging adventurers!" "Oh!" groaned Mrs. Gilson; and "Good Lord!" lamented Mr. Gilson, delighted by the possibility of tragedy; and "Really, I'm not exaggerating," said Jeff enthusiastically. "What are we going to do?" demanded Mrs. Gilson; while Mr. Gilson, being of a ready and inventive mind, exclaimed, "By Jove, you ought to kidnap her and marry her yourself, Jeff!" "I'd like to. But I'm too old." They beautifully assured him that he was a blithe young thing with milk teeth; and with a certain satisfaction Jeff suggested, "I tell you what we might do. Of course it's an ancient stunt, but it's good. I judge that Daggett hasn't been here at the house much. Why not have him here so often that Claire will awaken to his crudity, and get sick of him?" "We'll do it," thrilled Mrs. Gilson. "We'll have him for everything from nine-course dinners with Grandmother Eaton's napkins on view, to milk and cold ham out of the ice-box. When Claire doesn't invite him, I will!" CHAPTER XXXI THE KITCHEN INTIMATE Milt had become used to the Gilson drawing-room. He was no longer uncomfortable in the presence of its sleek fatness, though at first (not knowing that there were such resources as interior decorators), he had been convinced that, to have created the room, the Gilsons must have known everything in the world. Now he glanced familiarly at its white paneling, its sconces like silver candlesticks, the inevitable davenport inevitably backed by an amethyst-shaded piano lamp and a table crowded with silver boxes and picture-frames. He liked the winsomeness of light upon velvet and polished wood. It was not the drawing-room but the kitchen that dismayed him. In Schoenstrom he had known that there must somewhere be beautiful "parlors," but he had trusted in his experience of kitchens. Kitchens, according to his philosophy, were small smelly rooms of bare floors, and provided with one oilcloth-covered table, one stove (the front draft always broken and propped up with the lid-lifter), one cupboard with panes of tin pierced in rosettes, and one stack of dirty dishes. But the Gilson kitchen had the efficiency of a laboratory and the superciliousness of a hair-dresser's booth. With awe Milt beheld walls of white tiles, a cork floor, a gas-range large as a hotel-stove, a ceiling-high refrigerator of enamel and nickel, zinc-topped tables, and a case of utensils like a surgeon's knives. It frightened him; it made more hopelessly unapproachable than ever the Alexandrian luxury of the great Gilsons.... The Vanderbilts' kitchen must be like this. And maybe King George's. He was viewing the kitchen upon the occasion of an intimate Sunday evening supper to which he had been yearningly invited by Mrs. Gilson. The maids were all out. The Gilsons and Claire, Milt and Jeff Saxton, shoutingly prepared their own supper. While Mrs. Gilson scrambled eggs and made coffee, the others set the table, and brought cold ham and a bowl of salad from the ice-box. Milt had intended to be a silent but deft servitor. When he had heard that he was to come to supper with the returned Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, he had first been panic-shaken, then resolved. He'd "let old iron-face Saxton do the high and mighty. Let him stand around and show off his clothes and adjectives, way he did at Flathead Lake." But he, Milt, would be "on the job." He'd help get supper, and calmly ignore Jeff's rudeness. Only--Jeff wasn't rude. He greeted Milt with, "Ah, Daggett! This is _so_ nice!" And Milt had no chance to help. It was Jeff who anticipated him and with a pleasant, "Let me get that--I'm kitchen-broke," snatched up the cold ham and salad. It was Jeff who found the supper plates, while Milt was blunderingly wondering how any one family could use a "whole furniture-store-full of different kinds of china." It was Jeff who sprang to help Claire wheel in the tea-wagon, and so captured the chance to speak to her for which Milt had been maneuvering these five minutes. When they were settled, Jeff glowed at him, and respectfully offered, "I thought of you so often, Daggett, on a recent little jaunt of mine. You'd have been helpful." "Where was that?" asked Milt suspiciously (wondering, and waiting to see, whether you could take cold ham in your fingers). "Oh, in Alaska." "In--Alaska?" Milt was dismayed. "Yes, just a business trip there. There's something I wish you'd advise me about." He was humble. And Milt was uneasy. He grumbled, "What's that?" "I've been wondering whether it would be possible to use wireless telephony in Alaska. But I'm such a dub at electricity. Do you know---- What would be the cost of installing a wireless telephone plant with a hundred-mile radius?" "Gee, I don't know!" "Oh, so sorry. Well, I wonder if you can tell me about wireless telegraphy, then?" "No, I don't know anything about that either." Milt had desperately tried to make his answer gracious but somehow---- He hated this devil's obsequiousness more than he had his chilliness at Flathead Lake. He had a feeling that the Gilsons had delightedly kicked each other under the table; that, for all her unchanging smile, Claire was unhappy.... And she was so far off, a white wraith floating beyond his frantic grasp. "It doesn't matter, really. But I didn't know---- So you've started in the engineering school at the University of Washington," Saxton was purring. "Have you met Gid Childers there--son of old Senator Childers--charming people." "I've seen him. He has a Stutz--no, his is the Mercer," sighed Milt. He hated himself for it, but he couldn't quite keep the awe out of his voice. People with Mercers---- Claire seemed to be trying to speak. She made a delicate, feminine, clairesque approximation to clearing her throat. But Jeff ignored her and with almost osculatory affection continued to Milt: "Do let me know if there's anything I can do to help you. We're acquainted with two or three of your engineering faculty at the Office. They write in about various things. Do you happen to know Dr. Philgren?" "Oh yes. Say! He's a wonder!" Milt was betrayed into exclaiming. "Yes. Good chap, I believe. He's been trying to get a job with us. We may give him one. Just tell him you're a friend of mine, and that he's to give you any help he can." Milt choked on a "Thanks." "And--now that we're just the family here together--how goes the financial side? Can I be of any assistance in introducing you to some engineering firm where you could do a little work on the side? You could make quite a little money----" So confoundedly affectionate and paternal---- Milt said irritably, "Thanks, but I don't need to do any work. I've got plenty of money." "How pleasant!" Saxton's voice was smooth as marshmallow. "You're fortunate. I had quite a struggle to get through Princeton." Wasn't Mr. Gilson contrasting Saxton's silk shirt with Milt's darned cotton covering, and in light of that contrast chuckling at Milt's boast and Saxton's modesty? Milt became overheated. His scalp prickled and his shoulder-blades were damp. As Saxton turned from him, and crooned to Claire, "More ham, honey?" Milt hated himself. He was in much of the dramatic but undesirable position of a man in pajamas, not very good pajamas, who has been locked out in the hotel corridor by the slamming of his door. He was in the frame of mind of a mongrel, of a real Boys'-Dog, at a Madison Square dog-show. He had a faint shrewd suspicion of Saxton's game. But what could he do about it? He felt even more out of place when the family forgot him and talked about people of whom he had never heard. He sat alone on an extremely distant desert isle and ate cold ham and wished he were in Schoenstrom. Claire had recovered her power of speech. She seemed to be trying to bring him into the conversation, so that the family might appreciate him. She hesitated, and thought with creased brows, and brought out, "Uh, uh, oh---- Oh Milt: How much is gas selling at now?"... * * * * * Milt left that charming and intimate supper-party at nine. He said, "Got to work on--on my analytical geometry," as though it was a lie; and he threw "Good night" at Saxton as though he hated his kind, good benefactor; and when he tried to be gracious to Mrs. Gilson the best he could get out was, "Thanks f' inviting me." They expansively saw him to the door. Just as he thought that he had escaped, Saxton begged, "Oh, Daggett, I was arguing with a chap---- What color are Holstein-Friesian cattle? Red?" "Black and white," Milt said eagerly. He heard Mrs. Gilson giggle. He stood on the terrace wiping his forehead and, without the least struggle, finally and irretrievably admitting that he would never see Claire Boltwood or any of her friends again. Not--never! * * * * * He had received from Mrs. Gilson a note inviting him to share their box at the first night of a three-night Opera Season. He had spent half a day in trying to think of a courteously rude way of declining. A straggly little girl came up from the candy-shop below his room, demanding, "Say, are you Mr. Daggett? Say, there's some woman wants to talk to you on our telephone. Say, tell them we ain't supposed to be no messenger-office. You ain't supposed to call no upstairs people on our telephone. We ain't supposed to leave the store and go trotting all over town to---- Gee, a nickel, gee, thank you, don't mind what ma says, she's always kicking." On the telephone, he heard Claire's voice in an agitated, "Milt! Meet me down-town, at the Imperial Motion Picture Theater, right away. Something I've got to tell you. I'll be in the lobby. Hurry!" When he bolted in she was already in the lobby, agitatedly looking over a frame of "stills." She ran to him, hooked her fingers in his lapel, poured out, "They've invited you to the opera? I want you to come and put it all over them. I'm almost sure there's a plot. They want to show me that you aren't used to tiaras and saxophones and creaking dowagers and tulle. Beat 'em! Beat 'em! Come to the opera and be awf'ly aloof and supercilious. You can! Yes, you can! And be sure--wear evening clothes. Now I've got to hurry." "B-but----" "Don't disappoint me. I depend on you. Oh, say you will!" "I will!" She was gone, whisking into the Gilson limousine. He was in a glow at her loyalty, in a tremor of anger at the meddlers. But he had never worn evening clothes. He called it "a dress-suit," and before the complications of that exotic garb, he was flabby with anxiety. To Milt and to Schoenstrom--to Bill McGolwey, even to Prof Jones and the greasily prosperous Heinie Rauskukle--the dress-suit was the symbol and proof, the indication and manner, of sophisticated wealth. In Schoenstrom even waiters do not wear dress-suits. For one thing there aren't any waiters. There is one waitress at the Leipzig House, Miss Annie Schweigenblat, but you wouldn't expect Miss Schweigenblat to deal them off the arm in black trousers with braid down the side. No; a dress-suit was what the hero wore in the movies; and the hero in the movies, when he wasn't a cowpuncher, was an ex-captain of the Yale football team, and had chambers and a valet. You could tell him from the valet because he wasn't so bald. It is true that Milt had heard that in St. Cloud there were people who wore dress-suits at parties, but then St. Cloud was a city, fifteen or sixteen thousand. "How could he get away with a dress-suit? How could he keep from feeling foolish in a low-cut vest, and what the deuce would he do with the tails? Did you part 'em or roll 'em up, when you sat down? And wouldn't everybody be able to tell from his foolish look that he didn't belong in one?" He could hear A.D.T. boys and loafers in front of pool rooms whispering, "Look at the piker in the rented soup and fish!" For of course he'd rent one. Nobody bought them--except plutes like Henry B. Boltwood. He agitatedly walked up and down for an hour, peering into haberdashery windows, looking for a kind-faced young man. He found him, in Ye Pall Mall Toggery Shoppe & Shoes; an open-faced young man who was gazing through the window as sparklingly as though he was thinking of going as a missionary to India--and liked curry. Milt ironed out his worried face, clumped in, demanded fraternally, "Say, old man, don't some of these gents' furnishings stores have kind of little charts that tell just what you wear with dress-suits and Prince Alberts and everything?" "You bet," said the kind-faced young man. West of Chicago, "You bet" means "Rather," and "Yes indeed," and "On the whole I should be inclined to fancy that there may be some vestiges of accuracy in your curious opinion," and "You're a liar but I can't afford to say so." The kind-faced young man brought from behind the counter a beautiful brochure illustrated with photographs of Phoebus Apollo in what were described as "American Beauty Garments--neat, natty, nobby, new." The center pages faithfully catalogued the ties, shirts, cuff-links, spats, boots, hats, to wear with evening clothes, morning clothes, riding clothes, tennis costumes, polite mourning. As he looked it over Milt felt that his wardrobe already contained all these gentlemanly possessions. With the aid of the clerk and the chart he purchased a tradition-haunted garment with a plate-armor bosom and an opening as crooked as the Missouri River; a white tie which in his strong red hands looked as silly as a dead fish; waistcoat, pearl links, and studs. For the first time, except for seizures of madness during two or three visits to Minneapolis motor accessory stores, he caught the shopping-fever. The long shining counter, the trim red-stained shelves, the glittering cases, the racks of flaunting ties, were beautiful to him and beckoning. He revolved a pleasantly clicking rack of ties, then turned and fought his way out. He bought pumps--which cost exactly twice as much as the largest sum which he had allowed himself. He bought a newspaper, and in the want-columns found the advertisement: Silberfarb the Society Tailor DRESS SUITS TO RENT Snappiest in the City Despite the superlative snappiness of Mr. Silberfarb's dress-suits his establishment was a loft over a delicatessen, approached by a splintery stairway along which hung shabby signs announcing the upstairs offices of "J. L. & T. J. O'Regan, Private Detectives," "The Zenith Spiritualist Church, Messages by Rev. Lulu Paughouse," "The International Order of Live Ones, Seattle Wigwam," and "Mme. Lavourie, Sulphur Baths." The dead air of the hallway suggested petty crookedness. Milt felt that he ought to fight somebody but, there being no one to fight, he banged along the flapping boards of the second-floor hallway to the ground-glass door of Silberfarb the Society Tailor, who was also, as an afterthought on a straggly placard, "Pressng & Cleang While U Wait." He belligerently shouldered into a low room. The light from the one window was almost obscured by racks of musty-smelling black clothes which stretched away from him in two dismal aisles that resembled a morgue of unhappy dead men indecently hung up on hooks. On a long, clumsily carpentered table, a small Jew, collarless, sweaty, unshaven, was darning trousers under an evil mantle gaslight. The Jew wrung out his hands and tried to look benevolent. "Want to rent a dress-suit," said Milt. "I got just the t'ing for you!" The little man unfolded himself, galloped down the aisle, seized the first garment that came to hand, and came back to lay it against Milt's uncomfortable frame, bumbling, "Fine, mister, fy-en!" Milt studied the shiny-seamed, worn-buttonholed, limp object with dislike. Its personality was disintegrated. The only thing he liked about it was the good garage stink of gasoline. "That's almost worn out," he growled. At this sacrilege Mr. Silberfarb threw up his hands, with the dingy suit flapping in them like a bed-quilt shaken from a tenement window. He looked Milt all over, coldly. His red but shining eyes hinted that Milt was a clodhopper and no honest wearer of evening clothes. Milt felt humble, but he snapped, "No good. Want something with class." "Vell, that was good enough for a university professor at the big dance, but if you say so----" In the manner of one who is being put to an unfair amount of trouble, Mr. Silberfarb returned the paranoiac dress-suit to the rack, sighing patiently as he laboriously draped it on a hanger. He peered and pawed. He crowed with throaty triumph and brought back a rich ripe thing of velvet collar and cuffs. He fixed Milt with eyes that had become as sulky as the eyes of a dog in August dust. "Now that--you can't beat that, if you vant class, and it'll fit you like a glove. Oh, that's an ellllegant garment!" Shaking himself out of the spell of those contemptuous eyes Milt opened his brochure, studied the chart, and in a footnote found, "Never wear velvet collars or cuffs with evening coat." "Nope. Nix on the velvet," he remarked. Then the little man went mad and ran around in circles. He flung the ellllegant garment on the table. He flapped his arms, and wailed, "What do you vant? What do you vannnnt? That's a hundred-and-fifty-dollar dress-suit! That belonged to one of the richest men in the city. He sold it to me because he was going to Japan." "Well, you can send it to Japan after him. I want something decent. Have you got it--or shall I go some place else?" The tailor instantly became affectionate. "How about a nice Tuxedo?" he coaxed. "Nope. It says here--let me see--oh yes, here it is--it says here in the book that for the theater-with-ladies, should not wear 'dinner-coat or so-called Tuxedo, but----'" "Oh, dem fellows what writes books they don't know nothing. Absolute! They make it up." "Huh! Well, I guess I'll take my chance on them. The factory knows the ignition better 'n any repair-man." "Vell say, you're a hard fellow to please. I'll give you one of my reserve stock, but you got to leave me ten dollars deposit instead of five." Mr. Silberfarb quite cheerfully unlocked a glass case behind the racked and ghostly dead; he brought out a suit that seemed to Milt almost decent. And it almost fitted when, after changing clothes in a broiling, boiling, reeking, gasoline-pulsing hole behind the racks, he examined it before a pier-glass. But he caught the tailor assisting the fit by bunching up a roll of cloth at the shoulder. Again Milt snapped, and again the tailor suffered and died, and to a doubting heathen world maintained the true gospel of "What do you vannnnt? It ain't stylish to have the dress-suit too tight! All the gents is wearing 'em loose and graceful." But in the end, after Milt had gone as far as the door, Mr. Silberfarb admitted that one dress-coat wouldn't always fit all persons without some alterations. The coat did bag a little, and it was too long in the sleeves, but as Milt studied himself in his room--by placing his small melancholy mirror on the bureau, then on a chair, then on the floor, finally, to get a complete view, clear out in the hall--he admitted with stirring delight that he looked "pretty fair in the bloomin' outfit." His clear face, his shining hair, his straight shoulders, seemed to go with the costume. He wriggled into his top-coat and marched out of his room, theater-bound, with the well-fed satisfaction of a man who is certain that no one is giggling, "Look at the hand-me-downs." His pumps did alternately pinch his toes and rub his heels; the trousers cramped his waist; and he suspected that his tie had gone wandering. But he swaggered to the trolley, and sat as one rich and famous and very kind to the Common People, till---- Another man in evening clothes got on the car, and Milt saw that he wore a silk hat, and a white knitted scarf; that he took

whether

How many times the word 'whether' appears in the text?

who was the limp indoor-dweller, and he who was the ruddy ranger; that as he had admired her at Flathead Lake, so now it was hers to admire, and his to be serenely heroic. She was not far from the worshiping sub-deb in her sighing, "How _did_ you get the scar?" "That? Oh, nothing." "Please tell me." "Really and truly. Nothing at all. Just a drunken fellow with a knife, playing the fool. I didn't have to touch him--quite sure he could have given me a frightful beating and all that sort of thing. It was the Big Chief who got rid of him." "He--cut you? With a kniiiiiife? Ohhhhhhh!" She ran to him, pityingly stroked the scar, looked down at him with filmy eyes. Then she tried to retreat, but he retained her hand, glanced up at her as though he knew her every thought. She felt weak. How could she escape him? "Please!" she begged flutteringly. If he held her hand another moment, she trembled, she'd be on his lap, in his arms--lost. And he was holding it. He was---- Oh, he was too old for her. Yes, and too paternal. But still---- Life with Jeff would be protected, kindly, honorable. Yet all the time she wanted, and stormily knew she wanted, to be fleeing to the boy Milt, her mate; to run away with him, hand in hand, discovering all the colored world, laughing at life, not afraid of losing dignity. In fear of Jeff's very kindliness and honor, she jerked her hand free. Then she tried to smile like a clever fencer. As she retreated to her chair she stammered, "Did you---- Was Alaska interesting?" He did not let her go, this time. Easy, cat-like for all his dry gravity, he sauntered after her, and with a fine high seriousness pleaded his case: "Claire dear, those few weeks of fighting nature were a revelation to me. I'm going to have lots more of it. As it happens, they need me there. There's plenty of copper, but there's big transportation and employment problems that I seem better able to solve than the other chaps--though of course I'm an absolute muff when it comes to engineering problems. But I've had certain training and--I'm going to arrange things so that I get up there at least once a year. Next summer I'll make a much longer trip--see the mountains--oh, glorious mountains--and funny half-Russian towns, and have some fishing---- Wandering. The really big thing. Even finer than your superb plucky trip through----" "Wasn't plucky! I'm a cry baby," she said, like a bad, contradictory little girl. He didn't argue it. He smiled and said "Tut!" and placidly catalogued her with, "You're the pluckiest girl I've ever seen, and it's all the more amazing because you're not a motion-picture Tomboy, but essentially exquisite----" "I'm a grub." "Very well, then. You're a grub. So am I. And I like it. And when I make the big Alaskan trip next year I want you to go along! Claire! Haven't you any idea how terribly close to me the thought of you has been these weeks? You've guided me through the wilderness----" "It's---- I'm glad." She sprang up, beseeching, "Jeff dear, you're going to stay for tea? I must run up and powder my nose." "Not until you say you're glad to see me. Child dear, we've been ambling along and---- No. You aren't a child any more. You're a woman. And if I've never been quite a man, but just a dusty office-machine, that's gone now. I've got the wind of the wilderness in my lungs. Man and woman! My woman! That's all I'm going to say now, but---- Oh my God, Claire, I do need you so!" He drew her head to his shoulder, and for an instant she rested there. But as she looked up, she saw coming age in the granulated skin of his throat. "He needs me--but he'd boss me. I'd be the cunning child-wife, even at fifty," she worried, and "Hang him, it's like his superiority to beat poor Milt even at adventuring--and to be such a confounded Modest Christian Gentleman about it!" "You'd--you're so dreadfully managing," she sighed aloud. For the first time in all their acquaintanceship, Jeff's pride broke, and he held her away from him, while his lips were pathetic, and he mourned, "Why do you always try to hurt me?" "Oh, my dear, I don't." "Is it because you resent the decent things I have managed to do?" "I don't understand." "If I have an idea for a party, you think I'm 'managing.' If I think things out deeply, you say I'm dull." "Oh, you aren't. I didn't mean----" "What are you? A real woman, or one of these flirts, that love to tease a man because he's foolish enough to be honestly in love?" "I'm not--hon-estly I'm not, Jeff. It's---- You don't quite make me---- It's just that I'm not in love with you. I like you, and respect you terribly, but----" "I'm going to make you love me." His clutching fingers hurt her arm, and somehow she was not angry, but stirred. "But I'm not going to try now. Forget the Alaskan caveman. Remember, I haven't even used the word 'love.' I've just chatted about fjords, or whatever they are, but one of these days---- No. I won't do it. I want to stay here in Seattle a few days, and take you on jolly picnics, but---- Would you rather I didn't even do that? I'm----" He dropped her arm, kneaded his forehead with the heel of his palm. "I can't stand being regarded as a bothersome puppy. I can't stand it! I can't!" "Please stay, Jeff! We'll have some darling drives and things. We'll go up Rainier as far as we can." He stayed. He was anecdotal and amusing at tea, that afternoon. Claire saw how the Gilsons, and two girls who dropped in, admired him. That made her uneasy. And when Mrs. Gilson begged him to leave his hotel and stay with them, he refused with a quick look at Claire that hurt her. "He wants me to be free. He's really so much more considerate than Milt. And I hurt him. Even his pride broke down. And I've spoiled Milt's life by meddling. And I've hurt the Gilsons' feelings. And I'm not much of a comfort to father. Oh, I'm absolutely no good," she agonized. CHAPTER XXX THE VIRTUOUS PLOTTERS Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, in Alaskan tan and New York evening clothes and Piccadilly poise, was talking to the Eugene Gilsons while Claire finished dressing for the theater. Mrs. Gilson observed, "She's the dearest thing. We've become awfully fond of her. But I don't think she knows what she wants to do with life. She's rather at loose ends. Who is this Daggett boy--some university student--whom she seems to like?" "Well, since you speak of him---- I hadn't meant to, unless you did. I want to be fair to him. What did she tell you about him?" Jeff asked confidentially. "Nothing, except that he's a young engineer, and frightfully brave and all those uncomfortable virtues, and she met him in Yellowstone Park or somewhere, and he saved her from a bear--or was it a tramp?--from something unnecessary, at any rate." "Eva, I don't want to be supercilious, but the truth is that this young Daggett is a rather dreadful person. He's been here at the house, hasn't he? How did he strike you?" "Not at all. He's silent, and as dull as lukewarm tea, but perfectly inoffensive." "Then he's cleverer than I thought! Daggett is anything but dull and inoffensive, and if he can play that estimable r le----! It seems that he is the son of some common workman in the Middlewest; he isn't an engineer at all; he's really a chauffeur or a taxi-driver or something; and he ran into Claire and Henry B. on the road, and somehow insinuated himself into their graces--far from being silent and commonplace, he appears to have some strange kind of charm which," Jeff sighed, "I don't understand at all. I simply don't understand it! "I met him in Montana with the most gorgeously atrocious person I've ever encountered--one Pinky Westlake, or some such a name--positively, a crook! He tried to get Boltwood and myself interested in the commonest kind of a mining swindle--hinted that we were to join him in cheating the public. And this Daggett was his partner--they actually traveled together. But I do want to be just. I'm not _sure_ that Daggett was aware of his partner's dishonesty. That isn't what worries me about the lad. It's his utter impossibility. He's as crude as iron-ore. When he's being careful, he may manage to be inconspicuous, but give him the chance---- "Really, I'm not exaggerating when I say that at thirty-five he'll be dining in his shirt-sleeves, and sitting down to read the paper with his shoes off and feet up on the table. But Claire--you know what a dear Quixotic soul she is--she fancies that because this fellow repaired a puncture or something of the sort for her on the road, she's indebted to him, and the worse he is, the more she feels that she must help him. And affairs of that kind---- Oh, it's quite too horrible, but there have been cases, you know, where girls as splendid and fine and well-bred as Claire herself have been trapped into low marriages by their loyalty to cadging adventurers!" "Oh!" groaned Mrs. Gilson; and "Good Lord!" lamented Mr. Gilson, delighted by the possibility of tragedy; and "Really, I'm not exaggerating," said Jeff enthusiastically. "What are we going to do?" demanded Mrs. Gilson; while Mr. Gilson, being of a ready and inventive mind, exclaimed, "By Jove, you ought to kidnap her and marry her yourself, Jeff!" "I'd like to. But I'm too old." They beautifully assured him that he was a blithe young thing with milk teeth; and with a certain satisfaction Jeff suggested, "I tell you what we might do. Of course it's an ancient stunt, but it's good. I judge that Daggett hasn't been here at the house much. Why not have him here so often that Claire will awaken to his crudity, and get sick of him?" "We'll do it," thrilled Mrs. Gilson. "We'll have him for everything from nine-course dinners with Grandmother Eaton's napkins on view, to milk and cold ham out of the ice-box. When Claire doesn't invite him, I will!" CHAPTER XXXI THE KITCHEN INTIMATE Milt had become used to the Gilson drawing-room. He was no longer uncomfortable in the presence of its sleek fatness, though at first (not knowing that there were such resources as interior decorators), he had been convinced that, to have created the room, the Gilsons must have known everything in the world. Now he glanced familiarly at its white paneling, its sconces like silver candlesticks, the inevitable davenport inevitably backed by an amethyst-shaded piano lamp and a table crowded with silver boxes and picture-frames. He liked the winsomeness of light upon velvet and polished wood. It was not the drawing-room but the kitchen that dismayed him. In Schoenstrom he had known that there must somewhere be beautiful "parlors," but he had trusted in his experience of kitchens. Kitchens, according to his philosophy, were small smelly rooms of bare floors, and provided with one oilcloth-covered table, one stove (the front draft always broken and propped up with the lid-lifter), one cupboard with panes of tin pierced in rosettes, and one stack of dirty dishes. But the Gilson kitchen had the efficiency of a laboratory and the superciliousness of a hair-dresser's booth. With awe Milt beheld walls of white tiles, a cork floor, a gas-range large as a hotel-stove, a ceiling-high refrigerator of enamel and nickel, zinc-topped tables, and a case of utensils like a surgeon's knives. It frightened him; it made more hopelessly unapproachable than ever the Alexandrian luxury of the great Gilsons.... The Vanderbilts' kitchen must be like this. And maybe King George's. He was viewing the kitchen upon the occasion of an intimate Sunday evening supper to which he had been yearningly invited by Mrs. Gilson. The maids were all out. The Gilsons and Claire, Milt and Jeff Saxton, shoutingly prepared their own supper. While Mrs. Gilson scrambled eggs and made coffee, the others set the table, and brought cold ham and a bowl of salad from the ice-box. Milt had intended to be a silent but deft servitor. When he had heard that he was to come to supper with the returned Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, he had first been panic-shaken, then resolved. He'd "let old iron-face Saxton do the high and mighty. Let him stand around and show off his clothes and adjectives, way he did at Flathead Lake." But he, Milt, would be "on the job." He'd help get supper, and calmly ignore Jeff's rudeness. Only--Jeff wasn't rude. He greeted Milt with, "Ah, Daggett! This is _so_ nice!" And Milt had no chance to help. It was Jeff who anticipated him and with a pleasant, "Let me get that--I'm kitchen-broke," snatched up the cold ham and salad. It was Jeff who found the supper plates, while Milt was blunderingly wondering how any one family could use a "whole furniture-store-full of different kinds of china." It was Jeff who sprang to help Claire wheel in the tea-wagon, and so captured the chance to speak to her for which Milt had been maneuvering these five minutes. When they were settled, Jeff glowed at him, and respectfully offered, "I thought of you so often, Daggett, on a recent little jaunt of mine. You'd have been helpful." "Where was that?" asked Milt suspiciously (wondering, and waiting to see, whether you could take cold ham in your fingers). "Oh, in Alaska." "In--Alaska?" Milt was dismayed. "Yes, just a business trip there. There's something I wish you'd advise me about." He was humble. And Milt was uneasy. He grumbled, "What's that?" "I've been wondering whether it would be possible to use wireless telephony in Alaska. But I'm such a dub at electricity. Do you know---- What would be the cost of installing a wireless telephone plant with a hundred-mile radius?" "Gee, I don't know!" "Oh, so sorry. Well, I wonder if you can tell me about wireless telegraphy, then?" "No, I don't know anything about that either." Milt had desperately tried to make his answer gracious but somehow---- He hated this devil's obsequiousness more than he had his chilliness at Flathead Lake. He had a feeling that the Gilsons had delightedly kicked each other under the table; that, for all her unchanging smile, Claire was unhappy.... And she was so far off, a white wraith floating beyond his frantic grasp. "It doesn't matter, really. But I didn't know---- So you've started in the engineering school at the University of Washington," Saxton was purring. "Have you met Gid Childers there--son of old Senator Childers--charming people." "I've seen him. He has a Stutz--no, his is the Mercer," sighed Milt. He hated himself for it, but he couldn't quite keep the awe out of his voice. People with Mercers---- Claire seemed to be trying to speak. She made a delicate, feminine, clairesque approximation to clearing her throat. But Jeff ignored her and with almost osculatory affection continued to Milt: "Do let me know if there's anything I can do to help you. We're acquainted with two or three of your engineering faculty at the Office. They write in about various things. Do you happen to know Dr. Philgren?" "Oh yes. Say! He's a wonder!" Milt was betrayed into exclaiming. "Yes. Good chap, I believe. He's been trying to get a job with us. We may give him one. Just tell him you're a friend of mine, and that he's to give you any help he can." Milt choked on a "Thanks." "And--now that we're just the family here together--how goes the financial side? Can I be of any assistance in introducing you to some engineering firm where you could do a little work on the side? You could make quite a little money----" So confoundedly affectionate and paternal---- Milt said irritably, "Thanks, but I don't need to do any work. I've got plenty of money." "How pleasant!" Saxton's voice was smooth as marshmallow. "You're fortunate. I had quite a struggle to get through Princeton." Wasn't Mr. Gilson contrasting Saxton's silk shirt with Milt's darned cotton covering, and in light of that contrast chuckling at Milt's boast and Saxton's modesty? Milt became overheated. His scalp prickled and his shoulder-blades were damp. As Saxton turned from him, and crooned to Claire, "More ham, honey?" Milt hated himself. He was in much of the dramatic but undesirable position of a man in pajamas, not very good pajamas, who has been locked out in the hotel corridor by the slamming of his door. He was in the frame of mind of a mongrel, of a real Boys'-Dog, at a Madison Square dog-show. He had a faint shrewd suspicion of Saxton's game. But what could he do about it? He felt even more out of place when the family forgot him and talked about people of whom he had never heard. He sat alone on an extremely distant desert isle and ate cold ham and wished he were in Schoenstrom. Claire had recovered her power of speech. She seemed to be trying to bring him into the conversation, so that the family might appreciate him. She hesitated, and thought with creased brows, and brought out, "Uh, uh, oh---- Oh Milt: How much is gas selling at now?"... * * * * * Milt left that charming and intimate supper-party at nine. He said, "Got to work on--on my analytical geometry," as though it was a lie; and he threw "Good night" at Saxton as though he hated his kind, good benefactor; and when he tried to be gracious to Mrs. Gilson the best he could get out was, "Thanks f' inviting me." They expansively saw him to the door. Just as he thought that he had escaped, Saxton begged, "Oh, Daggett, I was arguing with a chap---- What color are Holstein-Friesian cattle? Red?" "Black and white," Milt said eagerly. He heard Mrs. Gilson giggle. He stood on the terrace wiping his forehead and, without the least struggle, finally and irretrievably admitting that he would never see Claire Boltwood or any of her friends again. Not--never! * * * * * He had received from Mrs. Gilson a note inviting him to share their box at the first night of a three-night Opera Season. He had spent half a day in trying to think of a courteously rude way of declining. A straggly little girl came up from the candy-shop below his room, demanding, "Say, are you Mr. Daggett? Say, there's some woman wants to talk to you on our telephone. Say, tell them we ain't supposed to be no messenger-office. You ain't supposed to call no upstairs people on our telephone. We ain't supposed to leave the store and go trotting all over town to---- Gee, a nickel, gee, thank you, don't mind what ma says, she's always kicking." On the telephone, he heard Claire's voice in an agitated, "Milt! Meet me down-town, at the Imperial Motion Picture Theater, right away. Something I've got to tell you. I'll be in the lobby. Hurry!" When he bolted in she was already in the lobby, agitatedly looking over a frame of "stills." She ran to him, hooked her fingers in his lapel, poured out, "They've invited you to the opera? I want you to come and put it all over them. I'm almost sure there's a plot. They want to show me that you aren't used to tiaras and saxophones and creaking dowagers and tulle. Beat 'em! Beat 'em! Come to the opera and be awf'ly aloof and supercilious. You can! Yes, you can! And be sure--wear evening clothes. Now I've got to hurry." "B-but----" "Don't disappoint me. I depend on you. Oh, say you will!" "I will!" She was gone, whisking into the Gilson limousine. He was in a glow at her loyalty, in a tremor of anger at the meddlers. But he had never worn evening clothes. He called it "a dress-suit," and before the complications of that exotic garb, he was flabby with anxiety. To Milt and to Schoenstrom--to Bill McGolwey, even to Prof Jones and the greasily prosperous Heinie Rauskukle--the dress-suit was the symbol and proof, the indication and manner, of sophisticated wealth. In Schoenstrom even waiters do not wear dress-suits. For one thing there aren't any waiters. There is one waitress at the Leipzig House, Miss Annie Schweigenblat, but you wouldn't expect Miss Schweigenblat to deal them off the arm in black trousers with braid down the side. No; a dress-suit was what the hero wore in the movies; and the hero in the movies, when he wasn't a cowpuncher, was an ex-captain of the Yale football team, and had chambers and a valet. You could tell him from the valet because he wasn't so bald. It is true that Milt had heard that in St. Cloud there were people who wore dress-suits at parties, but then St. Cloud was a city, fifteen or sixteen thousand. "How could he get away with a dress-suit? How could he keep from feeling foolish in a low-cut vest, and what the deuce would he do with the tails? Did you part 'em or roll 'em up, when you sat down? And wouldn't everybody be able to tell from his foolish look that he didn't belong in one?" He could hear A.D.T. boys and loafers in front of pool rooms whispering, "Look at the piker in the rented soup and fish!" For of course he'd rent one. Nobody bought them--except plutes like Henry B. Boltwood. He agitatedly walked up and down for an hour, peering into haberdashery windows, looking for a kind-faced young man. He found him, in Ye Pall Mall Toggery Shoppe & Shoes; an open-faced young man who was gazing through the window as sparklingly as though he was thinking of going as a missionary to India--and liked curry. Milt ironed out his worried face, clumped in, demanded fraternally, "Say, old man, don't some of these gents' furnishings stores have kind of little charts that tell just what you wear with dress-suits and Prince Alberts and everything?" "You bet," said the kind-faced young man. West of Chicago, "You bet" means "Rather," and "Yes indeed," and "On the whole I should be inclined to fancy that there may be some vestiges of accuracy in your curious opinion," and "You're a liar but I can't afford to say so." The kind-faced young man brought from behind the counter a beautiful brochure illustrated with photographs of Phoebus Apollo in what were described as "American Beauty Garments--neat, natty, nobby, new." The center pages faithfully catalogued the ties, shirts, cuff-links, spats, boots, hats, to wear with evening clothes, morning clothes, riding clothes, tennis costumes, polite mourning. As he looked it over Milt felt that his wardrobe already contained all these gentlemanly possessions. With the aid of the clerk and the chart he purchased a tradition-haunted garment with a plate-armor bosom and an opening as crooked as the Missouri River; a white tie which in his strong red hands looked as silly as a dead fish; waistcoat, pearl links, and studs. For the first time, except for seizures of madness during two or three visits to Minneapolis motor accessory stores, he caught the shopping-fever. The long shining counter, the trim red-stained shelves, the glittering cases, the racks of flaunting ties, were beautiful to him and beckoning. He revolved a pleasantly clicking rack of ties, then turned and fought his way out. He bought pumps--which cost exactly twice as much as the largest sum which he had allowed himself. He bought a newspaper, and in the want-columns found the advertisement: Silberfarb the Society Tailor DRESS SUITS TO RENT Snappiest in the City Despite the superlative snappiness of Mr. Silberfarb's dress-suits his establishment was a loft over a delicatessen, approached by a splintery stairway along which hung shabby signs announcing the upstairs offices of "J. L. & T. J. O'Regan, Private Detectives," "The Zenith Spiritualist Church, Messages by Rev. Lulu Paughouse," "The International Order of Live Ones, Seattle Wigwam," and "Mme. Lavourie, Sulphur Baths." The dead air of the hallway suggested petty crookedness. Milt felt that he ought to fight somebody but, there being no one to fight, he banged along the flapping boards of the second-floor hallway to the ground-glass door of Silberfarb the Society Tailor, who was also, as an afterthought on a straggly placard, "Pressng & Cleang While U Wait." He belligerently shouldered into a low room. The light from the one window was almost obscured by racks of musty-smelling black clothes which stretched away from him in two dismal aisles that resembled a morgue of unhappy dead men indecently hung up on hooks. On a long, clumsily carpentered table, a small Jew, collarless, sweaty, unshaven, was darning trousers under an evil mantle gaslight. The Jew wrung out his hands and tried to look benevolent. "Want to rent a dress-suit," said Milt. "I got just the t'ing for you!" The little man unfolded himself, galloped down the aisle, seized the first garment that came to hand, and came back to lay it against Milt's uncomfortable frame, bumbling, "Fine, mister, fy-en!" Milt studied the shiny-seamed, worn-buttonholed, limp object with dislike. Its personality was disintegrated. The only thing he liked about it was the good garage stink of gasoline. "That's almost worn out," he growled. At this sacrilege Mr. Silberfarb threw up his hands, with the dingy suit flapping in them like a bed-quilt shaken from a tenement window. He looked Milt all over, coldly. His red but shining eyes hinted that Milt was a clodhopper and no honest wearer of evening clothes. Milt felt humble, but he snapped, "No good. Want something with class." "Vell, that was good enough for a university professor at the big dance, but if you say so----" In the manner of one who is being put to an unfair amount of trouble, Mr. Silberfarb returned the paranoiac dress-suit to the rack, sighing patiently as he laboriously draped it on a hanger. He peered and pawed. He crowed with throaty triumph and brought back a rich ripe thing of velvet collar and cuffs. He fixed Milt with eyes that had become as sulky as the eyes of a dog in August dust. "Now that--you can't beat that, if you vant class, and it'll fit you like a glove. Oh, that's an ellllegant garment!" Shaking himself out of the spell of those contemptuous eyes Milt opened his brochure, studied the chart, and in a footnote found, "Never wear velvet collars or cuffs with evening coat." "Nope. Nix on the velvet," he remarked. Then the little man went mad and ran around in circles. He flung the ellllegant garment on the table. He flapped his arms, and wailed, "What do you vant? What do you vannnnt? That's a hundred-and-fifty-dollar dress-suit! That belonged to one of the richest men in the city. He sold it to me because he was going to Japan." "Well, you can send it to Japan after him. I want something decent. Have you got it--or shall I go some place else?" The tailor instantly became affectionate. "How about a nice Tuxedo?" he coaxed. "Nope. It says here--let me see--oh yes, here it is--it says here in the book that for the theater-with-ladies, should not wear 'dinner-coat or so-called Tuxedo, but----'" "Oh, dem fellows what writes books they don't know nothing. Absolute! They make it up." "Huh! Well, I guess I'll take my chance on them. The factory knows the ignition better 'n any repair-man." "Vell say, you're a hard fellow to please. I'll give you one of my reserve stock, but you got to leave me ten dollars deposit instead of five." Mr. Silberfarb quite cheerfully unlocked a glass case behind the racked and ghostly dead; he brought out a suit that seemed to Milt almost decent. And it almost fitted when, after changing clothes in a broiling, boiling, reeking, gasoline-pulsing hole behind the racks, he examined it before a pier-glass. But he caught the tailor assisting the fit by bunching up a roll of cloth at the shoulder. Again Milt snapped, and again the tailor suffered and died, and to a doubting heathen world maintained the true gospel of "What do you vannnnt? It ain't stylish to have the dress-suit too tight! All the gents is wearing 'em loose and graceful." But in the end, after Milt had gone as far as the door, Mr. Silberfarb admitted that one dress-coat wouldn't always fit all persons without some alterations. The coat did bag a little, and it was too long in the sleeves, but as Milt studied himself in his room--by placing his small melancholy mirror on the bureau, then on a chair, then on the floor, finally, to get a complete view, clear out in the hall--he admitted with stirring delight that he looked "pretty fair in the bloomin' outfit." His clear face, his shining hair, his straight shoulders, seemed to go with the costume. He wriggled into his top-coat and marched out of his room, theater-bound, with the well-fed satisfaction of a man who is certain that no one is giggling, "Look at the hand-me-downs." His pumps did alternately pinch his toes and rub his heels; the trousers cramped his waist; and he suspected that his tie had gone wandering. But he swaggered to the trolley, and sat as one rich and famous and very kind to the Common People, till---- Another man in evening clothes got on the car, and Milt saw that he wore a silk hat, and a white knitted scarf; that he took

that

How many times the word 'that' appears in the text?

who was the limp indoor-dweller, and he who was the ruddy ranger; that as he had admired her at Flathead Lake, so now it was hers to admire, and his to be serenely heroic. She was not far from the worshiping sub-deb in her sighing, "How _did_ you get the scar?" "That? Oh, nothing." "Please tell me." "Really and truly. Nothing at all. Just a drunken fellow with a knife, playing the fool. I didn't have to touch him--quite sure he could have given me a frightful beating and all that sort of thing. It was the Big Chief who got rid of him." "He--cut you? With a kniiiiiife? Ohhhhhhh!" She ran to him, pityingly stroked the scar, looked down at him with filmy eyes. Then she tried to retreat, but he retained her hand, glanced up at her as though he knew her every thought. She felt weak. How could she escape him? "Please!" she begged flutteringly. If he held her hand another moment, she trembled, she'd be on his lap, in his arms--lost. And he was holding it. He was---- Oh, he was too old for her. Yes, and too paternal. But still---- Life with Jeff would be protected, kindly, honorable. Yet all the time she wanted, and stormily knew she wanted, to be fleeing to the boy Milt, her mate; to run away with him, hand in hand, discovering all the colored world, laughing at life, not afraid of losing dignity. In fear of Jeff's very kindliness and honor, she jerked her hand free. Then she tried to smile like a clever fencer. As she retreated to her chair she stammered, "Did you---- Was Alaska interesting?" He did not let her go, this time. Easy, cat-like for all his dry gravity, he sauntered after her, and with a fine high seriousness pleaded his case: "Claire dear, those few weeks of fighting nature were a revelation to me. I'm going to have lots more of it. As it happens, they need me there. There's plenty of copper, but there's big transportation and employment problems that I seem better able to solve than the other chaps--though of course I'm an absolute muff when it comes to engineering problems. But I've had certain training and--I'm going to arrange things so that I get up there at least once a year. Next summer I'll make a much longer trip--see the mountains--oh, glorious mountains--and funny half-Russian towns, and have some fishing---- Wandering. The really big thing. Even finer than your superb plucky trip through----" "Wasn't plucky! I'm a cry baby," she said, like a bad, contradictory little girl. He didn't argue it. He smiled and said "Tut!" and placidly catalogued her with, "You're the pluckiest girl I've ever seen, and it's all the more amazing because you're not a motion-picture Tomboy, but essentially exquisite----" "I'm a grub." "Very well, then. You're a grub. So am I. And I like it. And when I make the big Alaskan trip next year I want you to go along! Claire! Haven't you any idea how terribly close to me the thought of you has been these weeks? You've guided me through the wilderness----" "It's---- I'm glad." She sprang up, beseeching, "Jeff dear, you're going to stay for tea? I must run up and powder my nose." "Not until you say you're glad to see me. Child dear, we've been ambling along and---- No. You aren't a child any more. You're a woman. And if I've never been quite a man, but just a dusty office-machine, that's gone now. I've got the wind of the wilderness in my lungs. Man and woman! My woman! That's all I'm going to say now, but---- Oh my God, Claire, I do need you so!" He drew her head to his shoulder, and for an instant she rested there. But as she looked up, she saw coming age in the granulated skin of his throat. "He needs me--but he'd boss me. I'd be the cunning child-wife, even at fifty," she worried, and "Hang him, it's like his superiority to beat poor Milt even at adventuring--and to be such a confounded Modest Christian Gentleman about it!" "You'd--you're so dreadfully managing," she sighed aloud. For the first time in all their acquaintanceship, Jeff's pride broke, and he held her away from him, while his lips were pathetic, and he mourned, "Why do you always try to hurt me?" "Oh, my dear, I don't." "Is it because you resent the decent things I have managed to do?" "I don't understand." "If I have an idea for a party, you think I'm 'managing.' If I think things out deeply, you say I'm dull." "Oh, you aren't. I didn't mean----" "What are you? A real woman, or one of these flirts, that love to tease a man because he's foolish enough to be honestly in love?" "I'm not--hon-estly I'm not, Jeff. It's---- You don't quite make me---- It's just that I'm not in love with you. I like you, and respect you terribly, but----" "I'm going to make you love me." His clutching fingers hurt her arm, and somehow she was not angry, but stirred. "But I'm not going to try now. Forget the Alaskan caveman. Remember, I haven't even used the word 'love.' I've just chatted about fjords, or whatever they are, but one of these days---- No. I won't do it. I want to stay here in Seattle a few days, and take you on jolly picnics, but---- Would you rather I didn't even do that? I'm----" He dropped her arm, kneaded his forehead with the heel of his palm. "I can't stand being regarded as a bothersome puppy. I can't stand it! I can't!" "Please stay, Jeff! We'll have some darling drives and things. We'll go up Rainier as far as we can." He stayed. He was anecdotal and amusing at tea, that afternoon. Claire saw how the Gilsons, and two girls who dropped in, admired him. That made her uneasy. And when Mrs. Gilson begged him to leave his hotel and stay with them, he refused with a quick look at Claire that hurt her. "He wants me to be free. He's really so much more considerate than Milt. And I hurt him. Even his pride broke down. And I've spoiled Milt's life by meddling. And I've hurt the Gilsons' feelings. And I'm not much of a comfort to father. Oh, I'm absolutely no good," she agonized. CHAPTER XXX THE VIRTUOUS PLOTTERS Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, in Alaskan tan and New York evening clothes and Piccadilly poise, was talking to the Eugene Gilsons while Claire finished dressing for the theater. Mrs. Gilson observed, "She's the dearest thing. We've become awfully fond of her. But I don't think she knows what she wants to do with life. She's rather at loose ends. Who is this Daggett boy--some university student--whom she seems to like?" "Well, since you speak of him---- I hadn't meant to, unless you did. I want to be fair to him. What did she tell you about him?" Jeff asked confidentially. "Nothing, except that he's a young engineer, and frightfully brave and all those uncomfortable virtues, and she met him in Yellowstone Park or somewhere, and he saved her from a bear--or was it a tramp?--from something unnecessary, at any rate." "Eva, I don't want to be supercilious, but the truth is that this young Daggett is a rather dreadful person. He's been here at the house, hasn't he? How did he strike you?" "Not at all. He's silent, and as dull as lukewarm tea, but perfectly inoffensive." "Then he's cleverer than I thought! Daggett is anything but dull and inoffensive, and if he can play that estimable r le----! It seems that he is the son of some common workman in the Middlewest; he isn't an engineer at all; he's really a chauffeur or a taxi-driver or something; and he ran into Claire and Henry B. on the road, and somehow insinuated himself into their graces--far from being silent and commonplace, he appears to have some strange kind of charm which," Jeff sighed, "I don't understand at all. I simply don't understand it! "I met him in Montana with the most gorgeously atrocious person I've ever encountered--one Pinky Westlake, or some such a name--positively, a crook! He tried to get Boltwood and myself interested in the commonest kind of a mining swindle--hinted that we were to join him in cheating the public. And this Daggett was his partner--they actually traveled together. But I do want to be just. I'm not _sure_ that Daggett was aware of his partner's dishonesty. That isn't what worries me about the lad. It's his utter impossibility. He's as crude as iron-ore. When he's being careful, he may manage to be inconspicuous, but give him the chance---- "Really, I'm not exaggerating when I say that at thirty-five he'll be dining in his shirt-sleeves, and sitting down to read the paper with his shoes off and feet up on the table. But Claire--you know what a dear Quixotic soul she is--she fancies that because this fellow repaired a puncture or something of the sort for her on the road, she's indebted to him, and the worse he is, the more she feels that she must help him. And affairs of that kind---- Oh, it's quite too horrible, but there have been cases, you know, where girls as splendid and fine and well-bred as Claire herself have been trapped into low marriages by their loyalty to cadging adventurers!" "Oh!" groaned Mrs. Gilson; and "Good Lord!" lamented Mr. Gilson, delighted by the possibility of tragedy; and "Really, I'm not exaggerating," said Jeff enthusiastically. "What are we going to do?" demanded Mrs. Gilson; while Mr. Gilson, being of a ready and inventive mind, exclaimed, "By Jove, you ought to kidnap her and marry her yourself, Jeff!" "I'd like to. But I'm too old." They beautifully assured him that he was a blithe young thing with milk teeth; and with a certain satisfaction Jeff suggested, "I tell you what we might do. Of course it's an ancient stunt, but it's good. I judge that Daggett hasn't been here at the house much. Why not have him here so often that Claire will awaken to his crudity, and get sick of him?" "We'll do it," thrilled Mrs. Gilson. "We'll have him for everything from nine-course dinners with Grandmother Eaton's napkins on view, to milk and cold ham out of the ice-box. When Claire doesn't invite him, I will!" CHAPTER XXXI THE KITCHEN INTIMATE Milt had become used to the Gilson drawing-room. He was no longer uncomfortable in the presence of its sleek fatness, though at first (not knowing that there were such resources as interior decorators), he had been convinced that, to have created the room, the Gilsons must have known everything in the world. Now he glanced familiarly at its white paneling, its sconces like silver candlesticks, the inevitable davenport inevitably backed by an amethyst-shaded piano lamp and a table crowded with silver boxes and picture-frames. He liked the winsomeness of light upon velvet and polished wood. It was not the drawing-room but the kitchen that dismayed him. In Schoenstrom he had known that there must somewhere be beautiful "parlors," but he had trusted in his experience of kitchens. Kitchens, according to his philosophy, were small smelly rooms of bare floors, and provided with one oilcloth-covered table, one stove (the front draft always broken and propped up with the lid-lifter), one cupboard with panes of tin pierced in rosettes, and one stack of dirty dishes. But the Gilson kitchen had the efficiency of a laboratory and the superciliousness of a hair-dresser's booth. With awe Milt beheld walls of white tiles, a cork floor, a gas-range large as a hotel-stove, a ceiling-high refrigerator of enamel and nickel, zinc-topped tables, and a case of utensils like a surgeon's knives. It frightened him; it made more hopelessly unapproachable than ever the Alexandrian luxury of the great Gilsons.... The Vanderbilts' kitchen must be like this. And maybe King George's. He was viewing the kitchen upon the occasion of an intimate Sunday evening supper to which he had been yearningly invited by Mrs. Gilson. The maids were all out. The Gilsons and Claire, Milt and Jeff Saxton, shoutingly prepared their own supper. While Mrs. Gilson scrambled eggs and made coffee, the others set the table, and brought cold ham and a bowl of salad from the ice-box. Milt had intended to be a silent but deft servitor. When he had heard that he was to come to supper with the returned Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, he had first been panic-shaken, then resolved. He'd "let old iron-face Saxton do the high and mighty. Let him stand around and show off his clothes and adjectives, way he did at Flathead Lake." But he, Milt, would be "on the job." He'd help get supper, and calmly ignore Jeff's rudeness. Only--Jeff wasn't rude. He greeted Milt with, "Ah, Daggett! This is _so_ nice!" And Milt had no chance to help. It was Jeff who anticipated him and with a pleasant, "Let me get that--I'm kitchen-broke," snatched up the cold ham and salad. It was Jeff who found the supper plates, while Milt was blunderingly wondering how any one family could use a "whole furniture-store-full of different kinds of china." It was Jeff who sprang to help Claire wheel in the tea-wagon, and so captured the chance to speak to her for which Milt had been maneuvering these five minutes. When they were settled, Jeff glowed at him, and respectfully offered, "I thought of you so often, Daggett, on a recent little jaunt of mine. You'd have been helpful." "Where was that?" asked Milt suspiciously (wondering, and waiting to see, whether you could take cold ham in your fingers). "Oh, in Alaska." "In--Alaska?" Milt was dismayed. "Yes, just a business trip there. There's something I wish you'd advise me about." He was humble. And Milt was uneasy. He grumbled, "What's that?" "I've been wondering whether it would be possible to use wireless telephony in Alaska. But I'm such a dub at electricity. Do you know---- What would be the cost of installing a wireless telephone plant with a hundred-mile radius?" "Gee, I don't know!" "Oh, so sorry. Well, I wonder if you can tell me about wireless telegraphy, then?" "No, I don't know anything about that either." Milt had desperately tried to make his answer gracious but somehow---- He hated this devil's obsequiousness more than he had his chilliness at Flathead Lake. He had a feeling that the Gilsons had delightedly kicked each other under the table; that, for all her unchanging smile, Claire was unhappy.... And she was so far off, a white wraith floating beyond his frantic grasp. "It doesn't matter, really. But I didn't know---- So you've started in the engineering school at the University of Washington," Saxton was purring. "Have you met Gid Childers there--son of old Senator Childers--charming people." "I've seen him. He has a Stutz--no, his is the Mercer," sighed Milt. He hated himself for it, but he couldn't quite keep the awe out of his voice. People with Mercers---- Claire seemed to be trying to speak. She made a delicate, feminine, clairesque approximation to clearing her throat. But Jeff ignored her and with almost osculatory affection continued to Milt: "Do let me know if there's anything I can do to help you. We're acquainted with two or three of your engineering faculty at the Office. They write in about various things. Do you happen to know Dr. Philgren?" "Oh yes. Say! He's a wonder!" Milt was betrayed into exclaiming. "Yes. Good chap, I believe. He's been trying to get a job with us. We may give him one. Just tell him you're a friend of mine, and that he's to give you any help he can." Milt choked on a "Thanks." "And--now that we're just the family here together--how goes the financial side? Can I be of any assistance in introducing you to some engineering firm where you could do a little work on the side? You could make quite a little money----" So confoundedly affectionate and paternal---- Milt said irritably, "Thanks, but I don't need to do any work. I've got plenty of money." "How pleasant!" Saxton's voice was smooth as marshmallow. "You're fortunate. I had quite a struggle to get through Princeton." Wasn't Mr. Gilson contrasting Saxton's silk shirt with Milt's darned cotton covering, and in light of that contrast chuckling at Milt's boast and Saxton's modesty? Milt became overheated. His scalp prickled and his shoulder-blades were damp. As Saxton turned from him, and crooned to Claire, "More ham, honey?" Milt hated himself. He was in much of the dramatic but undesirable position of a man in pajamas, not very good pajamas, who has been locked out in the hotel corridor by the slamming of his door. He was in the frame of mind of a mongrel, of a real Boys'-Dog, at a Madison Square dog-show. He had a faint shrewd suspicion of Saxton's game. But what could he do about it? He felt even more out of place when the family forgot him and talked about people of whom he had never heard. He sat alone on an extremely distant desert isle and ate cold ham and wished he were in Schoenstrom. Claire had recovered her power of speech. She seemed to be trying to bring him into the conversation, so that the family might appreciate him. She hesitated, and thought with creased brows, and brought out, "Uh, uh, oh---- Oh Milt: How much is gas selling at now?"... * * * * * Milt left that charming and intimate supper-party at nine. He said, "Got to work on--on my analytical geometry," as though it was a lie; and he threw "Good night" at Saxton as though he hated his kind, good benefactor; and when he tried to be gracious to Mrs. Gilson the best he could get out was, "Thanks f' inviting me." They expansively saw him to the door. Just as he thought that he had escaped, Saxton begged, "Oh, Daggett, I was arguing with a chap---- What color are Holstein-Friesian cattle? Red?" "Black and white," Milt said eagerly. He heard Mrs. Gilson giggle. He stood on the terrace wiping his forehead and, without the least struggle, finally and irretrievably admitting that he would never see Claire Boltwood or any of her friends again. Not--never! * * * * * He had received from Mrs. Gilson a note inviting him to share their box at the first night of a three-night Opera Season. He had spent half a day in trying to think of a courteously rude way of declining. A straggly little girl came up from the candy-shop below his room, demanding, "Say, are you Mr. Daggett? Say, there's some woman wants to talk to you on our telephone. Say, tell them we ain't supposed to be no messenger-office. You ain't supposed to call no upstairs people on our telephone. We ain't supposed to leave the store and go trotting all over town to---- Gee, a nickel, gee, thank you, don't mind what ma says, she's always kicking." On the telephone, he heard Claire's voice in an agitated, "Milt! Meet me down-town, at the Imperial Motion Picture Theater, right away. Something I've got to tell you. I'll be in the lobby. Hurry!" When he bolted in she was already in the lobby, agitatedly looking over a frame of "stills." She ran to him, hooked her fingers in his lapel, poured out, "They've invited you to the opera? I want you to come and put it all over them. I'm almost sure there's a plot. They want to show me that you aren't used to tiaras and saxophones and creaking dowagers and tulle. Beat 'em! Beat 'em! Come to the opera and be awf'ly aloof and supercilious. You can! Yes, you can! And be sure--wear evening clothes. Now I've got to hurry." "B-but----" "Don't disappoint me. I depend on you. Oh, say you will!" "I will!" She was gone, whisking into the Gilson limousine. He was in a glow at her loyalty, in a tremor of anger at the meddlers. But he had never worn evening clothes. He called it "a dress-suit," and before the complications of that exotic garb, he was flabby with anxiety. To Milt and to Schoenstrom--to Bill McGolwey, even to Prof Jones and the greasily prosperous Heinie Rauskukle--the dress-suit was the symbol and proof, the indication and manner, of sophisticated wealth. In Schoenstrom even waiters do not wear dress-suits. For one thing there aren't any waiters. There is one waitress at the Leipzig House, Miss Annie Schweigenblat, but you wouldn't expect Miss Schweigenblat to deal them off the arm in black trousers with braid down the side. No; a dress-suit was what the hero wore in the movies; and the hero in the movies, when he wasn't a cowpuncher, was an ex-captain of the Yale football team, and had chambers and a valet. You could tell him from the valet because he wasn't so bald. It is true that Milt had heard that in St. Cloud there were people who wore dress-suits at parties, but then St. Cloud was a city, fifteen or sixteen thousand. "How could he get away with a dress-suit? How could he keep from feeling foolish in a low-cut vest, and what the deuce would he do with the tails? Did you part 'em or roll 'em up, when you sat down? And wouldn't everybody be able to tell from his foolish look that he didn't belong in one?" He could hear A.D.T. boys and loafers in front of pool rooms whispering, "Look at the piker in the rented soup and fish!" For of course he'd rent one. Nobody bought them--except plutes like Henry B. Boltwood. He agitatedly walked up and down for an hour, peering into haberdashery windows, looking for a kind-faced young man. He found him, in Ye Pall Mall Toggery Shoppe & Shoes; an open-faced young man who was gazing through the window as sparklingly as though he was thinking of going as a missionary to India--and liked curry. Milt ironed out his worried face, clumped in, demanded fraternally, "Say, old man, don't some of these gents' furnishings stores have kind of little charts that tell just what you wear with dress-suits and Prince Alberts and everything?" "You bet," said the kind-faced young man. West of Chicago, "You bet" means "Rather," and "Yes indeed," and "On the whole I should be inclined to fancy that there may be some vestiges of accuracy in your curious opinion," and "You're a liar but I can't afford to say so." The kind-faced young man brought from behind the counter a beautiful brochure illustrated with photographs of Phoebus Apollo in what were described as "American Beauty Garments--neat, natty, nobby, new." The center pages faithfully catalogued the ties, shirts, cuff-links, spats, boots, hats, to wear with evening clothes, morning clothes, riding clothes, tennis costumes, polite mourning. As he looked it over Milt felt that his wardrobe already contained all these gentlemanly possessions. With the aid of the clerk and the chart he purchased a tradition-haunted garment with a plate-armor bosom and an opening as crooked as the Missouri River; a white tie which in his strong red hands looked as silly as a dead fish; waistcoat, pearl links, and studs. For the first time, except for seizures of madness during two or three visits to Minneapolis motor accessory stores, he caught the shopping-fever. The long shining counter, the trim red-stained shelves, the glittering cases, the racks of flaunting ties, were beautiful to him and beckoning. He revolved a pleasantly clicking rack of ties, then turned and fought his way out. He bought pumps--which cost exactly twice as much as the largest sum which he had allowed himself. He bought a newspaper, and in the want-columns found the advertisement: Silberfarb the Society Tailor DRESS SUITS TO RENT Snappiest in the City Despite the superlative snappiness of Mr. Silberfarb's dress-suits his establishment was a loft over a delicatessen, approached by a splintery stairway along which hung shabby signs announcing the upstairs offices of "J. L. & T. J. O'Regan, Private Detectives," "The Zenith Spiritualist Church, Messages by Rev. Lulu Paughouse," "The International Order of Live Ones, Seattle Wigwam," and "Mme. Lavourie, Sulphur Baths." The dead air of the hallway suggested petty crookedness. Milt felt that he ought to fight somebody but, there being no one to fight, he banged along the flapping boards of the second-floor hallway to the ground-glass door of Silberfarb the Society Tailor, who was also, as an afterthought on a straggly placard, "Pressng & Cleang While U Wait." He belligerently shouldered into a low room. The light from the one window was almost obscured by racks of musty-smelling black clothes which stretched away from him in two dismal aisles that resembled a morgue of unhappy dead men indecently hung up on hooks. On a long, clumsily carpentered table, a small Jew, collarless, sweaty, unshaven, was darning trousers under an evil mantle gaslight. The Jew wrung out his hands and tried to look benevolent. "Want to rent a dress-suit," said Milt. "I got just the t'ing for you!" The little man unfolded himself, galloped down the aisle, seized the first garment that came to hand, and came back to lay it against Milt's uncomfortable frame, bumbling, "Fine, mister, fy-en!" Milt studied the shiny-seamed, worn-buttonholed, limp object with dislike. Its personality was disintegrated. The only thing he liked about it was the good garage stink of gasoline. "That's almost worn out," he growled. At this sacrilege Mr. Silberfarb threw up his hands, with the dingy suit flapping in them like a bed-quilt shaken from a tenement window. He looked Milt all over, coldly. His red but shining eyes hinted that Milt was a clodhopper and no honest wearer of evening clothes. Milt felt humble, but he snapped, "No good. Want something with class." "Vell, that was good enough for a university professor at the big dance, but if you say so----" In the manner of one who is being put to an unfair amount of trouble, Mr. Silberfarb returned the paranoiac dress-suit to the rack, sighing patiently as he laboriously draped it on a hanger. He peered and pawed. He crowed with throaty triumph and brought back a rich ripe thing of velvet collar and cuffs. He fixed Milt with eyes that had become as sulky as the eyes of a dog in August dust. "Now that--you can't beat that, if you vant class, and it'll fit you like a glove. Oh, that's an ellllegant garment!" Shaking himself out of the spell of those contemptuous eyes Milt opened his brochure, studied the chart, and in a footnote found, "Never wear velvet collars or cuffs with evening coat." "Nope. Nix on the velvet," he remarked. Then the little man went mad and ran around in circles. He flung the ellllegant garment on the table. He flapped his arms, and wailed, "What do you vant? What do you vannnnt? That's a hundred-and-fifty-dollar dress-suit! That belonged to one of the richest men in the city. He sold it to me because he was going to Japan." "Well, you can send it to Japan after him. I want something decent. Have you got it--or shall I go some place else?" The tailor instantly became affectionate. "How about a nice Tuxedo?" he coaxed. "Nope. It says here--let me see--oh yes, here it is--it says here in the book that for the theater-with-ladies, should not wear 'dinner-coat or so-called Tuxedo, but----'" "Oh, dem fellows what writes books they don't know nothing. Absolute! They make it up." "Huh! Well, I guess I'll take my chance on them. The factory knows the ignition better 'n any repair-man." "Vell say, you're a hard fellow to please. I'll give you one of my reserve stock, but you got to leave me ten dollars deposit instead of five." Mr. Silberfarb quite cheerfully unlocked a glass case behind the racked and ghostly dead; he brought out a suit that seemed to Milt almost decent. And it almost fitted when, after changing clothes in a broiling, boiling, reeking, gasoline-pulsing hole behind the racks, he examined it before a pier-glass. But he caught the tailor assisting the fit by bunching up a roll of cloth at the shoulder. Again Milt snapped, and again the tailor suffered and died, and to a doubting heathen world maintained the true gospel of "What do you vannnnt? It ain't stylish to have the dress-suit too tight! All the gents is wearing 'em loose and graceful." But in the end, after Milt had gone as far as the door, Mr. Silberfarb admitted that one dress-coat wouldn't always fit all persons without some alterations. The coat did bag a little, and it was too long in the sleeves, but as Milt studied himself in his room--by placing his small melancholy mirror on the bureau, then on a chair, then on the floor, finally, to get a complete view, clear out in the hall--he admitted with stirring delight that he looked "pretty fair in the bloomin' outfit." His clear face, his shining hair, his straight shoulders, seemed to go with the costume. He wriggled into his top-coat and marched out of his room, theater-bound, with the well-fed satisfaction of a man who is certain that no one is giggling, "Look at the hand-me-downs." His pumps did alternately pinch his toes and rub his heels; the trousers cramped his waist; and he suspected that his tie had gone wandering. But he swaggered to the trolley, and sat as one rich and famous and very kind to the Common People, till---- Another man in evening clothes got on the car, and Milt saw that he wore a silk hat, and a white knitted scarf; that he took

knew

How many times the word 'knew' appears in the text?

who was the limp indoor-dweller, and he who was the ruddy ranger; that as he had admired her at Flathead Lake, so now it was hers to admire, and his to be serenely heroic. She was not far from the worshiping sub-deb in her sighing, "How _did_ you get the scar?" "That? Oh, nothing." "Please tell me." "Really and truly. Nothing at all. Just a drunken fellow with a knife, playing the fool. I didn't have to touch him--quite sure he could have given me a frightful beating and all that sort of thing. It was the Big Chief who got rid of him." "He--cut you? With a kniiiiiife? Ohhhhhhh!" She ran to him, pityingly stroked the scar, looked down at him with filmy eyes. Then she tried to retreat, but he retained her hand, glanced up at her as though he knew her every thought. She felt weak. How could she escape him? "Please!" she begged flutteringly. If he held her hand another moment, she trembled, she'd be on his lap, in his arms--lost. And he was holding it. He was---- Oh, he was too old for her. Yes, and too paternal. But still---- Life with Jeff would be protected, kindly, honorable. Yet all the time she wanted, and stormily knew she wanted, to be fleeing to the boy Milt, her mate; to run away with him, hand in hand, discovering all the colored world, laughing at life, not afraid of losing dignity. In fear of Jeff's very kindliness and honor, she jerked her hand free. Then she tried to smile like a clever fencer. As she retreated to her chair she stammered, "Did you---- Was Alaska interesting?" He did not let her go, this time. Easy, cat-like for all his dry gravity, he sauntered after her, and with a fine high seriousness pleaded his case: "Claire dear, those few weeks of fighting nature were a revelation to me. I'm going to have lots more of it. As it happens, they need me there. There's plenty of copper, but there's big transportation and employment problems that I seem better able to solve than the other chaps--though of course I'm an absolute muff when it comes to engineering problems. But I've had certain training and--I'm going to arrange things so that I get up there at least once a year. Next summer I'll make a much longer trip--see the mountains--oh, glorious mountains--and funny half-Russian towns, and have some fishing---- Wandering. The really big thing. Even finer than your superb plucky trip through----" "Wasn't plucky! I'm a cry baby," she said, like a bad, contradictory little girl. He didn't argue it. He smiled and said "Tut!" and placidly catalogued her with, "You're the pluckiest girl I've ever seen, and it's all the more amazing because you're not a motion-picture Tomboy, but essentially exquisite----" "I'm a grub." "Very well, then. You're a grub. So am I. And I like it. And when I make the big Alaskan trip next year I want you to go along! Claire! Haven't you any idea how terribly close to me the thought of you has been these weeks? You've guided me through the wilderness----" "It's---- I'm glad." She sprang up, beseeching, "Jeff dear, you're going to stay for tea? I must run up and powder my nose." "Not until you say you're glad to see me. Child dear, we've been ambling along and---- No. You aren't a child any more. You're a woman. And if I've never been quite a man, but just a dusty office-machine, that's gone now. I've got the wind of the wilderness in my lungs. Man and woman! My woman! That's all I'm going to say now, but---- Oh my God, Claire, I do need you so!" He drew her head to his shoulder, and for an instant she rested there. But as she looked up, she saw coming age in the granulated skin of his throat. "He needs me--but he'd boss me. I'd be the cunning child-wife, even at fifty," she worried, and "Hang him, it's like his superiority to beat poor Milt even at adventuring--and to be such a confounded Modest Christian Gentleman about it!" "You'd--you're so dreadfully managing," she sighed aloud. For the first time in all their acquaintanceship, Jeff's pride broke, and he held her away from him, while his lips were pathetic, and he mourned, "Why do you always try to hurt me?" "Oh, my dear, I don't." "Is it because you resent the decent things I have managed to do?" "I don't understand." "If I have an idea for a party, you think I'm 'managing.' If I think things out deeply, you say I'm dull." "Oh, you aren't. I didn't mean----" "What are you? A real woman, or one of these flirts, that love to tease a man because he's foolish enough to be honestly in love?" "I'm not--hon-estly I'm not, Jeff. It's---- You don't quite make me---- It's just that I'm not in love with you. I like you, and respect you terribly, but----" "I'm going to make you love me." His clutching fingers hurt her arm, and somehow she was not angry, but stirred. "But I'm not going to try now. Forget the Alaskan caveman. Remember, I haven't even used the word 'love.' I've just chatted about fjords, or whatever they are, but one of these days---- No. I won't do it. I want to stay here in Seattle a few days, and take you on jolly picnics, but---- Would you rather I didn't even do that? I'm----" He dropped her arm, kneaded his forehead with the heel of his palm. "I can't stand being regarded as a bothersome puppy. I can't stand it! I can't!" "Please stay, Jeff! We'll have some darling drives and things. We'll go up Rainier as far as we can." He stayed. He was anecdotal and amusing at tea, that afternoon. Claire saw how the Gilsons, and two girls who dropped in, admired him. That made her uneasy. And when Mrs. Gilson begged him to leave his hotel and stay with them, he refused with a quick look at Claire that hurt her. "He wants me to be free. He's really so much more considerate than Milt. And I hurt him. Even his pride broke down. And I've spoiled Milt's life by meddling. And I've hurt the Gilsons' feelings. And I'm not much of a comfort to father. Oh, I'm absolutely no good," she agonized. CHAPTER XXX THE VIRTUOUS PLOTTERS Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, in Alaskan tan and New York evening clothes and Piccadilly poise, was talking to the Eugene Gilsons while Claire finished dressing for the theater. Mrs. Gilson observed, "She's the dearest thing. We've become awfully fond of her. But I don't think she knows what she wants to do with life. She's rather at loose ends. Who is this Daggett boy--some university student--whom she seems to like?" "Well, since you speak of him---- I hadn't meant to, unless you did. I want to be fair to him. What did she tell you about him?" Jeff asked confidentially. "Nothing, except that he's a young engineer, and frightfully brave and all those uncomfortable virtues, and she met him in Yellowstone Park or somewhere, and he saved her from a bear--or was it a tramp?--from something unnecessary, at any rate." "Eva, I don't want to be supercilious, but the truth is that this young Daggett is a rather dreadful person. He's been here at the house, hasn't he? How did he strike you?" "Not at all. He's silent, and as dull as lukewarm tea, but perfectly inoffensive." "Then he's cleverer than I thought! Daggett is anything but dull and inoffensive, and if he can play that estimable r le----! It seems that he is the son of some common workman in the Middlewest; he isn't an engineer at all; he's really a chauffeur or a taxi-driver or something; and he ran into Claire and Henry B. on the road, and somehow insinuated himself into their graces--far from being silent and commonplace, he appears to have some strange kind of charm which," Jeff sighed, "I don't understand at all. I simply don't understand it! "I met him in Montana with the most gorgeously atrocious person I've ever encountered--one Pinky Westlake, or some such a name--positively, a crook! He tried to get Boltwood and myself interested in the commonest kind of a mining swindle--hinted that we were to join him in cheating the public. And this Daggett was his partner--they actually traveled together. But I do want to be just. I'm not _sure_ that Daggett was aware of his partner's dishonesty. That isn't what worries me about the lad. It's his utter impossibility. He's as crude as iron-ore. When he's being careful, he may manage to be inconspicuous, but give him the chance---- "Really, I'm not exaggerating when I say that at thirty-five he'll be dining in his shirt-sleeves, and sitting down to read the paper with his shoes off and feet up on the table. But Claire--you know what a dear Quixotic soul she is--she fancies that because this fellow repaired a puncture or something of the sort for her on the road, she's indebted to him, and the worse he is, the more she feels that she must help him. And affairs of that kind---- Oh, it's quite too horrible, but there have been cases, you know, where girls as splendid and fine and well-bred as Claire herself have been trapped into low marriages by their loyalty to cadging adventurers!" "Oh!" groaned Mrs. Gilson; and "Good Lord!" lamented Mr. Gilson, delighted by the possibility of tragedy; and "Really, I'm not exaggerating," said Jeff enthusiastically. "What are we going to do?" demanded Mrs. Gilson; while Mr. Gilson, being of a ready and inventive mind, exclaimed, "By Jove, you ought to kidnap her and marry her yourself, Jeff!" "I'd like to. But I'm too old." They beautifully assured him that he was a blithe young thing with milk teeth; and with a certain satisfaction Jeff suggested, "I tell you what we might do. Of course it's an ancient stunt, but it's good. I judge that Daggett hasn't been here at the house much. Why not have him here so often that Claire will awaken to his crudity, and get sick of him?" "We'll do it," thrilled Mrs. Gilson. "We'll have him for everything from nine-course dinners with Grandmother Eaton's napkins on view, to milk and cold ham out of the ice-box. When Claire doesn't invite him, I will!" CHAPTER XXXI THE KITCHEN INTIMATE Milt had become used to the Gilson drawing-room. He was no longer uncomfortable in the presence of its sleek fatness, though at first (not knowing that there were such resources as interior decorators), he had been convinced that, to have created the room, the Gilsons must have known everything in the world. Now he glanced familiarly at its white paneling, its sconces like silver candlesticks, the inevitable davenport inevitably backed by an amethyst-shaded piano lamp and a table crowded with silver boxes and picture-frames. He liked the winsomeness of light upon velvet and polished wood. It was not the drawing-room but the kitchen that dismayed him. In Schoenstrom he had known that there must somewhere be beautiful "parlors," but he had trusted in his experience of kitchens. Kitchens, according to his philosophy, were small smelly rooms of bare floors, and provided with one oilcloth-covered table, one stove (the front draft always broken and propped up with the lid-lifter), one cupboard with panes of tin pierced in rosettes, and one stack of dirty dishes. But the Gilson kitchen had the efficiency of a laboratory and the superciliousness of a hair-dresser's booth. With awe Milt beheld walls of white tiles, a cork floor, a gas-range large as a hotel-stove, a ceiling-high refrigerator of enamel and nickel, zinc-topped tables, and a case of utensils like a surgeon's knives. It frightened him; it made more hopelessly unapproachable than ever the Alexandrian luxury of the great Gilsons.... The Vanderbilts' kitchen must be like this. And maybe King George's. He was viewing the kitchen upon the occasion of an intimate Sunday evening supper to which he had been yearningly invited by Mrs. Gilson. The maids were all out. The Gilsons and Claire, Milt and Jeff Saxton, shoutingly prepared their own supper. While Mrs. Gilson scrambled eggs and made coffee, the others set the table, and brought cold ham and a bowl of salad from the ice-box. Milt had intended to be a silent but deft servitor. When he had heard that he was to come to supper with the returned Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, he had first been panic-shaken, then resolved. He'd "let old iron-face Saxton do the high and mighty. Let him stand around and show off his clothes and adjectives, way he did at Flathead Lake." But he, Milt, would be "on the job." He'd help get supper, and calmly ignore Jeff's rudeness. Only--Jeff wasn't rude. He greeted Milt with, "Ah, Daggett! This is _so_ nice!" And Milt had no chance to help. It was Jeff who anticipated him and with a pleasant, "Let me get that--I'm kitchen-broke," snatched up the cold ham and salad. It was Jeff who found the supper plates, while Milt was blunderingly wondering how any one family could use a "whole furniture-store-full of different kinds of china." It was Jeff who sprang to help Claire wheel in the tea-wagon, and so captured the chance to speak to her for which Milt had been maneuvering these five minutes. When they were settled, Jeff glowed at him, and respectfully offered, "I thought of you so often, Daggett, on a recent little jaunt of mine. You'd have been helpful." "Where was that?" asked Milt suspiciously (wondering, and waiting to see, whether you could take cold ham in your fingers). "Oh, in Alaska." "In--Alaska?" Milt was dismayed. "Yes, just a business trip there. There's something I wish you'd advise me about." He was humble. And Milt was uneasy. He grumbled, "What's that?" "I've been wondering whether it would be possible to use wireless telephony in Alaska. But I'm such a dub at electricity. Do you know---- What would be the cost of installing a wireless telephone plant with a hundred-mile radius?" "Gee, I don't know!" "Oh, so sorry. Well, I wonder if you can tell me about wireless telegraphy, then?" "No, I don't know anything about that either." Milt had desperately tried to make his answer gracious but somehow---- He hated this devil's obsequiousness more than he had his chilliness at Flathead Lake. He had a feeling that the Gilsons had delightedly kicked each other under the table; that, for all her unchanging smile, Claire was unhappy.... And she was so far off, a white wraith floating beyond his frantic grasp. "It doesn't matter, really. But I didn't know---- So you've started in the engineering school at the University of Washington," Saxton was purring. "Have you met Gid Childers there--son of old Senator Childers--charming people." "I've seen him. He has a Stutz--no, his is the Mercer," sighed Milt. He hated himself for it, but he couldn't quite keep the awe out of his voice. People with Mercers---- Claire seemed to be trying to speak. She made a delicate, feminine, clairesque approximation to clearing her throat. But Jeff ignored her and with almost osculatory affection continued to Milt: "Do let me know if there's anything I can do to help you. We're acquainted with two or three of your engineering faculty at the Office. They write in about various things. Do you happen to know Dr. Philgren?" "Oh yes. Say! He's a wonder!" Milt was betrayed into exclaiming. "Yes. Good chap, I believe. He's been trying to get a job with us. We may give him one. Just tell him you're a friend of mine, and that he's to give you any help he can." Milt choked on a "Thanks." "And--now that we're just the family here together--how goes the financial side? Can I be of any assistance in introducing you to some engineering firm where you could do a little work on the side? You could make quite a little money----" So confoundedly affectionate and paternal---- Milt said irritably, "Thanks, but I don't need to do any work. I've got plenty of money." "How pleasant!" Saxton's voice was smooth as marshmallow. "You're fortunate. I had quite a struggle to get through Princeton." Wasn't Mr. Gilson contrasting Saxton's silk shirt with Milt's darned cotton covering, and in light of that contrast chuckling at Milt's boast and Saxton's modesty? Milt became overheated. His scalp prickled and his shoulder-blades were damp. As Saxton turned from him, and crooned to Claire, "More ham, honey?" Milt hated himself. He was in much of the dramatic but undesirable position of a man in pajamas, not very good pajamas, who has been locked out in the hotel corridor by the slamming of his door. He was in the frame of mind of a mongrel, of a real Boys'-Dog, at a Madison Square dog-show. He had a faint shrewd suspicion of Saxton's game. But what could he do about it? He felt even more out of place when the family forgot him and talked about people of whom he had never heard. He sat alone on an extremely distant desert isle and ate cold ham and wished he were in Schoenstrom. Claire had recovered her power of speech. She seemed to be trying to bring him into the conversation, so that the family might appreciate him. She hesitated, and thought with creased brows, and brought out, "Uh, uh, oh---- Oh Milt: How much is gas selling at now?"... * * * * * Milt left that charming and intimate supper-party at nine. He said, "Got to work on--on my analytical geometry," as though it was a lie; and he threw "Good night" at Saxton as though he hated his kind, good benefactor; and when he tried to be gracious to Mrs. Gilson the best he could get out was, "Thanks f' inviting me." They expansively saw him to the door. Just as he thought that he had escaped, Saxton begged, "Oh, Daggett, I was arguing with a chap---- What color are Holstein-Friesian cattle? Red?" "Black and white," Milt said eagerly. He heard Mrs. Gilson giggle. He stood on the terrace wiping his forehead and, without the least struggle, finally and irretrievably admitting that he would never see Claire Boltwood or any of her friends again. Not--never! * * * * * He had received from Mrs. Gilson a note inviting him to share their box at the first night of a three-night Opera Season. He had spent half a day in trying to think of a courteously rude way of declining. A straggly little girl came up from the candy-shop below his room, demanding, "Say, are you Mr. Daggett? Say, there's some woman wants to talk to you on our telephone. Say, tell them we ain't supposed to be no messenger-office. You ain't supposed to call no upstairs people on our telephone. We ain't supposed to leave the store and go trotting all over town to---- Gee, a nickel, gee, thank you, don't mind what ma says, she's always kicking." On the telephone, he heard Claire's voice in an agitated, "Milt! Meet me down-town, at the Imperial Motion Picture Theater, right away. Something I've got to tell you. I'll be in the lobby. Hurry!" When he bolted in she was already in the lobby, agitatedly looking over a frame of "stills." She ran to him, hooked her fingers in his lapel, poured out, "They've invited you to the opera? I want you to come and put it all over them. I'm almost sure there's a plot. They want to show me that you aren't used to tiaras and saxophones and creaking dowagers and tulle. Beat 'em! Beat 'em! Come to the opera and be awf'ly aloof and supercilious. You can! Yes, you can! And be sure--wear evening clothes. Now I've got to hurry." "B-but----" "Don't disappoint me. I depend on you. Oh, say you will!" "I will!" She was gone, whisking into the Gilson limousine. He was in a glow at her loyalty, in a tremor of anger at the meddlers. But he had never worn evening clothes. He called it "a dress-suit," and before the complications of that exotic garb, he was flabby with anxiety. To Milt and to Schoenstrom--to Bill McGolwey, even to Prof Jones and the greasily prosperous Heinie Rauskukle--the dress-suit was the symbol and proof, the indication and manner, of sophisticated wealth. In Schoenstrom even waiters do not wear dress-suits. For one thing there aren't any waiters. There is one waitress at the Leipzig House, Miss Annie Schweigenblat, but you wouldn't expect Miss Schweigenblat to deal them off the arm in black trousers with braid down the side. No; a dress-suit was what the hero wore in the movies; and the hero in the movies, when he wasn't a cowpuncher, was an ex-captain of the Yale football team, and had chambers and a valet. You could tell him from the valet because he wasn't so bald. It is true that Milt had heard that in St. Cloud there were people who wore dress-suits at parties, but then St. Cloud was a city, fifteen or sixteen thousand. "How could he get away with a dress-suit? How could he keep from feeling foolish in a low-cut vest, and what the deuce would he do with the tails? Did you part 'em or roll 'em up, when you sat down? And wouldn't everybody be able to tell from his foolish look that he didn't belong in one?" He could hear A.D.T. boys and loafers in front of pool rooms whispering, "Look at the piker in the rented soup and fish!" For of course he'd rent one. Nobody bought them--except plutes like Henry B. Boltwood. He agitatedly walked up and down for an hour, peering into haberdashery windows, looking for a kind-faced young man. He found him, in Ye Pall Mall Toggery Shoppe & Shoes; an open-faced young man who was gazing through the window as sparklingly as though he was thinking of going as a missionary to India--and liked curry. Milt ironed out his worried face, clumped in, demanded fraternally, "Say, old man, don't some of these gents' furnishings stores have kind of little charts that tell just what you wear with dress-suits and Prince Alberts and everything?" "You bet," said the kind-faced young man. West of Chicago, "You bet" means "Rather," and "Yes indeed," and "On the whole I should be inclined to fancy that there may be some vestiges of accuracy in your curious opinion," and "You're a liar but I can't afford to say so." The kind-faced young man brought from behind the counter a beautiful brochure illustrated with photographs of Phoebus Apollo in what were described as "American Beauty Garments--neat, natty, nobby, new." The center pages faithfully catalogued the ties, shirts, cuff-links, spats, boots, hats, to wear with evening clothes, morning clothes, riding clothes, tennis costumes, polite mourning. As he looked it over Milt felt that his wardrobe already contained all these gentlemanly possessions. With the aid of the clerk and the chart he purchased a tradition-haunted garment with a plate-armor bosom and an opening as crooked as the Missouri River; a white tie which in his strong red hands looked as silly as a dead fish; waistcoat, pearl links, and studs. For the first time, except for seizures of madness during two or three visits to Minneapolis motor accessory stores, he caught the shopping-fever. The long shining counter, the trim red-stained shelves, the glittering cases, the racks of flaunting ties, were beautiful to him and beckoning. He revolved a pleasantly clicking rack of ties, then turned and fought his way out. He bought pumps--which cost exactly twice as much as the largest sum which he had allowed himself. He bought a newspaper, and in the want-columns found the advertisement: Silberfarb the Society Tailor DRESS SUITS TO RENT Snappiest in the City Despite the superlative snappiness of Mr. Silberfarb's dress-suits his establishment was a loft over a delicatessen, approached by a splintery stairway along which hung shabby signs announcing the upstairs offices of "J. L. & T. J. O'Regan, Private Detectives," "The Zenith Spiritualist Church, Messages by Rev. Lulu Paughouse," "The International Order of Live Ones, Seattle Wigwam," and "Mme. Lavourie, Sulphur Baths." The dead air of the hallway suggested petty crookedness. Milt felt that he ought to fight somebody but, there being no one to fight, he banged along the flapping boards of the second-floor hallway to the ground-glass door of Silberfarb the Society Tailor, who was also, as an afterthought on a straggly placard, "Pressng & Cleang While U Wait." He belligerently shouldered into a low room. The light from the one window was almost obscured by racks of musty-smelling black clothes which stretched away from him in two dismal aisles that resembled a morgue of unhappy dead men indecently hung up on hooks. On a long, clumsily carpentered table, a small Jew, collarless, sweaty, unshaven, was darning trousers under an evil mantle gaslight. The Jew wrung out his hands and tried to look benevolent. "Want to rent a dress-suit," said Milt. "I got just the t'ing for you!" The little man unfolded himself, galloped down the aisle, seized the first garment that came to hand, and came back to lay it against Milt's uncomfortable frame, bumbling, "Fine, mister, fy-en!" Milt studied the shiny-seamed, worn-buttonholed, limp object with dislike. Its personality was disintegrated. The only thing he liked about it was the good garage stink of gasoline. "That's almost worn out," he growled. At this sacrilege Mr. Silberfarb threw up his hands, with the dingy suit flapping in them like a bed-quilt shaken from a tenement window. He looked Milt all over, coldly. His red but shining eyes hinted that Milt was a clodhopper and no honest wearer of evening clothes. Milt felt humble, but he snapped, "No good. Want something with class." "Vell, that was good enough for a university professor at the big dance, but if you say so----" In the manner of one who is being put to an unfair amount of trouble, Mr. Silberfarb returned the paranoiac dress-suit to the rack, sighing patiently as he laboriously draped it on a hanger. He peered and pawed. He crowed with throaty triumph and brought back a rich ripe thing of velvet collar and cuffs. He fixed Milt with eyes that had become as sulky as the eyes of a dog in August dust. "Now that--you can't beat that, if you vant class, and it'll fit you like a glove. Oh, that's an ellllegant garment!" Shaking himself out of the spell of those contemptuous eyes Milt opened his brochure, studied the chart, and in a footnote found, "Never wear velvet collars or cuffs with evening coat." "Nope. Nix on the velvet," he remarked. Then the little man went mad and ran around in circles. He flung the ellllegant garment on the table. He flapped his arms, and wailed, "What do you vant? What do you vannnnt? That's a hundred-and-fifty-dollar dress-suit! That belonged to one of the richest men in the city. He sold it to me because he was going to Japan." "Well, you can send it to Japan after him. I want something decent. Have you got it--or shall I go some place else?" The tailor instantly became affectionate. "How about a nice Tuxedo?" he coaxed. "Nope. It says here--let me see--oh yes, here it is--it says here in the book that for the theater-with-ladies, should not wear 'dinner-coat or so-called Tuxedo, but----'" "Oh, dem fellows what writes books they don't know nothing. Absolute! They make it up." "Huh! Well, I guess I'll take my chance on them. The factory knows the ignition better 'n any repair-man." "Vell say, you're a hard fellow to please. I'll give you one of my reserve stock, but you got to leave me ten dollars deposit instead of five." Mr. Silberfarb quite cheerfully unlocked a glass case behind the racked and ghostly dead; he brought out a suit that seemed to Milt almost decent. And it almost fitted when, after changing clothes in a broiling, boiling, reeking, gasoline-pulsing hole behind the racks, he examined it before a pier-glass. But he caught the tailor assisting the fit by bunching up a roll of cloth at the shoulder. Again Milt snapped, and again the tailor suffered and died, and to a doubting heathen world maintained the true gospel of "What do you vannnnt? It ain't stylish to have the dress-suit too tight! All the gents is wearing 'em loose and graceful." But in the end, after Milt had gone as far as the door, Mr. Silberfarb admitted that one dress-coat wouldn't always fit all persons without some alterations. The coat did bag a little, and it was too long in the sleeves, but as Milt studied himself in his room--by placing his small melancholy mirror on the bureau, then on a chair, then on the floor, finally, to get a complete view, clear out in the hall--he admitted with stirring delight that he looked "pretty fair in the bloomin' outfit." His clear face, his shining hair, his straight shoulders, seemed to go with the costume. He wriggled into his top-coat and marched out of his room, theater-bound, with the well-fed satisfaction of a man who is certain that no one is giggling, "Look at the hand-me-downs." His pumps did alternately pinch his toes and rub his heels; the trousers cramped his waist; and he suspected that his tie had gone wandering. But he swaggered to the trolley, and sat as one rich and famous and very kind to the Common People, till---- Another man in evening clothes got on the car, and Milt saw that he wore a silk hat, and a white knitted scarf; that he took

because

How many times the word 'because' appears in the text?

who was the limp indoor-dweller, and he who was the ruddy ranger; that as he had admired her at Flathead Lake, so now it was hers to admire, and his to be serenely heroic. She was not far from the worshiping sub-deb in her sighing, "How _did_ you get the scar?" "That? Oh, nothing." "Please tell me." "Really and truly. Nothing at all. Just a drunken fellow with a knife, playing the fool. I didn't have to touch him--quite sure he could have given me a frightful beating and all that sort of thing. It was the Big Chief who got rid of him." "He--cut you? With a kniiiiiife? Ohhhhhhh!" She ran to him, pityingly stroked the scar, looked down at him with filmy eyes. Then she tried to retreat, but he retained her hand, glanced up at her as though he knew her every thought. She felt weak. How could she escape him? "Please!" she begged flutteringly. If he held her hand another moment, she trembled, she'd be on his lap, in his arms--lost. And he was holding it. He was---- Oh, he was too old for her. Yes, and too paternal. But still---- Life with Jeff would be protected, kindly, honorable. Yet all the time she wanted, and stormily knew she wanted, to be fleeing to the boy Milt, her mate; to run away with him, hand in hand, discovering all the colored world, laughing at life, not afraid of losing dignity. In fear of Jeff's very kindliness and honor, she jerked her hand free. Then she tried to smile like a clever fencer. As she retreated to her chair she stammered, "Did you---- Was Alaska interesting?" He did not let her go, this time. Easy, cat-like for all his dry gravity, he sauntered after her, and with a fine high seriousness pleaded his case: "Claire dear, those few weeks of fighting nature were a revelation to me. I'm going to have lots more of it. As it happens, they need me there. There's plenty of copper, but there's big transportation and employment problems that I seem better able to solve than the other chaps--though of course I'm an absolute muff when it comes to engineering problems. But I've had certain training and--I'm going to arrange things so that I get up there at least once a year. Next summer I'll make a much longer trip--see the mountains--oh, glorious mountains--and funny half-Russian towns, and have some fishing---- Wandering. The really big thing. Even finer than your superb plucky trip through----" "Wasn't plucky! I'm a cry baby," she said, like a bad, contradictory little girl. He didn't argue it. He smiled and said "Tut!" and placidly catalogued her with, "You're the pluckiest girl I've ever seen, and it's all the more amazing because you're not a motion-picture Tomboy, but essentially exquisite----" "I'm a grub." "Very well, then. You're a grub. So am I. And I like it. And when I make the big Alaskan trip next year I want you to go along! Claire! Haven't you any idea how terribly close to me the thought of you has been these weeks? You've guided me through the wilderness----" "It's---- I'm glad." She sprang up, beseeching, "Jeff dear, you're going to stay for tea? I must run up and powder my nose." "Not until you say you're glad to see me. Child dear, we've been ambling along and---- No. You aren't a child any more. You're a woman. And if I've never been quite a man, but just a dusty office-machine, that's gone now. I've got the wind of the wilderness in my lungs. Man and woman! My woman! That's all I'm going to say now, but---- Oh my God, Claire, I do need you so!" He drew her head to his shoulder, and for an instant she rested there. But as she looked up, she saw coming age in the granulated skin of his throat. "He needs me--but he'd boss me. I'd be the cunning child-wife, even at fifty," she worried, and "Hang him, it's like his superiority to beat poor Milt even at adventuring--and to be such a confounded Modest Christian Gentleman about it!" "You'd--you're so dreadfully managing," she sighed aloud. For the first time in all their acquaintanceship, Jeff's pride broke, and he held her away from him, while his lips were pathetic, and he mourned, "Why do you always try to hurt me?" "Oh, my dear, I don't." "Is it because you resent the decent things I have managed to do?" "I don't understand." "If I have an idea for a party, you think I'm 'managing.' If I think things out deeply, you say I'm dull." "Oh, you aren't. I didn't mean----" "What are you? A real woman, or one of these flirts, that love to tease a man because he's foolish enough to be honestly in love?" "I'm not--hon-estly I'm not, Jeff. It's---- You don't quite make me---- It's just that I'm not in love with you. I like you, and respect you terribly, but----" "I'm going to make you love me." His clutching fingers hurt her arm, and somehow she was not angry, but stirred. "But I'm not going to try now. Forget the Alaskan caveman. Remember, I haven't even used the word 'love.' I've just chatted about fjords, or whatever they are, but one of these days---- No. I won't do it. I want to stay here in Seattle a few days, and take you on jolly picnics, but---- Would you rather I didn't even do that? I'm----" He dropped her arm, kneaded his forehead with the heel of his palm. "I can't stand being regarded as a bothersome puppy. I can't stand it! I can't!" "Please stay, Jeff! We'll have some darling drives and things. We'll go up Rainier as far as we can." He stayed. He was anecdotal and amusing at tea, that afternoon. Claire saw how the Gilsons, and two girls who dropped in, admired him. That made her uneasy. And when Mrs. Gilson begged him to leave his hotel and stay with them, he refused with a quick look at Claire that hurt her. "He wants me to be free. He's really so much more considerate than Milt. And I hurt him. Even his pride broke down. And I've spoiled Milt's life by meddling. And I've hurt the Gilsons' feelings. And I'm not much of a comfort to father. Oh, I'm absolutely no good," she agonized. CHAPTER XXX THE VIRTUOUS PLOTTERS Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, in Alaskan tan and New York evening clothes and Piccadilly poise, was talking to the Eugene Gilsons while Claire finished dressing for the theater. Mrs. Gilson observed, "She's the dearest thing. We've become awfully fond of her. But I don't think she knows what she wants to do with life. She's rather at loose ends. Who is this Daggett boy--some university student--whom she seems to like?" "Well, since you speak of him---- I hadn't meant to, unless you did. I want to be fair to him. What did she tell you about him?" Jeff asked confidentially. "Nothing, except that he's a young engineer, and frightfully brave and all those uncomfortable virtues, and she met him in Yellowstone Park or somewhere, and he saved her from a bear--or was it a tramp?--from something unnecessary, at any rate." "Eva, I don't want to be supercilious, but the truth is that this young Daggett is a rather dreadful person. He's been here at the house, hasn't he? How did he strike you?" "Not at all. He's silent, and as dull as lukewarm tea, but perfectly inoffensive." "Then he's cleverer than I thought! Daggett is anything but dull and inoffensive, and if he can play that estimable r le----! It seems that he is the son of some common workman in the Middlewest; he isn't an engineer at all; he's really a chauffeur or a taxi-driver or something; and he ran into Claire and Henry B. on the road, and somehow insinuated himself into their graces--far from being silent and commonplace, he appears to have some strange kind of charm which," Jeff sighed, "I don't understand at all. I simply don't understand it! "I met him in Montana with the most gorgeously atrocious person I've ever encountered--one Pinky Westlake, or some such a name--positively, a crook! He tried to get Boltwood and myself interested in the commonest kind of a mining swindle--hinted that we were to join him in cheating the public. And this Daggett was his partner--they actually traveled together. But I do want to be just. I'm not _sure_ that Daggett was aware of his partner's dishonesty. That isn't what worries me about the lad. It's his utter impossibility. He's as crude as iron-ore. When he's being careful, he may manage to be inconspicuous, but give him the chance---- "Really, I'm not exaggerating when I say that at thirty-five he'll be dining in his shirt-sleeves, and sitting down to read the paper with his shoes off and feet up on the table. But Claire--you know what a dear Quixotic soul she is--she fancies that because this fellow repaired a puncture or something of the sort for her on the road, she's indebted to him, and the worse he is, the more she feels that she must help him. And affairs of that kind---- Oh, it's quite too horrible, but there have been cases, you know, where girls as splendid and fine and well-bred as Claire herself have been trapped into low marriages by their loyalty to cadging adventurers!" "Oh!" groaned Mrs. Gilson; and "Good Lord!" lamented Mr. Gilson, delighted by the possibility of tragedy; and "Really, I'm not exaggerating," said Jeff enthusiastically. "What are we going to do?" demanded Mrs. Gilson; while Mr. Gilson, being of a ready and inventive mind, exclaimed, "By Jove, you ought to kidnap her and marry her yourself, Jeff!" "I'd like to. But I'm too old." They beautifully assured him that he was a blithe young thing with milk teeth; and with a certain satisfaction Jeff suggested, "I tell you what we might do. Of course it's an ancient stunt, but it's good. I judge that Daggett hasn't been here at the house much. Why not have him here so often that Claire will awaken to his crudity, and get sick of him?" "We'll do it," thrilled Mrs. Gilson. "We'll have him for everything from nine-course dinners with Grandmother Eaton's napkins on view, to milk and cold ham out of the ice-box. When Claire doesn't invite him, I will!" CHAPTER XXXI THE KITCHEN INTIMATE Milt had become used to the Gilson drawing-room. He was no longer uncomfortable in the presence of its sleek fatness, though at first (not knowing that there were such resources as interior decorators), he had been convinced that, to have created the room, the Gilsons must have known everything in the world. Now he glanced familiarly at its white paneling, its sconces like silver candlesticks, the inevitable davenport inevitably backed by an amethyst-shaded piano lamp and a table crowded with silver boxes and picture-frames. He liked the winsomeness of light upon velvet and polished wood. It was not the drawing-room but the kitchen that dismayed him. In Schoenstrom he had known that there must somewhere be beautiful "parlors," but he had trusted in his experience of kitchens. Kitchens, according to his philosophy, were small smelly rooms of bare floors, and provided with one oilcloth-covered table, one stove (the front draft always broken and propped up with the lid-lifter), one cupboard with panes of tin pierced in rosettes, and one stack of dirty dishes. But the Gilson kitchen had the efficiency of a laboratory and the superciliousness of a hair-dresser's booth. With awe Milt beheld walls of white tiles, a cork floor, a gas-range large as a hotel-stove, a ceiling-high refrigerator of enamel and nickel, zinc-topped tables, and a case of utensils like a surgeon's knives. It frightened him; it made more hopelessly unapproachable than ever the Alexandrian luxury of the great Gilsons.... The Vanderbilts' kitchen must be like this. And maybe King George's. He was viewing the kitchen upon the occasion of an intimate Sunday evening supper to which he had been yearningly invited by Mrs. Gilson. The maids were all out. The Gilsons and Claire, Milt and Jeff Saxton, shoutingly prepared their own supper. While Mrs. Gilson scrambled eggs and made coffee, the others set the table, and brought cold ham and a bowl of salad from the ice-box. Milt had intended to be a silent but deft servitor. When he had heard that he was to come to supper with the returned Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, he had first been panic-shaken, then resolved. He'd "let old iron-face Saxton do the high and mighty. Let him stand around and show off his clothes and adjectives, way he did at Flathead Lake." But he, Milt, would be "on the job." He'd help get supper, and calmly ignore Jeff's rudeness. Only--Jeff wasn't rude. He greeted Milt with, "Ah, Daggett! This is _so_ nice!" And Milt had no chance to help. It was Jeff who anticipated him and with a pleasant, "Let me get that--I'm kitchen-broke," snatched up the cold ham and salad. It was Jeff who found the supper plates, while Milt was blunderingly wondering how any one family could use a "whole furniture-store-full of different kinds of china." It was Jeff who sprang to help Claire wheel in the tea-wagon, and so captured the chance to speak to her for which Milt had been maneuvering these five minutes. When they were settled, Jeff glowed at him, and respectfully offered, "I thought of you so often, Daggett, on a recent little jaunt of mine. You'd have been helpful." "Where was that?" asked Milt suspiciously (wondering, and waiting to see, whether you could take cold ham in your fingers). "Oh, in Alaska." "In--Alaska?" Milt was dismayed. "Yes, just a business trip there. There's something I wish you'd advise me about." He was humble. And Milt was uneasy. He grumbled, "What's that?" "I've been wondering whether it would be possible to use wireless telephony in Alaska. But I'm such a dub at electricity. Do you know---- What would be the cost of installing a wireless telephone plant with a hundred-mile radius?" "Gee, I don't know!" "Oh, so sorry. Well, I wonder if you can tell me about wireless telegraphy, then?" "No, I don't know anything about that either." Milt had desperately tried to make his answer gracious but somehow---- He hated this devil's obsequiousness more than he had his chilliness at Flathead Lake. He had a feeling that the Gilsons had delightedly kicked each other under the table; that, for all her unchanging smile, Claire was unhappy.... And she was so far off, a white wraith floating beyond his frantic grasp. "It doesn't matter, really. But I didn't know---- So you've started in the engineering school at the University of Washington," Saxton was purring. "Have you met Gid Childers there--son of old Senator Childers--charming people." "I've seen him. He has a Stutz--no, his is the Mercer," sighed Milt. He hated himself for it, but he couldn't quite keep the awe out of his voice. People with Mercers---- Claire seemed to be trying to speak. She made a delicate, feminine, clairesque approximation to clearing her throat. But Jeff ignored her and with almost osculatory affection continued to Milt: "Do let me know if there's anything I can do to help you. We're acquainted with two or three of your engineering faculty at the Office. They write in about various things. Do you happen to know Dr. Philgren?" "Oh yes. Say! He's a wonder!" Milt was betrayed into exclaiming. "Yes. Good chap, I believe. He's been trying to get a job with us. We may give him one. Just tell him you're a friend of mine, and that he's to give you any help he can." Milt choked on a "Thanks." "And--now that we're just the family here together--how goes the financial side? Can I be of any assistance in introducing you to some engineering firm where you could do a little work on the side? You could make quite a little money----" So confoundedly affectionate and paternal---- Milt said irritably, "Thanks, but I don't need to do any work. I've got plenty of money." "How pleasant!" Saxton's voice was smooth as marshmallow. "You're fortunate. I had quite a struggle to get through Princeton." Wasn't Mr. Gilson contrasting Saxton's silk shirt with Milt's darned cotton covering, and in light of that contrast chuckling at Milt's boast and Saxton's modesty? Milt became overheated. His scalp prickled and his shoulder-blades were damp. As Saxton turned from him, and crooned to Claire, "More ham, honey?" Milt hated himself. He was in much of the dramatic but undesirable position of a man in pajamas, not very good pajamas, who has been locked out in the hotel corridor by the slamming of his door. He was in the frame of mind of a mongrel, of a real Boys'-Dog, at a Madison Square dog-show. He had a faint shrewd suspicion of Saxton's game. But what could he do about it? He felt even more out of place when the family forgot him and talked about people of whom he had never heard. He sat alone on an extremely distant desert isle and ate cold ham and wished he were in Schoenstrom. Claire had recovered her power of speech. She seemed to be trying to bring him into the conversation, so that the family might appreciate him. She hesitated, and thought with creased brows, and brought out, "Uh, uh, oh---- Oh Milt: How much is gas selling at now?"... * * * * * Milt left that charming and intimate supper-party at nine. He said, "Got to work on--on my analytical geometry," as though it was a lie; and he threw "Good night" at Saxton as though he hated his kind, good benefactor; and when he tried to be gracious to Mrs. Gilson the best he could get out was, "Thanks f' inviting me." They expansively saw him to the door. Just as he thought that he had escaped, Saxton begged, "Oh, Daggett, I was arguing with a chap---- What color are Holstein-Friesian cattle? Red?" "Black and white," Milt said eagerly. He heard Mrs. Gilson giggle. He stood on the terrace wiping his forehead and, without the least struggle, finally and irretrievably admitting that he would never see Claire Boltwood or any of her friends again. Not--never! * * * * * He had received from Mrs. Gilson a note inviting him to share their box at the first night of a three-night Opera Season. He had spent half a day in trying to think of a courteously rude way of declining. A straggly little girl came up from the candy-shop below his room, demanding, "Say, are you Mr. Daggett? Say, there's some woman wants to talk to you on our telephone. Say, tell them we ain't supposed to be no messenger-office. You ain't supposed to call no upstairs people on our telephone. We ain't supposed to leave the store and go trotting all over town to---- Gee, a nickel, gee, thank you, don't mind what ma says, she's always kicking." On the telephone, he heard Claire's voice in an agitated, "Milt! Meet me down-town, at the Imperial Motion Picture Theater, right away. Something I've got to tell you. I'll be in the lobby. Hurry!" When he bolted in she was already in the lobby, agitatedly looking over a frame of "stills." She ran to him, hooked her fingers in his lapel, poured out, "They've invited you to the opera? I want you to come and put it all over them. I'm almost sure there's a plot. They want to show me that you aren't used to tiaras and saxophones and creaking dowagers and tulle. Beat 'em! Beat 'em! Come to the opera and be awf'ly aloof and supercilious. You can! Yes, you can! And be sure--wear evening clothes. Now I've got to hurry." "B-but----" "Don't disappoint me. I depend on you. Oh, say you will!" "I will!" She was gone, whisking into the Gilson limousine. He was in a glow at her loyalty, in a tremor of anger at the meddlers. But he had never worn evening clothes. He called it "a dress-suit," and before the complications of that exotic garb, he was flabby with anxiety. To Milt and to Schoenstrom--to Bill McGolwey, even to Prof Jones and the greasily prosperous Heinie Rauskukle--the dress-suit was the symbol and proof, the indication and manner, of sophisticated wealth. In Schoenstrom even waiters do not wear dress-suits. For one thing there aren't any waiters. There is one waitress at the Leipzig House, Miss Annie Schweigenblat, but you wouldn't expect Miss Schweigenblat to deal them off the arm in black trousers with braid down the side. No; a dress-suit was what the hero wore in the movies; and the hero in the movies, when he wasn't a cowpuncher, was an ex-captain of the Yale football team, and had chambers and a valet. You could tell him from the valet because he wasn't so bald. It is true that Milt had heard that in St. Cloud there were people who wore dress-suits at parties, but then St. Cloud was a city, fifteen or sixteen thousand. "How could he get away with a dress-suit? How could he keep from feeling foolish in a low-cut vest, and what the deuce would he do with the tails? Did you part 'em or roll 'em up, when you sat down? And wouldn't everybody be able to tell from his foolish look that he didn't belong in one?" He could hear A.D.T. boys and loafers in front of pool rooms whispering, "Look at the piker in the rented soup and fish!" For of course he'd rent one. Nobody bought them--except plutes like Henry B. Boltwood. He agitatedly walked up and down for an hour, peering into haberdashery windows, looking for a kind-faced young man. He found him, in Ye Pall Mall Toggery Shoppe & Shoes; an open-faced young man who was gazing through the window as sparklingly as though he was thinking of going as a missionary to India--and liked curry. Milt ironed out his worried face, clumped in, demanded fraternally, "Say, old man, don't some of these gents' furnishings stores have kind of little charts that tell just what you wear with dress-suits and Prince Alberts and everything?" "You bet," said the kind-faced young man. West of Chicago, "You bet" means "Rather," and "Yes indeed," and "On the whole I should be inclined to fancy that there may be some vestiges of accuracy in your curious opinion," and "You're a liar but I can't afford to say so." The kind-faced young man brought from behind the counter a beautiful brochure illustrated with photographs of Phoebus Apollo in what were described as "American Beauty Garments--neat, natty, nobby, new." The center pages faithfully catalogued the ties, shirts, cuff-links, spats, boots, hats, to wear with evening clothes, morning clothes, riding clothes, tennis costumes, polite mourning. As he looked it over Milt felt that his wardrobe already contained all these gentlemanly possessions. With the aid of the clerk and the chart he purchased a tradition-haunted garment with a plate-armor bosom and an opening as crooked as the Missouri River; a white tie which in his strong red hands looked as silly as a dead fish; waistcoat, pearl links, and studs. For the first time, except for seizures of madness during two or three visits to Minneapolis motor accessory stores, he caught the shopping-fever. The long shining counter, the trim red-stained shelves, the glittering cases, the racks of flaunting ties, were beautiful to him and beckoning. He revolved a pleasantly clicking rack of ties, then turned and fought his way out. He bought pumps--which cost exactly twice as much as the largest sum which he had allowed himself. He bought a newspaper, and in the want-columns found the advertisement: Silberfarb the Society Tailor DRESS SUITS TO RENT Snappiest in the City Despite the superlative snappiness of Mr. Silberfarb's dress-suits his establishment was a loft over a delicatessen, approached by a splintery stairway along which hung shabby signs announcing the upstairs offices of "J. L. & T. J. O'Regan, Private Detectives," "The Zenith Spiritualist Church, Messages by Rev. Lulu Paughouse," "The International Order of Live Ones, Seattle Wigwam," and "Mme. Lavourie, Sulphur Baths." The dead air of the hallway suggested petty crookedness. Milt felt that he ought to fight somebody but, there being no one to fight, he banged along the flapping boards of the second-floor hallway to the ground-glass door of Silberfarb the Society Tailor, who was also, as an afterthought on a straggly placard, "Pressng & Cleang While U Wait." He belligerently shouldered into a low room. The light from the one window was almost obscured by racks of musty-smelling black clothes which stretched away from him in two dismal aisles that resembled a morgue of unhappy dead men indecently hung up on hooks. On a long, clumsily carpentered table, a small Jew, collarless, sweaty, unshaven, was darning trousers under an evil mantle gaslight. The Jew wrung out his hands and tried to look benevolent. "Want to rent a dress-suit," said Milt. "I got just the t'ing for you!" The little man unfolded himself, galloped down the aisle, seized the first garment that came to hand, and came back to lay it against Milt's uncomfortable frame, bumbling, "Fine, mister, fy-en!" Milt studied the shiny-seamed, worn-buttonholed, limp object with dislike. Its personality was disintegrated. The only thing he liked about it was the good garage stink of gasoline. "That's almost worn out," he growled. At this sacrilege Mr. Silberfarb threw up his hands, with the dingy suit flapping in them like a bed-quilt shaken from a tenement window. He looked Milt all over, coldly. His red but shining eyes hinted that Milt was a clodhopper and no honest wearer of evening clothes. Milt felt humble, but he snapped, "No good. Want something with class." "Vell, that was good enough for a university professor at the big dance, but if you say so----" In the manner of one who is being put to an unfair amount of trouble, Mr. Silberfarb returned the paranoiac dress-suit to the rack, sighing patiently as he laboriously draped it on a hanger. He peered and pawed. He crowed with throaty triumph and brought back a rich ripe thing of velvet collar and cuffs. He fixed Milt with eyes that had become as sulky as the eyes of a dog in August dust. "Now that--you can't beat that, if you vant class, and it'll fit you like a glove. Oh, that's an ellllegant garment!" Shaking himself out of the spell of those contemptuous eyes Milt opened his brochure, studied the chart, and in a footnote found, "Never wear velvet collars or cuffs with evening coat." "Nope. Nix on the velvet," he remarked. Then the little man went mad and ran around in circles. He flung the ellllegant garment on the table. He flapped his arms, and wailed, "What do you vant? What do you vannnnt? That's a hundred-and-fifty-dollar dress-suit! That belonged to one of the richest men in the city. He sold it to me because he was going to Japan." "Well, you can send it to Japan after him. I want something decent. Have you got it--or shall I go some place else?" The tailor instantly became affectionate. "How about a nice Tuxedo?" he coaxed. "Nope. It says here--let me see--oh yes, here it is--it says here in the book that for the theater-with-ladies, should not wear 'dinner-coat or so-called Tuxedo, but----'" "Oh, dem fellows what writes books they don't know nothing. Absolute! They make it up." "Huh! Well, I guess I'll take my chance on them. The factory knows the ignition better 'n any repair-man." "Vell say, you're a hard fellow to please. I'll give you one of my reserve stock, but you got to leave me ten dollars deposit instead of five." Mr. Silberfarb quite cheerfully unlocked a glass case behind the racked and ghostly dead; he brought out a suit that seemed to Milt almost decent. And it almost fitted when, after changing clothes in a broiling, boiling, reeking, gasoline-pulsing hole behind the racks, he examined it before a pier-glass. But he caught the tailor assisting the fit by bunching up a roll of cloth at the shoulder. Again Milt snapped, and again the tailor suffered and died, and to a doubting heathen world maintained the true gospel of "What do you vannnnt? It ain't stylish to have the dress-suit too tight! All the gents is wearing 'em loose and graceful." But in the end, after Milt had gone as far as the door, Mr. Silberfarb admitted that one dress-coat wouldn't always fit all persons without some alterations. The coat did bag a little, and it was too long in the sleeves, but as Milt studied himself in his room--by placing his small melancholy mirror on the bureau, then on a chair, then on the floor, finally, to get a complete view, clear out in the hall--he admitted with stirring delight that he looked "pretty fair in the bloomin' outfit." His clear face, his shining hair, his straight shoulders, seemed to go with the costume. He wriggled into his top-coat and marched out of his room, theater-bound, with the well-fed satisfaction of a man who is certain that no one is giggling, "Look at the hand-me-downs." His pumps did alternately pinch his toes and rub his heels; the trousers cramped his waist; and he suspected that his tie had gone wandering. But he swaggered to the trolley, and sat as one rich and famous and very kind to the Common People, till---- Another man in evening clothes got on the car, and Milt saw that he wore a silk hat, and a white knitted scarf; that he took

table

How many times the word 'table' appears in the text?

who was the limp indoor-dweller, and he who was the ruddy ranger; that as he had admired her at Flathead Lake, so now it was hers to admire, and his to be serenely heroic. She was not far from the worshiping sub-deb in her sighing, "How _did_ you get the scar?" "That? Oh, nothing." "Please tell me." "Really and truly. Nothing at all. Just a drunken fellow with a knife, playing the fool. I didn't have to touch him--quite sure he could have given me a frightful beating and all that sort of thing. It was the Big Chief who got rid of him." "He--cut you? With a kniiiiiife? Ohhhhhhh!" She ran to him, pityingly stroked the scar, looked down at him with filmy eyes. Then she tried to retreat, but he retained her hand, glanced up at her as though he knew her every thought. She felt weak. How could she escape him? "Please!" she begged flutteringly. If he held her hand another moment, she trembled, she'd be on his lap, in his arms--lost. And he was holding it. He was---- Oh, he was too old for her. Yes, and too paternal. But still---- Life with Jeff would be protected, kindly, honorable. Yet all the time she wanted, and stormily knew she wanted, to be fleeing to the boy Milt, her mate; to run away with him, hand in hand, discovering all the colored world, laughing at life, not afraid of losing dignity. In fear of Jeff's very kindliness and honor, she jerked her hand free. Then she tried to smile like a clever fencer. As she retreated to her chair she stammered, "Did you---- Was Alaska interesting?" He did not let her go, this time. Easy, cat-like for all his dry gravity, he sauntered after her, and with a fine high seriousness pleaded his case: "Claire dear, those few weeks of fighting nature were a revelation to me. I'm going to have lots more of it. As it happens, they need me there. There's plenty of copper, but there's big transportation and employment problems that I seem better able to solve than the other chaps--though of course I'm an absolute muff when it comes to engineering problems. But I've had certain training and--I'm going to arrange things so that I get up there at least once a year. Next summer I'll make a much longer trip--see the mountains--oh, glorious mountains--and funny half-Russian towns, and have some fishing---- Wandering. The really big thing. Even finer than your superb plucky trip through----" "Wasn't plucky! I'm a cry baby," she said, like a bad, contradictory little girl. He didn't argue it. He smiled and said "Tut!" and placidly catalogued her with, "You're the pluckiest girl I've ever seen, and it's all the more amazing because you're not a motion-picture Tomboy, but essentially exquisite----" "I'm a grub." "Very well, then. You're a grub. So am I. And I like it. And when I make the big Alaskan trip next year I want you to go along! Claire! Haven't you any idea how terribly close to me the thought of you has been these weeks? You've guided me through the wilderness----" "It's---- I'm glad." She sprang up, beseeching, "Jeff dear, you're going to stay for tea? I must run up and powder my nose." "Not until you say you're glad to see me. Child dear, we've been ambling along and---- No. You aren't a child any more. You're a woman. And if I've never been quite a man, but just a dusty office-machine, that's gone now. I've got the wind of the wilderness in my lungs. Man and woman! My woman! That's all I'm going to say now, but---- Oh my God, Claire, I do need you so!" He drew her head to his shoulder, and for an instant she rested there. But as she looked up, she saw coming age in the granulated skin of his throat. "He needs me--but he'd boss me. I'd be the cunning child-wife, even at fifty," she worried, and "Hang him, it's like his superiority to beat poor Milt even at adventuring--and to be such a confounded Modest Christian Gentleman about it!" "You'd--you're so dreadfully managing," she sighed aloud. For the first time in all their acquaintanceship, Jeff's pride broke, and he held her away from him, while his lips were pathetic, and he mourned, "Why do you always try to hurt me?" "Oh, my dear, I don't." "Is it because you resent the decent things I have managed to do?" "I don't understand." "If I have an idea for a party, you think I'm 'managing.' If I think things out deeply, you say I'm dull." "Oh, you aren't. I didn't mean----" "What are you? A real woman, or one of these flirts, that love to tease a man because he's foolish enough to be honestly in love?" "I'm not--hon-estly I'm not, Jeff. It's---- You don't quite make me---- It's just that I'm not in love with you. I like you, and respect you terribly, but----" "I'm going to make you love me." His clutching fingers hurt her arm, and somehow she was not angry, but stirred. "But I'm not going to try now. Forget the Alaskan caveman. Remember, I haven't even used the word 'love.' I've just chatted about fjords, or whatever they are, but one of these days---- No. I won't do it. I want to stay here in Seattle a few days, and take you on jolly picnics, but---- Would you rather I didn't even do that? I'm----" He dropped her arm, kneaded his forehead with the heel of his palm. "I can't stand being regarded as a bothersome puppy. I can't stand it! I can't!" "Please stay, Jeff! We'll have some darling drives and things. We'll go up Rainier as far as we can." He stayed. He was anecdotal and amusing at tea, that afternoon. Claire saw how the Gilsons, and two girls who dropped in, admired him. That made her uneasy. And when Mrs. Gilson begged him to leave his hotel and stay with them, he refused with a quick look at Claire that hurt her. "He wants me to be free. He's really so much more considerate than Milt. And I hurt him. Even his pride broke down. And I've spoiled Milt's life by meddling. And I've hurt the Gilsons' feelings. And I'm not much of a comfort to father. Oh, I'm absolutely no good," she agonized. CHAPTER XXX THE VIRTUOUS PLOTTERS Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, in Alaskan tan and New York evening clothes and Piccadilly poise, was talking to the Eugene Gilsons while Claire finished dressing for the theater. Mrs. Gilson observed, "She's the dearest thing. We've become awfully fond of her. But I don't think she knows what she wants to do with life. She's rather at loose ends. Who is this Daggett boy--some university student--whom she seems to like?" "Well, since you speak of him---- I hadn't meant to, unless you did. I want to be fair to him. What did she tell you about him?" Jeff asked confidentially. "Nothing, except that he's a young engineer, and frightfully brave and all those uncomfortable virtues, and she met him in Yellowstone Park or somewhere, and he saved her from a bear--or was it a tramp?--from something unnecessary, at any rate." "Eva, I don't want to be supercilious, but the truth is that this young Daggett is a rather dreadful person. He's been here at the house, hasn't he? How did he strike you?" "Not at all. He's silent, and as dull as lukewarm tea, but perfectly inoffensive." "Then he's cleverer than I thought! Daggett is anything but dull and inoffensive, and if he can play that estimable r le----! It seems that he is the son of some common workman in the Middlewest; he isn't an engineer at all; he's really a chauffeur or a taxi-driver or something; and he ran into Claire and Henry B. on the road, and somehow insinuated himself into their graces--far from being silent and commonplace, he appears to have some strange kind of charm which," Jeff sighed, "I don't understand at all. I simply don't understand it! "I met him in Montana with the most gorgeously atrocious person I've ever encountered--one Pinky Westlake, or some such a name--positively, a crook! He tried to get Boltwood and myself interested in the commonest kind of a mining swindle--hinted that we were to join him in cheating the public. And this Daggett was his partner--they actually traveled together. But I do want to be just. I'm not _sure_ that Daggett was aware of his partner's dishonesty. That isn't what worries me about the lad. It's his utter impossibility. He's as crude as iron-ore. When he's being careful, he may manage to be inconspicuous, but give him the chance---- "Really, I'm not exaggerating when I say that at thirty-five he'll be dining in his shirt-sleeves, and sitting down to read the paper with his shoes off and feet up on the table. But Claire--you know what a dear Quixotic soul she is--she fancies that because this fellow repaired a puncture or something of the sort for her on the road, she's indebted to him, and the worse he is, the more she feels that she must help him. And affairs of that kind---- Oh, it's quite too horrible, but there have been cases, you know, where girls as splendid and fine and well-bred as Claire herself have been trapped into low marriages by their loyalty to cadging adventurers!" "Oh!" groaned Mrs. Gilson; and "Good Lord!" lamented Mr. Gilson, delighted by the possibility of tragedy; and "Really, I'm not exaggerating," said Jeff enthusiastically. "What are we going to do?" demanded Mrs. Gilson; while Mr. Gilson, being of a ready and inventive mind, exclaimed, "By Jove, you ought to kidnap her and marry her yourself, Jeff!" "I'd like to. But I'm too old." They beautifully assured him that he was a blithe young thing with milk teeth; and with a certain satisfaction Jeff suggested, "I tell you what we might do. Of course it's an ancient stunt, but it's good. I judge that Daggett hasn't been here at the house much. Why not have him here so often that Claire will awaken to his crudity, and get sick of him?" "We'll do it," thrilled Mrs. Gilson. "We'll have him for everything from nine-course dinners with Grandmother Eaton's napkins on view, to milk and cold ham out of the ice-box. When Claire doesn't invite him, I will!" CHAPTER XXXI THE KITCHEN INTIMATE Milt had become used to the Gilson drawing-room. He was no longer uncomfortable in the presence of its sleek fatness, though at first (not knowing that there were such resources as interior decorators), he had been convinced that, to have created the room, the Gilsons must have known everything in the world. Now he glanced familiarly at its white paneling, its sconces like silver candlesticks, the inevitable davenport inevitably backed by an amethyst-shaded piano lamp and a table crowded with silver boxes and picture-frames. He liked the winsomeness of light upon velvet and polished wood. It was not the drawing-room but the kitchen that dismayed him. In Schoenstrom he had known that there must somewhere be beautiful "parlors," but he had trusted in his experience of kitchens. Kitchens, according to his philosophy, were small smelly rooms of bare floors, and provided with one oilcloth-covered table, one stove (the front draft always broken and propped up with the lid-lifter), one cupboard with panes of tin pierced in rosettes, and one stack of dirty dishes. But the Gilson kitchen had the efficiency of a laboratory and the superciliousness of a hair-dresser's booth. With awe Milt beheld walls of white tiles, a cork floor, a gas-range large as a hotel-stove, a ceiling-high refrigerator of enamel and nickel, zinc-topped tables, and a case of utensils like a surgeon's knives. It frightened him; it made more hopelessly unapproachable than ever the Alexandrian luxury of the great Gilsons.... The Vanderbilts' kitchen must be like this. And maybe King George's. He was viewing the kitchen upon the occasion of an intimate Sunday evening supper to which he had been yearningly invited by Mrs. Gilson. The maids were all out. The Gilsons and Claire, Milt and Jeff Saxton, shoutingly prepared their own supper. While Mrs. Gilson scrambled eggs and made coffee, the others set the table, and brought cold ham and a bowl of salad from the ice-box. Milt had intended to be a silent but deft servitor. When he had heard that he was to come to supper with the returned Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, he had first been panic-shaken, then resolved. He'd "let old iron-face Saxton do the high and mighty. Let him stand around and show off his clothes and adjectives, way he did at Flathead Lake." But he, Milt, would be "on the job." He'd help get supper, and calmly ignore Jeff's rudeness. Only--Jeff wasn't rude. He greeted Milt with, "Ah, Daggett! This is _so_ nice!" And Milt had no chance to help. It was Jeff who anticipated him and with a pleasant, "Let me get that--I'm kitchen-broke," snatched up the cold ham and salad. It was Jeff who found the supper plates, while Milt was blunderingly wondering how any one family could use a "whole furniture-store-full of different kinds of china." It was Jeff who sprang to help Claire wheel in the tea-wagon, and so captured the chance to speak to her for which Milt had been maneuvering these five minutes. When they were settled, Jeff glowed at him, and respectfully offered, "I thought of you so often, Daggett, on a recent little jaunt of mine. You'd have been helpful." "Where was that?" asked Milt suspiciously (wondering, and waiting to see, whether you could take cold ham in your fingers). "Oh, in Alaska." "In--Alaska?" Milt was dismayed. "Yes, just a business trip there. There's something I wish you'd advise me about." He was humble. And Milt was uneasy. He grumbled, "What's that?" "I've been wondering whether it would be possible to use wireless telephony in Alaska. But I'm such a dub at electricity. Do you know---- What would be the cost of installing a wireless telephone plant with a hundred-mile radius?" "Gee, I don't know!" "Oh, so sorry. Well, I wonder if you can tell me about wireless telegraphy, then?" "No, I don't know anything about that either." Milt had desperately tried to make his answer gracious but somehow---- He hated this devil's obsequiousness more than he had his chilliness at Flathead Lake. He had a feeling that the Gilsons had delightedly kicked each other under the table; that, for all her unchanging smile, Claire was unhappy.... And she was so far off, a white wraith floating beyond his frantic grasp. "It doesn't matter, really. But I didn't know---- So you've started in the engineering school at the University of Washington," Saxton was purring. "Have you met Gid Childers there--son of old Senator Childers--charming people." "I've seen him. He has a Stutz--no, his is the Mercer," sighed Milt. He hated himself for it, but he couldn't quite keep the awe out of his voice. People with Mercers---- Claire seemed to be trying to speak. She made a delicate, feminine, clairesque approximation to clearing her throat. But Jeff ignored her and with almost osculatory affection continued to Milt: "Do let me know if there's anything I can do to help you. We're acquainted with two or three of your engineering faculty at the Office. They write in about various things. Do you happen to know Dr. Philgren?" "Oh yes. Say! He's a wonder!" Milt was betrayed into exclaiming. "Yes. Good chap, I believe. He's been trying to get a job with us. We may give him one. Just tell him you're a friend of mine, and that he's to give you any help he can." Milt choked on a "Thanks." "And--now that we're just the family here together--how goes the financial side? Can I be of any assistance in introducing you to some engineering firm where you could do a little work on the side? You could make quite a little money----" So confoundedly affectionate and paternal---- Milt said irritably, "Thanks, but I don't need to do any work. I've got plenty of money." "How pleasant!" Saxton's voice was smooth as marshmallow. "You're fortunate. I had quite a struggle to get through Princeton." Wasn't Mr. Gilson contrasting Saxton's silk shirt with Milt's darned cotton covering, and in light of that contrast chuckling at Milt's boast and Saxton's modesty? Milt became overheated. His scalp prickled and his shoulder-blades were damp. As Saxton turned from him, and crooned to Claire, "More ham, honey?" Milt hated himself. He was in much of the dramatic but undesirable position of a man in pajamas, not very good pajamas, who has been locked out in the hotel corridor by the slamming of his door. He was in the frame of mind of a mongrel, of a real Boys'-Dog, at a Madison Square dog-show. He had a faint shrewd suspicion of Saxton's game. But what could he do about it? He felt even more out of place when the family forgot him and talked about people of whom he had never heard. He sat alone on an extremely distant desert isle and ate cold ham and wished he were in Schoenstrom. Claire had recovered her power of speech. She seemed to be trying to bring him into the conversation, so that the family might appreciate him. She hesitated, and thought with creased brows, and brought out, "Uh, uh, oh---- Oh Milt: How much is gas selling at now?"... * * * * * Milt left that charming and intimate supper-party at nine. He said, "Got to work on--on my analytical geometry," as though it was a lie; and he threw "Good night" at Saxton as though he hated his kind, good benefactor; and when he tried to be gracious to Mrs. Gilson the best he could get out was, "Thanks f' inviting me." They expansively saw him to the door. Just as he thought that he had escaped, Saxton begged, "Oh, Daggett, I was arguing with a chap---- What color are Holstein-Friesian cattle? Red?" "Black and white," Milt said eagerly. He heard Mrs. Gilson giggle. He stood on the terrace wiping his forehead and, without the least struggle, finally and irretrievably admitting that he would never see Claire Boltwood or any of her friends again. Not--never! * * * * * He had received from Mrs. Gilson a note inviting him to share their box at the first night of a three-night Opera Season. He had spent half a day in trying to think of a courteously rude way of declining. A straggly little girl came up from the candy-shop below his room, demanding, "Say, are you Mr. Daggett? Say, there's some woman wants to talk to you on our telephone. Say, tell them we ain't supposed to be no messenger-office. You ain't supposed to call no upstairs people on our telephone. We ain't supposed to leave the store and go trotting all over town to---- Gee, a nickel, gee, thank you, don't mind what ma says, she's always kicking." On the telephone, he heard Claire's voice in an agitated, "Milt! Meet me down-town, at the Imperial Motion Picture Theater, right away. Something I've got to tell you. I'll be in the lobby. Hurry!" When he bolted in she was already in the lobby, agitatedly looking over a frame of "stills." She ran to him, hooked her fingers in his lapel, poured out, "They've invited you to the opera? I want you to come and put it all over them. I'm almost sure there's a plot. They want to show me that you aren't used to tiaras and saxophones and creaking dowagers and tulle. Beat 'em! Beat 'em! Come to the opera and be awf'ly aloof and supercilious. You can! Yes, you can! And be sure--wear evening clothes. Now I've got to hurry." "B-but----" "Don't disappoint me. I depend on you. Oh, say you will!" "I will!" She was gone, whisking into the Gilson limousine. He was in a glow at her loyalty, in a tremor of anger at the meddlers. But he had never worn evening clothes. He called it "a dress-suit," and before the complications of that exotic garb, he was flabby with anxiety. To Milt and to Schoenstrom--to Bill McGolwey, even to Prof Jones and the greasily prosperous Heinie Rauskukle--the dress-suit was the symbol and proof, the indication and manner, of sophisticated wealth. In Schoenstrom even waiters do not wear dress-suits. For one thing there aren't any waiters. There is one waitress at the Leipzig House, Miss Annie Schweigenblat, but you wouldn't expect Miss Schweigenblat to deal them off the arm in black trousers with braid down the side. No; a dress-suit was what the hero wore in the movies; and the hero in the movies, when he wasn't a cowpuncher, was an ex-captain of the Yale football team, and had chambers and a valet. You could tell him from the valet because he wasn't so bald. It is true that Milt had heard that in St. Cloud there were people who wore dress-suits at parties, but then St. Cloud was a city, fifteen or sixteen thousand. "How could he get away with a dress-suit? How could he keep from feeling foolish in a low-cut vest, and what the deuce would he do with the tails? Did you part 'em or roll 'em up, when you sat down? And wouldn't everybody be able to tell from his foolish look that he didn't belong in one?" He could hear A.D.T. boys and loafers in front of pool rooms whispering, "Look at the piker in the rented soup and fish!" For of course he'd rent one. Nobody bought them--except plutes like Henry B. Boltwood. He agitatedly walked up and down for an hour, peering into haberdashery windows, looking for a kind-faced young man. He found him, in Ye Pall Mall Toggery Shoppe & Shoes; an open-faced young man who was gazing through the window as sparklingly as though he was thinking of going as a missionary to India--and liked curry. Milt ironed out his worried face, clumped in, demanded fraternally, "Say, old man, don't some of these gents' furnishings stores have kind of little charts that tell just what you wear with dress-suits and Prince Alberts and everything?" "You bet," said the kind-faced young man. West of Chicago, "You bet" means "Rather," and "Yes indeed," and "On the whole I should be inclined to fancy that there may be some vestiges of accuracy in your curious opinion," and "You're a liar but I can't afford to say so." The kind-faced young man brought from behind the counter a beautiful brochure illustrated with photographs of Phoebus Apollo in what were described as "American Beauty Garments--neat, natty, nobby, new." The center pages faithfully catalogued the ties, shirts, cuff-links, spats, boots, hats, to wear with evening clothes, morning clothes, riding clothes, tennis costumes, polite mourning. As he looked it over Milt felt that his wardrobe already contained all these gentlemanly possessions. With the aid of the clerk and the chart he purchased a tradition-haunted garment with a plate-armor bosom and an opening as crooked as the Missouri River; a white tie which in his strong red hands looked as silly as a dead fish; waistcoat, pearl links, and studs. For the first time, except for seizures of madness during two or three visits to Minneapolis motor accessory stores, he caught the shopping-fever. The long shining counter, the trim red-stained shelves, the glittering cases, the racks of flaunting ties, were beautiful to him and beckoning. He revolved a pleasantly clicking rack of ties, then turned and fought his way out. He bought pumps--which cost exactly twice as much as the largest sum which he had allowed himself. He bought a newspaper, and in the want-columns found the advertisement: Silberfarb the Society Tailor DRESS SUITS TO RENT Snappiest in the City Despite the superlative snappiness of Mr. Silberfarb's dress-suits his establishment was a loft over a delicatessen, approached by a splintery stairway along which hung shabby signs announcing the upstairs offices of "J. L. & T. J. O'Regan, Private Detectives," "The Zenith Spiritualist Church, Messages by Rev. Lulu Paughouse," "The International Order of Live Ones, Seattle Wigwam," and "Mme. Lavourie, Sulphur Baths." The dead air of the hallway suggested petty crookedness. Milt felt that he ought to fight somebody but, there being no one to fight, he banged along the flapping boards of the second-floor hallway to the ground-glass door of Silberfarb the Society Tailor, who was also, as an afterthought on a straggly placard, "Pressng & Cleang While U Wait." He belligerently shouldered into a low room. The light from the one window was almost obscured by racks of musty-smelling black clothes which stretched away from him in two dismal aisles that resembled a morgue of unhappy dead men indecently hung up on hooks. On a long, clumsily carpentered table, a small Jew, collarless, sweaty, unshaven, was darning trousers under an evil mantle gaslight. The Jew wrung out his hands and tried to look benevolent. "Want to rent a dress-suit," said Milt. "I got just the t'ing for you!" The little man unfolded himself, galloped down the aisle, seized the first garment that came to hand, and came back to lay it against Milt's uncomfortable frame, bumbling, "Fine, mister, fy-en!" Milt studied the shiny-seamed, worn-buttonholed, limp object with dislike. Its personality was disintegrated. The only thing he liked about it was the good garage stink of gasoline. "That's almost worn out," he growled. At this sacrilege Mr. Silberfarb threw up his hands, with the dingy suit flapping in them like a bed-quilt shaken from a tenement window. He looked Milt all over, coldly. His red but shining eyes hinted that Milt was a clodhopper and no honest wearer of evening clothes. Milt felt humble, but he snapped, "No good. Want something with class." "Vell, that was good enough for a university professor at the big dance, but if you say so----" In the manner of one who is being put to an unfair amount of trouble, Mr. Silberfarb returned the paranoiac dress-suit to the rack, sighing patiently as he laboriously draped it on a hanger. He peered and pawed. He crowed with throaty triumph and brought back a rich ripe thing of velvet collar and cuffs. He fixed Milt with eyes that had become as sulky as the eyes of a dog in August dust. "Now that--you can't beat that, if you vant class, and it'll fit you like a glove. Oh, that's an ellllegant garment!" Shaking himself out of the spell of those contemptuous eyes Milt opened his brochure, studied the chart, and in a footnote found, "Never wear velvet collars or cuffs with evening coat." "Nope. Nix on the velvet," he remarked. Then the little man went mad and ran around in circles. He flung the ellllegant garment on the table. He flapped his arms, and wailed, "What do you vant? What do you vannnnt? That's a hundred-and-fifty-dollar dress-suit! That belonged to one of the richest men in the city. He sold it to me because he was going to Japan." "Well, you can send it to Japan after him. I want something decent. Have you got it--or shall I go some place else?" The tailor instantly became affectionate. "How about a nice Tuxedo?" he coaxed. "Nope. It says here--let me see--oh yes, here it is--it says here in the book that for the theater-with-ladies, should not wear 'dinner-coat or so-called Tuxedo, but----'" "Oh, dem fellows what writes books they don't know nothing. Absolute! They make it up." "Huh! Well, I guess I'll take my chance on them. The factory knows the ignition better 'n any repair-man." "Vell say, you're a hard fellow to please. I'll give you one of my reserve stock, but you got to leave me ten dollars deposit instead of five." Mr. Silberfarb quite cheerfully unlocked a glass case behind the racked and ghostly dead; he brought out a suit that seemed to Milt almost decent. And it almost fitted when, after changing clothes in a broiling, boiling, reeking, gasoline-pulsing hole behind the racks, he examined it before a pier-glass. But he caught the tailor assisting the fit by bunching up a roll of cloth at the shoulder. Again Milt snapped, and again the tailor suffered and died, and to a doubting heathen world maintained the true gospel of "What do you vannnnt? It ain't stylish to have the dress-suit too tight! All the gents is wearing 'em loose and graceful." But in the end, after Milt had gone as far as the door, Mr. Silberfarb admitted that one dress-coat wouldn't always fit all persons without some alterations. The coat did bag a little, and it was too long in the sleeves, but as Milt studied himself in his room--by placing his small melancholy mirror on the bureau, then on a chair, then on the floor, finally, to get a complete view, clear out in the hall--he admitted with stirring delight that he looked "pretty fair in the bloomin' outfit." His clear face, his shining hair, his straight shoulders, seemed to go with the costume. He wriggled into his top-coat and marched out of his room, theater-bound, with the well-fed satisfaction of a man who is certain that no one is giggling, "Look at the hand-me-downs." His pumps did alternately pinch his toes and rub his heels; the trousers cramped his waist; and he suspected that his tie had gone wandering. But he swaggered to the trolley, and sat as one rich and famous and very kind to the Common People, till---- Another man in evening clothes got on the car, and Milt saw that he wore a silk hat, and a white knitted scarf; that he took

high

How many times the word 'high' appears in the text?

who was the limp indoor-dweller, and he who was the ruddy ranger; that as he had admired her at Flathead Lake, so now it was hers to admire, and his to be serenely heroic. She was not far from the worshiping sub-deb in her sighing, "How _did_ you get the scar?" "That? Oh, nothing." "Please tell me." "Really and truly. Nothing at all. Just a drunken fellow with a knife, playing the fool. I didn't have to touch him--quite sure he could have given me a frightful beating and all that sort of thing. It was the Big Chief who got rid of him." "He--cut you? With a kniiiiiife? Ohhhhhhh!" She ran to him, pityingly stroked the scar, looked down at him with filmy eyes. Then she tried to retreat, but he retained her hand, glanced up at her as though he knew her every thought. She felt weak. How could she escape him? "Please!" she begged flutteringly. If he held her hand another moment, she trembled, she'd be on his lap, in his arms--lost. And he was holding it. He was---- Oh, he was too old for her. Yes, and too paternal. But still---- Life with Jeff would be protected, kindly, honorable. Yet all the time she wanted, and stormily knew she wanted, to be fleeing to the boy Milt, her mate; to run away with him, hand in hand, discovering all the colored world, laughing at life, not afraid of losing dignity. In fear of Jeff's very kindliness and honor, she jerked her hand free. Then she tried to smile like a clever fencer. As she retreated to her chair she stammered, "Did you---- Was Alaska interesting?" He did not let her go, this time. Easy, cat-like for all his dry gravity, he sauntered after her, and with a fine high seriousness pleaded his case: "Claire dear, those few weeks of fighting nature were a revelation to me. I'm going to have lots more of it. As it happens, they need me there. There's plenty of copper, but there's big transportation and employment problems that I seem better able to solve than the other chaps--though of course I'm an absolute muff when it comes to engineering problems. But I've had certain training and--I'm going to arrange things so that I get up there at least once a year. Next summer I'll make a much longer trip--see the mountains--oh, glorious mountains--and funny half-Russian towns, and have some fishing---- Wandering. The really big thing. Even finer than your superb plucky trip through----" "Wasn't plucky! I'm a cry baby," she said, like a bad, contradictory little girl. He didn't argue it. He smiled and said "Tut!" and placidly catalogued her with, "You're the pluckiest girl I've ever seen, and it's all the more amazing because you're not a motion-picture Tomboy, but essentially exquisite----" "I'm a grub." "Very well, then. You're a grub. So am I. And I like it. And when I make the big Alaskan trip next year I want you to go along! Claire! Haven't you any idea how terribly close to me the thought of you has been these weeks? You've guided me through the wilderness----" "It's---- I'm glad." She sprang up, beseeching, "Jeff dear, you're going to stay for tea? I must run up and powder my nose." "Not until you say you're glad to see me. Child dear, we've been ambling along and---- No. You aren't a child any more. You're a woman. And if I've never been quite a man, but just a dusty office-machine, that's gone now. I've got the wind of the wilderness in my lungs. Man and woman! My woman! That's all I'm going to say now, but---- Oh my God, Claire, I do need you so!" He drew her head to his shoulder, and for an instant she rested there. But as she looked up, she saw coming age in the granulated skin of his throat. "He needs me--but he'd boss me. I'd be the cunning child-wife, even at fifty," she worried, and "Hang him, it's like his superiority to beat poor Milt even at adventuring--and to be such a confounded Modest Christian Gentleman about it!" "You'd--you're so dreadfully managing," she sighed aloud. For the first time in all their acquaintanceship, Jeff's pride broke, and he held her away from him, while his lips were pathetic, and he mourned, "Why do you always try to hurt me?" "Oh, my dear, I don't." "Is it because you resent the decent things I have managed to do?" "I don't understand." "If I have an idea for a party, you think I'm 'managing.' If I think things out deeply, you say I'm dull." "Oh, you aren't. I didn't mean----" "What are you? A real woman, or one of these flirts, that love to tease a man because he's foolish enough to be honestly in love?" "I'm not--hon-estly I'm not, Jeff. It's---- You don't quite make me---- It's just that I'm not in love with you. I like you, and respect you terribly, but----" "I'm going to make you love me." His clutching fingers hurt her arm, and somehow she was not angry, but stirred. "But I'm not going to try now. Forget the Alaskan caveman. Remember, I haven't even used the word 'love.' I've just chatted about fjords, or whatever they are, but one of these days---- No. I won't do it. I want to stay here in Seattle a few days, and take you on jolly picnics, but---- Would you rather I didn't even do that? I'm----" He dropped her arm, kneaded his forehead with the heel of his palm. "I can't stand being regarded as a bothersome puppy. I can't stand it! I can't!" "Please stay, Jeff! We'll have some darling drives and things. We'll go up Rainier as far as we can." He stayed. He was anecdotal and amusing at tea, that afternoon. Claire saw how the Gilsons, and two girls who dropped in, admired him. That made her uneasy. And when Mrs. Gilson begged him to leave his hotel and stay with them, he refused with a quick look at Claire that hurt her. "He wants me to be free. He's really so much more considerate than Milt. And I hurt him. Even his pride broke down. And I've spoiled Milt's life by meddling. And I've hurt the Gilsons' feelings. And I'm not much of a comfort to father. Oh, I'm absolutely no good," she agonized. CHAPTER XXX THE VIRTUOUS PLOTTERS Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, in Alaskan tan and New York evening clothes and Piccadilly poise, was talking to the Eugene Gilsons while Claire finished dressing for the theater. Mrs. Gilson observed, "She's the dearest thing. We've become awfully fond of her. But I don't think she knows what she wants to do with life. She's rather at loose ends. Who is this Daggett boy--some university student--whom she seems to like?" "Well, since you speak of him---- I hadn't meant to, unless you did. I want to be fair to him. What did she tell you about him?" Jeff asked confidentially. "Nothing, except that he's a young engineer, and frightfully brave and all those uncomfortable virtues, and she met him in Yellowstone Park or somewhere, and he saved her from a bear--or was it a tramp?--from something unnecessary, at any rate." "Eva, I don't want to be supercilious, but the truth is that this young Daggett is a rather dreadful person. He's been here at the house, hasn't he? How did he strike you?" "Not at all. He's silent, and as dull as lukewarm tea, but perfectly inoffensive." "Then he's cleverer than I thought! Daggett is anything but dull and inoffensive, and if he can play that estimable r le----! It seems that he is the son of some common workman in the Middlewest; he isn't an engineer at all; he's really a chauffeur or a taxi-driver or something; and he ran into Claire and Henry B. on the road, and somehow insinuated himself into their graces--far from being silent and commonplace, he appears to have some strange kind of charm which," Jeff sighed, "I don't understand at all. I simply don't understand it! "I met him in Montana with the most gorgeously atrocious person I've ever encountered--one Pinky Westlake, or some such a name--positively, a crook! He tried to get Boltwood and myself interested in the commonest kind of a mining swindle--hinted that we were to join him in cheating the public. And this Daggett was his partner--they actually traveled together. But I do want to be just. I'm not _sure_ that Daggett was aware of his partner's dishonesty. That isn't what worries me about the lad. It's his utter impossibility. He's as crude as iron-ore. When he's being careful, he may manage to be inconspicuous, but give him the chance---- "Really, I'm not exaggerating when I say that at thirty-five he'll be dining in his shirt-sleeves, and sitting down to read the paper with his shoes off and feet up on the table. But Claire--you know what a dear Quixotic soul she is--she fancies that because this fellow repaired a puncture or something of the sort for her on the road, she's indebted to him, and the worse he is, the more she feels that she must help him. And affairs of that kind---- Oh, it's quite too horrible, but there have been cases, you know, where girls as splendid and fine and well-bred as Claire herself have been trapped into low marriages by their loyalty to cadging adventurers!" "Oh!" groaned Mrs. Gilson; and "Good Lord!" lamented Mr. Gilson, delighted by the possibility of tragedy; and "Really, I'm not exaggerating," said Jeff enthusiastically. "What are we going to do?" demanded Mrs. Gilson; while Mr. Gilson, being of a ready and inventive mind, exclaimed, "By Jove, you ought to kidnap her and marry her yourself, Jeff!" "I'd like to. But I'm too old." They beautifully assured him that he was a blithe young thing with milk teeth; and with a certain satisfaction Jeff suggested, "I tell you what we might do. Of course it's an ancient stunt, but it's good. I judge that Daggett hasn't been here at the house much. Why not have him here so often that Claire will awaken to his crudity, and get sick of him?" "We'll do it," thrilled Mrs. Gilson. "We'll have him for everything from nine-course dinners with Grandmother Eaton's napkins on view, to milk and cold ham out of the ice-box. When Claire doesn't invite him, I will!" CHAPTER XXXI THE KITCHEN INTIMATE Milt had become used to the Gilson drawing-room. He was no longer uncomfortable in the presence of its sleek fatness, though at first (not knowing that there were such resources as interior decorators), he had been convinced that, to have created the room, the Gilsons must have known everything in the world. Now he glanced familiarly at its white paneling, its sconces like silver candlesticks, the inevitable davenport inevitably backed by an amethyst-shaded piano lamp and a table crowded with silver boxes and picture-frames. He liked the winsomeness of light upon velvet and polished wood. It was not the drawing-room but the kitchen that dismayed him. In Schoenstrom he had known that there must somewhere be beautiful "parlors," but he had trusted in his experience of kitchens. Kitchens, according to his philosophy, were small smelly rooms of bare floors, and provided with one oilcloth-covered table, one stove (the front draft always broken and propped up with the lid-lifter), one cupboard with panes of tin pierced in rosettes, and one stack of dirty dishes. But the Gilson kitchen had the efficiency of a laboratory and the superciliousness of a hair-dresser's booth. With awe Milt beheld walls of white tiles, a cork floor, a gas-range large as a hotel-stove, a ceiling-high refrigerator of enamel and nickel, zinc-topped tables, and a case of utensils like a surgeon's knives. It frightened him; it made more hopelessly unapproachable than ever the Alexandrian luxury of the great Gilsons.... The Vanderbilts' kitchen must be like this. And maybe King George's. He was viewing the kitchen upon the occasion of an intimate Sunday evening supper to which he had been yearningly invited by Mrs. Gilson. The maids were all out. The Gilsons and Claire, Milt and Jeff Saxton, shoutingly prepared their own supper. While Mrs. Gilson scrambled eggs and made coffee, the others set the table, and brought cold ham and a bowl of salad from the ice-box. Milt had intended to be a silent but deft servitor. When he had heard that he was to come to supper with the returned Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, he had first been panic-shaken, then resolved. He'd "let old iron-face Saxton do the high and mighty. Let him stand around and show off his clothes and adjectives, way he did at Flathead Lake." But he, Milt, would be "on the job." He'd help get supper, and calmly ignore Jeff's rudeness. Only--Jeff wasn't rude. He greeted Milt with, "Ah, Daggett! This is _so_ nice!" And Milt had no chance to help. It was Jeff who anticipated him and with a pleasant, "Let me get that--I'm kitchen-broke," snatched up the cold ham and salad. It was Jeff who found the supper plates, while Milt was blunderingly wondering how any one family could use a "whole furniture-store-full of different kinds of china." It was Jeff who sprang to help Claire wheel in the tea-wagon, and so captured the chance to speak to her for which Milt had been maneuvering these five minutes. When they were settled, Jeff glowed at him, and respectfully offered, "I thought of you so often, Daggett, on a recent little jaunt of mine. You'd have been helpful." "Where was that?" asked Milt suspiciously (wondering, and waiting to see, whether you could take cold ham in your fingers). "Oh, in Alaska." "In--Alaska?" Milt was dismayed. "Yes, just a business trip there. There's something I wish you'd advise me about." He was humble. And Milt was uneasy. He grumbled, "What's that?" "I've been wondering whether it would be possible to use wireless telephony in Alaska. But I'm such a dub at electricity. Do you know---- What would be the cost of installing a wireless telephone plant with a hundred-mile radius?" "Gee, I don't know!" "Oh, so sorry. Well, I wonder if you can tell me about wireless telegraphy, then?" "No, I don't know anything about that either." Milt had desperately tried to make his answer gracious but somehow---- He hated this devil's obsequiousness more than he had his chilliness at Flathead Lake. He had a feeling that the Gilsons had delightedly kicked each other under the table; that, for all her unchanging smile, Claire was unhappy.... And she was so far off, a white wraith floating beyond his frantic grasp. "It doesn't matter, really. But I didn't know---- So you've started in the engineering school at the University of Washington," Saxton was purring. "Have you met Gid Childers there--son of old Senator Childers--charming people." "I've seen him. He has a Stutz--no, his is the Mercer," sighed Milt. He hated himself for it, but he couldn't quite keep the awe out of his voice. People with Mercers---- Claire seemed to be trying to speak. She made a delicate, feminine, clairesque approximation to clearing her throat. But Jeff ignored her and with almost osculatory affection continued to Milt: "Do let me know if there's anything I can do to help you. We're acquainted with two or three of your engineering faculty at the Office. They write in about various things. Do you happen to know Dr. Philgren?" "Oh yes. Say! He's a wonder!" Milt was betrayed into exclaiming. "Yes. Good chap, I believe. He's been trying to get a job with us. We may give him one. Just tell him you're a friend of mine, and that he's to give you any help he can." Milt choked on a "Thanks." "And--now that we're just the family here together--how goes the financial side? Can I be of any assistance in introducing you to some engineering firm where you could do a little work on the side? You could make quite a little money----" So confoundedly affectionate and paternal---- Milt said irritably, "Thanks, but I don't need to do any work. I've got plenty of money." "How pleasant!" Saxton's voice was smooth as marshmallow. "You're fortunate. I had quite a struggle to get through Princeton." Wasn't Mr. Gilson contrasting Saxton's silk shirt with Milt's darned cotton covering, and in light of that contrast chuckling at Milt's boast and Saxton's modesty? Milt became overheated. His scalp prickled and his shoulder-blades were damp. As Saxton turned from him, and crooned to Claire, "More ham, honey?" Milt hated himself. He was in much of the dramatic but undesirable position of a man in pajamas, not very good pajamas, who has been locked out in the hotel corridor by the slamming of his door. He was in the frame of mind of a mongrel, of a real Boys'-Dog, at a Madison Square dog-show. He had a faint shrewd suspicion of Saxton's game. But what could he do about it? He felt even more out of place when the family forgot him and talked about people of whom he had never heard. He sat alone on an extremely distant desert isle and ate cold ham and wished he were in Schoenstrom. Claire had recovered her power of speech. She seemed to be trying to bring him into the conversation, so that the family might appreciate him. She hesitated, and thought with creased brows, and brought out, "Uh, uh, oh---- Oh Milt: How much is gas selling at now?"... * * * * * Milt left that charming and intimate supper-party at nine. He said, "Got to work on--on my analytical geometry," as though it was a lie; and he threw "Good night" at Saxton as though he hated his kind, good benefactor; and when he tried to be gracious to Mrs. Gilson the best he could get out was, "Thanks f' inviting me." They expansively saw him to the door. Just as he thought that he had escaped, Saxton begged, "Oh, Daggett, I was arguing with a chap---- What color are Holstein-Friesian cattle? Red?" "Black and white," Milt said eagerly. He heard Mrs. Gilson giggle. He stood on the terrace wiping his forehead and, without the least struggle, finally and irretrievably admitting that he would never see Claire Boltwood or any of her friends again. Not--never! * * * * * He had received from Mrs. Gilson a note inviting him to share their box at the first night of a three-night Opera Season. He had spent half a day in trying to think of a courteously rude way of declining. A straggly little girl came up from the candy-shop below his room, demanding, "Say, are you Mr. Daggett? Say, there's some woman wants to talk to you on our telephone. Say, tell them we ain't supposed to be no messenger-office. You ain't supposed to call no upstairs people on our telephone. We ain't supposed to leave the store and go trotting all over town to---- Gee, a nickel, gee, thank you, don't mind what ma says, she's always kicking." On the telephone, he heard Claire's voice in an agitated, "Milt! Meet me down-town, at the Imperial Motion Picture Theater, right away. Something I've got to tell you. I'll be in the lobby. Hurry!" When he bolted in she was already in the lobby, agitatedly looking over a frame of "stills." She ran to him, hooked her fingers in his lapel, poured out, "They've invited you to the opera? I want you to come and put it all over them. I'm almost sure there's a plot. They want to show me that you aren't used to tiaras and saxophones and creaking dowagers and tulle. Beat 'em! Beat 'em! Come to the opera and be awf'ly aloof and supercilious. You can! Yes, you can! And be sure--wear evening clothes. Now I've got to hurry." "B-but----" "Don't disappoint me. I depend on you. Oh, say you will!" "I will!" She was gone, whisking into the Gilson limousine. He was in a glow at her loyalty, in a tremor of anger at the meddlers. But he had never worn evening clothes. He called it "a dress-suit," and before the complications of that exotic garb, he was flabby with anxiety. To Milt and to Schoenstrom--to Bill McGolwey, even to Prof Jones and the greasily prosperous Heinie Rauskukle--the dress-suit was the symbol and proof, the indication and manner, of sophisticated wealth. In Schoenstrom even waiters do not wear dress-suits. For one thing there aren't any waiters. There is one waitress at the Leipzig House, Miss Annie Schweigenblat, but you wouldn't expect Miss Schweigenblat to deal them off the arm in black trousers with braid down the side. No; a dress-suit was what the hero wore in the movies; and the hero in the movies, when he wasn't a cowpuncher, was an ex-captain of the Yale football team, and had chambers and a valet. You could tell him from the valet because he wasn't so bald. It is true that Milt had heard that in St. Cloud there were people who wore dress-suits at parties, but then St. Cloud was a city, fifteen or sixteen thousand. "How could he get away with a dress-suit? How could he keep from feeling foolish in a low-cut vest, and what the deuce would he do with the tails? Did you part 'em or roll 'em up, when you sat down? And wouldn't everybody be able to tell from his foolish look that he didn't belong in one?" He could hear A.D.T. boys and loafers in front of pool rooms whispering, "Look at the piker in the rented soup and fish!" For of course he'd rent one. Nobody bought them--except plutes like Henry B. Boltwood. He agitatedly walked up and down for an hour, peering into haberdashery windows, looking for a kind-faced young man. He found him, in Ye Pall Mall Toggery Shoppe & Shoes; an open-faced young man who was gazing through the window as sparklingly as though he was thinking of going as a missionary to India--and liked curry. Milt ironed out his worried face, clumped in, demanded fraternally, "Say, old man, don't some of these gents' furnishings stores have kind of little charts that tell just what you wear with dress-suits and Prince Alberts and everything?" "You bet," said the kind-faced young man. West of Chicago, "You bet" means "Rather," and "Yes indeed," and "On the whole I should be inclined to fancy that there may be some vestiges of accuracy in your curious opinion," and "You're a liar but I can't afford to say so." The kind-faced young man brought from behind the counter a beautiful brochure illustrated with photographs of Phoebus Apollo in what were described as "American Beauty Garments--neat, natty, nobby, new." The center pages faithfully catalogued the ties, shirts, cuff-links, spats, boots, hats, to wear with evening clothes, morning clothes, riding clothes, tennis costumes, polite mourning. As he looked it over Milt felt that his wardrobe already contained all these gentlemanly possessions. With the aid of the clerk and the chart he purchased a tradition-haunted garment with a plate-armor bosom and an opening as crooked as the Missouri River; a white tie which in his strong red hands looked as silly as a dead fish; waistcoat, pearl links, and studs. For the first time, except for seizures of madness during two or three visits to Minneapolis motor accessory stores, he caught the shopping-fever. The long shining counter, the trim red-stained shelves, the glittering cases, the racks of flaunting ties, were beautiful to him and beckoning. He revolved a pleasantly clicking rack of ties, then turned and fought his way out. He bought pumps--which cost exactly twice as much as the largest sum which he had allowed himself. He bought a newspaper, and in the want-columns found the advertisement: Silberfarb the Society Tailor DRESS SUITS TO RENT Snappiest in the City Despite the superlative snappiness of Mr. Silberfarb's dress-suits his establishment was a loft over a delicatessen, approached by a splintery stairway along which hung shabby signs announcing the upstairs offices of "J. L. & T. J. O'Regan, Private Detectives," "The Zenith Spiritualist Church, Messages by Rev. Lulu Paughouse," "The International Order of Live Ones, Seattle Wigwam," and "Mme. Lavourie, Sulphur Baths." The dead air of the hallway suggested petty crookedness. Milt felt that he ought to fight somebody but, there being no one to fight, he banged along the flapping boards of the second-floor hallway to the ground-glass door of Silberfarb the Society Tailor, who was also, as an afterthought on a straggly placard, "Pressng & Cleang While U Wait." He belligerently shouldered into a low room. The light from the one window was almost obscured by racks of musty-smelling black clothes which stretched away from him in two dismal aisles that resembled a morgue of unhappy dead men indecently hung up on hooks. On a long, clumsily carpentered table, a small Jew, collarless, sweaty, unshaven, was darning trousers under an evil mantle gaslight. The Jew wrung out his hands and tried to look benevolent. "Want to rent a dress-suit," said Milt. "I got just the t'ing for you!" The little man unfolded himself, galloped down the aisle, seized the first garment that came to hand, and came back to lay it against Milt's uncomfortable frame, bumbling, "Fine, mister, fy-en!" Milt studied the shiny-seamed, worn-buttonholed, limp object with dislike. Its personality was disintegrated. The only thing he liked about it was the good garage stink of gasoline. "That's almost worn out," he growled. At this sacrilege Mr. Silberfarb threw up his hands, with the dingy suit flapping in them like a bed-quilt shaken from a tenement window. He looked Milt all over, coldly. His red but shining eyes hinted that Milt was a clodhopper and no honest wearer of evening clothes. Milt felt humble, but he snapped, "No good. Want something with class." "Vell, that was good enough for a university professor at the big dance, but if you say so----" In the manner of one who is being put to an unfair amount of trouble, Mr. Silberfarb returned the paranoiac dress-suit to the rack, sighing patiently as he laboriously draped it on a hanger. He peered and pawed. He crowed with throaty triumph and brought back a rich ripe thing of velvet collar and cuffs. He fixed Milt with eyes that had become as sulky as the eyes of a dog in August dust. "Now that--you can't beat that, if you vant class, and it'll fit you like a glove. Oh, that's an ellllegant garment!" Shaking himself out of the spell of those contemptuous eyes Milt opened his brochure, studied the chart, and in a footnote found, "Never wear velvet collars or cuffs with evening coat." "Nope. Nix on the velvet," he remarked. Then the little man went mad and ran around in circles. He flung the ellllegant garment on the table. He flapped his arms, and wailed, "What do you vant? What do you vannnnt? That's a hundred-and-fifty-dollar dress-suit! That belonged to one of the richest men in the city. He sold it to me because he was going to Japan." "Well, you can send it to Japan after him. I want something decent. Have you got it--or shall I go some place else?" The tailor instantly became affectionate. "How about a nice Tuxedo?" he coaxed. "Nope. It says here--let me see--oh yes, here it is--it says here in the book that for the theater-with-ladies, should not wear 'dinner-coat or so-called Tuxedo, but----'" "Oh, dem fellows what writes books they don't know nothing. Absolute! They make it up." "Huh! Well, I guess I'll take my chance on them. The factory knows the ignition better 'n any repair-man." "Vell say, you're a hard fellow to please. I'll give you one of my reserve stock, but you got to leave me ten dollars deposit instead of five." Mr. Silberfarb quite cheerfully unlocked a glass case behind the racked and ghostly dead; he brought out a suit that seemed to Milt almost decent. And it almost fitted when, after changing clothes in a broiling, boiling, reeking, gasoline-pulsing hole behind the racks, he examined it before a pier-glass. But he caught the tailor assisting the fit by bunching up a roll of cloth at the shoulder. Again Milt snapped, and again the tailor suffered and died, and to a doubting heathen world maintained the true gospel of "What do you vannnnt? It ain't stylish to have the dress-suit too tight! All the gents is wearing 'em loose and graceful." But in the end, after Milt had gone as far as the door, Mr. Silberfarb admitted that one dress-coat wouldn't always fit all persons without some alterations. The coat did bag a little, and it was too long in the sleeves, but as Milt studied himself in his room--by placing his small melancholy mirror on the bureau, then on a chair, then on the floor, finally, to get a complete view, clear out in the hall--he admitted with stirring delight that he looked "pretty fair in the bloomin' outfit." His clear face, his shining hair, his straight shoulders, seemed to go with the costume. He wriggled into his top-coat and marched out of his room, theater-bound, with the well-fed satisfaction of a man who is certain that no one is giggling, "Look at the hand-me-downs." His pumps did alternately pinch his toes and rub his heels; the trousers cramped his waist; and he suspected that his tie had gone wandering. But he swaggered to the trolley, and sat as one rich and famous and very kind to the Common People, till---- Another man in evening clothes got on the car, and Milt saw that he wore a silk hat, and a white knitted scarf; that he took

scar

How many times the word 'scar' appears in the text?

who was the limp indoor-dweller, and he who was the ruddy ranger; that as he had admired her at Flathead Lake, so now it was hers to admire, and his to be serenely heroic. She was not far from the worshiping sub-deb in her sighing, "How _did_ you get the scar?" "That? Oh, nothing." "Please tell me." "Really and truly. Nothing at all. Just a drunken fellow with a knife, playing the fool. I didn't have to touch him--quite sure he could have given me a frightful beating and all that sort of thing. It was the Big Chief who got rid of him." "He--cut you? With a kniiiiiife? Ohhhhhhh!" She ran to him, pityingly stroked the scar, looked down at him with filmy eyes. Then she tried to retreat, but he retained her hand, glanced up at her as though he knew her every thought. She felt weak. How could she escape him? "Please!" she begged flutteringly. If he held her hand another moment, she trembled, she'd be on his lap, in his arms--lost. And he was holding it. He was---- Oh, he was too old for her. Yes, and too paternal. But still---- Life with Jeff would be protected, kindly, honorable. Yet all the time she wanted, and stormily knew she wanted, to be fleeing to the boy Milt, her mate; to run away with him, hand in hand, discovering all the colored world, laughing at life, not afraid of losing dignity. In fear of Jeff's very kindliness and honor, she jerked her hand free. Then she tried to smile like a clever fencer. As she retreated to her chair she stammered, "Did you---- Was Alaska interesting?" He did not let her go, this time. Easy, cat-like for all his dry gravity, he sauntered after her, and with a fine high seriousness pleaded his case: "Claire dear, those few weeks of fighting nature were a revelation to me. I'm going to have lots more of it. As it happens, they need me there. There's plenty of copper, but there's big transportation and employment problems that I seem better able to solve than the other chaps--though of course I'm an absolute muff when it comes to engineering problems. But I've had certain training and--I'm going to arrange things so that I get up there at least once a year. Next summer I'll make a much longer trip--see the mountains--oh, glorious mountains--and funny half-Russian towns, and have some fishing---- Wandering. The really big thing. Even finer than your superb plucky trip through----" "Wasn't plucky! I'm a cry baby," she said, like a bad, contradictory little girl. He didn't argue it. He smiled and said "Tut!" and placidly catalogued her with, "You're the pluckiest girl I've ever seen, and it's all the more amazing because you're not a motion-picture Tomboy, but essentially exquisite----" "I'm a grub." "Very well, then. You're a grub. So am I. And I like it. And when I make the big Alaskan trip next year I want you to go along! Claire! Haven't you any idea how terribly close to me the thought of you has been these weeks? You've guided me through the wilderness----" "It's---- I'm glad." She sprang up, beseeching, "Jeff dear, you're going to stay for tea? I must run up and powder my nose." "Not until you say you're glad to see me. Child dear, we've been ambling along and---- No. You aren't a child any more. You're a woman. And if I've never been quite a man, but just a dusty office-machine, that's gone now. I've got the wind of the wilderness in my lungs. Man and woman! My woman! That's all I'm going to say now, but---- Oh my God, Claire, I do need you so!" He drew her head to his shoulder, and for an instant she rested there. But as she looked up, she saw coming age in the granulated skin of his throat. "He needs me--but he'd boss me. I'd be the cunning child-wife, even at fifty," she worried, and "Hang him, it's like his superiority to beat poor Milt even at adventuring--and to be such a confounded Modest Christian Gentleman about it!" "You'd--you're so dreadfully managing," she sighed aloud. For the first time in all their acquaintanceship, Jeff's pride broke, and he held her away from him, while his lips were pathetic, and he mourned, "Why do you always try to hurt me?" "Oh, my dear, I don't." "Is it because you resent the decent things I have managed to do?" "I don't understand." "If I have an idea for a party, you think I'm 'managing.' If I think things out deeply, you say I'm dull." "Oh, you aren't. I didn't mean----" "What are you? A real woman, or one of these flirts, that love to tease a man because he's foolish enough to be honestly in love?" "I'm not--hon-estly I'm not, Jeff. It's---- You don't quite make me---- It's just that I'm not in love with you. I like you, and respect you terribly, but----" "I'm going to make you love me." His clutching fingers hurt her arm, and somehow she was not angry, but stirred. "But I'm not going to try now. Forget the Alaskan caveman. Remember, I haven't even used the word 'love.' I've just chatted about fjords, or whatever they are, but one of these days---- No. I won't do it. I want to stay here in Seattle a few days, and take you on jolly picnics, but---- Would you rather I didn't even do that? I'm----" He dropped her arm, kneaded his forehead with the heel of his palm. "I can't stand being regarded as a bothersome puppy. I can't stand it! I can't!" "Please stay, Jeff! We'll have some darling drives and things. We'll go up Rainier as far as we can." He stayed. He was anecdotal and amusing at tea, that afternoon. Claire saw how the Gilsons, and two girls who dropped in, admired him. That made her uneasy. And when Mrs. Gilson begged him to leave his hotel and stay with them, he refused with a quick look at Claire that hurt her. "He wants me to be free. He's really so much more considerate than Milt. And I hurt him. Even his pride broke down. And I've spoiled Milt's life by meddling. And I've hurt the Gilsons' feelings. And I'm not much of a comfort to father. Oh, I'm absolutely no good," she agonized. CHAPTER XXX THE VIRTUOUS PLOTTERS Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, in Alaskan tan and New York evening clothes and Piccadilly poise, was talking to the Eugene Gilsons while Claire finished dressing for the theater. Mrs. Gilson observed, "She's the dearest thing. We've become awfully fond of her. But I don't think she knows what she wants to do with life. She's rather at loose ends. Who is this Daggett boy--some university student--whom she seems to like?" "Well, since you speak of him---- I hadn't meant to, unless you did. I want to be fair to him. What did she tell you about him?" Jeff asked confidentially. "Nothing, except that he's a young engineer, and frightfully brave and all those uncomfortable virtues, and she met him in Yellowstone Park or somewhere, and he saved her from a bear--or was it a tramp?--from something unnecessary, at any rate." "Eva, I don't want to be supercilious, but the truth is that this young Daggett is a rather dreadful person. He's been here at the house, hasn't he? How did he strike you?" "Not at all. He's silent, and as dull as lukewarm tea, but perfectly inoffensive." "Then he's cleverer than I thought! Daggett is anything but dull and inoffensive, and if he can play that estimable r le----! It seems that he is the son of some common workman in the Middlewest; he isn't an engineer at all; he's really a chauffeur or a taxi-driver or something; and he ran into Claire and Henry B. on the road, and somehow insinuated himself into their graces--far from being silent and commonplace, he appears to have some strange kind of charm which," Jeff sighed, "I don't understand at all. I simply don't understand it! "I met him in Montana with the most gorgeously atrocious person I've ever encountered--one Pinky Westlake, or some such a name--positively, a crook! He tried to get Boltwood and myself interested in the commonest kind of a mining swindle--hinted that we were to join him in cheating the public. And this Daggett was his partner--they actually traveled together. But I do want to be just. I'm not _sure_ that Daggett was aware of his partner's dishonesty. That isn't what worries me about the lad. It's his utter impossibility. He's as crude as iron-ore. When he's being careful, he may manage to be inconspicuous, but give him the chance---- "Really, I'm not exaggerating when I say that at thirty-five he'll be dining in his shirt-sleeves, and sitting down to read the paper with his shoes off and feet up on the table. But Claire--you know what a dear Quixotic soul she is--she fancies that because this fellow repaired a puncture or something of the sort for her on the road, she's indebted to him, and the worse he is, the more she feels that she must help him. And affairs of that kind---- Oh, it's quite too horrible, but there have been cases, you know, where girls as splendid and fine and well-bred as Claire herself have been trapped into low marriages by their loyalty to cadging adventurers!" "Oh!" groaned Mrs. Gilson; and "Good Lord!" lamented Mr. Gilson, delighted by the possibility of tragedy; and "Really, I'm not exaggerating," said Jeff enthusiastically. "What are we going to do?" demanded Mrs. Gilson; while Mr. Gilson, being of a ready and inventive mind, exclaimed, "By Jove, you ought to kidnap her and marry her yourself, Jeff!" "I'd like to. But I'm too old." They beautifully assured him that he was a blithe young thing with milk teeth; and with a certain satisfaction Jeff suggested, "I tell you what we might do. Of course it's an ancient stunt, but it's good. I judge that Daggett hasn't been here at the house much. Why not have him here so often that Claire will awaken to his crudity, and get sick of him?" "We'll do it," thrilled Mrs. Gilson. "We'll have him for everything from nine-course dinners with Grandmother Eaton's napkins on view, to milk and cold ham out of the ice-box. When Claire doesn't invite him, I will!" CHAPTER XXXI THE KITCHEN INTIMATE Milt had become used to the Gilson drawing-room. He was no longer uncomfortable in the presence of its sleek fatness, though at first (not knowing that there were such resources as interior decorators), he had been convinced that, to have created the room, the Gilsons must have known everything in the world. Now he glanced familiarly at its white paneling, its sconces like silver candlesticks, the inevitable davenport inevitably backed by an amethyst-shaded piano lamp and a table crowded with silver boxes and picture-frames. He liked the winsomeness of light upon velvet and polished wood. It was not the drawing-room but the kitchen that dismayed him. In Schoenstrom he had known that there must somewhere be beautiful "parlors," but he had trusted in his experience of kitchens. Kitchens, according to his philosophy, were small smelly rooms of bare floors, and provided with one oilcloth-covered table, one stove (the front draft always broken and propped up with the lid-lifter), one cupboard with panes of tin pierced in rosettes, and one stack of dirty dishes. But the Gilson kitchen had the efficiency of a laboratory and the superciliousness of a hair-dresser's booth. With awe Milt beheld walls of white tiles, a cork floor, a gas-range large as a hotel-stove, a ceiling-high refrigerator of enamel and nickel, zinc-topped tables, and a case of utensils like a surgeon's knives. It frightened him; it made more hopelessly unapproachable than ever the Alexandrian luxury of the great Gilsons.... The Vanderbilts' kitchen must be like this. And maybe King George's. He was viewing the kitchen upon the occasion of an intimate Sunday evening supper to which he had been yearningly invited by Mrs. Gilson. The maids were all out. The Gilsons and Claire, Milt and Jeff Saxton, shoutingly prepared their own supper. While Mrs. Gilson scrambled eggs and made coffee, the others set the table, and brought cold ham and a bowl of salad from the ice-box. Milt had intended to be a silent but deft servitor. When he had heard that he was to come to supper with the returned Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, he had first been panic-shaken, then resolved. He'd "let old iron-face Saxton do the high and mighty. Let him stand around and show off his clothes and adjectives, way he did at Flathead Lake." But he, Milt, would be "on the job." He'd help get supper, and calmly ignore Jeff's rudeness. Only--Jeff wasn't rude. He greeted Milt with, "Ah, Daggett! This is _so_ nice!" And Milt had no chance to help. It was Jeff who anticipated him and with a pleasant, "Let me get that--I'm kitchen-broke," snatched up the cold ham and salad. It was Jeff who found the supper plates, while Milt was blunderingly wondering how any one family could use a "whole furniture-store-full of different kinds of china." It was Jeff who sprang to help Claire wheel in the tea-wagon, and so captured the chance to speak to her for which Milt had been maneuvering these five minutes. When they were settled, Jeff glowed at him, and respectfully offered, "I thought of you so often, Daggett, on a recent little jaunt of mine. You'd have been helpful." "Where was that?" asked Milt suspiciously (wondering, and waiting to see, whether you could take cold ham in your fingers). "Oh, in Alaska." "In--Alaska?" Milt was dismayed. "Yes, just a business trip there. There's something I wish you'd advise me about." He was humble. And Milt was uneasy. He grumbled, "What's that?" "I've been wondering whether it would be possible to use wireless telephony in Alaska. But I'm such a dub at electricity. Do you know---- What would be the cost of installing a wireless telephone plant with a hundred-mile radius?" "Gee, I don't know!" "Oh, so sorry. Well, I wonder if you can tell me about wireless telegraphy, then?" "No, I don't know anything about that either." Milt had desperately tried to make his answer gracious but somehow---- He hated this devil's obsequiousness more than he had his chilliness at Flathead Lake. He had a feeling that the Gilsons had delightedly kicked each other under the table; that, for all her unchanging smile, Claire was unhappy.... And she was so far off, a white wraith floating beyond his frantic grasp. "It doesn't matter, really. But I didn't know---- So you've started in the engineering school at the University of Washington," Saxton was purring. "Have you met Gid Childers there--son of old Senator Childers--charming people." "I've seen him. He has a Stutz--no, his is the Mercer," sighed Milt. He hated himself for it, but he couldn't quite keep the awe out of his voice. People with Mercers---- Claire seemed to be trying to speak. She made a delicate, feminine, clairesque approximation to clearing her throat. But Jeff ignored her and with almost osculatory affection continued to Milt: "Do let me know if there's anything I can do to help you. We're acquainted with two or three of your engineering faculty at the Office. They write in about various things. Do you happen to know Dr. Philgren?" "Oh yes. Say! He's a wonder!" Milt was betrayed into exclaiming. "Yes. Good chap, I believe. He's been trying to get a job with us. We may give him one. Just tell him you're a friend of mine, and that he's to give you any help he can." Milt choked on a "Thanks." "And--now that we're just the family here together--how goes the financial side? Can I be of any assistance in introducing you to some engineering firm where you could do a little work on the side? You could make quite a little money----" So confoundedly affectionate and paternal---- Milt said irritably, "Thanks, but I don't need to do any work. I've got plenty of money." "How pleasant!" Saxton's voice was smooth as marshmallow. "You're fortunate. I had quite a struggle to get through Princeton." Wasn't Mr. Gilson contrasting Saxton's silk shirt with Milt's darned cotton covering, and in light of that contrast chuckling at Milt's boast and Saxton's modesty? Milt became overheated. His scalp prickled and his shoulder-blades were damp. As Saxton turned from him, and crooned to Claire, "More ham, honey?" Milt hated himself. He was in much of the dramatic but undesirable position of a man in pajamas, not very good pajamas, who has been locked out in the hotel corridor by the slamming of his door. He was in the frame of mind of a mongrel, of a real Boys'-Dog, at a Madison Square dog-show. He had a faint shrewd suspicion of Saxton's game. But what could he do about it? He felt even more out of place when the family forgot him and talked about people of whom he had never heard. He sat alone on an extremely distant desert isle and ate cold ham and wished he were in Schoenstrom. Claire had recovered her power of speech. She seemed to be trying to bring him into the conversation, so that the family might appreciate him. She hesitated, and thought with creased brows, and brought out, "Uh, uh, oh---- Oh Milt: How much is gas selling at now?"... * * * * * Milt left that charming and intimate supper-party at nine. He said, "Got to work on--on my analytical geometry," as though it was a lie; and he threw "Good night" at Saxton as though he hated his kind, good benefactor; and when he tried to be gracious to Mrs. Gilson the best he could get out was, "Thanks f' inviting me." They expansively saw him to the door. Just as he thought that he had escaped, Saxton begged, "Oh, Daggett, I was arguing with a chap---- What color are Holstein-Friesian cattle? Red?" "Black and white," Milt said eagerly. He heard Mrs. Gilson giggle. He stood on the terrace wiping his forehead and, without the least struggle, finally and irretrievably admitting that he would never see Claire Boltwood or any of her friends again. Not--never! * * * * * He had received from Mrs. Gilson a note inviting him to share their box at the first night of a three-night Opera Season. He had spent half a day in trying to think of a courteously rude way of declining. A straggly little girl came up from the candy-shop below his room, demanding, "Say, are you Mr. Daggett? Say, there's some woman wants to talk to you on our telephone. Say, tell them we ain't supposed to be no messenger-office. You ain't supposed to call no upstairs people on our telephone. We ain't supposed to leave the store and go trotting all over town to---- Gee, a nickel, gee, thank you, don't mind what ma says, she's always kicking." On the telephone, he heard Claire's voice in an agitated, "Milt! Meet me down-town, at the Imperial Motion Picture Theater, right away. Something I've got to tell you. I'll be in the lobby. Hurry!" When he bolted in she was already in the lobby, agitatedly looking over a frame of "stills." She ran to him, hooked her fingers in his lapel, poured out, "They've invited you to the opera? I want you to come and put it all over them. I'm almost sure there's a plot. They want to show me that you aren't used to tiaras and saxophones and creaking dowagers and tulle. Beat 'em! Beat 'em! Come to the opera and be awf'ly aloof and supercilious. You can! Yes, you can! And be sure--wear evening clothes. Now I've got to hurry." "B-but----" "Don't disappoint me. I depend on you. Oh, say you will!" "I will!" She was gone, whisking into the Gilson limousine. He was in a glow at her loyalty, in a tremor of anger at the meddlers. But he had never worn evening clothes. He called it "a dress-suit," and before the complications of that exotic garb, he was flabby with anxiety. To Milt and to Schoenstrom--to Bill McGolwey, even to Prof Jones and the greasily prosperous Heinie Rauskukle--the dress-suit was the symbol and proof, the indication and manner, of sophisticated wealth. In Schoenstrom even waiters do not wear dress-suits. For one thing there aren't any waiters. There is one waitress at the Leipzig House, Miss Annie Schweigenblat, but you wouldn't expect Miss Schweigenblat to deal them off the arm in black trousers with braid down the side. No; a dress-suit was what the hero wore in the movies; and the hero in the movies, when he wasn't a cowpuncher, was an ex-captain of the Yale football team, and had chambers and a valet. You could tell him from the valet because he wasn't so bald. It is true that Milt had heard that in St. Cloud there were people who wore dress-suits at parties, but then St. Cloud was a city, fifteen or sixteen thousand. "How could he get away with a dress-suit? How could he keep from feeling foolish in a low-cut vest, and what the deuce would he do with the tails? Did you part 'em or roll 'em up, when you sat down? And wouldn't everybody be able to tell from his foolish look that he didn't belong in one?" He could hear A.D.T. boys and loafers in front of pool rooms whispering, "Look at the piker in the rented soup and fish!" For of course he'd rent one. Nobody bought them--except plutes like Henry B. Boltwood. He agitatedly walked up and down for an hour, peering into haberdashery windows, looking for a kind-faced young man. He found him, in Ye Pall Mall Toggery Shoppe & Shoes; an open-faced young man who was gazing through the window as sparklingly as though he was thinking of going as a missionary to India--and liked curry. Milt ironed out his worried face, clumped in, demanded fraternally, "Say, old man, don't some of these gents' furnishings stores have kind of little charts that tell just what you wear with dress-suits and Prince Alberts and everything?" "You bet," said the kind-faced young man. West of Chicago, "You bet" means "Rather," and "Yes indeed," and "On the whole I should be inclined to fancy that there may be some vestiges of accuracy in your curious opinion," and "You're a liar but I can't afford to say so." The kind-faced young man brought from behind the counter a beautiful brochure illustrated with photographs of Phoebus Apollo in what were described as "American Beauty Garments--neat, natty, nobby, new." The center pages faithfully catalogued the ties, shirts, cuff-links, spats, boots, hats, to wear with evening clothes, morning clothes, riding clothes, tennis costumes, polite mourning. As he looked it over Milt felt that his wardrobe already contained all these gentlemanly possessions. With the aid of the clerk and the chart he purchased a tradition-haunted garment with a plate-armor bosom and an opening as crooked as the Missouri River; a white tie which in his strong red hands looked as silly as a dead fish; waistcoat, pearl links, and studs. For the first time, except for seizures of madness during two or three visits to Minneapolis motor accessory stores, he caught the shopping-fever. The long shining counter, the trim red-stained shelves, the glittering cases, the racks of flaunting ties, were beautiful to him and beckoning. He revolved a pleasantly clicking rack of ties, then turned and fought his way out. He bought pumps--which cost exactly twice as much as the largest sum which he had allowed himself. He bought a newspaper, and in the want-columns found the advertisement: Silberfarb the Society Tailor DRESS SUITS TO RENT Snappiest in the City Despite the superlative snappiness of Mr. Silberfarb's dress-suits his establishment was a loft over a delicatessen, approached by a splintery stairway along which hung shabby signs announcing the upstairs offices of "J. L. & T. J. O'Regan, Private Detectives," "The Zenith Spiritualist Church, Messages by Rev. Lulu Paughouse," "The International Order of Live Ones, Seattle Wigwam," and "Mme. Lavourie, Sulphur Baths." The dead air of the hallway suggested petty crookedness. Milt felt that he ought to fight somebody but, there being no one to fight, he banged along the flapping boards of the second-floor hallway to the ground-glass door of Silberfarb the Society Tailor, who was also, as an afterthought on a straggly placard, "Pressng & Cleang While U Wait." He belligerently shouldered into a low room. The light from the one window was almost obscured by racks of musty-smelling black clothes which stretched away from him in two dismal aisles that resembled a morgue of unhappy dead men indecently hung up on hooks. On a long, clumsily carpentered table, a small Jew, collarless, sweaty, unshaven, was darning trousers under an evil mantle gaslight. The Jew wrung out his hands and tried to look benevolent. "Want to rent a dress-suit," said Milt. "I got just the t'ing for you!" The little man unfolded himself, galloped down the aisle, seized the first garment that came to hand, and came back to lay it against Milt's uncomfortable frame, bumbling, "Fine, mister, fy-en!" Milt studied the shiny-seamed, worn-buttonholed, limp object with dislike. Its personality was disintegrated. The only thing he liked about it was the good garage stink of gasoline. "That's almost worn out," he growled. At this sacrilege Mr. Silberfarb threw up his hands, with the dingy suit flapping in them like a bed-quilt shaken from a tenement window. He looked Milt all over, coldly. His red but shining eyes hinted that Milt was a clodhopper and no honest wearer of evening clothes. Milt felt humble, but he snapped, "No good. Want something with class." "Vell, that was good enough for a university professor at the big dance, but if you say so----" In the manner of one who is being put to an unfair amount of trouble, Mr. Silberfarb returned the paranoiac dress-suit to the rack, sighing patiently as he laboriously draped it on a hanger. He peered and pawed. He crowed with throaty triumph and brought back a rich ripe thing of velvet collar and cuffs. He fixed Milt with eyes that had become as sulky as the eyes of a dog in August dust. "Now that--you can't beat that, if you vant class, and it'll fit you like a glove. Oh, that's an ellllegant garment!" Shaking himself out of the spell of those contemptuous eyes Milt opened his brochure, studied the chart, and in a footnote found, "Never wear velvet collars or cuffs with evening coat." "Nope. Nix on the velvet," he remarked. Then the little man went mad and ran around in circles. He flung the ellllegant garment on the table. He flapped his arms, and wailed, "What do you vant? What do you vannnnt? That's a hundred-and-fifty-dollar dress-suit! That belonged to one of the richest men in the city. He sold it to me because he was going to Japan." "Well, you can send it to Japan after him. I want something decent. Have you got it--or shall I go some place else?" The tailor instantly became affectionate. "How about a nice Tuxedo?" he coaxed. "Nope. It says here--let me see--oh yes, here it is--it says here in the book that for the theater-with-ladies, should not wear 'dinner-coat or so-called Tuxedo, but----'" "Oh, dem fellows what writes books they don't know nothing. Absolute! They make it up." "Huh! Well, I guess I'll take my chance on them. The factory knows the ignition better 'n any repair-man." "Vell say, you're a hard fellow to please. I'll give you one of my reserve stock, but you got to leave me ten dollars deposit instead of five." Mr. Silberfarb quite cheerfully unlocked a glass case behind the racked and ghostly dead; he brought out a suit that seemed to Milt almost decent. And it almost fitted when, after changing clothes in a broiling, boiling, reeking, gasoline-pulsing hole behind the racks, he examined it before a pier-glass. But he caught the tailor assisting the fit by bunching up a roll of cloth at the shoulder. Again Milt snapped, and again the tailor suffered and died, and to a doubting heathen world maintained the true gospel of "What do you vannnnt? It ain't stylish to have the dress-suit too tight! All the gents is wearing 'em loose and graceful." But in the end, after Milt had gone as far as the door, Mr. Silberfarb admitted that one dress-coat wouldn't always fit all persons without some alterations. The coat did bag a little, and it was too long in the sleeves, but as Milt studied himself in his room--by placing his small melancholy mirror on the bureau, then on a chair, then on the floor, finally, to get a complete view, clear out in the hall--he admitted with stirring delight that he looked "pretty fair in the bloomin' outfit." His clear face, his shining hair, his straight shoulders, seemed to go with the costume. He wriggled into his top-coat and marched out of his room, theater-bound, with the well-fed satisfaction of a man who is certain that no one is giggling, "Look at the hand-me-downs." His pumps did alternately pinch his toes and rub his heels; the trousers cramped his waist; and he suspected that his tie had gone wandering. But he swaggered to the trolley, and sat as one rich and famous and very kind to the Common People, till---- Another man in evening clothes got on the car, and Milt saw that he wore a silk hat, and a white knitted scarf; that he took

pinned

How many times the word 'pinned' appears in the text?

who was the limp indoor-dweller, and he who was the ruddy ranger; that as he had admired her at Flathead Lake, so now it was hers to admire, and his to be serenely heroic. She was not far from the worshiping sub-deb in her sighing, "How _did_ you get the scar?" "That? Oh, nothing." "Please tell me." "Really and truly. Nothing at all. Just a drunken fellow with a knife, playing the fool. I didn't have to touch him--quite sure he could have given me a frightful beating and all that sort of thing. It was the Big Chief who got rid of him." "He--cut you? With a kniiiiiife? Ohhhhhhh!" She ran to him, pityingly stroked the scar, looked down at him with filmy eyes. Then she tried to retreat, but he retained her hand, glanced up at her as though he knew her every thought. She felt weak. How could she escape him? "Please!" she begged flutteringly. If he held her hand another moment, she trembled, she'd be on his lap, in his arms--lost. And he was holding it. He was---- Oh, he was too old for her. Yes, and too paternal. But still---- Life with Jeff would be protected, kindly, honorable. Yet all the time she wanted, and stormily knew she wanted, to be fleeing to the boy Milt, her mate; to run away with him, hand in hand, discovering all the colored world, laughing at life, not afraid of losing dignity. In fear of Jeff's very kindliness and honor, she jerked her hand free. Then she tried to smile like a clever fencer. As she retreated to her chair she stammered, "Did you---- Was Alaska interesting?" He did not let her go, this time. Easy, cat-like for all his dry gravity, he sauntered after her, and with a fine high seriousness pleaded his case: "Claire dear, those few weeks of fighting nature were a revelation to me. I'm going to have lots more of it. As it happens, they need me there. There's plenty of copper, but there's big transportation and employment problems that I seem better able to solve than the other chaps--though of course I'm an absolute muff when it comes to engineering problems. But I've had certain training and--I'm going to arrange things so that I get up there at least once a year. Next summer I'll make a much longer trip--see the mountains--oh, glorious mountains--and funny half-Russian towns, and have some fishing---- Wandering. The really big thing. Even finer than your superb plucky trip through----" "Wasn't plucky! I'm a cry baby," she said, like a bad, contradictory little girl. He didn't argue it. He smiled and said "Tut!" and placidly catalogued her with, "You're the pluckiest girl I've ever seen, and it's all the more amazing because you're not a motion-picture Tomboy, but essentially exquisite----" "I'm a grub." "Very well, then. You're a grub. So am I. And I like it. And when I make the big Alaskan trip next year I want you to go along! Claire! Haven't you any idea how terribly close to me the thought of you has been these weeks? You've guided me through the wilderness----" "It's---- I'm glad." She sprang up, beseeching, "Jeff dear, you're going to stay for tea? I must run up and powder my nose." "Not until you say you're glad to see me. Child dear, we've been ambling along and---- No. You aren't a child any more. You're a woman. And if I've never been quite a man, but just a dusty office-machine, that's gone now. I've got the wind of the wilderness in my lungs. Man and woman! My woman! That's all I'm going to say now, but---- Oh my God, Claire, I do need you so!" He drew her head to his shoulder, and for an instant she rested there. But as she looked up, she saw coming age in the granulated skin of his throat. "He needs me--but he'd boss me. I'd be the cunning child-wife, even at fifty," she worried, and "Hang him, it's like his superiority to beat poor Milt even at adventuring--and to be such a confounded Modest Christian Gentleman about it!" "You'd--you're so dreadfully managing," she sighed aloud. For the first time in all their acquaintanceship, Jeff's pride broke, and he held her away from him, while his lips were pathetic, and he mourned, "Why do you always try to hurt me?" "Oh, my dear, I don't." "Is it because you resent the decent things I have managed to do?" "I don't understand." "If I have an idea for a party, you think I'm 'managing.' If I think things out deeply, you say I'm dull." "Oh, you aren't. I didn't mean----" "What are you? A real woman, or one of these flirts, that love to tease a man because he's foolish enough to be honestly in love?" "I'm not--hon-estly I'm not, Jeff. It's---- You don't quite make me---- It's just that I'm not in love with you. I like you, and respect you terribly, but----" "I'm going to make you love me." His clutching fingers hurt her arm, and somehow she was not angry, but stirred. "But I'm not going to try now. Forget the Alaskan caveman. Remember, I haven't even used the word 'love.' I've just chatted about fjords, or whatever they are, but one of these days---- No. I won't do it. I want to stay here in Seattle a few days, and take you on jolly picnics, but---- Would you rather I didn't even do that? I'm----" He dropped her arm, kneaded his forehead with the heel of his palm. "I can't stand being regarded as a bothersome puppy. I can't stand it! I can't!" "Please stay, Jeff! We'll have some darling drives and things. We'll go up Rainier as far as we can." He stayed. He was anecdotal and amusing at tea, that afternoon. Claire saw how the Gilsons, and two girls who dropped in, admired him. That made her uneasy. And when Mrs. Gilson begged him to leave his hotel and stay with them, he refused with a quick look at Claire that hurt her. "He wants me to be free. He's really so much more considerate than Milt. And I hurt him. Even his pride broke down. And I've spoiled Milt's life by meddling. And I've hurt the Gilsons' feelings. And I'm not much of a comfort to father. Oh, I'm absolutely no good," she agonized. CHAPTER XXX THE VIRTUOUS PLOTTERS Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, in Alaskan tan and New York evening clothes and Piccadilly poise, was talking to the Eugene Gilsons while Claire finished dressing for the theater. Mrs. Gilson observed, "She's the dearest thing. We've become awfully fond of her. But I don't think she knows what she wants to do with life. She's rather at loose ends. Who is this Daggett boy--some university student--whom she seems to like?" "Well, since you speak of him---- I hadn't meant to, unless you did. I want to be fair to him. What did she tell you about him?" Jeff asked confidentially. "Nothing, except that he's a young engineer, and frightfully brave and all those uncomfortable virtues, and she met him in Yellowstone Park or somewhere, and he saved her from a bear--or was it a tramp?--from something unnecessary, at any rate." "Eva, I don't want to be supercilious, but the truth is that this young Daggett is a rather dreadful person. He's been here at the house, hasn't he? How did he strike you?" "Not at all. He's silent, and as dull as lukewarm tea, but perfectly inoffensive." "Then he's cleverer than I thought! Daggett is anything but dull and inoffensive, and if he can play that estimable r le----! It seems that he is the son of some common workman in the Middlewest; he isn't an engineer at all; he's really a chauffeur or a taxi-driver or something; and he ran into Claire and Henry B. on the road, and somehow insinuated himself into their graces--far from being silent and commonplace, he appears to have some strange kind of charm which," Jeff sighed, "I don't understand at all. I simply don't understand it! "I met him in Montana with the most gorgeously atrocious person I've ever encountered--one Pinky Westlake, or some such a name--positively, a crook! He tried to get Boltwood and myself interested in the commonest kind of a mining swindle--hinted that we were to join him in cheating the public. And this Daggett was his partner--they actually traveled together. But I do want to be just. I'm not _sure_ that Daggett was aware of his partner's dishonesty. That isn't what worries me about the lad. It's his utter impossibility. He's as crude as iron-ore. When he's being careful, he may manage to be inconspicuous, but give him the chance---- "Really, I'm not exaggerating when I say that at thirty-five he'll be dining in his shirt-sleeves, and sitting down to read the paper with his shoes off and feet up on the table. But Claire--you know what a dear Quixotic soul she is--she fancies that because this fellow repaired a puncture or something of the sort for her on the road, she's indebted to him, and the worse he is, the more she feels that she must help him. And affairs of that kind---- Oh, it's quite too horrible, but there have been cases, you know, where girls as splendid and fine and well-bred as Claire herself have been trapped into low marriages by their loyalty to cadging adventurers!" "Oh!" groaned Mrs. Gilson; and "Good Lord!" lamented Mr. Gilson, delighted by the possibility of tragedy; and "Really, I'm not exaggerating," said Jeff enthusiastically. "What are we going to do?" demanded Mrs. Gilson; while Mr. Gilson, being of a ready and inventive mind, exclaimed, "By Jove, you ought to kidnap her and marry her yourself, Jeff!" "I'd like to. But I'm too old." They beautifully assured him that he was a blithe young thing with milk teeth; and with a certain satisfaction Jeff suggested, "I tell you what we might do. Of course it's an ancient stunt, but it's good. I judge that Daggett hasn't been here at the house much. Why not have him here so often that Claire will awaken to his crudity, and get sick of him?" "We'll do it," thrilled Mrs. Gilson. "We'll have him for everything from nine-course dinners with Grandmother Eaton's napkins on view, to milk and cold ham out of the ice-box. When Claire doesn't invite him, I will!" CHAPTER XXXI THE KITCHEN INTIMATE Milt had become used to the Gilson drawing-room. He was no longer uncomfortable in the presence of its sleek fatness, though at first (not knowing that there were such resources as interior decorators), he had been convinced that, to have created the room, the Gilsons must have known everything in the world. Now he glanced familiarly at its white paneling, its sconces like silver candlesticks, the inevitable davenport inevitably backed by an amethyst-shaded piano lamp and a table crowded with silver boxes and picture-frames. He liked the winsomeness of light upon velvet and polished wood. It was not the drawing-room but the kitchen that dismayed him. In Schoenstrom he had known that there must somewhere be beautiful "parlors," but he had trusted in his experience of kitchens. Kitchens, according to his philosophy, were small smelly rooms of bare floors, and provided with one oilcloth-covered table, one stove (the front draft always broken and propped up with the lid-lifter), one cupboard with panes of tin pierced in rosettes, and one stack of dirty dishes. But the Gilson kitchen had the efficiency of a laboratory and the superciliousness of a hair-dresser's booth. With awe Milt beheld walls of white tiles, a cork floor, a gas-range large as a hotel-stove, a ceiling-high refrigerator of enamel and nickel, zinc-topped tables, and a case of utensils like a surgeon's knives. It frightened him; it made more hopelessly unapproachable than ever the Alexandrian luxury of the great Gilsons.... The Vanderbilts' kitchen must be like this. And maybe King George's. He was viewing the kitchen upon the occasion of an intimate Sunday evening supper to which he had been yearningly invited by Mrs. Gilson. The maids were all out. The Gilsons and Claire, Milt and Jeff Saxton, shoutingly prepared their own supper. While Mrs. Gilson scrambled eggs and made coffee, the others set the table, and brought cold ham and a bowl of salad from the ice-box. Milt had intended to be a silent but deft servitor. When he had heard that he was to come to supper with the returned Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, he had first been panic-shaken, then resolved. He'd "let old iron-face Saxton do the high and mighty. Let him stand around and show off his clothes and adjectives, way he did at Flathead Lake." But he, Milt, would be "on the job." He'd help get supper, and calmly ignore Jeff's rudeness. Only--Jeff wasn't rude. He greeted Milt with, "Ah, Daggett! This is _so_ nice!" And Milt had no chance to help. It was Jeff who anticipated him and with a pleasant, "Let me get that--I'm kitchen-broke," snatched up the cold ham and salad. It was Jeff who found the supper plates, while Milt was blunderingly wondering how any one family could use a "whole furniture-store-full of different kinds of china." It was Jeff who sprang to help Claire wheel in the tea-wagon, and so captured the chance to speak to her for which Milt had been maneuvering these five minutes. When they were settled, Jeff glowed at him, and respectfully offered, "I thought of you so often, Daggett, on a recent little jaunt of mine. You'd have been helpful." "Where was that?" asked Milt suspiciously (wondering, and waiting to see, whether you could take cold ham in your fingers). "Oh, in Alaska." "In--Alaska?" Milt was dismayed. "Yes, just a business trip there. There's something I wish you'd advise me about." He was humble. And Milt was uneasy. He grumbled, "What's that?" "I've been wondering whether it would be possible to use wireless telephony in Alaska. But I'm such a dub at electricity. Do you know---- What would be the cost of installing a wireless telephone plant with a hundred-mile radius?" "Gee, I don't know!" "Oh, so sorry. Well, I wonder if you can tell me about wireless telegraphy, then?" "No, I don't know anything about that either." Milt had desperately tried to make his answer gracious but somehow---- He hated this devil's obsequiousness more than he had his chilliness at Flathead Lake. He had a feeling that the Gilsons had delightedly kicked each other under the table; that, for all her unchanging smile, Claire was unhappy.... And she was so far off, a white wraith floating beyond his frantic grasp. "It doesn't matter, really. But I didn't know---- So you've started in the engineering school at the University of Washington," Saxton was purring. "Have you met Gid Childers there--son of old Senator Childers--charming people." "I've seen him. He has a Stutz--no, his is the Mercer," sighed Milt. He hated himself for it, but he couldn't quite keep the awe out of his voice. People with Mercers---- Claire seemed to be trying to speak. She made a delicate, feminine, clairesque approximation to clearing her throat. But Jeff ignored her and with almost osculatory affection continued to Milt: "Do let me know if there's anything I can do to help you. We're acquainted with two or three of your engineering faculty at the Office. They write in about various things. Do you happen to know Dr. Philgren?" "Oh yes. Say! He's a wonder!" Milt was betrayed into exclaiming. "Yes. Good chap, I believe. He's been trying to get a job with us. We may give him one. Just tell him you're a friend of mine, and that he's to give you any help he can." Milt choked on a "Thanks." "And--now that we're just the family here together--how goes the financial side? Can I be of any assistance in introducing you to some engineering firm where you could do a little work on the side? You could make quite a little money----" So confoundedly affectionate and paternal---- Milt said irritably, "Thanks, but I don't need to do any work. I've got plenty of money." "How pleasant!" Saxton's voice was smooth as marshmallow. "You're fortunate. I had quite a struggle to get through Princeton." Wasn't Mr. Gilson contrasting Saxton's silk shirt with Milt's darned cotton covering, and in light of that contrast chuckling at Milt's boast and Saxton's modesty? Milt became overheated. His scalp prickled and his shoulder-blades were damp. As Saxton turned from him, and crooned to Claire, "More ham, honey?" Milt hated himself. He was in much of the dramatic but undesirable position of a man in pajamas, not very good pajamas, who has been locked out in the hotel corridor by the slamming of his door. He was in the frame of mind of a mongrel, of a real Boys'-Dog, at a Madison Square dog-show. He had a faint shrewd suspicion of Saxton's game. But what could he do about it? He felt even more out of place when the family forgot him and talked about people of whom he had never heard. He sat alone on an extremely distant desert isle and ate cold ham and wished he were in Schoenstrom. Claire had recovered her power of speech. She seemed to be trying to bring him into the conversation, so that the family might appreciate him. She hesitated, and thought with creased brows, and brought out, "Uh, uh, oh---- Oh Milt: How much is gas selling at now?"... * * * * * Milt left that charming and intimate supper-party at nine. He said, "Got to work on--on my analytical geometry," as though it was a lie; and he threw "Good night" at Saxton as though he hated his kind, good benefactor; and when he tried to be gracious to Mrs. Gilson the best he could get out was, "Thanks f' inviting me." They expansively saw him to the door. Just as he thought that he had escaped, Saxton begged, "Oh, Daggett, I was arguing with a chap---- What color are Holstein-Friesian cattle? Red?" "Black and white," Milt said eagerly. He heard Mrs. Gilson giggle. He stood on the terrace wiping his forehead and, without the least struggle, finally and irretrievably admitting that he would never see Claire Boltwood or any of her friends again. Not--never! * * * * * He had received from Mrs. Gilson a note inviting him to share their box at the first night of a three-night Opera Season. He had spent half a day in trying to think of a courteously rude way of declining. A straggly little girl came up from the candy-shop below his room, demanding, "Say, are you Mr. Daggett? Say, there's some woman wants to talk to you on our telephone. Say, tell them we ain't supposed to be no messenger-office. You ain't supposed to call no upstairs people on our telephone. We ain't supposed to leave the store and go trotting all over town to---- Gee, a nickel, gee, thank you, don't mind what ma says, she's always kicking." On the telephone, he heard Claire's voice in an agitated, "Milt! Meet me down-town, at the Imperial Motion Picture Theater, right away. Something I've got to tell you. I'll be in the lobby. Hurry!" When he bolted in she was already in the lobby, agitatedly looking over a frame of "stills." She ran to him, hooked her fingers in his lapel, poured out, "They've invited you to the opera? I want you to come and put it all over them. I'm almost sure there's a plot. They want to show me that you aren't used to tiaras and saxophones and creaking dowagers and tulle. Beat 'em! Beat 'em! Come to the opera and be awf'ly aloof and supercilious. You can! Yes, you can! And be sure--wear evening clothes. Now I've got to hurry." "B-but----" "Don't disappoint me. I depend on you. Oh, say you will!" "I will!" She was gone, whisking into the Gilson limousine. He was in a glow at her loyalty, in a tremor of anger at the meddlers. But he had never worn evening clothes. He called it "a dress-suit," and before the complications of that exotic garb, he was flabby with anxiety. To Milt and to Schoenstrom--to Bill McGolwey, even to Prof Jones and the greasily prosperous Heinie Rauskukle--the dress-suit was the symbol and proof, the indication and manner, of sophisticated wealth. In Schoenstrom even waiters do not wear dress-suits. For one thing there aren't any waiters. There is one waitress at the Leipzig House, Miss Annie Schweigenblat, but you wouldn't expect Miss Schweigenblat to deal them off the arm in black trousers with braid down the side. No; a dress-suit was what the hero wore in the movies; and the hero in the movies, when he wasn't a cowpuncher, was an ex-captain of the Yale football team, and had chambers and a valet. You could tell him from the valet because he wasn't so bald. It is true that Milt had heard that in St. Cloud there were people who wore dress-suits at parties, but then St. Cloud was a city, fifteen or sixteen thousand. "How could he get away with a dress-suit? How could he keep from feeling foolish in a low-cut vest, and what the deuce would he do with the tails? Did you part 'em or roll 'em up, when you sat down? And wouldn't everybody be able to tell from his foolish look that he didn't belong in one?" He could hear A.D.T. boys and loafers in front of pool rooms whispering, "Look at the piker in the rented soup and fish!" For of course he'd rent one. Nobody bought them--except plutes like Henry B. Boltwood. He agitatedly walked up and down for an hour, peering into haberdashery windows, looking for a kind-faced young man. He found him, in Ye Pall Mall Toggery Shoppe & Shoes; an open-faced young man who was gazing through the window as sparklingly as though he was thinking of going as a missionary to India--and liked curry. Milt ironed out his worried face, clumped in, demanded fraternally, "Say, old man, don't some of these gents' furnishings stores have kind of little charts that tell just what you wear with dress-suits and Prince Alberts and everything?" "You bet," said the kind-faced young man. West of Chicago, "You bet" means "Rather," and "Yes indeed," and "On the whole I should be inclined to fancy that there may be some vestiges of accuracy in your curious opinion," and "You're a liar but I can't afford to say so." The kind-faced young man brought from behind the counter a beautiful brochure illustrated with photographs of Phoebus Apollo in what were described as "American Beauty Garments--neat, natty, nobby, new." The center pages faithfully catalogued the ties, shirts, cuff-links, spats, boots, hats, to wear with evening clothes, morning clothes, riding clothes, tennis costumes, polite mourning. As he looked it over Milt felt that his wardrobe already contained all these gentlemanly possessions. With the aid of the clerk and the chart he purchased a tradition-haunted garment with a plate-armor bosom and an opening as crooked as the Missouri River; a white tie which in his strong red hands looked as silly as a dead fish; waistcoat, pearl links, and studs. For the first time, except for seizures of madness during two or three visits to Minneapolis motor accessory stores, he caught the shopping-fever. The long shining counter, the trim red-stained shelves, the glittering cases, the racks of flaunting ties, were beautiful to him and beckoning. He revolved a pleasantly clicking rack of ties, then turned and fought his way out. He bought pumps--which cost exactly twice as much as the largest sum which he had allowed himself. He bought a newspaper, and in the want-columns found the advertisement: Silberfarb the Society Tailor DRESS SUITS TO RENT Snappiest in the City Despite the superlative snappiness of Mr. Silberfarb's dress-suits his establishment was a loft over a delicatessen, approached by a splintery stairway along which hung shabby signs announcing the upstairs offices of "J. L. & T. J. O'Regan, Private Detectives," "The Zenith Spiritualist Church, Messages by Rev. Lulu Paughouse," "The International Order of Live Ones, Seattle Wigwam," and "Mme. Lavourie, Sulphur Baths." The dead air of the hallway suggested petty crookedness. Milt felt that he ought to fight somebody but, there being no one to fight, he banged along the flapping boards of the second-floor hallway to the ground-glass door of Silberfarb the Society Tailor, who was also, as an afterthought on a straggly placard, "Pressng & Cleang While U Wait." He belligerently shouldered into a low room. The light from the one window was almost obscured by racks of musty-smelling black clothes which stretched away from him in two dismal aisles that resembled a morgue of unhappy dead men indecently hung up on hooks. On a long, clumsily carpentered table, a small Jew, collarless, sweaty, unshaven, was darning trousers under an evil mantle gaslight. The Jew wrung out his hands and tried to look benevolent. "Want to rent a dress-suit," said Milt. "I got just the t'ing for you!" The little man unfolded himself, galloped down the aisle, seized the first garment that came to hand, and came back to lay it against Milt's uncomfortable frame, bumbling, "Fine, mister, fy-en!" Milt studied the shiny-seamed, worn-buttonholed, limp object with dislike. Its personality was disintegrated. The only thing he liked about it was the good garage stink of gasoline. "That's almost worn out," he growled. At this sacrilege Mr. Silberfarb threw up his hands, with the dingy suit flapping in them like a bed-quilt shaken from a tenement window. He looked Milt all over, coldly. His red but shining eyes hinted that Milt was a clodhopper and no honest wearer of evening clothes. Milt felt humble, but he snapped, "No good. Want something with class." "Vell, that was good enough for a university professor at the big dance, but if you say so----" In the manner of one who is being put to an unfair amount of trouble, Mr. Silberfarb returned the paranoiac dress-suit to the rack, sighing patiently as he laboriously draped it on a hanger. He peered and pawed. He crowed with throaty triumph and brought back a rich ripe thing of velvet collar and cuffs. He fixed Milt with eyes that had become as sulky as the eyes of a dog in August dust. "Now that--you can't beat that, if you vant class, and it'll fit you like a glove. Oh, that's an ellllegant garment!" Shaking himself out of the spell of those contemptuous eyes Milt opened his brochure, studied the chart, and in a footnote found, "Never wear velvet collars or cuffs with evening coat." "Nope. Nix on the velvet," he remarked. Then the little man went mad and ran around in circles. He flung the ellllegant garment on the table. He flapped his arms, and wailed, "What do you vant? What do you vannnnt? That's a hundred-and-fifty-dollar dress-suit! That belonged to one of the richest men in the city. He sold it to me because he was going to Japan." "Well, you can send it to Japan after him. I want something decent. Have you got it--or shall I go some place else?" The tailor instantly became affectionate. "How about a nice Tuxedo?" he coaxed. "Nope. It says here--let me see--oh yes, here it is--it says here in the book that for the theater-with-ladies, should not wear 'dinner-coat or so-called Tuxedo, but----'" "Oh, dem fellows what writes books they don't know nothing. Absolute! They make it up." "Huh! Well, I guess I'll take my chance on them. The factory knows the ignition better 'n any repair-man." "Vell say, you're a hard fellow to please. I'll give you one of my reserve stock, but you got to leave me ten dollars deposit instead of five." Mr. Silberfarb quite cheerfully unlocked a glass case behind the racked and ghostly dead; he brought out a suit that seemed to Milt almost decent. And it almost fitted when, after changing clothes in a broiling, boiling, reeking, gasoline-pulsing hole behind the racks, he examined it before a pier-glass. But he caught the tailor assisting the fit by bunching up a roll of cloth at the shoulder. Again Milt snapped, and again the tailor suffered and died, and to a doubting heathen world maintained the true gospel of "What do you vannnnt? It ain't stylish to have the dress-suit too tight! All the gents is wearing 'em loose and graceful." But in the end, after Milt had gone as far as the door, Mr. Silberfarb admitted that one dress-coat wouldn't always fit all persons without some alterations. The coat did bag a little, and it was too long in the sleeves, but as Milt studied himself in his room--by placing his small melancholy mirror on the bureau, then on a chair, then on the floor, finally, to get a complete view, clear out in the hall--he admitted with stirring delight that he looked "pretty fair in the bloomin' outfit." His clear face, his shining hair, his straight shoulders, seemed to go with the costume. He wriggled into his top-coat and marched out of his room, theater-bound, with the well-fed satisfaction of a man who is certain that no one is giggling, "Look at the hand-me-downs." His pumps did alternately pinch his toes and rub his heels; the trousers cramped his waist; and he suspected that his tie had gone wandering. But he swaggered to the trolley, and sat as one rich and famous and very kind to the Common People, till---- Another man in evening clothes got on the car, and Milt saw that he wore a silk hat, and a white knitted scarf; that he took

person

How many times the word 'person' appears in the text?

who was the limp indoor-dweller, and he who was the ruddy ranger; that as he had admired her at Flathead Lake, so now it was hers to admire, and his to be serenely heroic. She was not far from the worshiping sub-deb in her sighing, "How _did_ you get the scar?" "That? Oh, nothing." "Please tell me." "Really and truly. Nothing at all. Just a drunken fellow with a knife, playing the fool. I didn't have to touch him--quite sure he could have given me a frightful beating and all that sort of thing. It was the Big Chief who got rid of him." "He--cut you? With a kniiiiiife? Ohhhhhhh!" She ran to him, pityingly stroked the scar, looked down at him with filmy eyes. Then she tried to retreat, but he retained her hand, glanced up at her as though he knew her every thought. She felt weak. How could she escape him? "Please!" she begged flutteringly. If he held her hand another moment, she trembled, she'd be on his lap, in his arms--lost. And he was holding it. He was---- Oh, he was too old for her. Yes, and too paternal. But still---- Life with Jeff would be protected, kindly, honorable. Yet all the time she wanted, and stormily knew she wanted, to be fleeing to the boy Milt, her mate; to run away with him, hand in hand, discovering all the colored world, laughing at life, not afraid of losing dignity. In fear of Jeff's very kindliness and honor, she jerked her hand free. Then she tried to smile like a clever fencer. As she retreated to her chair she stammered, "Did you---- Was Alaska interesting?" He did not let her go, this time. Easy, cat-like for all his dry gravity, he sauntered after her, and with a fine high seriousness pleaded his case: "Claire dear, those few weeks of fighting nature were a revelation to me. I'm going to have lots more of it. As it happens, they need me there. There's plenty of copper, but there's big transportation and employment problems that I seem better able to solve than the other chaps--though of course I'm an absolute muff when it comes to engineering problems. But I've had certain training and--I'm going to arrange things so that I get up there at least once a year. Next summer I'll make a much longer trip--see the mountains--oh, glorious mountains--and funny half-Russian towns, and have some fishing---- Wandering. The really big thing. Even finer than your superb plucky trip through----" "Wasn't plucky! I'm a cry baby," she said, like a bad, contradictory little girl. He didn't argue it. He smiled and said "Tut!" and placidly catalogued her with, "You're the pluckiest girl I've ever seen, and it's all the more amazing because you're not a motion-picture Tomboy, but essentially exquisite----" "I'm a grub." "Very well, then. You're a grub. So am I. And I like it. And when I make the big Alaskan trip next year I want you to go along! Claire! Haven't you any idea how terribly close to me the thought of you has been these weeks? You've guided me through the wilderness----" "It's---- I'm glad." She sprang up, beseeching, "Jeff dear, you're going to stay for tea? I must run up and powder my nose." "Not until you say you're glad to see me. Child dear, we've been ambling along and---- No. You aren't a child any more. You're a woman. And if I've never been quite a man, but just a dusty office-machine, that's gone now. I've got the wind of the wilderness in my lungs. Man and woman! My woman! That's all I'm going to say now, but---- Oh my God, Claire, I do need you so!" He drew her head to his shoulder, and for an instant she rested there. But as she looked up, she saw coming age in the granulated skin of his throat. "He needs me--but he'd boss me. I'd be the cunning child-wife, even at fifty," she worried, and "Hang him, it's like his superiority to beat poor Milt even at adventuring--and to be such a confounded Modest Christian Gentleman about it!" "You'd--you're so dreadfully managing," she sighed aloud. For the first time in all their acquaintanceship, Jeff's pride broke, and he held her away from him, while his lips were pathetic, and he mourned, "Why do you always try to hurt me?" "Oh, my dear, I don't." "Is it because you resent the decent things I have managed to do?" "I don't understand." "If I have an idea for a party, you think I'm 'managing.' If I think things out deeply, you say I'm dull." "Oh, you aren't. I didn't mean----" "What are you? A real woman, or one of these flirts, that love to tease a man because he's foolish enough to be honestly in love?" "I'm not--hon-estly I'm not, Jeff. It's---- You don't quite make me---- It's just that I'm not in love with you. I like you, and respect you terribly, but----" "I'm going to make you love me." His clutching fingers hurt her arm, and somehow she was not angry, but stirred. "But I'm not going to try now. Forget the Alaskan caveman. Remember, I haven't even used the word 'love.' I've just chatted about fjords, or whatever they are, but one of these days---- No. I won't do it. I want to stay here in Seattle a few days, and take you on jolly picnics, but---- Would you rather I didn't even do that? I'm----" He dropped her arm, kneaded his forehead with the heel of his palm. "I can't stand being regarded as a bothersome puppy. I can't stand it! I can't!" "Please stay, Jeff! We'll have some darling drives and things. We'll go up Rainier as far as we can." He stayed. He was anecdotal and amusing at tea, that afternoon. Claire saw how the Gilsons, and two girls who dropped in, admired him. That made her uneasy. And when Mrs. Gilson begged him to leave his hotel and stay with them, he refused with a quick look at Claire that hurt her. "He wants me to be free. He's really so much more considerate than Milt. And I hurt him. Even his pride broke down. And I've spoiled Milt's life by meddling. And I've hurt the Gilsons' feelings. And I'm not much of a comfort to father. Oh, I'm absolutely no good," she agonized. CHAPTER XXX THE VIRTUOUS PLOTTERS Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, in Alaskan tan and New York evening clothes and Piccadilly poise, was talking to the Eugene Gilsons while Claire finished dressing for the theater. Mrs. Gilson observed, "She's the dearest thing. We've become awfully fond of her. But I don't think she knows what she wants to do with life. She's rather at loose ends. Who is this Daggett boy--some university student--whom she seems to like?" "Well, since you speak of him---- I hadn't meant to, unless you did. I want to be fair to him. What did she tell you about him?" Jeff asked confidentially. "Nothing, except that he's a young engineer, and frightfully brave and all those uncomfortable virtues, and she met him in Yellowstone Park or somewhere, and he saved her from a bear--or was it a tramp?--from something unnecessary, at any rate." "Eva, I don't want to be supercilious, but the truth is that this young Daggett is a rather dreadful person. He's been here at the house, hasn't he? How did he strike you?" "Not at all. He's silent, and as dull as lukewarm tea, but perfectly inoffensive." "Then he's cleverer than I thought! Daggett is anything but dull and inoffensive, and if he can play that estimable r le----! It seems that he is the son of some common workman in the Middlewest; he isn't an engineer at all; he's really a chauffeur or a taxi-driver or something; and he ran into Claire and Henry B. on the road, and somehow insinuated himself into their graces--far from being silent and commonplace, he appears to have some strange kind of charm which," Jeff sighed, "I don't understand at all. I simply don't understand it! "I met him in Montana with the most gorgeously atrocious person I've ever encountered--one Pinky Westlake, or some such a name--positively, a crook! He tried to get Boltwood and myself interested in the commonest kind of a mining swindle--hinted that we were to join him in cheating the public. And this Daggett was his partner--they actually traveled together. But I do want to be just. I'm not _sure_ that Daggett was aware of his partner's dishonesty. That isn't what worries me about the lad. It's his utter impossibility. He's as crude as iron-ore. When he's being careful, he may manage to be inconspicuous, but give him the chance---- "Really, I'm not exaggerating when I say that at thirty-five he'll be dining in his shirt-sleeves, and sitting down to read the paper with his shoes off and feet up on the table. But Claire--you know what a dear Quixotic soul she is--she fancies that because this fellow repaired a puncture or something of the sort for her on the road, she's indebted to him, and the worse he is, the more she feels that she must help him. And affairs of that kind---- Oh, it's quite too horrible, but there have been cases, you know, where girls as splendid and fine and well-bred as Claire herself have been trapped into low marriages by their loyalty to cadging adventurers!" "Oh!" groaned Mrs. Gilson; and "Good Lord!" lamented Mr. Gilson, delighted by the possibility of tragedy; and "Really, I'm not exaggerating," said Jeff enthusiastically. "What are we going to do?" demanded Mrs. Gilson; while Mr. Gilson, being of a ready and inventive mind, exclaimed, "By Jove, you ought to kidnap her and marry her yourself, Jeff!" "I'd like to. But I'm too old." They beautifully assured him that he was a blithe young thing with milk teeth; and with a certain satisfaction Jeff suggested, "I tell you what we might do. Of course it's an ancient stunt, but it's good. I judge that Daggett hasn't been here at the house much. Why not have him here so often that Claire will awaken to his crudity, and get sick of him?" "We'll do it," thrilled Mrs. Gilson. "We'll have him for everything from nine-course dinners with Grandmother Eaton's napkins on view, to milk and cold ham out of the ice-box. When Claire doesn't invite him, I will!" CHAPTER XXXI THE KITCHEN INTIMATE Milt had become used to the Gilson drawing-room. He was no longer uncomfortable in the presence of its sleek fatness, though at first (not knowing that there were such resources as interior decorators), he had been convinced that, to have created the room, the Gilsons must have known everything in the world. Now he glanced familiarly at its white paneling, its sconces like silver candlesticks, the inevitable davenport inevitably backed by an amethyst-shaded piano lamp and a table crowded with silver boxes and picture-frames. He liked the winsomeness of light upon velvet and polished wood. It was not the drawing-room but the kitchen that dismayed him. In Schoenstrom he had known that there must somewhere be beautiful "parlors," but he had trusted in his experience of kitchens. Kitchens, according to his philosophy, were small smelly rooms of bare floors, and provided with one oilcloth-covered table, one stove (the front draft always broken and propped up with the lid-lifter), one cupboard with panes of tin pierced in rosettes, and one stack of dirty dishes. But the Gilson kitchen had the efficiency of a laboratory and the superciliousness of a hair-dresser's booth. With awe Milt beheld walls of white tiles, a cork floor, a gas-range large as a hotel-stove, a ceiling-high refrigerator of enamel and nickel, zinc-topped tables, and a case of utensils like a surgeon's knives. It frightened him; it made more hopelessly unapproachable than ever the Alexandrian luxury of the great Gilsons.... The Vanderbilts' kitchen must be like this. And maybe King George's. He was viewing the kitchen upon the occasion of an intimate Sunday evening supper to which he had been yearningly invited by Mrs. Gilson. The maids were all out. The Gilsons and Claire, Milt and Jeff Saxton, shoutingly prepared their own supper. While Mrs. Gilson scrambled eggs and made coffee, the others set the table, and brought cold ham and a bowl of salad from the ice-box. Milt had intended to be a silent but deft servitor. When he had heard that he was to come to supper with the returned Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, he had first been panic-shaken, then resolved. He'd "let old iron-face Saxton do the high and mighty. Let him stand around and show off his clothes and adjectives, way he did at Flathead Lake." But he, Milt, would be "on the job." He'd help get supper, and calmly ignore Jeff's rudeness. Only--Jeff wasn't rude. He greeted Milt with, "Ah, Daggett! This is _so_ nice!" And Milt had no chance to help. It was Jeff who anticipated him and with a pleasant, "Let me get that--I'm kitchen-broke," snatched up the cold ham and salad. It was Jeff who found the supper plates, while Milt was blunderingly wondering how any one family could use a "whole furniture-store-full of different kinds of china." It was Jeff who sprang to help Claire wheel in the tea-wagon, and so captured the chance to speak to her for which Milt had been maneuvering these five minutes. When they were settled, Jeff glowed at him, and respectfully offered, "I thought of you so often, Daggett, on a recent little jaunt of mine. You'd have been helpful." "Where was that?" asked Milt suspiciously (wondering, and waiting to see, whether you could take cold ham in your fingers). "Oh, in Alaska." "In--Alaska?" Milt was dismayed. "Yes, just a business trip there. There's something I wish you'd advise me about." He was humble. And Milt was uneasy. He grumbled, "What's that?" "I've been wondering whether it would be possible to use wireless telephony in Alaska. But I'm such a dub at electricity. Do you know---- What would be the cost of installing a wireless telephone plant with a hundred-mile radius?" "Gee, I don't know!" "Oh, so sorry. Well, I wonder if you can tell me about wireless telegraphy, then?" "No, I don't know anything about that either." Milt had desperately tried to make his answer gracious but somehow---- He hated this devil's obsequiousness more than he had his chilliness at Flathead Lake. He had a feeling that the Gilsons had delightedly kicked each other under the table; that, for all her unchanging smile, Claire was unhappy.... And she was so far off, a white wraith floating beyond his frantic grasp. "It doesn't matter, really. But I didn't know---- So you've started in the engineering school at the University of Washington," Saxton was purring. "Have you met Gid Childers there--son of old Senator Childers--charming people." "I've seen him. He has a Stutz--no, his is the Mercer," sighed Milt. He hated himself for it, but he couldn't quite keep the awe out of his voice. People with Mercers---- Claire seemed to be trying to speak. She made a delicate, feminine, clairesque approximation to clearing her throat. But Jeff ignored her and with almost osculatory affection continued to Milt: "Do let me know if there's anything I can do to help you. We're acquainted with two or three of your engineering faculty at the Office. They write in about various things. Do you happen to know Dr. Philgren?" "Oh yes. Say! He's a wonder!" Milt was betrayed into exclaiming. "Yes. Good chap, I believe. He's been trying to get a job with us. We may give him one. Just tell him you're a friend of mine, and that he's to give you any help he can." Milt choked on a "Thanks." "And--now that we're just the family here together--how goes the financial side? Can I be of any assistance in introducing you to some engineering firm where you could do a little work on the side? You could make quite a little money----" So confoundedly affectionate and paternal---- Milt said irritably, "Thanks, but I don't need to do any work. I've got plenty of money." "How pleasant!" Saxton's voice was smooth as marshmallow. "You're fortunate. I had quite a struggle to get through Princeton." Wasn't Mr. Gilson contrasting Saxton's silk shirt with Milt's darned cotton covering, and in light of that contrast chuckling at Milt's boast and Saxton's modesty? Milt became overheated. His scalp prickled and his shoulder-blades were damp. As Saxton turned from him, and crooned to Claire, "More ham, honey?" Milt hated himself. He was in much of the dramatic but undesirable position of a man in pajamas, not very good pajamas, who has been locked out in the hotel corridor by the slamming of his door. He was in the frame of mind of a mongrel, of a real Boys'-Dog, at a Madison Square dog-show. He had a faint shrewd suspicion of Saxton's game. But what could he do about it? He felt even more out of place when the family forgot him and talked about people of whom he had never heard. He sat alone on an extremely distant desert isle and ate cold ham and wished he were in Schoenstrom. Claire had recovered her power of speech. She seemed to be trying to bring him into the conversation, so that the family might appreciate him. She hesitated, and thought with creased brows, and brought out, "Uh, uh, oh---- Oh Milt: How much is gas selling at now?"... * * * * * Milt left that charming and intimate supper-party at nine. He said, "Got to work on--on my analytical geometry," as though it was a lie; and he threw "Good night" at Saxton as though he hated his kind, good benefactor; and when he tried to be gracious to Mrs. Gilson the best he could get out was, "Thanks f' inviting me." They expansively saw him to the door. Just as he thought that he had escaped, Saxton begged, "Oh, Daggett, I was arguing with a chap---- What color are Holstein-Friesian cattle? Red?" "Black and white," Milt said eagerly. He heard Mrs. Gilson giggle. He stood on the terrace wiping his forehead and, without the least struggle, finally and irretrievably admitting that he would never see Claire Boltwood or any of her friends again. Not--never! * * * * * He had received from Mrs. Gilson a note inviting him to share their box at the first night of a three-night Opera Season. He had spent half a day in trying to think of a courteously rude way of declining. A straggly little girl came up from the candy-shop below his room, demanding, "Say, are you Mr. Daggett? Say, there's some woman wants to talk to you on our telephone. Say, tell them we ain't supposed to be no messenger-office. You ain't supposed to call no upstairs people on our telephone. We ain't supposed to leave the store and go trotting all over town to---- Gee, a nickel, gee, thank you, don't mind what ma says, she's always kicking." On the telephone, he heard Claire's voice in an agitated, "Milt! Meet me down-town, at the Imperial Motion Picture Theater, right away. Something I've got to tell you. I'll be in the lobby. Hurry!" When he bolted in she was already in the lobby, agitatedly looking over a frame of "stills." She ran to him, hooked her fingers in his lapel, poured out, "They've invited you to the opera? I want you to come and put it all over them. I'm almost sure there's a plot. They want to show me that you aren't used to tiaras and saxophones and creaking dowagers and tulle. Beat 'em! Beat 'em! Come to the opera and be awf'ly aloof and supercilious. You can! Yes, you can! And be sure--wear evening clothes. Now I've got to hurry." "B-but----" "Don't disappoint me. I depend on you. Oh, say you will!" "I will!" She was gone, whisking into the Gilson limousine. He was in a glow at her loyalty, in a tremor of anger at the meddlers. But he had never worn evening clothes. He called it "a dress-suit," and before the complications of that exotic garb, he was flabby with anxiety. To Milt and to Schoenstrom--to Bill McGolwey, even to Prof Jones and the greasily prosperous Heinie Rauskukle--the dress-suit was the symbol and proof, the indication and manner, of sophisticated wealth. In Schoenstrom even waiters do not wear dress-suits. For one thing there aren't any waiters. There is one waitress at the Leipzig House, Miss Annie Schweigenblat, but you wouldn't expect Miss Schweigenblat to deal them off the arm in black trousers with braid down the side. No; a dress-suit was what the hero wore in the movies; and the hero in the movies, when he wasn't a cowpuncher, was an ex-captain of the Yale football team, and had chambers and a valet. You could tell him from the valet because he wasn't so bald. It is true that Milt had heard that in St. Cloud there were people who wore dress-suits at parties, but then St. Cloud was a city, fifteen or sixteen thousand. "How could he get away with a dress-suit? How could he keep from feeling foolish in a low-cut vest, and what the deuce would he do with the tails? Did you part 'em or roll 'em up, when you sat down? And wouldn't everybody be able to tell from his foolish look that he didn't belong in one?" He could hear A.D.T. boys and loafers in front of pool rooms whispering, "Look at the piker in the rented soup and fish!" For of course he'd rent one. Nobody bought them--except plutes like Henry B. Boltwood. He agitatedly walked up and down for an hour, peering into haberdashery windows, looking for a kind-faced young man. He found him, in Ye Pall Mall Toggery Shoppe & Shoes; an open-faced young man who was gazing through the window as sparklingly as though he was thinking of going as a missionary to India--and liked curry. Milt ironed out his worried face, clumped in, demanded fraternally, "Say, old man, don't some of these gents' furnishings stores have kind of little charts that tell just what you wear with dress-suits and Prince Alberts and everything?" "You bet," said the kind-faced young man. West of Chicago, "You bet" means "Rather," and "Yes indeed," and "On the whole I should be inclined to fancy that there may be some vestiges of accuracy in your curious opinion," and "You're a liar but I can't afford to say so." The kind-faced young man brought from behind the counter a beautiful brochure illustrated with photographs of Phoebus Apollo in what were described as "American Beauty Garments--neat, natty, nobby, new." The center pages faithfully catalogued the ties, shirts, cuff-links, spats, boots, hats, to wear with evening clothes, morning clothes, riding clothes, tennis costumes, polite mourning. As he looked it over Milt felt that his wardrobe already contained all these gentlemanly possessions. With the aid of the clerk and the chart he purchased a tradition-haunted garment with a plate-armor bosom and an opening as crooked as the Missouri River; a white tie which in his strong red hands looked as silly as a dead fish; waistcoat, pearl links, and studs. For the first time, except for seizures of madness during two or three visits to Minneapolis motor accessory stores, he caught the shopping-fever. The long shining counter, the trim red-stained shelves, the glittering cases, the racks of flaunting ties, were beautiful to him and beckoning. He revolved a pleasantly clicking rack of ties, then turned and fought his way out. He bought pumps--which cost exactly twice as much as the largest sum which he had allowed himself. He bought a newspaper, and in the want-columns found the advertisement: Silberfarb the Society Tailor DRESS SUITS TO RENT Snappiest in the City Despite the superlative snappiness of Mr. Silberfarb's dress-suits his establishment was a loft over a delicatessen, approached by a splintery stairway along which hung shabby signs announcing the upstairs offices of "J. L. & T. J. O'Regan, Private Detectives," "The Zenith Spiritualist Church, Messages by Rev. Lulu Paughouse," "The International Order of Live Ones, Seattle Wigwam," and "Mme. Lavourie, Sulphur Baths." The dead air of the hallway suggested petty crookedness. Milt felt that he ought to fight somebody but, there being no one to fight, he banged along the flapping boards of the second-floor hallway to the ground-glass door of Silberfarb the Society Tailor, who was also, as an afterthought on a straggly placard, "Pressng & Cleang While U Wait." He belligerently shouldered into a low room. The light from the one window was almost obscured by racks of musty-smelling black clothes which stretched away from him in two dismal aisles that resembled a morgue of unhappy dead men indecently hung up on hooks. On a long, clumsily carpentered table, a small Jew, collarless, sweaty, unshaven, was darning trousers under an evil mantle gaslight. The Jew wrung out his hands and tried to look benevolent. "Want to rent a dress-suit," said Milt. "I got just the t'ing for you!" The little man unfolded himself, galloped down the aisle, seized the first garment that came to hand, and came back to lay it against Milt's uncomfortable frame, bumbling, "Fine, mister, fy-en!" Milt studied the shiny-seamed, worn-buttonholed, limp object with dislike. Its personality was disintegrated. The only thing he liked about it was the good garage stink of gasoline. "That's almost worn out," he growled. At this sacrilege Mr. Silberfarb threw up his hands, with the dingy suit flapping in them like a bed-quilt shaken from a tenement window. He looked Milt all over, coldly. His red but shining eyes hinted that Milt was a clodhopper and no honest wearer of evening clothes. Milt felt humble, but he snapped, "No good. Want something with class." "Vell, that was good enough for a university professor at the big dance, but if you say so----" In the manner of one who is being put to an unfair amount of trouble, Mr. Silberfarb returned the paranoiac dress-suit to the rack, sighing patiently as he laboriously draped it on a hanger. He peered and pawed. He crowed with throaty triumph and brought back a rich ripe thing of velvet collar and cuffs. He fixed Milt with eyes that had become as sulky as the eyes of a dog in August dust. "Now that--you can't beat that, if you vant class, and it'll fit you like a glove. Oh, that's an ellllegant garment!" Shaking himself out of the spell of those contemptuous eyes Milt opened his brochure, studied the chart, and in a footnote found, "Never wear velvet collars or cuffs with evening coat." "Nope. Nix on the velvet," he remarked. Then the little man went mad and ran around in circles. He flung the ellllegant garment on the table. He flapped his arms, and wailed, "What do you vant? What do you vannnnt? That's a hundred-and-fifty-dollar dress-suit! That belonged to one of the richest men in the city. He sold it to me because he was going to Japan." "Well, you can send it to Japan after him. I want something decent. Have you got it--or shall I go some place else?" The tailor instantly became affectionate. "How about a nice Tuxedo?" he coaxed. "Nope. It says here--let me see--oh yes, here it is--it says here in the book that for the theater-with-ladies, should not wear 'dinner-coat or so-called Tuxedo, but----'" "Oh, dem fellows what writes books they don't know nothing. Absolute! They make it up." "Huh! Well, I guess I'll take my chance on them. The factory knows the ignition better 'n any repair-man." "Vell say, you're a hard fellow to please. I'll give you one of my reserve stock, but you got to leave me ten dollars deposit instead of five." Mr. Silberfarb quite cheerfully unlocked a glass case behind the racked and ghostly dead; he brought out a suit that seemed to Milt almost decent. And it almost fitted when, after changing clothes in a broiling, boiling, reeking, gasoline-pulsing hole behind the racks, he examined it before a pier-glass. But he caught the tailor assisting the fit by bunching up a roll of cloth at the shoulder. Again Milt snapped, and again the tailor suffered and died, and to a doubting heathen world maintained the true gospel of "What do you vannnnt? It ain't stylish to have the dress-suit too tight! All the gents is wearing 'em loose and graceful." But in the end, after Milt had gone as far as the door, Mr. Silberfarb admitted that one dress-coat wouldn't always fit all persons without some alterations. The coat did bag a little, and it was too long in the sleeves, but as Milt studied himself in his room--by placing his small melancholy mirror on the bureau, then on a chair, then on the floor, finally, to get a complete view, clear out in the hall--he admitted with stirring delight that he looked "pretty fair in the bloomin' outfit." His clear face, his shining hair, his straight shoulders, seemed to go with the costume. He wriggled into his top-coat and marched out of his room, theater-bound, with the well-fed satisfaction of a man who is certain that no one is giggling, "Look at the hand-me-downs." His pumps did alternately pinch his toes and rub his heels; the trousers cramped his waist; and he suspected that his tie had gone wandering. But he swaggered to the trolley, and sat as one rich and famous and very kind to the Common People, till---- Another man in evening clothes got on the car, and Milt saw that he wore a silk hat, and a white knitted scarf; that he took

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who was the limp indoor-dweller, and he who was the ruddy ranger; that as he had admired her at Flathead Lake, so now it was hers to admire, and his to be serenely heroic. She was not far from the worshiping sub-deb in her sighing, "How _did_ you get the scar?" "That? Oh, nothing." "Please tell me." "Really and truly. Nothing at all. Just a drunken fellow with a knife, playing the fool. I didn't have to touch him--quite sure he could have given me a frightful beating and all that sort of thing. It was the Big Chief who got rid of him." "He--cut you? With a kniiiiiife? Ohhhhhhh!" She ran to him, pityingly stroked the scar, looked down at him with filmy eyes. Then she tried to retreat, but he retained her hand, glanced up at her as though he knew her every thought. She felt weak. How could she escape him? "Please!" she begged flutteringly. If he held her hand another moment, she trembled, she'd be on his lap, in his arms--lost. And he was holding it. He was---- Oh, he was too old for her. Yes, and too paternal. But still---- Life with Jeff would be protected, kindly, honorable. Yet all the time she wanted, and stormily knew she wanted, to be fleeing to the boy Milt, her mate; to run away with him, hand in hand, discovering all the colored world, laughing at life, not afraid of losing dignity. In fear of Jeff's very kindliness and honor, she jerked her hand free. Then she tried to smile like a clever fencer. As she retreated to her chair she stammered, "Did you---- Was Alaska interesting?" He did not let her go, this time. Easy, cat-like for all his dry gravity, he sauntered after her, and with a fine high seriousness pleaded his case: "Claire dear, those few weeks of fighting nature were a revelation to me. I'm going to have lots more of it. As it happens, they need me there. There's plenty of copper, but there's big transportation and employment problems that I seem better able to solve than the other chaps--though of course I'm an absolute muff when it comes to engineering problems. But I've had certain training and--I'm going to arrange things so that I get up there at least once a year. Next summer I'll make a much longer trip--see the mountains--oh, glorious mountains--and funny half-Russian towns, and have some fishing---- Wandering. The really big thing. Even finer than your superb plucky trip through----" "Wasn't plucky! I'm a cry baby," she said, like a bad, contradictory little girl. He didn't argue it. He smiled and said "Tut!" and placidly catalogued her with, "You're the pluckiest girl I've ever seen, and it's all the more amazing because you're not a motion-picture Tomboy, but essentially exquisite----" "I'm a grub." "Very well, then. You're a grub. So am I. And I like it. And when I make the big Alaskan trip next year I want you to go along! Claire! Haven't you any idea how terribly close to me the thought of you has been these weeks? You've guided me through the wilderness----" "It's---- I'm glad." She sprang up, beseeching, "Jeff dear, you're going to stay for tea? I must run up and powder my nose." "Not until you say you're glad to see me. Child dear, we've been ambling along and---- No. You aren't a child any more. You're a woman. And if I've never been quite a man, but just a dusty office-machine, that's gone now. I've got the wind of the wilderness in my lungs. Man and woman! My woman! That's all I'm going to say now, but---- Oh my God, Claire, I do need you so!" He drew her head to his shoulder, and for an instant she rested there. But as she looked up, she saw coming age in the granulated skin of his throat. "He needs me--but he'd boss me. I'd be the cunning child-wife, even at fifty," she worried, and "Hang him, it's like his superiority to beat poor Milt even at adventuring--and to be such a confounded Modest Christian Gentleman about it!" "You'd--you're so dreadfully managing," she sighed aloud. For the first time in all their acquaintanceship, Jeff's pride broke, and he held her away from him, while his lips were pathetic, and he mourned, "Why do you always try to hurt me?" "Oh, my dear, I don't." "Is it because you resent the decent things I have managed to do?" "I don't understand." "If I have an idea for a party, you think I'm 'managing.' If I think things out deeply, you say I'm dull." "Oh, you aren't. I didn't mean----" "What are you? A real woman, or one of these flirts, that love to tease a man because he's foolish enough to be honestly in love?" "I'm not--hon-estly I'm not, Jeff. It's---- You don't quite make me---- It's just that I'm not in love with you. I like you, and respect you terribly, but----" "I'm going to make you love me." His clutching fingers hurt her arm, and somehow she was not angry, but stirred. "But I'm not going to try now. Forget the Alaskan caveman. Remember, I haven't even used the word 'love.' I've just chatted about fjords, or whatever they are, but one of these days---- No. I won't do it. I want to stay here in Seattle a few days, and take you on jolly picnics, but---- Would you rather I didn't even do that? I'm----" He dropped her arm, kneaded his forehead with the heel of his palm. "I can't stand being regarded as a bothersome puppy. I can't stand it! I can't!" "Please stay, Jeff! We'll have some darling drives and things. We'll go up Rainier as far as we can." He stayed. He was anecdotal and amusing at tea, that afternoon. Claire saw how the Gilsons, and two girls who dropped in, admired him. That made her uneasy. And when Mrs. Gilson begged him to leave his hotel and stay with them, he refused with a quick look at Claire that hurt her. "He wants me to be free. He's really so much more considerate than Milt. And I hurt him. Even his pride broke down. And I've spoiled Milt's life by meddling. And I've hurt the Gilsons' feelings. And I'm not much of a comfort to father. Oh, I'm absolutely no good," she agonized. CHAPTER XXX THE VIRTUOUS PLOTTERS Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, in Alaskan tan and New York evening clothes and Piccadilly poise, was talking to the Eugene Gilsons while Claire finished dressing for the theater. Mrs. Gilson observed, "She's the dearest thing. We've become awfully fond of her. But I don't think she knows what she wants to do with life. She's rather at loose ends. Who is this Daggett boy--some university student--whom she seems to like?" "Well, since you speak of him---- I hadn't meant to, unless you did. I want to be fair to him. What did she tell you about him?" Jeff asked confidentially. "Nothing, except that he's a young engineer, and frightfully brave and all those uncomfortable virtues, and she met him in Yellowstone Park or somewhere, and he saved her from a bear--or was it a tramp?--from something unnecessary, at any rate." "Eva, I don't want to be supercilious, but the truth is that this young Daggett is a rather dreadful person. He's been here at the house, hasn't he? How did he strike you?" "Not at all. He's silent, and as dull as lukewarm tea, but perfectly inoffensive." "Then he's cleverer than I thought! Daggett is anything but dull and inoffensive, and if he can play that estimable r le----! It seems that he is the son of some common workman in the Middlewest; he isn't an engineer at all; he's really a chauffeur or a taxi-driver or something; and he ran into Claire and Henry B. on the road, and somehow insinuated himself into their graces--far from being silent and commonplace, he appears to have some strange kind of charm which," Jeff sighed, "I don't understand at all. I simply don't understand it! "I met him in Montana with the most gorgeously atrocious person I've ever encountered--one Pinky Westlake, or some such a name--positively, a crook! He tried to get Boltwood and myself interested in the commonest kind of a mining swindle--hinted that we were to join him in cheating the public. And this Daggett was his partner--they actually traveled together. But I do want to be just. I'm not _sure_ that Daggett was aware of his partner's dishonesty. That isn't what worries me about the lad. It's his utter impossibility. He's as crude as iron-ore. When he's being careful, he may manage to be inconspicuous, but give him the chance---- "Really, I'm not exaggerating when I say that at thirty-five he'll be dining in his shirt-sleeves, and sitting down to read the paper with his shoes off and feet up on the table. But Claire--you know what a dear Quixotic soul she is--she fancies that because this fellow repaired a puncture or something of the sort for her on the road, she's indebted to him, and the worse he is, the more she feels that she must help him. And affairs of that kind---- Oh, it's quite too horrible, but there have been cases, you know, where girls as splendid and fine and well-bred as Claire herself have been trapped into low marriages by their loyalty to cadging adventurers!" "Oh!" groaned Mrs. Gilson; and "Good Lord!" lamented Mr. Gilson, delighted by the possibility of tragedy; and "Really, I'm not exaggerating," said Jeff enthusiastically. "What are we going to do?" demanded Mrs. Gilson; while Mr. Gilson, being of a ready and inventive mind, exclaimed, "By Jove, you ought to kidnap her and marry her yourself, Jeff!" "I'd like to. But I'm too old." They beautifully assured him that he was a blithe young thing with milk teeth; and with a certain satisfaction Jeff suggested, "I tell you what we might do. Of course it's an ancient stunt, but it's good. I judge that Daggett hasn't been here at the house much. Why not have him here so often that Claire will awaken to his crudity, and get sick of him?" "We'll do it," thrilled Mrs. Gilson. "We'll have him for everything from nine-course dinners with Grandmother Eaton's napkins on view, to milk and cold ham out of the ice-box. When Claire doesn't invite him, I will!" CHAPTER XXXI THE KITCHEN INTIMATE Milt had become used to the Gilson drawing-room. He was no longer uncomfortable in the presence of its sleek fatness, though at first (not knowing that there were such resources as interior decorators), he had been convinced that, to have created the room, the Gilsons must have known everything in the world. Now he glanced familiarly at its white paneling, its sconces like silver candlesticks, the inevitable davenport inevitably backed by an amethyst-shaded piano lamp and a table crowded with silver boxes and picture-frames. He liked the winsomeness of light upon velvet and polished wood. It was not the drawing-room but the kitchen that dismayed him. In Schoenstrom he had known that there must somewhere be beautiful "parlors," but he had trusted in his experience of kitchens. Kitchens, according to his philosophy, were small smelly rooms of bare floors, and provided with one oilcloth-covered table, one stove (the front draft always broken and propped up with the lid-lifter), one cupboard with panes of tin pierced in rosettes, and one stack of dirty dishes. But the Gilson kitchen had the efficiency of a laboratory and the superciliousness of a hair-dresser's booth. With awe Milt beheld walls of white tiles, a cork floor, a gas-range large as a hotel-stove, a ceiling-high refrigerator of enamel and nickel, zinc-topped tables, and a case of utensils like a surgeon's knives. It frightened him; it made more hopelessly unapproachable than ever the Alexandrian luxury of the great Gilsons.... The Vanderbilts' kitchen must be like this. And maybe King George's. He was viewing the kitchen upon the occasion of an intimate Sunday evening supper to which he had been yearningly invited by Mrs. Gilson. The maids were all out. The Gilsons and Claire, Milt and Jeff Saxton, shoutingly prepared their own supper. While Mrs. Gilson scrambled eggs and made coffee, the others set the table, and brought cold ham and a bowl of salad from the ice-box. Milt had intended to be a silent but deft servitor. When he had heard that he was to come to supper with the returned Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, he had first been panic-shaken, then resolved. He'd "let old iron-face Saxton do the high and mighty. Let him stand around and show off his clothes and adjectives, way he did at Flathead Lake." But he, Milt, would be "on the job." He'd help get supper, and calmly ignore Jeff's rudeness. Only--Jeff wasn't rude. He greeted Milt with, "Ah, Daggett! This is _so_ nice!" And Milt had no chance to help. It was Jeff who anticipated him and with a pleasant, "Let me get that--I'm kitchen-broke," snatched up the cold ham and salad. It was Jeff who found the supper plates, while Milt was blunderingly wondering how any one family could use a "whole furniture-store-full of different kinds of china." It was Jeff who sprang to help Claire wheel in the tea-wagon, and so captured the chance to speak to her for which Milt had been maneuvering these five minutes. When they were settled, Jeff glowed at him, and respectfully offered, "I thought of you so often, Daggett, on a recent little jaunt of mine. You'd have been helpful." "Where was that?" asked Milt suspiciously (wondering, and waiting to see, whether you could take cold ham in your fingers). "Oh, in Alaska." "In--Alaska?" Milt was dismayed. "Yes, just a business trip there. There's something I wish you'd advise me about." He was humble. And Milt was uneasy. He grumbled, "What's that?" "I've been wondering whether it would be possible to use wireless telephony in Alaska. But I'm such a dub at electricity. Do you know---- What would be the cost of installing a wireless telephone plant with a hundred-mile radius?" "Gee, I don't know!" "Oh, so sorry. Well, I wonder if you can tell me about wireless telegraphy, then?" "No, I don't know anything about that either." Milt had desperately tried to make his answer gracious but somehow---- He hated this devil's obsequiousness more than he had his chilliness at Flathead Lake. He had a feeling that the Gilsons had delightedly kicked each other under the table; that, for all her unchanging smile, Claire was unhappy.... And she was so far off, a white wraith floating beyond his frantic grasp. "It doesn't matter, really. But I didn't know---- So you've started in the engineering school at the University of Washington," Saxton was purring. "Have you met Gid Childers there--son of old Senator Childers--charming people." "I've seen him. He has a Stutz--no, his is the Mercer," sighed Milt. He hated himself for it, but he couldn't quite keep the awe out of his voice. People with Mercers---- Claire seemed to be trying to speak. She made a delicate, feminine, clairesque approximation to clearing her throat. But Jeff ignored her and with almost osculatory affection continued to Milt: "Do let me know if there's anything I can do to help you. We're acquainted with two or three of your engineering faculty at the Office. They write in about various things. Do you happen to know Dr. Philgren?" "Oh yes. Say! He's a wonder!" Milt was betrayed into exclaiming. "Yes. Good chap, I believe. He's been trying to get a job with us. We may give him one. Just tell him you're a friend of mine, and that he's to give you any help he can." Milt choked on a "Thanks." "And--now that we're just the family here together--how goes the financial side? Can I be of any assistance in introducing you to some engineering firm where you could do a little work on the side? You could make quite a little money----" So confoundedly affectionate and paternal---- Milt said irritably, "Thanks, but I don't need to do any work. I've got plenty of money." "How pleasant!" Saxton's voice was smooth as marshmallow. "You're fortunate. I had quite a struggle to get through Princeton." Wasn't Mr. Gilson contrasting Saxton's silk shirt with Milt's darned cotton covering, and in light of that contrast chuckling at Milt's boast and Saxton's modesty? Milt became overheated. His scalp prickled and his shoulder-blades were damp. As Saxton turned from him, and crooned to Claire, "More ham, honey?" Milt hated himself. He was in much of the dramatic but undesirable position of a man in pajamas, not very good pajamas, who has been locked out in the hotel corridor by the slamming of his door. He was in the frame of mind of a mongrel, of a real Boys'-Dog, at a Madison Square dog-show. He had a faint shrewd suspicion of Saxton's game. But what could he do about it? He felt even more out of place when the family forgot him and talked about people of whom he had never heard. He sat alone on an extremely distant desert isle and ate cold ham and wished he were in Schoenstrom. Claire had recovered her power of speech. She seemed to be trying to bring him into the conversation, so that the family might appreciate him. She hesitated, and thought with creased brows, and brought out, "Uh, uh, oh---- Oh Milt: How much is gas selling at now?"... * * * * * Milt left that charming and intimate supper-party at nine. He said, "Got to work on--on my analytical geometry," as though it was a lie; and he threw "Good night" at Saxton as though he hated his kind, good benefactor; and when he tried to be gracious to Mrs. Gilson the best he could get out was, "Thanks f' inviting me." They expansively saw him to the door. Just as he thought that he had escaped, Saxton begged, "Oh, Daggett, I was arguing with a chap---- What color are Holstein-Friesian cattle? Red?" "Black and white," Milt said eagerly. He heard Mrs. Gilson giggle. He stood on the terrace wiping his forehead and, without the least struggle, finally and irretrievably admitting that he would never see Claire Boltwood or any of her friends again. Not--never! * * * * * He had received from Mrs. Gilson a note inviting him to share their box at the first night of a three-night Opera Season. He had spent half a day in trying to think of a courteously rude way of declining. A straggly little girl came up from the candy-shop below his room, demanding, "Say, are you Mr. Daggett? Say, there's some woman wants to talk to you on our telephone. Say, tell them we ain't supposed to be no messenger-office. You ain't supposed to call no upstairs people on our telephone. We ain't supposed to leave the store and go trotting all over town to---- Gee, a nickel, gee, thank you, don't mind what ma says, she's always kicking." On the telephone, he heard Claire's voice in an agitated, "Milt! Meet me down-town, at the Imperial Motion Picture Theater, right away. Something I've got to tell you. I'll be in the lobby. Hurry!" When he bolted in she was already in the lobby, agitatedly looking over a frame of "stills." She ran to him, hooked her fingers in his lapel, poured out, "They've invited you to the opera? I want you to come and put it all over them. I'm almost sure there's a plot. They want to show me that you aren't used to tiaras and saxophones and creaking dowagers and tulle. Beat 'em! Beat 'em! Come to the opera and be awf'ly aloof and supercilious. You can! Yes, you can! And be sure--wear evening clothes. Now I've got to hurry." "B-but----" "Don't disappoint me. I depend on you. Oh, say you will!" "I will!" She was gone, whisking into the Gilson limousine. He was in a glow at her loyalty, in a tremor of anger at the meddlers. But he had never worn evening clothes. He called it "a dress-suit," and before the complications of that exotic garb, he was flabby with anxiety. To Milt and to Schoenstrom--to Bill McGolwey, even to Prof Jones and the greasily prosperous Heinie Rauskukle--the dress-suit was the symbol and proof, the indication and manner, of sophisticated wealth. In Schoenstrom even waiters do not wear dress-suits. For one thing there aren't any waiters. There is one waitress at the Leipzig House, Miss Annie Schweigenblat, but you wouldn't expect Miss Schweigenblat to deal them off the arm in black trousers with braid down the side. No; a dress-suit was what the hero wore in the movies; and the hero in the movies, when he wasn't a cowpuncher, was an ex-captain of the Yale football team, and had chambers and a valet. You could tell him from the valet because he wasn't so bald. It is true that Milt had heard that in St. Cloud there were people who wore dress-suits at parties, but then St. Cloud was a city, fifteen or sixteen thousand. "How could he get away with a dress-suit? How could he keep from feeling foolish in a low-cut vest, and what the deuce would he do with the tails? Did you part 'em or roll 'em up, when you sat down? And wouldn't everybody be able to tell from his foolish look that he didn't belong in one?" He could hear A.D.T. boys and loafers in front of pool rooms whispering, "Look at the piker in the rented soup and fish!" For of course he'd rent one. Nobody bought them--except plutes like Henry B. Boltwood. He agitatedly walked up and down for an hour, peering into haberdashery windows, looking for a kind-faced young man. He found him, in Ye Pall Mall Toggery Shoppe & Shoes; an open-faced young man who was gazing through the window as sparklingly as though he was thinking of going as a missionary to India--and liked curry. Milt ironed out his worried face, clumped in, demanded fraternally, "Say, old man, don't some of these gents' furnishings stores have kind of little charts that tell just what you wear with dress-suits and Prince Alberts and everything?" "You bet," said the kind-faced young man. West of Chicago, "You bet" means "Rather," and "Yes indeed," and "On the whole I should be inclined to fancy that there may be some vestiges of accuracy in your curious opinion," and "You're a liar but I can't afford to say so." The kind-faced young man brought from behind the counter a beautiful brochure illustrated with photographs of Phoebus Apollo in what were described as "American Beauty Garments--neat, natty, nobby, new." The center pages faithfully catalogued the ties, shirts, cuff-links, spats, boots, hats, to wear with evening clothes, morning clothes, riding clothes, tennis costumes, polite mourning. As he looked it over Milt felt that his wardrobe already contained all these gentlemanly possessions. With the aid of the clerk and the chart he purchased a tradition-haunted garment with a plate-armor bosom and an opening as crooked as the Missouri River; a white tie which in his strong red hands looked as silly as a dead fish; waistcoat, pearl links, and studs. For the first time, except for seizures of madness during two or three visits to Minneapolis motor accessory stores, he caught the shopping-fever. The long shining counter, the trim red-stained shelves, the glittering cases, the racks of flaunting ties, were beautiful to him and beckoning. He revolved a pleasantly clicking rack of ties, then turned and fought his way out. He bought pumps--which cost exactly twice as much as the largest sum which he had allowed himself. He bought a newspaper, and in the want-columns found the advertisement: Silberfarb the Society Tailor DRESS SUITS TO RENT Snappiest in the City Despite the superlative snappiness of Mr. Silberfarb's dress-suits his establishment was a loft over a delicatessen, approached by a splintery stairway along which hung shabby signs announcing the upstairs offices of "J. L. & T. J. O'Regan, Private Detectives," "The Zenith Spiritualist Church, Messages by Rev. Lulu Paughouse," "The International Order of Live Ones, Seattle Wigwam," and "Mme. Lavourie, Sulphur Baths." The dead air of the hallway suggested petty crookedness. Milt felt that he ought to fight somebody but, there being no one to fight, he banged along the flapping boards of the second-floor hallway to the ground-glass door of Silberfarb the Society Tailor, who was also, as an afterthought on a straggly placard, "Pressng & Cleang While U Wait." He belligerently shouldered into a low room. The light from the one window was almost obscured by racks of musty-smelling black clothes which stretched away from him in two dismal aisles that resembled a morgue of unhappy dead men indecently hung up on hooks. On a long, clumsily carpentered table, a small Jew, collarless, sweaty, unshaven, was darning trousers under an evil mantle gaslight. The Jew wrung out his hands and tried to look benevolent. "Want to rent a dress-suit," said Milt. "I got just the t'ing for you!" The little man unfolded himself, galloped down the aisle, seized the first garment that came to hand, and came back to lay it against Milt's uncomfortable frame, bumbling, "Fine, mister, fy-en!" Milt studied the shiny-seamed, worn-buttonholed, limp object with dislike. Its personality was disintegrated. The only thing he liked about it was the good garage stink of gasoline. "That's almost worn out," he growled. At this sacrilege Mr. Silberfarb threw up his hands, with the dingy suit flapping in them like a bed-quilt shaken from a tenement window. He looked Milt all over, coldly. His red but shining eyes hinted that Milt was a clodhopper and no honest wearer of evening clothes. Milt felt humble, but he snapped, "No good. Want something with class." "Vell, that was good enough for a university professor at the big dance, but if you say so----" In the manner of one who is being put to an unfair amount of trouble, Mr. Silberfarb returned the paranoiac dress-suit to the rack, sighing patiently as he laboriously draped it on a hanger. He peered and pawed. He crowed with throaty triumph and brought back a rich ripe thing of velvet collar and cuffs. He fixed Milt with eyes that had become as sulky as the eyes of a dog in August dust. "Now that--you can't beat that, if you vant class, and it'll fit you like a glove. Oh, that's an ellllegant garment!" Shaking himself out of the spell of those contemptuous eyes Milt opened his brochure, studied the chart, and in a footnote found, "Never wear velvet collars or cuffs with evening coat." "Nope. Nix on the velvet," he remarked. Then the little man went mad and ran around in circles. He flung the ellllegant garment on the table. He flapped his arms, and wailed, "What do you vant? What do you vannnnt? That's a hundred-and-fifty-dollar dress-suit! That belonged to one of the richest men in the city. He sold it to me because he was going to Japan." "Well, you can send it to Japan after him. I want something decent. Have you got it--or shall I go some place else?" The tailor instantly became affectionate. "How about a nice Tuxedo?" he coaxed. "Nope. It says here--let me see--oh yes, here it is--it says here in the book that for the theater-with-ladies, should not wear 'dinner-coat or so-called Tuxedo, but----'" "Oh, dem fellows what writes books they don't know nothing. Absolute! They make it up." "Huh! Well, I guess I'll take my chance on them. The factory knows the ignition better 'n any repair-man." "Vell say, you're a hard fellow to please. I'll give you one of my reserve stock, but you got to leave me ten dollars deposit instead of five." Mr. Silberfarb quite cheerfully unlocked a glass case behind the racked and ghostly dead; he brought out a suit that seemed to Milt almost decent. And it almost fitted when, after changing clothes in a broiling, boiling, reeking, gasoline-pulsing hole behind the racks, he examined it before a pier-glass. But he caught the tailor assisting the fit by bunching up a roll of cloth at the shoulder. Again Milt snapped, and again the tailor suffered and died, and to a doubting heathen world maintained the true gospel of "What do you vannnnt? It ain't stylish to have the dress-suit too tight! All the gents is wearing 'em loose and graceful." But in the end, after Milt had gone as far as the door, Mr. Silberfarb admitted that one dress-coat wouldn't always fit all persons without some alterations. The coat did bag a little, and it was too long in the sleeves, but as Milt studied himself in his room--by placing his small melancholy mirror on the bureau, then on a chair, then on the floor, finally, to get a complete view, clear out in the hall--he admitted with stirring delight that he looked "pretty fair in the bloomin' outfit." His clear face, his shining hair, his straight shoulders, seemed to go with the costume. He wriggled into his top-coat and marched out of his room, theater-bound, with the well-fed satisfaction of a man who is certain that no one is giggling, "Look at the hand-me-downs." His pumps did alternately pinch his toes and rub his heels; the trousers cramped his waist; and he suspected that his tie had gone wandering. But he swaggered to the trolley, and sat as one rich and famous and very kind to the Common People, till---- Another man in evening clothes got on the car, and Milt saw that he wore a silk hat, and a white knitted scarf; that he took

stove

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who was the limp indoor-dweller, and he who was the ruddy ranger; that as he had admired her at Flathead Lake, so now it was hers to admire, and his to be serenely heroic. She was not far from the worshiping sub-deb in her sighing, "How _did_ you get the scar?" "That? Oh, nothing." "Please tell me." "Really and truly. Nothing at all. Just a drunken fellow with a knife, playing the fool. I didn't have to touch him--quite sure he could have given me a frightful beating and all that sort of thing. It was the Big Chief who got rid of him." "He--cut you? With a kniiiiiife? Ohhhhhhh!" She ran to him, pityingly stroked the scar, looked down at him with filmy eyes. Then she tried to retreat, but he retained her hand, glanced up at her as though he knew her every thought. She felt weak. How could she escape him? "Please!" she begged flutteringly. If he held her hand another moment, she trembled, she'd be on his lap, in his arms--lost. And he was holding it. He was---- Oh, he was too old for her. Yes, and too paternal. But still---- Life with Jeff would be protected, kindly, honorable. Yet all the time she wanted, and stormily knew she wanted, to be fleeing to the boy Milt, her mate; to run away with him, hand in hand, discovering all the colored world, laughing at life, not afraid of losing dignity. In fear of Jeff's very kindliness and honor, she jerked her hand free. Then she tried to smile like a clever fencer. As she retreated to her chair she stammered, "Did you---- Was Alaska interesting?" He did not let her go, this time. Easy, cat-like for all his dry gravity, he sauntered after her, and with a fine high seriousness pleaded his case: "Claire dear, those few weeks of fighting nature were a revelation to me. I'm going to have lots more of it. As it happens, they need me there. There's plenty of copper, but there's big transportation and employment problems that I seem better able to solve than the other chaps--though of course I'm an absolute muff when it comes to engineering problems. But I've had certain training and--I'm going to arrange things so that I get up there at least once a year. Next summer I'll make a much longer trip--see the mountains--oh, glorious mountains--and funny half-Russian towns, and have some fishing---- Wandering. The really big thing. Even finer than your superb plucky trip through----" "Wasn't plucky! I'm a cry baby," she said, like a bad, contradictory little girl. He didn't argue it. He smiled and said "Tut!" and placidly catalogued her with, "You're the pluckiest girl I've ever seen, and it's all the more amazing because you're not a motion-picture Tomboy, but essentially exquisite----" "I'm a grub." "Very well, then. You're a grub. So am I. And I like it. And when I make the big Alaskan trip next year I want you to go along! Claire! Haven't you any idea how terribly close to me the thought of you has been these weeks? You've guided me through the wilderness----" "It's---- I'm glad." She sprang up, beseeching, "Jeff dear, you're going to stay for tea? I must run up and powder my nose." "Not until you say you're glad to see me. Child dear, we've been ambling along and---- No. You aren't a child any more. You're a woman. And if I've never been quite a man, but just a dusty office-machine, that's gone now. I've got the wind of the wilderness in my lungs. Man and woman! My woman! That's all I'm going to say now, but---- Oh my God, Claire, I do need you so!" He drew her head to his shoulder, and for an instant she rested there. But as she looked up, she saw coming age in the granulated skin of his throat. "He needs me--but he'd boss me. I'd be the cunning child-wife, even at fifty," she worried, and "Hang him, it's like his superiority to beat poor Milt even at adventuring--and to be such a confounded Modest Christian Gentleman about it!" "You'd--you're so dreadfully managing," she sighed aloud. For the first time in all their acquaintanceship, Jeff's pride broke, and he held her away from him, while his lips were pathetic, and he mourned, "Why do you always try to hurt me?" "Oh, my dear, I don't." "Is it because you resent the decent things I have managed to do?" "I don't understand." "If I have an idea for a party, you think I'm 'managing.' If I think things out deeply, you say I'm dull." "Oh, you aren't. I didn't mean----" "What are you? A real woman, or one of these flirts, that love to tease a man because he's foolish enough to be honestly in love?" "I'm not--hon-estly I'm not, Jeff. It's---- You don't quite make me---- It's just that I'm not in love with you. I like you, and respect you terribly, but----" "I'm going to make you love me." His clutching fingers hurt her arm, and somehow she was not angry, but stirred. "But I'm not going to try now. Forget the Alaskan caveman. Remember, I haven't even used the word 'love.' I've just chatted about fjords, or whatever they are, but one of these days---- No. I won't do it. I want to stay here in Seattle a few days, and take you on jolly picnics, but---- Would you rather I didn't even do that? I'm----" He dropped her arm, kneaded his forehead with the heel of his palm. "I can't stand being regarded as a bothersome puppy. I can't stand it! I can't!" "Please stay, Jeff! We'll have some darling drives and things. We'll go up Rainier as far as we can." He stayed. He was anecdotal and amusing at tea, that afternoon. Claire saw how the Gilsons, and two girls who dropped in, admired him. That made her uneasy. And when Mrs. Gilson begged him to leave his hotel and stay with them, he refused with a quick look at Claire that hurt her. "He wants me to be free. He's really so much more considerate than Milt. And I hurt him. Even his pride broke down. And I've spoiled Milt's life by meddling. And I've hurt the Gilsons' feelings. And I'm not much of a comfort to father. Oh, I'm absolutely no good," she agonized. CHAPTER XXX THE VIRTUOUS PLOTTERS Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, in Alaskan tan and New York evening clothes and Piccadilly poise, was talking to the Eugene Gilsons while Claire finished dressing for the theater. Mrs. Gilson observed, "She's the dearest thing. We've become awfully fond of her. But I don't think she knows what she wants to do with life. She's rather at loose ends. Who is this Daggett boy--some university student--whom she seems to like?" "Well, since you speak of him---- I hadn't meant to, unless you did. I want to be fair to him. What did she tell you about him?" Jeff asked confidentially. "Nothing, except that he's a young engineer, and frightfully brave and all those uncomfortable virtues, and she met him in Yellowstone Park or somewhere, and he saved her from a bear--or was it a tramp?--from something unnecessary, at any rate." "Eva, I don't want to be supercilious, but the truth is that this young Daggett is a rather dreadful person. He's been here at the house, hasn't he? How did he strike you?" "Not at all. He's silent, and as dull as lukewarm tea, but perfectly inoffensive." "Then he's cleverer than I thought! Daggett is anything but dull and inoffensive, and if he can play that estimable r le----! It seems that he is the son of some common workman in the Middlewest; he isn't an engineer at all; he's really a chauffeur or a taxi-driver or something; and he ran into Claire and Henry B. on the road, and somehow insinuated himself into their graces--far from being silent and commonplace, he appears to have some strange kind of charm which," Jeff sighed, "I don't understand at all. I simply don't understand it! "I met him in Montana with the most gorgeously atrocious person I've ever encountered--one Pinky Westlake, or some such a name--positively, a crook! He tried to get Boltwood and myself interested in the commonest kind of a mining swindle--hinted that we were to join him in cheating the public. And this Daggett was his partner--they actually traveled together. But I do want to be just. I'm not _sure_ that Daggett was aware of his partner's dishonesty. That isn't what worries me about the lad. It's his utter impossibility. He's as crude as iron-ore. When he's being careful, he may manage to be inconspicuous, but give him the chance---- "Really, I'm not exaggerating when I say that at thirty-five he'll be dining in his shirt-sleeves, and sitting down to read the paper with his shoes off and feet up on the table. But Claire--you know what a dear Quixotic soul she is--she fancies that because this fellow repaired a puncture or something of the sort for her on the road, she's indebted to him, and the worse he is, the more she feels that she must help him. And affairs of that kind---- Oh, it's quite too horrible, but there have been cases, you know, where girls as splendid and fine and well-bred as Claire herself have been trapped into low marriages by their loyalty to cadging adventurers!" "Oh!" groaned Mrs. Gilson; and "Good Lord!" lamented Mr. Gilson, delighted by the possibility of tragedy; and "Really, I'm not exaggerating," said Jeff enthusiastically. "What are we going to do?" demanded Mrs. Gilson; while Mr. Gilson, being of a ready and inventive mind, exclaimed, "By Jove, you ought to kidnap her and marry her yourself, Jeff!" "I'd like to. But I'm too old." They beautifully assured him that he was a blithe young thing with milk teeth; and with a certain satisfaction Jeff suggested, "I tell you what we might do. Of course it's an ancient stunt, but it's good. I judge that Daggett hasn't been here at the house much. Why not have him here so often that Claire will awaken to his crudity, and get sick of him?" "We'll do it," thrilled Mrs. Gilson. "We'll have him for everything from nine-course dinners with Grandmother Eaton's napkins on view, to milk and cold ham out of the ice-box. When Claire doesn't invite him, I will!" CHAPTER XXXI THE KITCHEN INTIMATE Milt had become used to the Gilson drawing-room. He was no longer uncomfortable in the presence of its sleek fatness, though at first (not knowing that there were such resources as interior decorators), he had been convinced that, to have created the room, the Gilsons must have known everything in the world. Now he glanced familiarly at its white paneling, its sconces like silver candlesticks, the inevitable davenport inevitably backed by an amethyst-shaded piano lamp and a table crowded with silver boxes and picture-frames. He liked the winsomeness of light upon velvet and polished wood. It was not the drawing-room but the kitchen that dismayed him. In Schoenstrom he had known that there must somewhere be beautiful "parlors," but he had trusted in his experience of kitchens. Kitchens, according to his philosophy, were small smelly rooms of bare floors, and provided with one oilcloth-covered table, one stove (the front draft always broken and propped up with the lid-lifter), one cupboard with panes of tin pierced in rosettes, and one stack of dirty dishes. But the Gilson kitchen had the efficiency of a laboratory and the superciliousness of a hair-dresser's booth. With awe Milt beheld walls of white tiles, a cork floor, a gas-range large as a hotel-stove, a ceiling-high refrigerator of enamel and nickel, zinc-topped tables, and a case of utensils like a surgeon's knives. It frightened him; it made more hopelessly unapproachable than ever the Alexandrian luxury of the great Gilsons.... The Vanderbilts' kitchen must be like this. And maybe King George's. He was viewing the kitchen upon the occasion of an intimate Sunday evening supper to which he had been yearningly invited by Mrs. Gilson. The maids were all out. The Gilsons and Claire, Milt and Jeff Saxton, shoutingly prepared their own supper. While Mrs. Gilson scrambled eggs and made coffee, the others set the table, and brought cold ham and a bowl of salad from the ice-box. Milt had intended to be a silent but deft servitor. When he had heard that he was to come to supper with the returned Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, he had first been panic-shaken, then resolved. He'd "let old iron-face Saxton do the high and mighty. Let him stand around and show off his clothes and adjectives, way he did at Flathead Lake." But he, Milt, would be "on the job." He'd help get supper, and calmly ignore Jeff's rudeness. Only--Jeff wasn't rude. He greeted Milt with, "Ah, Daggett! This is _so_ nice!" And Milt had no chance to help. It was Jeff who anticipated him and with a pleasant, "Let me get that--I'm kitchen-broke," snatched up the cold ham and salad. It was Jeff who found the supper plates, while Milt was blunderingly wondering how any one family could use a "whole furniture-store-full of different kinds of china." It was Jeff who sprang to help Claire wheel in the tea-wagon, and so captured the chance to speak to her for which Milt had been maneuvering these five minutes. When they were settled, Jeff glowed at him, and respectfully offered, "I thought of you so often, Daggett, on a recent little jaunt of mine. You'd have been helpful." "Where was that?" asked Milt suspiciously (wondering, and waiting to see, whether you could take cold ham in your fingers). "Oh, in Alaska." "In--Alaska?" Milt was dismayed. "Yes, just a business trip there. There's something I wish you'd advise me about." He was humble. And Milt was uneasy. He grumbled, "What's that?" "I've been wondering whether it would be possible to use wireless telephony in Alaska. But I'm such a dub at electricity. Do you know---- What would be the cost of installing a wireless telephone plant with a hundred-mile radius?" "Gee, I don't know!" "Oh, so sorry. Well, I wonder if you can tell me about wireless telegraphy, then?" "No, I don't know anything about that either." Milt had desperately tried to make his answer gracious but somehow---- He hated this devil's obsequiousness more than he had his chilliness at Flathead Lake. He had a feeling that the Gilsons had delightedly kicked each other under the table; that, for all her unchanging smile, Claire was unhappy.... And she was so far off, a white wraith floating beyond his frantic grasp. "It doesn't matter, really. But I didn't know---- So you've started in the engineering school at the University of Washington," Saxton was purring. "Have you met Gid Childers there--son of old Senator Childers--charming people." "I've seen him. He has a Stutz--no, his is the Mercer," sighed Milt. He hated himself for it, but he couldn't quite keep the awe out of his voice. People with Mercers---- Claire seemed to be trying to speak. She made a delicate, feminine, clairesque approximation to clearing her throat. But Jeff ignored her and with almost osculatory affection continued to Milt: "Do let me know if there's anything I can do to help you. We're acquainted with two or three of your engineering faculty at the Office. They write in about various things. Do you happen to know Dr. Philgren?" "Oh yes. Say! He's a wonder!" Milt was betrayed into exclaiming. "Yes. Good chap, I believe. He's been trying to get a job with us. We may give him one. Just tell him you're a friend of mine, and that he's to give you any help he can." Milt choked on a "Thanks." "And--now that we're just the family here together--how goes the financial side? Can I be of any assistance in introducing you to some engineering firm where you could do a little work on the side? You could make quite a little money----" So confoundedly affectionate and paternal---- Milt said irritably, "Thanks, but I don't need to do any work. I've got plenty of money." "How pleasant!" Saxton's voice was smooth as marshmallow. "You're fortunate. I had quite a struggle to get through Princeton." Wasn't Mr. Gilson contrasting Saxton's silk shirt with Milt's darned cotton covering, and in light of that contrast chuckling at Milt's boast and Saxton's modesty? Milt became overheated. His scalp prickled and his shoulder-blades were damp. As Saxton turned from him, and crooned to Claire, "More ham, honey?" Milt hated himself. He was in much of the dramatic but undesirable position of a man in pajamas, not very good pajamas, who has been locked out in the hotel corridor by the slamming of his door. He was in the frame of mind of a mongrel, of a real Boys'-Dog, at a Madison Square dog-show. He had a faint shrewd suspicion of Saxton's game. But what could he do about it? He felt even more out of place when the family forgot him and talked about people of whom he had never heard. He sat alone on an extremely distant desert isle and ate cold ham and wished he were in Schoenstrom. Claire had recovered her power of speech. She seemed to be trying to bring him into the conversation, so that the family might appreciate him. She hesitated, and thought with creased brows, and brought out, "Uh, uh, oh---- Oh Milt: How much is gas selling at now?"... * * * * * Milt left that charming and intimate supper-party at nine. He said, "Got to work on--on my analytical geometry," as though it was a lie; and he threw "Good night" at Saxton as though he hated his kind, good benefactor; and when he tried to be gracious to Mrs. Gilson the best he could get out was, "Thanks f' inviting me." They expansively saw him to the door. Just as he thought that he had escaped, Saxton begged, "Oh, Daggett, I was arguing with a chap---- What color are Holstein-Friesian cattle? Red?" "Black and white," Milt said eagerly. He heard Mrs. Gilson giggle. He stood on the terrace wiping his forehead and, without the least struggle, finally and irretrievably admitting that he would never see Claire Boltwood or any of her friends again. Not--never! * * * * * He had received from Mrs. Gilson a note inviting him to share their box at the first night of a three-night Opera Season. He had spent half a day in trying to think of a courteously rude way of declining. A straggly little girl came up from the candy-shop below his room, demanding, "Say, are you Mr. Daggett? Say, there's some woman wants to talk to you on our telephone. Say, tell them we ain't supposed to be no messenger-office. You ain't supposed to call no upstairs people on our telephone. We ain't supposed to leave the store and go trotting all over town to---- Gee, a nickel, gee, thank you, don't mind what ma says, she's always kicking." On the telephone, he heard Claire's voice in an agitated, "Milt! Meet me down-town, at the Imperial Motion Picture Theater, right away. Something I've got to tell you. I'll be in the lobby. Hurry!" When he bolted in she was already in the lobby, agitatedly looking over a frame of "stills." She ran to him, hooked her fingers in his lapel, poured out, "They've invited you to the opera? I want you to come and put it all over them. I'm almost sure there's a plot. They want to show me that you aren't used to tiaras and saxophones and creaking dowagers and tulle. Beat 'em! Beat 'em! Come to the opera and be awf'ly aloof and supercilious. You can! Yes, you can! And be sure--wear evening clothes. Now I've got to hurry." "B-but----" "Don't disappoint me. I depend on you. Oh, say you will!" "I will!" She was gone, whisking into the Gilson limousine. He was in a glow at her loyalty, in a tremor of anger at the meddlers. But he had never worn evening clothes. He called it "a dress-suit," and before the complications of that exotic garb, he was flabby with anxiety. To Milt and to Schoenstrom--to Bill McGolwey, even to Prof Jones and the greasily prosperous Heinie Rauskukle--the dress-suit was the symbol and proof, the indication and manner, of sophisticated wealth. In Schoenstrom even waiters do not wear dress-suits. For one thing there aren't any waiters. There is one waitress at the Leipzig House, Miss Annie Schweigenblat, but you wouldn't expect Miss Schweigenblat to deal them off the arm in black trousers with braid down the side. No; a dress-suit was what the hero wore in the movies; and the hero in the movies, when he wasn't a cowpuncher, was an ex-captain of the Yale football team, and had chambers and a valet. You could tell him from the valet because he wasn't so bald. It is true that Milt had heard that in St. Cloud there were people who wore dress-suits at parties, but then St. Cloud was a city, fifteen or sixteen thousand. "How could he get away with a dress-suit? How could he keep from feeling foolish in a low-cut vest, and what the deuce would he do with the tails? Did you part 'em or roll 'em up, when you sat down? And wouldn't everybody be able to tell from his foolish look that he didn't belong in one?" He could hear A.D.T. boys and loafers in front of pool rooms whispering, "Look at the piker in the rented soup and fish!" For of course he'd rent one. Nobody bought them--except plutes like Henry B. Boltwood. He agitatedly walked up and down for an hour, peering into haberdashery windows, looking for a kind-faced young man. He found him, in Ye Pall Mall Toggery Shoppe & Shoes; an open-faced young man who was gazing through the window as sparklingly as though he was thinking of going as a missionary to India--and liked curry. Milt ironed out his worried face, clumped in, demanded fraternally, "Say, old man, don't some of these gents' furnishings stores have kind of little charts that tell just what you wear with dress-suits and Prince Alberts and everything?" "You bet," said the kind-faced young man. West of Chicago, "You bet" means "Rather," and "Yes indeed," and "On the whole I should be inclined to fancy that there may be some vestiges of accuracy in your curious opinion," and "You're a liar but I can't afford to say so." The kind-faced young man brought from behind the counter a beautiful brochure illustrated with photographs of Phoebus Apollo in what were described as "American Beauty Garments--neat, natty, nobby, new." The center pages faithfully catalogued the ties, shirts, cuff-links, spats, boots, hats, to wear with evening clothes, morning clothes, riding clothes, tennis costumes, polite mourning. As he looked it over Milt felt that his wardrobe already contained all these gentlemanly possessions. With the aid of the clerk and the chart he purchased a tradition-haunted garment with a plate-armor bosom and an opening as crooked as the Missouri River; a white tie which in his strong red hands looked as silly as a dead fish; waistcoat, pearl links, and studs. For the first time, except for seizures of madness during two or three visits to Minneapolis motor accessory stores, he caught the shopping-fever. The long shining counter, the trim red-stained shelves, the glittering cases, the racks of flaunting ties, were beautiful to him and beckoning. He revolved a pleasantly clicking rack of ties, then turned and fought his way out. He bought pumps--which cost exactly twice as much as the largest sum which he had allowed himself. He bought a newspaper, and in the want-columns found the advertisement: Silberfarb the Society Tailor DRESS SUITS TO RENT Snappiest in the City Despite the superlative snappiness of Mr. Silberfarb's dress-suits his establishment was a loft over a delicatessen, approached by a splintery stairway along which hung shabby signs announcing the upstairs offices of "J. L. & T. J. O'Regan, Private Detectives," "The Zenith Spiritualist Church, Messages by Rev. Lulu Paughouse," "The International Order of Live Ones, Seattle Wigwam," and "Mme. Lavourie, Sulphur Baths." The dead air of the hallway suggested petty crookedness. Milt felt that he ought to fight somebody but, there being no one to fight, he banged along the flapping boards of the second-floor hallway to the ground-glass door of Silberfarb the Society Tailor, who was also, as an afterthought on a straggly placard, "Pressng & Cleang While U Wait." He belligerently shouldered into a low room. The light from the one window was almost obscured by racks of musty-smelling black clothes which stretched away from him in two dismal aisles that resembled a morgue of unhappy dead men indecently hung up on hooks. On a long, clumsily carpentered table, a small Jew, collarless, sweaty, unshaven, was darning trousers under an evil mantle gaslight. The Jew wrung out his hands and tried to look benevolent. "Want to rent a dress-suit," said Milt. "I got just the t'ing for you!" The little man unfolded himself, galloped down the aisle, seized the first garment that came to hand, and came back to lay it against Milt's uncomfortable frame, bumbling, "Fine, mister, fy-en!" Milt studied the shiny-seamed, worn-buttonholed, limp object with dislike. Its personality was disintegrated. The only thing he liked about it was the good garage stink of gasoline. "That's almost worn out," he growled. At this sacrilege Mr. Silberfarb threw up his hands, with the dingy suit flapping in them like a bed-quilt shaken from a tenement window. He looked Milt all over, coldly. His red but shining eyes hinted that Milt was a clodhopper and no honest wearer of evening clothes. Milt felt humble, but he snapped, "No good. Want something with class." "Vell, that was good enough for a university professor at the big dance, but if you say so----" In the manner of one who is being put to an unfair amount of trouble, Mr. Silberfarb returned the paranoiac dress-suit to the rack, sighing patiently as he laboriously draped it on a hanger. He peered and pawed. He crowed with throaty triumph and brought back a rich ripe thing of velvet collar and cuffs. He fixed Milt with eyes that had become as sulky as the eyes of a dog in August dust. "Now that--you can't beat that, if you vant class, and it'll fit you like a glove. Oh, that's an ellllegant garment!" Shaking himself out of the spell of those contemptuous eyes Milt opened his brochure, studied the chart, and in a footnote found, "Never wear velvet collars or cuffs with evening coat." "Nope. Nix on the velvet," he remarked. Then the little man went mad and ran around in circles. He flung the ellllegant garment on the table. He flapped his arms, and wailed, "What do you vant? What do you vannnnt? That's a hundred-and-fifty-dollar dress-suit! That belonged to one of the richest men in the city. He sold it to me because he was going to Japan." "Well, you can send it to Japan after him. I want something decent. Have you got it--or shall I go some place else?" The tailor instantly became affectionate. "How about a nice Tuxedo?" he coaxed. "Nope. It says here--let me see--oh yes, here it is--it says here in the book that for the theater-with-ladies, should not wear 'dinner-coat or so-called Tuxedo, but----'" "Oh, dem fellows what writes books they don't know nothing. Absolute! They make it up." "Huh! Well, I guess I'll take my chance on them. The factory knows the ignition better 'n any repair-man." "Vell say, you're a hard fellow to please. I'll give you one of my reserve stock, but you got to leave me ten dollars deposit instead of five." Mr. Silberfarb quite cheerfully unlocked a glass case behind the racked and ghostly dead; he brought out a suit that seemed to Milt almost decent. And it almost fitted when, after changing clothes in a broiling, boiling, reeking, gasoline-pulsing hole behind the racks, he examined it before a pier-glass. But he caught the tailor assisting the fit by bunching up a roll of cloth at the shoulder. Again Milt snapped, and again the tailor suffered and died, and to a doubting heathen world maintained the true gospel of "What do you vannnnt? It ain't stylish to have the dress-suit too tight! All the gents is wearing 'em loose and graceful." But in the end, after Milt had gone as far as the door, Mr. Silberfarb admitted that one dress-coat wouldn't always fit all persons without some alterations. The coat did bag a little, and it was too long in the sleeves, but as Milt studied himself in his room--by placing his small melancholy mirror on the bureau, then on a chair, then on the floor, finally, to get a complete view, clear out in the hall--he admitted with stirring delight that he looked "pretty fair in the bloomin' outfit." His clear face, his shining hair, his straight shoulders, seemed to go with the costume. He wriggled into his top-coat and marched out of his room, theater-bound, with the well-fed satisfaction of a man who is certain that no one is giggling, "Look at the hand-me-downs." His pumps did alternately pinch his toes and rub his heels; the trousers cramped his waist; and he suspected that his tie had gone wandering. But he swaggered to the trolley, and sat as one rich and famous and very kind to the Common People, till---- Another man in evening clothes got on the car, and Milt saw that he wore a silk hat, and a white knitted scarf; that he took

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who was the limp indoor-dweller, and he who was the ruddy ranger; that as he had admired her at Flathead Lake, so now it was hers to admire, and his to be serenely heroic. She was not far from the worshiping sub-deb in her sighing, "How _did_ you get the scar?" "That? Oh, nothing." "Please tell me." "Really and truly. Nothing at all. Just a drunken fellow with a knife, playing the fool. I didn't have to touch him--quite sure he could have given me a frightful beating and all that sort of thing. It was the Big Chief who got rid of him." "He--cut you? With a kniiiiiife? Ohhhhhhh!" She ran to him, pityingly stroked the scar, looked down at him with filmy eyes. Then she tried to retreat, but he retained her hand, glanced up at her as though he knew her every thought. She felt weak. How could she escape him? "Please!" she begged flutteringly. If he held her hand another moment, she trembled, she'd be on his lap, in his arms--lost. And he was holding it. He was---- Oh, he was too old for her. Yes, and too paternal. But still---- Life with Jeff would be protected, kindly, honorable. Yet all the time she wanted, and stormily knew she wanted, to be fleeing to the boy Milt, her mate; to run away with him, hand in hand, discovering all the colored world, laughing at life, not afraid of losing dignity. In fear of Jeff's very kindliness and honor, she jerked her hand free. Then she tried to smile like a clever fencer. As she retreated to her chair she stammered, "Did you---- Was Alaska interesting?" He did not let her go, this time. Easy, cat-like for all his dry gravity, he sauntered after her, and with a fine high seriousness pleaded his case: "Claire dear, those few weeks of fighting nature were a revelation to me. I'm going to have lots more of it. As it happens, they need me there. There's plenty of copper, but there's big transportation and employment problems that I seem better able to solve than the other chaps--though of course I'm an absolute muff when it comes to engineering problems. But I've had certain training and--I'm going to arrange things so that I get up there at least once a year. Next summer I'll make a much longer trip--see the mountains--oh, glorious mountains--and funny half-Russian towns, and have some fishing---- Wandering. The really big thing. Even finer than your superb plucky trip through----" "Wasn't plucky! I'm a cry baby," she said, like a bad, contradictory little girl. He didn't argue it. He smiled and said "Tut!" and placidly catalogued her with, "You're the pluckiest girl I've ever seen, and it's all the more amazing because you're not a motion-picture Tomboy, but essentially exquisite----" "I'm a grub." "Very well, then. You're a grub. So am I. And I like it. And when I make the big Alaskan trip next year I want you to go along! Claire! Haven't you any idea how terribly close to me the thought of you has been these weeks? You've guided me through the wilderness----" "It's---- I'm glad." She sprang up, beseeching, "Jeff dear, you're going to stay for tea? I must run up and powder my nose." "Not until you say you're glad to see me. Child dear, we've been ambling along and---- No. You aren't a child any more. You're a woman. And if I've never been quite a man, but just a dusty office-machine, that's gone now. I've got the wind of the wilderness in my lungs. Man and woman! My woman! That's all I'm going to say now, but---- Oh my God, Claire, I do need you so!" He drew her head to his shoulder, and for an instant she rested there. But as she looked up, she saw coming age in the granulated skin of his throat. "He needs me--but he'd boss me. I'd be the cunning child-wife, even at fifty," she worried, and "Hang him, it's like his superiority to beat poor Milt even at adventuring--and to be such a confounded Modest Christian Gentleman about it!" "You'd--you're so dreadfully managing," she sighed aloud. For the first time in all their acquaintanceship, Jeff's pride broke, and he held her away from him, while his lips were pathetic, and he mourned, "Why do you always try to hurt me?" "Oh, my dear, I don't." "Is it because you resent the decent things I have managed to do?" "I don't understand." "If I have an idea for a party, you think I'm 'managing.' If I think things out deeply, you say I'm dull." "Oh, you aren't. I didn't mean----" "What are you? A real woman, or one of these flirts, that love to tease a man because he's foolish enough to be honestly in love?" "I'm not--hon-estly I'm not, Jeff. It's---- You don't quite make me---- It's just that I'm not in love with you. I like you, and respect you terribly, but----" "I'm going to make you love me." His clutching fingers hurt her arm, and somehow she was not angry, but stirred. "But I'm not going to try now. Forget the Alaskan caveman. Remember, I haven't even used the word 'love.' I've just chatted about fjords, or whatever they are, but one of these days---- No. I won't do it. I want to stay here in Seattle a few days, and take you on jolly picnics, but---- Would you rather I didn't even do that? I'm----" He dropped her arm, kneaded his forehead with the heel of his palm. "I can't stand being regarded as a bothersome puppy. I can't stand it! I can't!" "Please stay, Jeff! We'll have some darling drives and things. We'll go up Rainier as far as we can." He stayed. He was anecdotal and amusing at tea, that afternoon. Claire saw how the Gilsons, and two girls who dropped in, admired him. That made her uneasy. And when Mrs. Gilson begged him to leave his hotel and stay with them, he refused with a quick look at Claire that hurt her. "He wants me to be free. He's really so much more considerate than Milt. And I hurt him. Even his pride broke down. And I've spoiled Milt's life by meddling. And I've hurt the Gilsons' feelings. And I'm not much of a comfort to father. Oh, I'm absolutely no good," she agonized. CHAPTER XXX THE VIRTUOUS PLOTTERS Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, in Alaskan tan and New York evening clothes and Piccadilly poise, was talking to the Eugene Gilsons while Claire finished dressing for the theater. Mrs. Gilson observed, "She's the dearest thing. We've become awfully fond of her. But I don't think she knows what she wants to do with life. She's rather at loose ends. Who is this Daggett boy--some university student--whom she seems to like?" "Well, since you speak of him---- I hadn't meant to, unless you did. I want to be fair to him. What did she tell you about him?" Jeff asked confidentially. "Nothing, except that he's a young engineer, and frightfully brave and all those uncomfortable virtues, and she met him in Yellowstone Park or somewhere, and he saved her from a bear--or was it a tramp?--from something unnecessary, at any rate." "Eva, I don't want to be supercilious, but the truth is that this young Daggett is a rather dreadful person. He's been here at the house, hasn't he? How did he strike you?" "Not at all. He's silent, and as dull as lukewarm tea, but perfectly inoffensive." "Then he's cleverer than I thought! Daggett is anything but dull and inoffensive, and if he can play that estimable r le----! It seems that he is the son of some common workman in the Middlewest; he isn't an engineer at all; he's really a chauffeur or a taxi-driver or something; and he ran into Claire and Henry B. on the road, and somehow insinuated himself into their graces--far from being silent and commonplace, he appears to have some strange kind of charm which," Jeff sighed, "I don't understand at all. I simply don't understand it! "I met him in Montana with the most gorgeously atrocious person I've ever encountered--one Pinky Westlake, or some such a name--positively, a crook! He tried to get Boltwood and myself interested in the commonest kind of a mining swindle--hinted that we were to join him in cheating the public. And this Daggett was his partner--they actually traveled together. But I do want to be just. I'm not _sure_ that Daggett was aware of his partner's dishonesty. That isn't what worries me about the lad. It's his utter impossibility. He's as crude as iron-ore. When he's being careful, he may manage to be inconspicuous, but give him the chance---- "Really, I'm not exaggerating when I say that at thirty-five he'll be dining in his shirt-sleeves, and sitting down to read the paper with his shoes off and feet up on the table. But Claire--you know what a dear Quixotic soul she is--she fancies that because this fellow repaired a puncture or something of the sort for her on the road, she's indebted to him, and the worse he is, the more she feels that she must help him. And affairs of that kind---- Oh, it's quite too horrible, but there have been cases, you know, where girls as splendid and fine and well-bred as Claire herself have been trapped into low marriages by their loyalty to cadging adventurers!" "Oh!" groaned Mrs. Gilson; and "Good Lord!" lamented Mr. Gilson, delighted by the possibility of tragedy; and "Really, I'm not exaggerating," said Jeff enthusiastically. "What are we going to do?" demanded Mrs. Gilson; while Mr. Gilson, being of a ready and inventive mind, exclaimed, "By Jove, you ought to kidnap her and marry her yourself, Jeff!" "I'd like to. But I'm too old." They beautifully assured him that he was a blithe young thing with milk teeth; and with a certain satisfaction Jeff suggested, "I tell you what we might do. Of course it's an ancient stunt, but it's good. I judge that Daggett hasn't been here at the house much. Why not have him here so often that Claire will awaken to his crudity, and get sick of him?" "We'll do it," thrilled Mrs. Gilson. "We'll have him for everything from nine-course dinners with Grandmother Eaton's napkins on view, to milk and cold ham out of the ice-box. When Claire doesn't invite him, I will!" CHAPTER XXXI THE KITCHEN INTIMATE Milt had become used to the Gilson drawing-room. He was no longer uncomfortable in the presence of its sleek fatness, though at first (not knowing that there were such resources as interior decorators), he had been convinced that, to have created the room, the Gilsons must have known everything in the world. Now he glanced familiarly at its white paneling, its sconces like silver candlesticks, the inevitable davenport inevitably backed by an amethyst-shaded piano lamp and a table crowded with silver boxes and picture-frames. He liked the winsomeness of light upon velvet and polished wood. It was not the drawing-room but the kitchen that dismayed him. In Schoenstrom he had known that there must somewhere be beautiful "parlors," but he had trusted in his experience of kitchens. Kitchens, according to his philosophy, were small smelly rooms of bare floors, and provided with one oilcloth-covered table, one stove (the front draft always broken and propped up with the lid-lifter), one cupboard with panes of tin pierced in rosettes, and one stack of dirty dishes. But the Gilson kitchen had the efficiency of a laboratory and the superciliousness of a hair-dresser's booth. With awe Milt beheld walls of white tiles, a cork floor, a gas-range large as a hotel-stove, a ceiling-high refrigerator of enamel and nickel, zinc-topped tables, and a case of utensils like a surgeon's knives. It frightened him; it made more hopelessly unapproachable than ever the Alexandrian luxury of the great Gilsons.... The Vanderbilts' kitchen must be like this. And maybe King George's. He was viewing the kitchen upon the occasion of an intimate Sunday evening supper to which he had been yearningly invited by Mrs. Gilson. The maids were all out. The Gilsons and Claire, Milt and Jeff Saxton, shoutingly prepared their own supper. While Mrs. Gilson scrambled eggs and made coffee, the others set the table, and brought cold ham and a bowl of salad from the ice-box. Milt had intended to be a silent but deft servitor. When he had heard that he was to come to supper with the returned Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, he had first been panic-shaken, then resolved. He'd "let old iron-face Saxton do the high and mighty. Let him stand around and show off his clothes and adjectives, way he did at Flathead Lake." But he, Milt, would be "on the job." He'd help get supper, and calmly ignore Jeff's rudeness. Only--Jeff wasn't rude. He greeted Milt with, "Ah, Daggett! This is _so_ nice!" And Milt had no chance to help. It was Jeff who anticipated him and with a pleasant, "Let me get that--I'm kitchen-broke," snatched up the cold ham and salad. It was Jeff who found the supper plates, while Milt was blunderingly wondering how any one family could use a "whole furniture-store-full of different kinds of china." It was Jeff who sprang to help Claire wheel in the tea-wagon, and so captured the chance to speak to her for which Milt had been maneuvering these five minutes. When they were settled, Jeff glowed at him, and respectfully offered, "I thought of you so often, Daggett, on a recent little jaunt of mine. You'd have been helpful." "Where was that?" asked Milt suspiciously (wondering, and waiting to see, whether you could take cold ham in your fingers). "Oh, in Alaska." "In--Alaska?" Milt was dismayed. "Yes, just a business trip there. There's something I wish you'd advise me about." He was humble. And Milt was uneasy. He grumbled, "What's that?" "I've been wondering whether it would be possible to use wireless telephony in Alaska. But I'm such a dub at electricity. Do you know---- What would be the cost of installing a wireless telephone plant with a hundred-mile radius?" "Gee, I don't know!" "Oh, so sorry. Well, I wonder if you can tell me about wireless telegraphy, then?" "No, I don't know anything about that either." Milt had desperately tried to make his answer gracious but somehow---- He hated this devil's obsequiousness more than he had his chilliness at Flathead Lake. He had a feeling that the Gilsons had delightedly kicked each other under the table; that, for all her unchanging smile, Claire was unhappy.... And she was so far off, a white wraith floating beyond his frantic grasp. "It doesn't matter, really. But I didn't know---- So you've started in the engineering school at the University of Washington," Saxton was purring. "Have you met Gid Childers there--son of old Senator Childers--charming people." "I've seen him. He has a Stutz--no, his is the Mercer," sighed Milt. He hated himself for it, but he couldn't quite keep the awe out of his voice. People with Mercers---- Claire seemed to be trying to speak. She made a delicate, feminine, clairesque approximation to clearing her throat. But Jeff ignored her and with almost osculatory affection continued to Milt: "Do let me know if there's anything I can do to help you. We're acquainted with two or three of your engineering faculty at the Office. They write in about various things. Do you happen to know Dr. Philgren?" "Oh yes. Say! He's a wonder!" Milt was betrayed into exclaiming. "Yes. Good chap, I believe. He's been trying to get a job with us. We may give him one. Just tell him you're a friend of mine, and that he's to give you any help he can." Milt choked on a "Thanks." "And--now that we're just the family here together--how goes the financial side? Can I be of any assistance in introducing you to some engineering firm where you could do a little work on the side? You could make quite a little money----" So confoundedly affectionate and paternal---- Milt said irritably, "Thanks, but I don't need to do any work. I've got plenty of money." "How pleasant!" Saxton's voice was smooth as marshmallow. "You're fortunate. I had quite a struggle to get through Princeton." Wasn't Mr. Gilson contrasting Saxton's silk shirt with Milt's darned cotton covering, and in light of that contrast chuckling at Milt's boast and Saxton's modesty? Milt became overheated. His scalp prickled and his shoulder-blades were damp. As Saxton turned from him, and crooned to Claire, "More ham, honey?" Milt hated himself. He was in much of the dramatic but undesirable position of a man in pajamas, not very good pajamas, who has been locked out in the hotel corridor by the slamming of his door. He was in the frame of mind of a mongrel, of a real Boys'-Dog, at a Madison Square dog-show. He had a faint shrewd suspicion of Saxton's game. But what could he do about it? He felt even more out of place when the family forgot him and talked about people of whom he had never heard. He sat alone on an extremely distant desert isle and ate cold ham and wished he were in Schoenstrom. Claire had recovered her power of speech. She seemed to be trying to bring him into the conversation, so that the family might appreciate him. She hesitated, and thought with creased brows, and brought out, "Uh, uh, oh---- Oh Milt: How much is gas selling at now?"... * * * * * Milt left that charming and intimate supper-party at nine. He said, "Got to work on--on my analytical geometry," as though it was a lie; and he threw "Good night" at Saxton as though he hated his kind, good benefactor; and when he tried to be gracious to Mrs. Gilson the best he could get out was, "Thanks f' inviting me." They expansively saw him to the door. Just as he thought that he had escaped, Saxton begged, "Oh, Daggett, I was arguing with a chap---- What color are Holstein-Friesian cattle? Red?" "Black and white," Milt said eagerly. He heard Mrs. Gilson giggle. He stood on the terrace wiping his forehead and, without the least struggle, finally and irretrievably admitting that he would never see Claire Boltwood or any of her friends again. Not--never! * * * * * He had received from Mrs. Gilson a note inviting him to share their box at the first night of a three-night Opera Season. He had spent half a day in trying to think of a courteously rude way of declining. A straggly little girl came up from the candy-shop below his room, demanding, "Say, are you Mr. Daggett? Say, there's some woman wants to talk to you on our telephone. Say, tell them we ain't supposed to be no messenger-office. You ain't supposed to call no upstairs people on our telephone. We ain't supposed to leave the store and go trotting all over town to---- Gee, a nickel, gee, thank you, don't mind what ma says, she's always kicking." On the telephone, he heard Claire's voice in an agitated, "Milt! Meet me down-town, at the Imperial Motion Picture Theater, right away. Something I've got to tell you. I'll be in the lobby. Hurry!" When he bolted in she was already in the lobby, agitatedly looking over a frame of "stills." She ran to him, hooked her fingers in his lapel, poured out, "They've invited you to the opera? I want you to come and put it all over them. I'm almost sure there's a plot. They want to show me that you aren't used to tiaras and saxophones and creaking dowagers and tulle. Beat 'em! Beat 'em! Come to the opera and be awf'ly aloof and supercilious. You can! Yes, you can! And be sure--wear evening clothes. Now I've got to hurry." "B-but----" "Don't disappoint me. I depend on you. Oh, say you will!" "I will!" She was gone, whisking into the Gilson limousine. He was in a glow at her loyalty, in a tremor of anger at the meddlers. But he had never worn evening clothes. He called it "a dress-suit," and before the complications of that exotic garb, he was flabby with anxiety. To Milt and to Schoenstrom--to Bill McGolwey, even to Prof Jones and the greasily prosperous Heinie Rauskukle--the dress-suit was the symbol and proof, the indication and manner, of sophisticated wealth. In Schoenstrom even waiters do not wear dress-suits. For one thing there aren't any waiters. There is one waitress at the Leipzig House, Miss Annie Schweigenblat, but you wouldn't expect Miss Schweigenblat to deal them off the arm in black trousers with braid down the side. No; a dress-suit was what the hero wore in the movies; and the hero in the movies, when he wasn't a cowpuncher, was an ex-captain of the Yale football team, and had chambers and a valet. You could tell him from the valet because he wasn't so bald. It is true that Milt had heard that in St. Cloud there were people who wore dress-suits at parties, but then St. Cloud was a city, fifteen or sixteen thousand. "How could he get away with a dress-suit? How could he keep from feeling foolish in a low-cut vest, and what the deuce would he do with the tails? Did you part 'em or roll 'em up, when you sat down? And wouldn't everybody be able to tell from his foolish look that he didn't belong in one?" He could hear A.D.T. boys and loafers in front of pool rooms whispering, "Look at the piker in the rented soup and fish!" For of course he'd rent one. Nobody bought them--except plutes like Henry B. Boltwood. He agitatedly walked up and down for an hour, peering into haberdashery windows, looking for a kind-faced young man. He found him, in Ye Pall Mall Toggery Shoppe & Shoes; an open-faced young man who was gazing through the window as sparklingly as though he was thinking of going as a missionary to India--and liked curry. Milt ironed out his worried face, clumped in, demanded fraternally, "Say, old man, don't some of these gents' furnishings stores have kind of little charts that tell just what you wear with dress-suits and Prince Alberts and everything?" "You bet," said the kind-faced young man. West of Chicago, "You bet" means "Rather," and "Yes indeed," and "On the whole I should be inclined to fancy that there may be some vestiges of accuracy in your curious opinion," and "You're a liar but I can't afford to say so." The kind-faced young man brought from behind the counter a beautiful brochure illustrated with photographs of Phoebus Apollo in what were described as "American Beauty Garments--neat, natty, nobby, new." The center pages faithfully catalogued the ties, shirts, cuff-links, spats, boots, hats, to wear with evening clothes, morning clothes, riding clothes, tennis costumes, polite mourning. As he looked it over Milt felt that his wardrobe already contained all these gentlemanly possessions. With the aid of the clerk and the chart he purchased a tradition-haunted garment with a plate-armor bosom and an opening as crooked as the Missouri River; a white tie which in his strong red hands looked as silly as a dead fish; waistcoat, pearl links, and studs. For the first time, except for seizures of madness during two or three visits to Minneapolis motor accessory stores, he caught the shopping-fever. The long shining counter, the trim red-stained shelves, the glittering cases, the racks of flaunting ties, were beautiful to him and beckoning. He revolved a pleasantly clicking rack of ties, then turned and fought his way out. He bought pumps--which cost exactly twice as much as the largest sum which he had allowed himself. He bought a newspaper, and in the want-columns found the advertisement: Silberfarb the Society Tailor DRESS SUITS TO RENT Snappiest in the City Despite the superlative snappiness of Mr. Silberfarb's dress-suits his establishment was a loft over a delicatessen, approached by a splintery stairway along which hung shabby signs announcing the upstairs offices of "J. L. & T. J. O'Regan, Private Detectives," "The Zenith Spiritualist Church, Messages by Rev. Lulu Paughouse," "The International Order of Live Ones, Seattle Wigwam," and "Mme. Lavourie, Sulphur Baths." The dead air of the hallway suggested petty crookedness. Milt felt that he ought to fight somebody but, there being no one to fight, he banged along the flapping boards of the second-floor hallway to the ground-glass door of Silberfarb the Society Tailor, who was also, as an afterthought on a straggly placard, "Pressng & Cleang While U Wait." He belligerently shouldered into a low room. The light from the one window was almost obscured by racks of musty-smelling black clothes which stretched away from him in two dismal aisles that resembled a morgue of unhappy dead men indecently hung up on hooks. On a long, clumsily carpentered table, a small Jew, collarless, sweaty, unshaven, was darning trousers under an evil mantle gaslight. The Jew wrung out his hands and tried to look benevolent. "Want to rent a dress-suit," said Milt. "I got just the t'ing for you!" The little man unfolded himself, galloped down the aisle, seized the first garment that came to hand, and came back to lay it against Milt's uncomfortable frame, bumbling, "Fine, mister, fy-en!" Milt studied the shiny-seamed, worn-buttonholed, limp object with dislike. Its personality was disintegrated. The only thing he liked about it was the good garage stink of gasoline. "That's almost worn out," he growled. At this sacrilege Mr. Silberfarb threw up his hands, with the dingy suit flapping in them like a bed-quilt shaken from a tenement window. He looked Milt all over, coldly. His red but shining eyes hinted that Milt was a clodhopper and no honest wearer of evening clothes. Milt felt humble, but he snapped, "No good. Want something with class." "Vell, that was good enough for a university professor at the big dance, but if you say so----" In the manner of one who is being put to an unfair amount of trouble, Mr. Silberfarb returned the paranoiac dress-suit to the rack, sighing patiently as he laboriously draped it on a hanger. He peered and pawed. He crowed with throaty triumph and brought back a rich ripe thing of velvet collar and cuffs. He fixed Milt with eyes that had become as sulky as the eyes of a dog in August dust. "Now that--you can't beat that, if you vant class, and it'll fit you like a glove. Oh, that's an ellllegant garment!" Shaking himself out of the spell of those contemptuous eyes Milt opened his brochure, studied the chart, and in a footnote found, "Never wear velvet collars or cuffs with evening coat." "Nope. Nix on the velvet," he remarked. Then the little man went mad and ran around in circles. He flung the ellllegant garment on the table. He flapped his arms, and wailed, "What do you vant? What do you vannnnt? That's a hundred-and-fifty-dollar dress-suit! That belonged to one of the richest men in the city. He sold it to me because he was going to Japan." "Well, you can send it to Japan after him. I want something decent. Have you got it--or shall I go some place else?" The tailor instantly became affectionate. "How about a nice Tuxedo?" he coaxed. "Nope. It says here--let me see--oh yes, here it is--it says here in the book that for the theater-with-ladies, should not wear 'dinner-coat or so-called Tuxedo, but----'" "Oh, dem fellows what writes books they don't know nothing. Absolute! They make it up." "Huh! Well, I guess I'll take my chance on them. The factory knows the ignition better 'n any repair-man." "Vell say, you're a hard fellow to please. I'll give you one of my reserve stock, but you got to leave me ten dollars deposit instead of five." Mr. Silberfarb quite cheerfully unlocked a glass case behind the racked and ghostly dead; he brought out a suit that seemed to Milt almost decent. And it almost fitted when, after changing clothes in a broiling, boiling, reeking, gasoline-pulsing hole behind the racks, he examined it before a pier-glass. But he caught the tailor assisting the fit by bunching up a roll of cloth at the shoulder. Again Milt snapped, and again the tailor suffered and died, and to a doubting heathen world maintained the true gospel of "What do you vannnnt? It ain't stylish to have the dress-suit too tight! All the gents is wearing 'em loose and graceful." But in the end, after Milt had gone as far as the door, Mr. Silberfarb admitted that one dress-coat wouldn't always fit all persons without some alterations. The coat did bag a little, and it was too long in the sleeves, but as Milt studied himself in his room--by placing his small melancholy mirror on the bureau, then on a chair, then on the floor, finally, to get a complete view, clear out in the hall--he admitted with stirring delight that he looked "pretty fair in the bloomin' outfit." His clear face, his shining hair, his straight shoulders, seemed to go with the costume. He wriggled into his top-coat and marched out of his room, theater-bound, with the well-fed satisfaction of a man who is certain that no one is giggling, "Look at the hand-me-downs." His pumps did alternately pinch his toes and rub his heels; the trousers cramped his waist; and he suspected that his tie had gone wandering. But he swaggered to the trolley, and sat as one rich and famous and very kind to the Common People, till---- Another man in evening clothes got on the car, and Milt saw that he wore a silk hat, and a white knitted scarf; that he took

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who was the limp indoor-dweller, and he who was the ruddy ranger; that as he had admired her at Flathead Lake, so now it was hers to admire, and his to be serenely heroic. She was not far from the worshiping sub-deb in her sighing, "How _did_ you get the scar?" "That? Oh, nothing." "Please tell me." "Really and truly. Nothing at all. Just a drunken fellow with a knife, playing the fool. I didn't have to touch him--quite sure he could have given me a frightful beating and all that sort of thing. It was the Big Chief who got rid of him." "He--cut you? With a kniiiiiife? Ohhhhhhh!" She ran to him, pityingly stroked the scar, looked down at him with filmy eyes. Then she tried to retreat, but he retained her hand, glanced up at her as though he knew her every thought. She felt weak. How could she escape him? "Please!" she begged flutteringly. If he held her hand another moment, she trembled, she'd be on his lap, in his arms--lost. And he was holding it. He was---- Oh, he was too old for her. Yes, and too paternal. But still---- Life with Jeff would be protected, kindly, honorable. Yet all the time she wanted, and stormily knew she wanted, to be fleeing to the boy Milt, her mate; to run away with him, hand in hand, discovering all the colored world, laughing at life, not afraid of losing dignity. In fear of Jeff's very kindliness and honor, she jerked her hand free. Then she tried to smile like a clever fencer. As she retreated to her chair she stammered, "Did you---- Was Alaska interesting?" He did not let her go, this time. Easy, cat-like for all his dry gravity, he sauntered after her, and with a fine high seriousness pleaded his case: "Claire dear, those few weeks of fighting nature were a revelation to me. I'm going to have lots more of it. As it happens, they need me there. There's plenty of copper, but there's big transportation and employment problems that I seem better able to solve than the other chaps--though of course I'm an absolute muff when it comes to engineering problems. But I've had certain training and--I'm going to arrange things so that I get up there at least once a year. Next summer I'll make a much longer trip--see the mountains--oh, glorious mountains--and funny half-Russian towns, and have some fishing---- Wandering. The really big thing. Even finer than your superb plucky trip through----" "Wasn't plucky! I'm a cry baby," she said, like a bad, contradictory little girl. He didn't argue it. He smiled and said "Tut!" and placidly catalogued her with, "You're the pluckiest girl I've ever seen, and it's all the more amazing because you're not a motion-picture Tomboy, but essentially exquisite----" "I'm a grub." "Very well, then. You're a grub. So am I. And I like it. And when I make the big Alaskan trip next year I want you to go along! Claire! Haven't you any idea how terribly close to me the thought of you has been these weeks? You've guided me through the wilderness----" "It's---- I'm glad." She sprang up, beseeching, "Jeff dear, you're going to stay for tea? I must run up and powder my nose." "Not until you say you're glad to see me. Child dear, we've been ambling along and---- No. You aren't a child any more. You're a woman. And if I've never been quite a man, but just a dusty office-machine, that's gone now. I've got the wind of the wilderness in my lungs. Man and woman! My woman! That's all I'm going to say now, but---- Oh my God, Claire, I do need you so!" He drew her head to his shoulder, and for an instant she rested there. But as she looked up, she saw coming age in the granulated skin of his throat. "He needs me--but he'd boss me. I'd be the cunning child-wife, even at fifty," she worried, and "Hang him, it's like his superiority to beat poor Milt even at adventuring--and to be such a confounded Modest Christian Gentleman about it!" "You'd--you're so dreadfully managing," she sighed aloud. For the first time in all their acquaintanceship, Jeff's pride broke, and he held her away from him, while his lips were pathetic, and he mourned, "Why do you always try to hurt me?" "Oh, my dear, I don't." "Is it because you resent the decent things I have managed to do?" "I don't understand." "If I have an idea for a party, you think I'm 'managing.' If I think things out deeply, you say I'm dull." "Oh, you aren't. I didn't mean----" "What are you? A real woman, or one of these flirts, that love to tease a man because he's foolish enough to be honestly in love?" "I'm not--hon-estly I'm not, Jeff. It's---- You don't quite make me---- It's just that I'm not in love with you. I like you, and respect you terribly, but----" "I'm going to make you love me." His clutching fingers hurt her arm, and somehow she was not angry, but stirred. "But I'm not going to try now. Forget the Alaskan caveman. Remember, I haven't even used the word 'love.' I've just chatted about fjords, or whatever they are, but one of these days---- No. I won't do it. I want to stay here in Seattle a few days, and take you on jolly picnics, but---- Would you rather I didn't even do that? I'm----" He dropped her arm, kneaded his forehead with the heel of his palm. "I can't stand being regarded as a bothersome puppy. I can't stand it! I can't!" "Please stay, Jeff! We'll have some darling drives and things. We'll go up Rainier as far as we can." He stayed. He was anecdotal and amusing at tea, that afternoon. Claire saw how the Gilsons, and two girls who dropped in, admired him. That made her uneasy. And when Mrs. Gilson begged him to leave his hotel and stay with them, he refused with a quick look at Claire that hurt her. "He wants me to be free. He's really so much more considerate than Milt. And I hurt him. Even his pride broke down. And I've spoiled Milt's life by meddling. And I've hurt the Gilsons' feelings. And I'm not much of a comfort to father. Oh, I'm absolutely no good," she agonized. CHAPTER XXX THE VIRTUOUS PLOTTERS Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, in Alaskan tan and New York evening clothes and Piccadilly poise, was talking to the Eugene Gilsons while Claire finished dressing for the theater. Mrs. Gilson observed, "She's the dearest thing. We've become awfully fond of her. But I don't think she knows what she wants to do with life. She's rather at loose ends. Who is this Daggett boy--some university student--whom she seems to like?" "Well, since you speak of him---- I hadn't meant to, unless you did. I want to be fair to him. What did she tell you about him?" Jeff asked confidentially. "Nothing, except that he's a young engineer, and frightfully brave and all those uncomfortable virtues, and she met him in Yellowstone Park or somewhere, and he saved her from a bear--or was it a tramp?--from something unnecessary, at any rate." "Eva, I don't want to be supercilious, but the truth is that this young Daggett is a rather dreadful person. He's been here at the house, hasn't he? How did he strike you?" "Not at all. He's silent, and as dull as lukewarm tea, but perfectly inoffensive." "Then he's cleverer than I thought! Daggett is anything but dull and inoffensive, and if he can play that estimable r le----! It seems that he is the son of some common workman in the Middlewest; he isn't an engineer at all; he's really a chauffeur or a taxi-driver or something; and he ran into Claire and Henry B. on the road, and somehow insinuated himself into their graces--far from being silent and commonplace, he appears to have some strange kind of charm which," Jeff sighed, "I don't understand at all. I simply don't understand it! "I met him in Montana with the most gorgeously atrocious person I've ever encountered--one Pinky Westlake, or some such a name--positively, a crook! He tried to get Boltwood and myself interested in the commonest kind of a mining swindle--hinted that we were to join him in cheating the public. And this Daggett was his partner--they actually traveled together. But I do want to be just. I'm not _sure_ that Daggett was aware of his partner's dishonesty. That isn't what worries me about the lad. It's his utter impossibility. He's as crude as iron-ore. When he's being careful, he may manage to be inconspicuous, but give him the chance---- "Really, I'm not exaggerating when I say that at thirty-five he'll be dining in his shirt-sleeves, and sitting down to read the paper with his shoes off and feet up on the table. But Claire--you know what a dear Quixotic soul she is--she fancies that because this fellow repaired a puncture or something of the sort for her on the road, she's indebted to him, and the worse he is, the more she feels that she must help him. And affairs of that kind---- Oh, it's quite too horrible, but there have been cases, you know, where girls as splendid and fine and well-bred as Claire herself have been trapped into low marriages by their loyalty to cadging adventurers!" "Oh!" groaned Mrs. Gilson; and "Good Lord!" lamented Mr. Gilson, delighted by the possibility of tragedy; and "Really, I'm not exaggerating," said Jeff enthusiastically. "What are we going to do?" demanded Mrs. Gilson; while Mr. Gilson, being of a ready and inventive mind, exclaimed, "By Jove, you ought to kidnap her and marry her yourself, Jeff!" "I'd like to. But I'm too old." They beautifully assured him that he was a blithe young thing with milk teeth; and with a certain satisfaction Jeff suggested, "I tell you what we might do. Of course it's an ancient stunt, but it's good. I judge that Daggett hasn't been here at the house much. Why not have him here so often that Claire will awaken to his crudity, and get sick of him?" "We'll do it," thrilled Mrs. Gilson. "We'll have him for everything from nine-course dinners with Grandmother Eaton's napkins on view, to milk and cold ham out of the ice-box. When Claire doesn't invite him, I will!" CHAPTER XXXI THE KITCHEN INTIMATE Milt had become used to the Gilson drawing-room. He was no longer uncomfortable in the presence of its sleek fatness, though at first (not knowing that there were such resources as interior decorators), he had been convinced that, to have created the room, the Gilsons must have known everything in the world. Now he glanced familiarly at its white paneling, its sconces like silver candlesticks, the inevitable davenport inevitably backed by an amethyst-shaded piano lamp and a table crowded with silver boxes and picture-frames. He liked the winsomeness of light upon velvet and polished wood. It was not the drawing-room but the kitchen that dismayed him. In Schoenstrom he had known that there must somewhere be beautiful "parlors," but he had trusted in his experience of kitchens. Kitchens, according to his philosophy, were small smelly rooms of bare floors, and provided with one oilcloth-covered table, one stove (the front draft always broken and propped up with the lid-lifter), one cupboard with panes of tin pierced in rosettes, and one stack of dirty dishes. But the Gilson kitchen had the efficiency of a laboratory and the superciliousness of a hair-dresser's booth. With awe Milt beheld walls of white tiles, a cork floor, a gas-range large as a hotel-stove, a ceiling-high refrigerator of enamel and nickel, zinc-topped tables, and a case of utensils like a surgeon's knives. It frightened him; it made more hopelessly unapproachable than ever the Alexandrian luxury of the great Gilsons.... The Vanderbilts' kitchen must be like this. And maybe King George's. He was viewing the kitchen upon the occasion of an intimate Sunday evening supper to which he had been yearningly invited by Mrs. Gilson. The maids were all out. The Gilsons and Claire, Milt and Jeff Saxton, shoutingly prepared their own supper. While Mrs. Gilson scrambled eggs and made coffee, the others set the table, and brought cold ham and a bowl of salad from the ice-box. Milt had intended to be a silent but deft servitor. When he had heard that he was to come to supper with the returned Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, he had first been panic-shaken, then resolved. He'd "let old iron-face Saxton do the high and mighty. Let him stand around and show off his clothes and adjectives, way he did at Flathead Lake." But he, Milt, would be "on the job." He'd help get supper, and calmly ignore Jeff's rudeness. Only--Jeff wasn't rude. He greeted Milt with, "Ah, Daggett! This is _so_ nice!" And Milt had no chance to help. It was Jeff who anticipated him and with a pleasant, "Let me get that--I'm kitchen-broke," snatched up the cold ham and salad. It was Jeff who found the supper plates, while Milt was blunderingly wondering how any one family could use a "whole furniture-store-full of different kinds of china." It was Jeff who sprang to help Claire wheel in the tea-wagon, and so captured the chance to speak to her for which Milt had been maneuvering these five minutes. When they were settled, Jeff glowed at him, and respectfully offered, "I thought of you so often, Daggett, on a recent little jaunt of mine. You'd have been helpful." "Where was that?" asked Milt suspiciously (wondering, and waiting to see, whether you could take cold ham in your fingers). "Oh, in Alaska." "In--Alaska?" Milt was dismayed. "Yes, just a business trip there. There's something I wish you'd advise me about." He was humble. And Milt was uneasy. He grumbled, "What's that?" "I've been wondering whether it would be possible to use wireless telephony in Alaska. But I'm such a dub at electricity. Do you know---- What would be the cost of installing a wireless telephone plant with a hundred-mile radius?" "Gee, I don't know!" "Oh, so sorry. Well, I wonder if you can tell me about wireless telegraphy, then?" "No, I don't know anything about that either." Milt had desperately tried to make his answer gracious but somehow---- He hated this devil's obsequiousness more than he had his chilliness at Flathead Lake. He had a feeling that the Gilsons had delightedly kicked each other under the table; that, for all her unchanging smile, Claire was unhappy.... And she was so far off, a white wraith floating beyond his frantic grasp. "It doesn't matter, really. But I didn't know---- So you've started in the engineering school at the University of Washington," Saxton was purring. "Have you met Gid Childers there--son of old Senator Childers--charming people." "I've seen him. He has a Stutz--no, his is the Mercer," sighed Milt. He hated himself for it, but he couldn't quite keep the awe out of his voice. People with Mercers---- Claire seemed to be trying to speak. She made a delicate, feminine, clairesque approximation to clearing her throat. But Jeff ignored her and with almost osculatory affection continued to Milt: "Do let me know if there's anything I can do to help you. We're acquainted with two or three of your engineering faculty at the Office. They write in about various things. Do you happen to know Dr. Philgren?" "Oh yes. Say! He's a wonder!" Milt was betrayed into exclaiming. "Yes. Good chap, I believe. He's been trying to get a job with us. We may give him one. Just tell him you're a friend of mine, and that he's to give you any help he can." Milt choked on a "Thanks." "And--now that we're just the family here together--how goes the financial side? Can I be of any assistance in introducing you to some engineering firm where you could do a little work on the side? You could make quite a little money----" So confoundedly affectionate and paternal---- Milt said irritably, "Thanks, but I don't need to do any work. I've got plenty of money." "How pleasant!" Saxton's voice was smooth as marshmallow. "You're fortunate. I had quite a struggle to get through Princeton." Wasn't Mr. Gilson contrasting Saxton's silk shirt with Milt's darned cotton covering, and in light of that contrast chuckling at Milt's boast and Saxton's modesty? Milt became overheated. His scalp prickled and his shoulder-blades were damp. As Saxton turned from him, and crooned to Claire, "More ham, honey?" Milt hated himself. He was in much of the dramatic but undesirable position of a man in pajamas, not very good pajamas, who has been locked out in the hotel corridor by the slamming of his door. He was in the frame of mind of a mongrel, of a real Boys'-Dog, at a Madison Square dog-show. He had a faint shrewd suspicion of Saxton's game. But what could he do about it? He felt even more out of place when the family forgot him and talked about people of whom he had never heard. He sat alone on an extremely distant desert isle and ate cold ham and wished he were in Schoenstrom. Claire had recovered her power of speech. She seemed to be trying to bring him into the conversation, so that the family might appreciate him. She hesitated, and thought with creased brows, and brought out, "Uh, uh, oh---- Oh Milt: How much is gas selling at now?"... * * * * * Milt left that charming and intimate supper-party at nine. He said, "Got to work on--on my analytical geometry," as though it was a lie; and he threw "Good night" at Saxton as though he hated his kind, good benefactor; and when he tried to be gracious to Mrs. Gilson the best he could get out was, "Thanks f' inviting me." They expansively saw him to the door. Just as he thought that he had escaped, Saxton begged, "Oh, Daggett, I was arguing with a chap---- What color are Holstein-Friesian cattle? Red?" "Black and white," Milt said eagerly. He heard Mrs. Gilson giggle. He stood on the terrace wiping his forehead and, without the least struggle, finally and irretrievably admitting that he would never see Claire Boltwood or any of her friends again. Not--never! * * * * * He had received from Mrs. Gilson a note inviting him to share their box at the first night of a three-night Opera Season. He had spent half a day in trying to think of a courteously rude way of declining. A straggly little girl came up from the candy-shop below his room, demanding, "Say, are you Mr. Daggett? Say, there's some woman wants to talk to you on our telephone. Say, tell them we ain't supposed to be no messenger-office. You ain't supposed to call no upstairs people on our telephone. We ain't supposed to leave the store and go trotting all over town to---- Gee, a nickel, gee, thank you, don't mind what ma says, she's always kicking." On the telephone, he heard Claire's voice in an agitated, "Milt! Meet me down-town, at the Imperial Motion Picture Theater, right away. Something I've got to tell you. I'll be in the lobby. Hurry!" When he bolted in she was already in the lobby, agitatedly looking over a frame of "stills." She ran to him, hooked her fingers in his lapel, poured out, "They've invited you to the opera? I want you to come and put it all over them. I'm almost sure there's a plot. They want to show me that you aren't used to tiaras and saxophones and creaking dowagers and tulle. Beat 'em! Beat 'em! Come to the opera and be awf'ly aloof and supercilious. You can! Yes, you can! And be sure--wear evening clothes. Now I've got to hurry." "B-but----" "Don't disappoint me. I depend on you. Oh, say you will!" "I will!" She was gone, whisking into the Gilson limousine. He was in a glow at her loyalty, in a tremor of anger at the meddlers. But he had never worn evening clothes. He called it "a dress-suit," and before the complications of that exotic garb, he was flabby with anxiety. To Milt and to Schoenstrom--to Bill McGolwey, even to Prof Jones and the greasily prosperous Heinie Rauskukle--the dress-suit was the symbol and proof, the indication and manner, of sophisticated wealth. In Schoenstrom even waiters do not wear dress-suits. For one thing there aren't any waiters. There is one waitress at the Leipzig House, Miss Annie Schweigenblat, but you wouldn't expect Miss Schweigenblat to deal them off the arm in black trousers with braid down the side. No; a dress-suit was what the hero wore in the movies; and the hero in the movies, when he wasn't a cowpuncher, was an ex-captain of the Yale football team, and had chambers and a valet. You could tell him from the valet because he wasn't so bald. It is true that Milt had heard that in St. Cloud there were people who wore dress-suits at parties, but then St. Cloud was a city, fifteen or sixteen thousand. "How could he get away with a dress-suit? How could he keep from feeling foolish in a low-cut vest, and what the deuce would he do with the tails? Did you part 'em or roll 'em up, when you sat down? And wouldn't everybody be able to tell from his foolish look that he didn't belong in one?" He could hear A.D.T. boys and loafers in front of pool rooms whispering, "Look at the piker in the rented soup and fish!" For of course he'd rent one. Nobody bought them--except plutes like Henry B. Boltwood. He agitatedly walked up and down for an hour, peering into haberdashery windows, looking for a kind-faced young man. He found him, in Ye Pall Mall Toggery Shoppe & Shoes; an open-faced young man who was gazing through the window as sparklingly as though he was thinking of going as a missionary to India--and liked curry. Milt ironed out his worried face, clumped in, demanded fraternally, "Say, old man, don't some of these gents' furnishings stores have kind of little charts that tell just what you wear with dress-suits and Prince Alberts and everything?" "You bet," said the kind-faced young man. West of Chicago, "You bet" means "Rather," and "Yes indeed," and "On the whole I should be inclined to fancy that there may be some vestiges of accuracy in your curious opinion," and "You're a liar but I can't afford to say so." The kind-faced young man brought from behind the counter a beautiful brochure illustrated with photographs of Phoebus Apollo in what were described as "American Beauty Garments--neat, natty, nobby, new." The center pages faithfully catalogued the ties, shirts, cuff-links, spats, boots, hats, to wear with evening clothes, morning clothes, riding clothes, tennis costumes, polite mourning. As he looked it over Milt felt that his wardrobe already contained all these gentlemanly possessions. With the aid of the clerk and the chart he purchased a tradition-haunted garment with a plate-armor bosom and an opening as crooked as the Missouri River; a white tie which in his strong red hands looked as silly as a dead fish; waistcoat, pearl links, and studs. For the first time, except for seizures of madness during two or three visits to Minneapolis motor accessory stores, he caught the shopping-fever. The long shining counter, the trim red-stained shelves, the glittering cases, the racks of flaunting ties, were beautiful to him and beckoning. He revolved a pleasantly clicking rack of ties, then turned and fought his way out. He bought pumps--which cost exactly twice as much as the largest sum which he had allowed himself. He bought a newspaper, and in the want-columns found the advertisement: Silberfarb the Society Tailor DRESS SUITS TO RENT Snappiest in the City Despite the superlative snappiness of Mr. Silberfarb's dress-suits his establishment was a loft over a delicatessen, approached by a splintery stairway along which hung shabby signs announcing the upstairs offices of "J. L. & T. J. O'Regan, Private Detectives," "The Zenith Spiritualist Church, Messages by Rev. Lulu Paughouse," "The International Order of Live Ones, Seattle Wigwam," and "Mme. Lavourie, Sulphur Baths." The dead air of the hallway suggested petty crookedness. Milt felt that he ought to fight somebody but, there being no one to fight, he banged along the flapping boards of the second-floor hallway to the ground-glass door of Silberfarb the Society Tailor, who was also, as an afterthought on a straggly placard, "Pressng & Cleang While U Wait." He belligerently shouldered into a low room. The light from the one window was almost obscured by racks of musty-smelling black clothes which stretched away from him in two dismal aisles that resembled a morgue of unhappy dead men indecently hung up on hooks. On a long, clumsily carpentered table, a small Jew, collarless, sweaty, unshaven, was darning trousers under an evil mantle gaslight. The Jew wrung out his hands and tried to look benevolent. "Want to rent a dress-suit," said Milt. "I got just the t'ing for you!" The little man unfolded himself, galloped down the aisle, seized the first garment that came to hand, and came back to lay it against Milt's uncomfortable frame, bumbling, "Fine, mister, fy-en!" Milt studied the shiny-seamed, worn-buttonholed, limp object with dislike. Its personality was disintegrated. The only thing he liked about it was the good garage stink of gasoline. "That's almost worn out," he growled. At this sacrilege Mr. Silberfarb threw up his hands, with the dingy suit flapping in them like a bed-quilt shaken from a tenement window. He looked Milt all over, coldly. His red but shining eyes hinted that Milt was a clodhopper and no honest wearer of evening clothes. Milt felt humble, but he snapped, "No good. Want something with class." "Vell, that was good enough for a university professor at the big dance, but if you say so----" In the manner of one who is being put to an unfair amount of trouble, Mr. Silberfarb returned the paranoiac dress-suit to the rack, sighing patiently as he laboriously draped it on a hanger. He peered and pawed. He crowed with throaty triumph and brought back a rich ripe thing of velvet collar and cuffs. He fixed Milt with eyes that had become as sulky as the eyes of a dog in August dust. "Now that--you can't beat that, if you vant class, and it'll fit you like a glove. Oh, that's an ellllegant garment!" Shaking himself out of the spell of those contemptuous eyes Milt opened his brochure, studied the chart, and in a footnote found, "Never wear velvet collars or cuffs with evening coat." "Nope. Nix on the velvet," he remarked. Then the little man went mad and ran around in circles. He flung the ellllegant garment on the table. He flapped his arms, and wailed, "What do you vant? What do you vannnnt? That's a hundred-and-fifty-dollar dress-suit! That belonged to one of the richest men in the city. He sold it to me because he was going to Japan." "Well, you can send it to Japan after him. I want something decent. Have you got it--or shall I go some place else?" The tailor instantly became affectionate. "How about a nice Tuxedo?" he coaxed. "Nope. It says here--let me see--oh yes, here it is--it says here in the book that for the theater-with-ladies, should not wear 'dinner-coat or so-called Tuxedo, but----'" "Oh, dem fellows what writes books they don't know nothing. Absolute! They make it up." "Huh! Well, I guess I'll take my chance on them. The factory knows the ignition better 'n any repair-man." "Vell say, you're a hard fellow to please. I'll give you one of my reserve stock, but you got to leave me ten dollars deposit instead of five." Mr. Silberfarb quite cheerfully unlocked a glass case behind the racked and ghostly dead; he brought out a suit that seemed to Milt almost decent. And it almost fitted when, after changing clothes in a broiling, boiling, reeking, gasoline-pulsing hole behind the racks, he examined it before a pier-glass. But he caught the tailor assisting the fit by bunching up a roll of cloth at the shoulder. Again Milt snapped, and again the tailor suffered and died, and to a doubting heathen world maintained the true gospel of "What do you vannnnt? It ain't stylish to have the dress-suit too tight! All the gents is wearing 'em loose and graceful." But in the end, after Milt had gone as far as the door, Mr. Silberfarb admitted that one dress-coat wouldn't always fit all persons without some alterations. The coat did bag a little, and it was too long in the sleeves, but as Milt studied himself in his room--by placing his small melancholy mirror on the bureau, then on a chair, then on the floor, finally, to get a complete view, clear out in the hall--he admitted with stirring delight that he looked "pretty fair in the bloomin' outfit." His clear face, his shining hair, his straight shoulders, seemed to go with the costume. He wriggled into his top-coat and marched out of his room, theater-bound, with the well-fed satisfaction of a man who is certain that no one is giggling, "Look at the hand-me-downs." His pumps did alternately pinch his toes and rub his heels; the trousers cramped his waist; and he suspected that his tie had gone wandering. But he swaggered to the trolley, and sat as one rich and famous and very kind to the Common People, till---- Another man in evening clothes got on the car, and Milt saw that he wore a silk hat, and a white knitted scarf; that he took

course

How many times the word 'course' appears in the text?

who was the limp indoor-dweller, and he who was the ruddy ranger; that as he had admired her at Flathead Lake, so now it was hers to admire, and his to be serenely heroic. She was not far from the worshiping sub-deb in her sighing, "How _did_ you get the scar?" "That? Oh, nothing." "Please tell me." "Really and truly. Nothing at all. Just a drunken fellow with a knife, playing the fool. I didn't have to touch him--quite sure he could have given me a frightful beating and all that sort of thing. It was the Big Chief who got rid of him." "He--cut you? With a kniiiiiife? Ohhhhhhh!" She ran to him, pityingly stroked the scar, looked down at him with filmy eyes. Then she tried to retreat, but he retained her hand, glanced up at her as though he knew her every thought. She felt weak. How could she escape him? "Please!" she begged flutteringly. If he held her hand another moment, she trembled, she'd be on his lap, in his arms--lost. And he was holding it. He was---- Oh, he was too old for her. Yes, and too paternal. But still---- Life with Jeff would be protected, kindly, honorable. Yet all the time she wanted, and stormily knew she wanted, to be fleeing to the boy Milt, her mate; to run away with him, hand in hand, discovering all the colored world, laughing at life, not afraid of losing dignity. In fear of Jeff's very kindliness and honor, she jerked her hand free. Then she tried to smile like a clever fencer. As she retreated to her chair she stammered, "Did you---- Was Alaska interesting?" He did not let her go, this time. Easy, cat-like for all his dry gravity, he sauntered after her, and with a fine high seriousness pleaded his case: "Claire dear, those few weeks of fighting nature were a revelation to me. I'm going to have lots more of it. As it happens, they need me there. There's plenty of copper, but there's big transportation and employment problems that I seem better able to solve than the other chaps--though of course I'm an absolute muff when it comes to engineering problems. But I've had certain training and--I'm going to arrange things so that I get up there at least once a year. Next summer I'll make a much longer trip--see the mountains--oh, glorious mountains--and funny half-Russian towns, and have some fishing---- Wandering. The really big thing. Even finer than your superb plucky trip through----" "Wasn't plucky! I'm a cry baby," she said, like a bad, contradictory little girl. He didn't argue it. He smiled and said "Tut!" and placidly catalogued her with, "You're the pluckiest girl I've ever seen, and it's all the more amazing because you're not a motion-picture Tomboy, but essentially exquisite----" "I'm a grub." "Very well, then. You're a grub. So am I. And I like it. And when I make the big Alaskan trip next year I want you to go along! Claire! Haven't you any idea how terribly close to me the thought of you has been these weeks? You've guided me through the wilderness----" "It's---- I'm glad." She sprang up, beseeching, "Jeff dear, you're going to stay for tea? I must run up and powder my nose." "Not until you say you're glad to see me. Child dear, we've been ambling along and---- No. You aren't a child any more. You're a woman. And if I've never been quite a man, but just a dusty office-machine, that's gone now. I've got the wind of the wilderness in my lungs. Man and woman! My woman! That's all I'm going to say now, but---- Oh my God, Claire, I do need you so!" He drew her head to his shoulder, and for an instant she rested there. But as she looked up, she saw coming age in the granulated skin of his throat. "He needs me--but he'd boss me. I'd be the cunning child-wife, even at fifty," she worried, and "Hang him, it's like his superiority to beat poor Milt even at adventuring--and to be such a confounded Modest Christian Gentleman about it!" "You'd--you're so dreadfully managing," she sighed aloud. For the first time in all their acquaintanceship, Jeff's pride broke, and he held her away from him, while his lips were pathetic, and he mourned, "Why do you always try to hurt me?" "Oh, my dear, I don't." "Is it because you resent the decent things I have managed to do?" "I don't understand." "If I have an idea for a party, you think I'm 'managing.' If I think things out deeply, you say I'm dull." "Oh, you aren't. I didn't mean----" "What are you? A real woman, or one of these flirts, that love to tease a man because he's foolish enough to be honestly in love?" "I'm not--hon-estly I'm not, Jeff. It's---- You don't quite make me---- It's just that I'm not in love with you. I like you, and respect you terribly, but----" "I'm going to make you love me." His clutching fingers hurt her arm, and somehow she was not angry, but stirred. "But I'm not going to try now. Forget the Alaskan caveman. Remember, I haven't even used the word 'love.' I've just chatted about fjords, or whatever they are, but one of these days---- No. I won't do it. I want to stay here in Seattle a few days, and take you on jolly picnics, but---- Would you rather I didn't even do that? I'm----" He dropped her arm, kneaded his forehead with the heel of his palm. "I can't stand being regarded as a bothersome puppy. I can't stand it! I can't!" "Please stay, Jeff! We'll have some darling drives and things. We'll go up Rainier as far as we can." He stayed. He was anecdotal and amusing at tea, that afternoon. Claire saw how the Gilsons, and two girls who dropped in, admired him. That made her uneasy. And when Mrs. Gilson begged him to leave his hotel and stay with them, he refused with a quick look at Claire that hurt her. "He wants me to be free. He's really so much more considerate than Milt. And I hurt him. Even his pride broke down. And I've spoiled Milt's life by meddling. And I've hurt the Gilsons' feelings. And I'm not much of a comfort to father. Oh, I'm absolutely no good," she agonized. CHAPTER XXX THE VIRTUOUS PLOTTERS Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, in Alaskan tan and New York evening clothes and Piccadilly poise, was talking to the Eugene Gilsons while Claire finished dressing for the theater. Mrs. Gilson observed, "She's the dearest thing. We've become awfully fond of her. But I don't think she knows what she wants to do with life. She's rather at loose ends. Who is this Daggett boy--some university student--whom she seems to like?" "Well, since you speak of him---- I hadn't meant to, unless you did. I want to be fair to him. What did she tell you about him?" Jeff asked confidentially. "Nothing, except that he's a young engineer, and frightfully brave and all those uncomfortable virtues, and she met him in Yellowstone Park or somewhere, and he saved her from a bear--or was it a tramp?--from something unnecessary, at any rate." "Eva, I don't want to be supercilious, but the truth is that this young Daggett is a rather dreadful person. He's been here at the house, hasn't he? How did he strike you?" "Not at all. He's silent, and as dull as lukewarm tea, but perfectly inoffensive." "Then he's cleverer than I thought! Daggett is anything but dull and inoffensive, and if he can play that estimable r le----! It seems that he is the son of some common workman in the Middlewest; he isn't an engineer at all; he's really a chauffeur or a taxi-driver or something; and he ran into Claire and Henry B. on the road, and somehow insinuated himself into their graces--far from being silent and commonplace, he appears to have some strange kind of charm which," Jeff sighed, "I don't understand at all. I simply don't understand it! "I met him in Montana with the most gorgeously atrocious person I've ever encountered--one Pinky Westlake, or some such a name--positively, a crook! He tried to get Boltwood and myself interested in the commonest kind of a mining swindle--hinted that we were to join him in cheating the public. And this Daggett was his partner--they actually traveled together. But I do want to be just. I'm not _sure_ that Daggett was aware of his partner's dishonesty. That isn't what worries me about the lad. It's his utter impossibility. He's as crude as iron-ore. When he's being careful, he may manage to be inconspicuous, but give him the chance---- "Really, I'm not exaggerating when I say that at thirty-five he'll be dining in his shirt-sleeves, and sitting down to read the paper with his shoes off and feet up on the table. But Claire--you know what a dear Quixotic soul she is--she fancies that because this fellow repaired a puncture or something of the sort for her on the road, she's indebted to him, and the worse he is, the more she feels that she must help him. And affairs of that kind---- Oh, it's quite too horrible, but there have been cases, you know, where girls as splendid and fine and well-bred as Claire herself have been trapped into low marriages by their loyalty to cadging adventurers!" "Oh!" groaned Mrs. Gilson; and "Good Lord!" lamented Mr. Gilson, delighted by the possibility of tragedy; and "Really, I'm not exaggerating," said Jeff enthusiastically. "What are we going to do?" demanded Mrs. Gilson; while Mr. Gilson, being of a ready and inventive mind, exclaimed, "By Jove, you ought to kidnap her and marry her yourself, Jeff!" "I'd like to. But I'm too old." They beautifully assured him that he was a blithe young thing with milk teeth; and with a certain satisfaction Jeff suggested, "I tell you what we might do. Of course it's an ancient stunt, but it's good. I judge that Daggett hasn't been here at the house much. Why not have him here so often that Claire will awaken to his crudity, and get sick of him?" "We'll do it," thrilled Mrs. Gilson. "We'll have him for everything from nine-course dinners with Grandmother Eaton's napkins on view, to milk and cold ham out of the ice-box. When Claire doesn't invite him, I will!" CHAPTER XXXI THE KITCHEN INTIMATE Milt had become used to the Gilson drawing-room. He was no longer uncomfortable in the presence of its sleek fatness, though at first (not knowing that there were such resources as interior decorators), he had been convinced that, to have created the room, the Gilsons must have known everything in the world. Now he glanced familiarly at its white paneling, its sconces like silver candlesticks, the inevitable davenport inevitably backed by an amethyst-shaded piano lamp and a table crowded with silver boxes and picture-frames. He liked the winsomeness of light upon velvet and polished wood. It was not the drawing-room but the kitchen that dismayed him. In Schoenstrom he had known that there must somewhere be beautiful "parlors," but he had trusted in his experience of kitchens. Kitchens, according to his philosophy, were small smelly rooms of bare floors, and provided with one oilcloth-covered table, one stove (the front draft always broken and propped up with the lid-lifter), one cupboard with panes of tin pierced in rosettes, and one stack of dirty dishes. But the Gilson kitchen had the efficiency of a laboratory and the superciliousness of a hair-dresser's booth. With awe Milt beheld walls of white tiles, a cork floor, a gas-range large as a hotel-stove, a ceiling-high refrigerator of enamel and nickel, zinc-topped tables, and a case of utensils like a surgeon's knives. It frightened him; it made more hopelessly unapproachable than ever the Alexandrian luxury of the great Gilsons.... The Vanderbilts' kitchen must be like this. And maybe King George's. He was viewing the kitchen upon the occasion of an intimate Sunday evening supper to which he had been yearningly invited by Mrs. Gilson. The maids were all out. The Gilsons and Claire, Milt and Jeff Saxton, shoutingly prepared their own supper. While Mrs. Gilson scrambled eggs and made coffee, the others set the table, and brought cold ham and a bowl of salad from the ice-box. Milt had intended to be a silent but deft servitor. When he had heard that he was to come to supper with the returned Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, he had first been panic-shaken, then resolved. He'd "let old iron-face Saxton do the high and mighty. Let him stand around and show off his clothes and adjectives, way he did at Flathead Lake." But he, Milt, would be "on the job." He'd help get supper, and calmly ignore Jeff's rudeness. Only--Jeff wasn't rude. He greeted Milt with, "Ah, Daggett! This is _so_ nice!" And Milt had no chance to help. It was Jeff who anticipated him and with a pleasant, "Let me get that--I'm kitchen-broke," snatched up the cold ham and salad. It was Jeff who found the supper plates, while Milt was blunderingly wondering how any one family could use a "whole furniture-store-full of different kinds of china." It was Jeff who sprang to help Claire wheel in the tea-wagon, and so captured the chance to speak to her for which Milt had been maneuvering these five minutes. When they were settled, Jeff glowed at him, and respectfully offered, "I thought of you so often, Daggett, on a recent little jaunt of mine. You'd have been helpful." "Where was that?" asked Milt suspiciously (wondering, and waiting to see, whether you could take cold ham in your fingers). "Oh, in Alaska." "In--Alaska?" Milt was dismayed. "Yes, just a business trip there. There's something I wish you'd advise me about." He was humble. And Milt was uneasy. He grumbled, "What's that?" "I've been wondering whether it would be possible to use wireless telephony in Alaska. But I'm such a dub at electricity. Do you know---- What would be the cost of installing a wireless telephone plant with a hundred-mile radius?" "Gee, I don't know!" "Oh, so sorry. Well, I wonder if you can tell me about wireless telegraphy, then?" "No, I don't know anything about that either." Milt had desperately tried to make his answer gracious but somehow---- He hated this devil's obsequiousness more than he had his chilliness at Flathead Lake. He had a feeling that the Gilsons had delightedly kicked each other under the table; that, for all her unchanging smile, Claire was unhappy.... And she was so far off, a white wraith floating beyond his frantic grasp. "It doesn't matter, really. But I didn't know---- So you've started in the engineering school at the University of Washington," Saxton was purring. "Have you met Gid Childers there--son of old Senator Childers--charming people." "I've seen him. He has a Stutz--no, his is the Mercer," sighed Milt. He hated himself for it, but he couldn't quite keep the awe out of his voice. People with Mercers---- Claire seemed to be trying to speak. She made a delicate, feminine, clairesque approximation to clearing her throat. But Jeff ignored her and with almost osculatory affection continued to Milt: "Do let me know if there's anything I can do to help you. We're acquainted with two or three of your engineering faculty at the Office. They write in about various things. Do you happen to know Dr. Philgren?" "Oh yes. Say! He's a wonder!" Milt was betrayed into exclaiming. "Yes. Good chap, I believe. He's been trying to get a job with us. We may give him one. Just tell him you're a friend of mine, and that he's to give you any help he can." Milt choked on a "Thanks." "And--now that we're just the family here together--how goes the financial side? Can I be of any assistance in introducing you to some engineering firm where you could do a little work on the side? You could make quite a little money----" So confoundedly affectionate and paternal---- Milt said irritably, "Thanks, but I don't need to do any work. I've got plenty of money." "How pleasant!" Saxton's voice was smooth as marshmallow. "You're fortunate. I had quite a struggle to get through Princeton." Wasn't Mr. Gilson contrasting Saxton's silk shirt with Milt's darned cotton covering, and in light of that contrast chuckling at Milt's boast and Saxton's modesty? Milt became overheated. His scalp prickled and his shoulder-blades were damp. As Saxton turned from him, and crooned to Claire, "More ham, honey?" Milt hated himself. He was in much of the dramatic but undesirable position of a man in pajamas, not very good pajamas, who has been locked out in the hotel corridor by the slamming of his door. He was in the frame of mind of a mongrel, of a real Boys'-Dog, at a Madison Square dog-show. He had a faint shrewd suspicion of Saxton's game. But what could he do about it? He felt even more out of place when the family forgot him and talked about people of whom he had never heard. He sat alone on an extremely distant desert isle and ate cold ham and wished he were in Schoenstrom. Claire had recovered her power of speech. She seemed to be trying to bring him into the conversation, so that the family might appreciate him. She hesitated, and thought with creased brows, and brought out, "Uh, uh, oh---- Oh Milt: How much is gas selling at now?"... * * * * * Milt left that charming and intimate supper-party at nine. He said, "Got to work on--on my analytical geometry," as though it was a lie; and he threw "Good night" at Saxton as though he hated his kind, good benefactor; and when he tried to be gracious to Mrs. Gilson the best he could get out was, "Thanks f' inviting me." They expansively saw him to the door. Just as he thought that he had escaped, Saxton begged, "Oh, Daggett, I was arguing with a chap---- What color are Holstein-Friesian cattle? Red?" "Black and white," Milt said eagerly. He heard Mrs. Gilson giggle. He stood on the terrace wiping his forehead and, without the least struggle, finally and irretrievably admitting that he would never see Claire Boltwood or any of her friends again. Not--never! * * * * * He had received from Mrs. Gilson a note inviting him to share their box at the first night of a three-night Opera Season. He had spent half a day in trying to think of a courteously rude way of declining. A straggly little girl came up from the candy-shop below his room, demanding, "Say, are you Mr. Daggett? Say, there's some woman wants to talk to you on our telephone. Say, tell them we ain't supposed to be no messenger-office. You ain't supposed to call no upstairs people on our telephone. We ain't supposed to leave the store and go trotting all over town to---- Gee, a nickel, gee, thank you, don't mind what ma says, she's always kicking." On the telephone, he heard Claire's voice in an agitated, "Milt! Meet me down-town, at the Imperial Motion Picture Theater, right away. Something I've got to tell you. I'll be in the lobby. Hurry!" When he bolted in she was already in the lobby, agitatedly looking over a frame of "stills." She ran to him, hooked her fingers in his lapel, poured out, "They've invited you to the opera? I want you to come and put it all over them. I'm almost sure there's a plot. They want to show me that you aren't used to tiaras and saxophones and creaking dowagers and tulle. Beat 'em! Beat 'em! Come to the opera and be awf'ly aloof and supercilious. You can! Yes, you can! And be sure--wear evening clothes. Now I've got to hurry." "B-but----" "Don't disappoint me. I depend on you. Oh, say you will!" "I will!" She was gone, whisking into the Gilson limousine. He was in a glow at her loyalty, in a tremor of anger at the meddlers. But he had never worn evening clothes. He called it "a dress-suit," and before the complications of that exotic garb, he was flabby with anxiety. To Milt and to Schoenstrom--to Bill McGolwey, even to Prof Jones and the greasily prosperous Heinie Rauskukle--the dress-suit was the symbol and proof, the indication and manner, of sophisticated wealth. In Schoenstrom even waiters do not wear dress-suits. For one thing there aren't any waiters. There is one waitress at the Leipzig House, Miss Annie Schweigenblat, but you wouldn't expect Miss Schweigenblat to deal them off the arm in black trousers with braid down the side. No; a dress-suit was what the hero wore in the movies; and the hero in the movies, when he wasn't a cowpuncher, was an ex-captain of the Yale football team, and had chambers and a valet. You could tell him from the valet because he wasn't so bald. It is true that Milt had heard that in St. Cloud there were people who wore dress-suits at parties, but then St. Cloud was a city, fifteen or sixteen thousand. "How could he get away with a dress-suit? How could he keep from feeling foolish in a low-cut vest, and what the deuce would he do with the tails? Did you part 'em or roll 'em up, when you sat down? And wouldn't everybody be able to tell from his foolish look that he didn't belong in one?" He could hear A.D.T. boys and loafers in front of pool rooms whispering, "Look at the piker in the rented soup and fish!" For of course he'd rent one. Nobody bought them--except plutes like Henry B. Boltwood. He agitatedly walked up and down for an hour, peering into haberdashery windows, looking for a kind-faced young man. He found him, in Ye Pall Mall Toggery Shoppe & Shoes; an open-faced young man who was gazing through the window as sparklingly as though he was thinking of going as a missionary to India--and liked curry. Milt ironed out his worried face, clumped in, demanded fraternally, "Say, old man, don't some of these gents' furnishings stores have kind of little charts that tell just what you wear with dress-suits and Prince Alberts and everything?" "You bet," said the kind-faced young man. West of Chicago, "You bet" means "Rather," and "Yes indeed," and "On the whole I should be inclined to fancy that there may be some vestiges of accuracy in your curious opinion," and "You're a liar but I can't afford to say so." The kind-faced young man brought from behind the counter a beautiful brochure illustrated with photographs of Phoebus Apollo in what were described as "American Beauty Garments--neat, natty, nobby, new." The center pages faithfully catalogued the ties, shirts, cuff-links, spats, boots, hats, to wear with evening clothes, morning clothes, riding clothes, tennis costumes, polite mourning. As he looked it over Milt felt that his wardrobe already contained all these gentlemanly possessions. With the aid of the clerk and the chart he purchased a tradition-haunted garment with a plate-armor bosom and an opening as crooked as the Missouri River; a white tie which in his strong red hands looked as silly as a dead fish; waistcoat, pearl links, and studs. For the first time, except for seizures of madness during two or three visits to Minneapolis motor accessory stores, he caught the shopping-fever. The long shining counter, the trim red-stained shelves, the glittering cases, the racks of flaunting ties, were beautiful to him and beckoning. He revolved a pleasantly clicking rack of ties, then turned and fought his way out. He bought pumps--which cost exactly twice as much as the largest sum which he had allowed himself. He bought a newspaper, and in the want-columns found the advertisement: Silberfarb the Society Tailor DRESS SUITS TO RENT Snappiest in the City Despite the superlative snappiness of Mr. Silberfarb's dress-suits his establishment was a loft over a delicatessen, approached by a splintery stairway along which hung shabby signs announcing the upstairs offices of "J. L. & T. J. O'Regan, Private Detectives," "The Zenith Spiritualist Church, Messages by Rev. Lulu Paughouse," "The International Order of Live Ones, Seattle Wigwam," and "Mme. Lavourie, Sulphur Baths." The dead air of the hallway suggested petty crookedness. Milt felt that he ought to fight somebody but, there being no one to fight, he banged along the flapping boards of the second-floor hallway to the ground-glass door of Silberfarb the Society Tailor, who was also, as an afterthought on a straggly placard, "Pressng & Cleang While U Wait." He belligerently shouldered into a low room. The light from the one window was almost obscured by racks of musty-smelling black clothes which stretched away from him in two dismal aisles that resembled a morgue of unhappy dead men indecently hung up on hooks. On a long, clumsily carpentered table, a small Jew, collarless, sweaty, unshaven, was darning trousers under an evil mantle gaslight. The Jew wrung out his hands and tried to look benevolent. "Want to rent a dress-suit," said Milt. "I got just the t'ing for you!" The little man unfolded himself, galloped down the aisle, seized the first garment that came to hand, and came back to lay it against Milt's uncomfortable frame, bumbling, "Fine, mister, fy-en!" Milt studied the shiny-seamed, worn-buttonholed, limp object with dislike. Its personality was disintegrated. The only thing he liked about it was the good garage stink of gasoline. "That's almost worn out," he growled. At this sacrilege Mr. Silberfarb threw up his hands, with the dingy suit flapping in them like a bed-quilt shaken from a tenement window. He looked Milt all over, coldly. His red but shining eyes hinted that Milt was a clodhopper and no honest wearer of evening clothes. Milt felt humble, but he snapped, "No good. Want something with class." "Vell, that was good enough for a university professor at the big dance, but if you say so----" In the manner of one who is being put to an unfair amount of trouble, Mr. Silberfarb returned the paranoiac dress-suit to the rack, sighing patiently as he laboriously draped it on a hanger. He peered and pawed. He crowed with throaty triumph and brought back a rich ripe thing of velvet collar and cuffs. He fixed Milt with eyes that had become as sulky as the eyes of a dog in August dust. "Now that--you can't beat that, if you vant class, and it'll fit you like a glove. Oh, that's an ellllegant garment!" Shaking himself out of the spell of those contemptuous eyes Milt opened his brochure, studied the chart, and in a footnote found, "Never wear velvet collars or cuffs with evening coat." "Nope. Nix on the velvet," he remarked. Then the little man went mad and ran around in circles. He flung the ellllegant garment on the table. He flapped his arms, and wailed, "What do you vant? What do you vannnnt? That's a hundred-and-fifty-dollar dress-suit! That belonged to one of the richest men in the city. He sold it to me because he was going to Japan." "Well, you can send it to Japan after him. I want something decent. Have you got it--or shall I go some place else?" The tailor instantly became affectionate. "How about a nice Tuxedo?" he coaxed. "Nope. It says here--let me see--oh yes, here it is--it says here in the book that for the theater-with-ladies, should not wear 'dinner-coat or so-called Tuxedo, but----'" "Oh, dem fellows what writes books they don't know nothing. Absolute! They make it up." "Huh! Well, I guess I'll take my chance on them. The factory knows the ignition better 'n any repair-man." "Vell say, you're a hard fellow to please. I'll give you one of my reserve stock, but you got to leave me ten dollars deposit instead of five." Mr. Silberfarb quite cheerfully unlocked a glass case behind the racked and ghostly dead; he brought out a suit that seemed to Milt almost decent. And it almost fitted when, after changing clothes in a broiling, boiling, reeking, gasoline-pulsing hole behind the racks, he examined it before a pier-glass. But he caught the tailor assisting the fit by bunching up a roll of cloth at the shoulder. Again Milt snapped, and again the tailor suffered and died, and to a doubting heathen world maintained the true gospel of "What do you vannnnt? It ain't stylish to have the dress-suit too tight! All the gents is wearing 'em loose and graceful." But in the end, after Milt had gone as far as the door, Mr. Silberfarb admitted that one dress-coat wouldn't always fit all persons without some alterations. The coat did bag a little, and it was too long in the sleeves, but as Milt studied himself in his room--by placing his small melancholy mirror on the bureau, then on a chair, then on the floor, finally, to get a complete view, clear out in the hall--he admitted with stirring delight that he looked "pretty fair in the bloomin' outfit." His clear face, his shining hair, his straight shoulders, seemed to go with the costume. He wriggled into his top-coat and marched out of his room, theater-bound, with the well-fed satisfaction of a man who is certain that no one is giggling, "Look at the hand-me-downs." His pumps did alternately pinch his toes and rub his heels; the trousers cramped his waist; and he suspected that his tie had gone wandering. But he swaggered to the trolley, and sat as one rich and famous and very kind to the Common People, till---- Another man in evening clothes got on the car, and Milt saw that he wore a silk hat, and a white knitted scarf; that he took

snatched

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who was the limp indoor-dweller, and he who was the ruddy ranger; that as he had admired her at Flathead Lake, so now it was hers to admire, and his to be serenely heroic. She was not far from the worshiping sub-deb in her sighing, "How _did_ you get the scar?" "That? Oh, nothing." "Please tell me." "Really and truly. Nothing at all. Just a drunken fellow with a knife, playing the fool. I didn't have to touch him--quite sure he could have given me a frightful beating and all that sort of thing. It was the Big Chief who got rid of him." "He--cut you? With a kniiiiiife? Ohhhhhhh!" She ran to him, pityingly stroked the scar, looked down at him with filmy eyes. Then she tried to retreat, but he retained her hand, glanced up at her as though he knew her every thought. She felt weak. How could she escape him? "Please!" she begged flutteringly. If he held her hand another moment, she trembled, she'd be on his lap, in his arms--lost. And he was holding it. He was---- Oh, he was too old for her. Yes, and too paternal. But still---- Life with Jeff would be protected, kindly, honorable. Yet all the time she wanted, and stormily knew she wanted, to be fleeing to the boy Milt, her mate; to run away with him, hand in hand, discovering all the colored world, laughing at life, not afraid of losing dignity. In fear of Jeff's very kindliness and honor, she jerked her hand free. Then she tried to smile like a clever fencer. As she retreated to her chair she stammered, "Did you---- Was Alaska interesting?" He did not let her go, this time. Easy, cat-like for all his dry gravity, he sauntered after her, and with a fine high seriousness pleaded his case: "Claire dear, those few weeks of fighting nature were a revelation to me. I'm going to have lots more of it. As it happens, they need me there. There's plenty of copper, but there's big transportation and employment problems that I seem better able to solve than the other chaps--though of course I'm an absolute muff when it comes to engineering problems. But I've had certain training and--I'm going to arrange things so that I get up there at least once a year. Next summer I'll make a much longer trip--see the mountains--oh, glorious mountains--and funny half-Russian towns, and have some fishing---- Wandering. The really big thing. Even finer than your superb plucky trip through----" "Wasn't plucky! I'm a cry baby," she said, like a bad, contradictory little girl. He didn't argue it. He smiled and said "Tut!" and placidly catalogued her with, "You're the pluckiest girl I've ever seen, and it's all the more amazing because you're not a motion-picture Tomboy, but essentially exquisite----" "I'm a grub." "Very well, then. You're a grub. So am I. And I like it. And when I make the big Alaskan trip next year I want you to go along! Claire! Haven't you any idea how terribly close to me the thought of you has been these weeks? You've guided me through the wilderness----" "It's---- I'm glad." She sprang up, beseeching, "Jeff dear, you're going to stay for tea? I must run up and powder my nose." "Not until you say you're glad to see me. Child dear, we've been ambling along and---- No. You aren't a child any more. You're a woman. And if I've never been quite a man, but just a dusty office-machine, that's gone now. I've got the wind of the wilderness in my lungs. Man and woman! My woman! That's all I'm going to say now, but---- Oh my God, Claire, I do need you so!" He drew her head to his shoulder, and for an instant she rested there. But as she looked up, she saw coming age in the granulated skin of his throat. "He needs me--but he'd boss me. I'd be the cunning child-wife, even at fifty," she worried, and "Hang him, it's like his superiority to beat poor Milt even at adventuring--and to be such a confounded Modest Christian Gentleman about it!" "You'd--you're so dreadfully managing," she sighed aloud. For the first time in all their acquaintanceship, Jeff's pride broke, and he held her away from him, while his lips were pathetic, and he mourned, "Why do you always try to hurt me?" "Oh, my dear, I don't." "Is it because you resent the decent things I have managed to do?" "I don't understand." "If I have an idea for a party, you think I'm 'managing.' If I think things out deeply, you say I'm dull." "Oh, you aren't. I didn't mean----" "What are you? A real woman, or one of these flirts, that love to tease a man because he's foolish enough to be honestly in love?" "I'm not--hon-estly I'm not, Jeff. It's---- You don't quite make me---- It's just that I'm not in love with you. I like you, and respect you terribly, but----" "I'm going to make you love me." His clutching fingers hurt her arm, and somehow she was not angry, but stirred. "But I'm not going to try now. Forget the Alaskan caveman. Remember, I haven't even used the word 'love.' I've just chatted about fjords, or whatever they are, but one of these days---- No. I won't do it. I want to stay here in Seattle a few days, and take you on jolly picnics, but---- Would you rather I didn't even do that? I'm----" He dropped her arm, kneaded his forehead with the heel of his palm. "I can't stand being regarded as a bothersome puppy. I can't stand it! I can't!" "Please stay, Jeff! We'll have some darling drives and things. We'll go up Rainier as far as we can." He stayed. He was anecdotal and amusing at tea, that afternoon. Claire saw how the Gilsons, and two girls who dropped in, admired him. That made her uneasy. And when Mrs. Gilson begged him to leave his hotel and stay with them, he refused with a quick look at Claire that hurt her. "He wants me to be free. He's really so much more considerate than Milt. And I hurt him. Even his pride broke down. And I've spoiled Milt's life by meddling. And I've hurt the Gilsons' feelings. And I'm not much of a comfort to father. Oh, I'm absolutely no good," she agonized. CHAPTER XXX THE VIRTUOUS PLOTTERS Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, in Alaskan tan and New York evening clothes and Piccadilly poise, was talking to the Eugene Gilsons while Claire finished dressing for the theater. Mrs. Gilson observed, "She's the dearest thing. We've become awfully fond of her. But I don't think she knows what she wants to do with life. She's rather at loose ends. Who is this Daggett boy--some university student--whom she seems to like?" "Well, since you speak of him---- I hadn't meant to, unless you did. I want to be fair to him. What did she tell you about him?" Jeff asked confidentially. "Nothing, except that he's a young engineer, and frightfully brave and all those uncomfortable virtues, and she met him in Yellowstone Park or somewhere, and he saved her from a bear--or was it a tramp?--from something unnecessary, at any rate." "Eva, I don't want to be supercilious, but the truth is that this young Daggett is a rather dreadful person. He's been here at the house, hasn't he? How did he strike you?" "Not at all. He's silent, and as dull as lukewarm tea, but perfectly inoffensive." "Then he's cleverer than I thought! Daggett is anything but dull and inoffensive, and if he can play that estimable r le----! It seems that he is the son of some common workman in the Middlewest; he isn't an engineer at all; he's really a chauffeur or a taxi-driver or something; and he ran into Claire and Henry B. on the road, and somehow insinuated himself into their graces--far from being silent and commonplace, he appears to have some strange kind of charm which," Jeff sighed, "I don't understand at all. I simply don't understand it! "I met him in Montana with the most gorgeously atrocious person I've ever encountered--one Pinky Westlake, or some such a name--positively, a crook! He tried to get Boltwood and myself interested in the commonest kind of a mining swindle--hinted that we were to join him in cheating the public. And this Daggett was his partner--they actually traveled together. But I do want to be just. I'm not _sure_ that Daggett was aware of his partner's dishonesty. That isn't what worries me about the lad. It's his utter impossibility. He's as crude as iron-ore. When he's being careful, he may manage to be inconspicuous, but give him the chance---- "Really, I'm not exaggerating when I say that at thirty-five he'll be dining in his shirt-sleeves, and sitting down to read the paper with his shoes off and feet up on the table. But Claire--you know what a dear Quixotic soul she is--she fancies that because this fellow repaired a puncture or something of the sort for her on the road, she's indebted to him, and the worse he is, the more she feels that she must help him. And affairs of that kind---- Oh, it's quite too horrible, but there have been cases, you know, where girls as splendid and fine and well-bred as Claire herself have been trapped into low marriages by their loyalty to cadging adventurers!" "Oh!" groaned Mrs. Gilson; and "Good Lord!" lamented Mr. Gilson, delighted by the possibility of tragedy; and "Really, I'm not exaggerating," said Jeff enthusiastically. "What are we going to do?" demanded Mrs. Gilson; while Mr. Gilson, being of a ready and inventive mind, exclaimed, "By Jove, you ought to kidnap her and marry her yourself, Jeff!" "I'd like to. But I'm too old." They beautifully assured him that he was a blithe young thing with milk teeth; and with a certain satisfaction Jeff suggested, "I tell you what we might do. Of course it's an ancient stunt, but it's good. I judge that Daggett hasn't been here at the house much. Why not have him here so often that Claire will awaken to his crudity, and get sick of him?" "We'll do it," thrilled Mrs. Gilson. "We'll have him for everything from nine-course dinners with Grandmother Eaton's napkins on view, to milk and cold ham out of the ice-box. When Claire doesn't invite him, I will!" CHAPTER XXXI THE KITCHEN INTIMATE Milt had become used to the Gilson drawing-room. He was no longer uncomfortable in the presence of its sleek fatness, though at first (not knowing that there were such resources as interior decorators), he had been convinced that, to have created the room, the Gilsons must have known everything in the world. Now he glanced familiarly at its white paneling, its sconces like silver candlesticks, the inevitable davenport inevitably backed by an amethyst-shaded piano lamp and a table crowded with silver boxes and picture-frames. He liked the winsomeness of light upon velvet and polished wood. It was not the drawing-room but the kitchen that dismayed him. In Schoenstrom he had known that there must somewhere be beautiful "parlors," but he had trusted in his experience of kitchens. Kitchens, according to his philosophy, were small smelly rooms of bare floors, and provided with one oilcloth-covered table, one stove (the front draft always broken and propped up with the lid-lifter), one cupboard with panes of tin pierced in rosettes, and one stack of dirty dishes. But the Gilson kitchen had the efficiency of a laboratory and the superciliousness of a hair-dresser's booth. With awe Milt beheld walls of white tiles, a cork floor, a gas-range large as a hotel-stove, a ceiling-high refrigerator of enamel and nickel, zinc-topped tables, and a case of utensils like a surgeon's knives. It frightened him; it made more hopelessly unapproachable than ever the Alexandrian luxury of the great Gilsons.... The Vanderbilts' kitchen must be like this. And maybe King George's. He was viewing the kitchen upon the occasion of an intimate Sunday evening supper to which he had been yearningly invited by Mrs. Gilson. The maids were all out. The Gilsons and Claire, Milt and Jeff Saxton, shoutingly prepared their own supper. While Mrs. Gilson scrambled eggs and made coffee, the others set the table, and brought cold ham and a bowl of salad from the ice-box. Milt had intended to be a silent but deft servitor. When he had heard that he was to come to supper with the returned Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, he had first been panic-shaken, then resolved. He'd "let old iron-face Saxton do the high and mighty. Let him stand around and show off his clothes and adjectives, way he did at Flathead Lake." But he, Milt, would be "on the job." He'd help get supper, and calmly ignore Jeff's rudeness. Only--Jeff wasn't rude. He greeted Milt with, "Ah, Daggett! This is _so_ nice!" And Milt had no chance to help. It was Jeff who anticipated him and with a pleasant, "Let me get that--I'm kitchen-broke," snatched up the cold ham and salad. It was Jeff who found the supper plates, while Milt was blunderingly wondering how any one family could use a "whole furniture-store-full of different kinds of china." It was Jeff who sprang to help Claire wheel in the tea-wagon, and so captured the chance to speak to her for which Milt had been maneuvering these five minutes. When they were settled, Jeff glowed at him, and respectfully offered, "I thought of you so often, Daggett, on a recent little jaunt of mine. You'd have been helpful." "Where was that?" asked Milt suspiciously (wondering, and waiting to see, whether you could take cold ham in your fingers). "Oh, in Alaska." "In--Alaska?" Milt was dismayed. "Yes, just a business trip there. There's something I wish you'd advise me about." He was humble. And Milt was uneasy. He grumbled, "What's that?" "I've been wondering whether it would be possible to use wireless telephony in Alaska. But I'm such a dub at electricity. Do you know---- What would be the cost of installing a wireless telephone plant with a hundred-mile radius?" "Gee, I don't know!" "Oh, so sorry. Well, I wonder if you can tell me about wireless telegraphy, then?" "No, I don't know anything about that either." Milt had desperately tried to make his answer gracious but somehow---- He hated this devil's obsequiousness more than he had his chilliness at Flathead Lake. He had a feeling that the Gilsons had delightedly kicked each other under the table; that, for all her unchanging smile, Claire was unhappy.... And she was so far off, a white wraith floating beyond his frantic grasp. "It doesn't matter, really. But I didn't know---- So you've started in the engineering school at the University of Washington," Saxton was purring. "Have you met Gid Childers there--son of old Senator Childers--charming people." "I've seen him. He has a Stutz--no, his is the Mercer," sighed Milt. He hated himself for it, but he couldn't quite keep the awe out of his voice. People with Mercers---- Claire seemed to be trying to speak. She made a delicate, feminine, clairesque approximation to clearing her throat. But Jeff ignored her and with almost osculatory affection continued to Milt: "Do let me know if there's anything I can do to help you. We're acquainted with two or three of your engineering faculty at the Office. They write in about various things. Do you happen to know Dr. Philgren?" "Oh yes. Say! He's a wonder!" Milt was betrayed into exclaiming. "Yes. Good chap, I believe. He's been trying to get a job with us. We may give him one. Just tell him you're a friend of mine, and that he's to give you any help he can." Milt choked on a "Thanks." "And--now that we're just the family here together--how goes the financial side? Can I be of any assistance in introducing you to some engineering firm where you could do a little work on the side? You could make quite a little money----" So confoundedly affectionate and paternal---- Milt said irritably, "Thanks, but I don't need to do any work. I've got plenty of money." "How pleasant!" Saxton's voice was smooth as marshmallow. "You're fortunate. I had quite a struggle to get through Princeton." Wasn't Mr. Gilson contrasting Saxton's silk shirt with Milt's darned cotton covering, and in light of that contrast chuckling at Milt's boast and Saxton's modesty? Milt became overheated. His scalp prickled and his shoulder-blades were damp. As Saxton turned from him, and crooned to Claire, "More ham, honey?" Milt hated himself. He was in much of the dramatic but undesirable position of a man in pajamas, not very good pajamas, who has been locked out in the hotel corridor by the slamming of his door. He was in the frame of mind of a mongrel, of a real Boys'-Dog, at a Madison Square dog-show. He had a faint shrewd suspicion of Saxton's game. But what could he do about it? He felt even more out of place when the family forgot him and talked about people of whom he had never heard. He sat alone on an extremely distant desert isle and ate cold ham and wished he were in Schoenstrom. Claire had recovered her power of speech. She seemed to be trying to bring him into the conversation, so that the family might appreciate him. She hesitated, and thought with creased brows, and brought out, "Uh, uh, oh---- Oh Milt: How much is gas selling at now?"... * * * * * Milt left that charming and intimate supper-party at nine. He said, "Got to work on--on my analytical geometry," as though it was a lie; and he threw "Good night" at Saxton as though he hated his kind, good benefactor; and when he tried to be gracious to Mrs. Gilson the best he could get out was, "Thanks f' inviting me." They expansively saw him to the door. Just as he thought that he had escaped, Saxton begged, "Oh, Daggett, I was arguing with a chap---- What color are Holstein-Friesian cattle? Red?" "Black and white," Milt said eagerly. He heard Mrs. Gilson giggle. He stood on the terrace wiping his forehead and, without the least struggle, finally and irretrievably admitting that he would never see Claire Boltwood or any of her friends again. Not--never! * * * * * He had received from Mrs. Gilson a note inviting him to share their box at the first night of a three-night Opera Season. He had spent half a day in trying to think of a courteously rude way of declining. A straggly little girl came up from the candy-shop below his room, demanding, "Say, are you Mr. Daggett? Say, there's some woman wants to talk to you on our telephone. Say, tell them we ain't supposed to be no messenger-office. You ain't supposed to call no upstairs people on our telephone. We ain't supposed to leave the store and go trotting all over town to---- Gee, a nickel, gee, thank you, don't mind what ma says, she's always kicking." On the telephone, he heard Claire's voice in an agitated, "Milt! Meet me down-town, at the Imperial Motion Picture Theater, right away. Something I've got to tell you. I'll be in the lobby. Hurry!" When he bolted in she was already in the lobby, agitatedly looking over a frame of "stills." She ran to him, hooked her fingers in his lapel, poured out, "They've invited you to the opera? I want you to come and put it all over them. I'm almost sure there's a plot. They want to show me that you aren't used to tiaras and saxophones and creaking dowagers and tulle. Beat 'em! Beat 'em! Come to the opera and be awf'ly aloof and supercilious. You can! Yes, you can! And be sure--wear evening clothes. Now I've got to hurry." "B-but----" "Don't disappoint me. I depend on you. Oh, say you will!" "I will!" She was gone, whisking into the Gilson limousine. He was in a glow at her loyalty, in a tremor of anger at the meddlers. But he had never worn evening clothes. He called it "a dress-suit," and before the complications of that exotic garb, he was flabby with anxiety. To Milt and to Schoenstrom--to Bill McGolwey, even to Prof Jones and the greasily prosperous Heinie Rauskukle--the dress-suit was the symbol and proof, the indication and manner, of sophisticated wealth. In Schoenstrom even waiters do not wear dress-suits. For one thing there aren't any waiters. There is one waitress at the Leipzig House, Miss Annie Schweigenblat, but you wouldn't expect Miss Schweigenblat to deal them off the arm in black trousers with braid down the side. No; a dress-suit was what the hero wore in the movies; and the hero in the movies, when he wasn't a cowpuncher, was an ex-captain of the Yale football team, and had chambers and a valet. You could tell him from the valet because he wasn't so bald. It is true that Milt had heard that in St. Cloud there were people who wore dress-suits at parties, but then St. Cloud was a city, fifteen or sixteen thousand. "How could he get away with a dress-suit? How could he keep from feeling foolish in a low-cut vest, and what the deuce would he do with the tails? Did you part 'em or roll 'em up, when you sat down? And wouldn't everybody be able to tell from his foolish look that he didn't belong in one?" He could hear A.D.T. boys and loafers in front of pool rooms whispering, "Look at the piker in the rented soup and fish!" For of course he'd rent one. Nobody bought them--except plutes like Henry B. Boltwood. He agitatedly walked up and down for an hour, peering into haberdashery windows, looking for a kind-faced young man. He found him, in Ye Pall Mall Toggery Shoppe & Shoes; an open-faced young man who was gazing through the window as sparklingly as though he was thinking of going as a missionary to India--and liked curry. Milt ironed out his worried face, clumped in, demanded fraternally, "Say, old man, don't some of these gents' furnishings stores have kind of little charts that tell just what you wear with dress-suits and Prince Alberts and everything?" "You bet," said the kind-faced young man. West of Chicago, "You bet" means "Rather," and "Yes indeed," and "On the whole I should be inclined to fancy that there may be some vestiges of accuracy in your curious opinion," and "You're a liar but I can't afford to say so." The kind-faced young man brought from behind the counter a beautiful brochure illustrated with photographs of Phoebus Apollo in what were described as "American Beauty Garments--neat, natty, nobby, new." The center pages faithfully catalogued the ties, shirts, cuff-links, spats, boots, hats, to wear with evening clothes, morning clothes, riding clothes, tennis costumes, polite mourning. As he looked it over Milt felt that his wardrobe already contained all these gentlemanly possessions. With the aid of the clerk and the chart he purchased a tradition-haunted garment with a plate-armor bosom and an opening as crooked as the Missouri River; a white tie which in his strong red hands looked as silly as a dead fish; waistcoat, pearl links, and studs. For the first time, except for seizures of madness during two or three visits to Minneapolis motor accessory stores, he caught the shopping-fever. The long shining counter, the trim red-stained shelves, the glittering cases, the racks of flaunting ties, were beautiful to him and beckoning. He revolved a pleasantly clicking rack of ties, then turned and fought his way out. He bought pumps--which cost exactly twice as much as the largest sum which he had allowed himself. He bought a newspaper, and in the want-columns found the advertisement: Silberfarb the Society Tailor DRESS SUITS TO RENT Snappiest in the City Despite the superlative snappiness of Mr. Silberfarb's dress-suits his establishment was a loft over a delicatessen, approached by a splintery stairway along which hung shabby signs announcing the upstairs offices of "J. L. & T. J. O'Regan, Private Detectives," "The Zenith Spiritualist Church, Messages by Rev. Lulu Paughouse," "The International Order of Live Ones, Seattle Wigwam," and "Mme. Lavourie, Sulphur Baths." The dead air of the hallway suggested petty crookedness. Milt felt that he ought to fight somebody but, there being no one to fight, he banged along the flapping boards of the second-floor hallway to the ground-glass door of Silberfarb the Society Tailor, who was also, as an afterthought on a straggly placard, "Pressng & Cleang While U Wait." He belligerently shouldered into a low room. The light from the one window was almost obscured by racks of musty-smelling black clothes which stretched away from him in two dismal aisles that resembled a morgue of unhappy dead men indecently hung up on hooks. On a long, clumsily carpentered table, a small Jew, collarless, sweaty, unshaven, was darning trousers under an evil mantle gaslight. The Jew wrung out his hands and tried to look benevolent. "Want to rent a dress-suit," said Milt. "I got just the t'ing for you!" The little man unfolded himself, galloped down the aisle, seized the first garment that came to hand, and came back to lay it against Milt's uncomfortable frame, bumbling, "Fine, mister, fy-en!" Milt studied the shiny-seamed, worn-buttonholed, limp object with dislike. Its personality was disintegrated. The only thing he liked about it was the good garage stink of gasoline. "That's almost worn out," he growled. At this sacrilege Mr. Silberfarb threw up his hands, with the dingy suit flapping in them like a bed-quilt shaken from a tenement window. He looked Milt all over, coldly. His red but shining eyes hinted that Milt was a clodhopper and no honest wearer of evening clothes. Milt felt humble, but he snapped, "No good. Want something with class." "Vell, that was good enough for a university professor at the big dance, but if you say so----" In the manner of one who is being put to an unfair amount of trouble, Mr. Silberfarb returned the paranoiac dress-suit to the rack, sighing patiently as he laboriously draped it on a hanger. He peered and pawed. He crowed with throaty triumph and brought back a rich ripe thing of velvet collar and cuffs. He fixed Milt with eyes that had become as sulky as the eyes of a dog in August dust. "Now that--you can't beat that, if you vant class, and it'll fit you like a glove. Oh, that's an ellllegant garment!" Shaking himself out of the spell of those contemptuous eyes Milt opened his brochure, studied the chart, and in a footnote found, "Never wear velvet collars or cuffs with evening coat." "Nope. Nix on the velvet," he remarked. Then the little man went mad and ran around in circles. He flung the ellllegant garment on the table. He flapped his arms, and wailed, "What do you vant? What do you vannnnt? That's a hundred-and-fifty-dollar dress-suit! That belonged to one of the richest men in the city. He sold it to me because he was going to Japan." "Well, you can send it to Japan after him. I want something decent. Have you got it--or shall I go some place else?" The tailor instantly became affectionate. "How about a nice Tuxedo?" he coaxed. "Nope. It says here--let me see--oh yes, here it is--it says here in the book that for the theater-with-ladies, should not wear 'dinner-coat or so-called Tuxedo, but----'" "Oh, dem fellows what writes books they don't know nothing. Absolute! They make it up." "Huh! Well, I guess I'll take my chance on them. The factory knows the ignition better 'n any repair-man." "Vell say, you're a hard fellow to please. I'll give you one of my reserve stock, but you got to leave me ten dollars deposit instead of five." Mr. Silberfarb quite cheerfully unlocked a glass case behind the racked and ghostly dead; he brought out a suit that seemed to Milt almost decent. And it almost fitted when, after changing clothes in a broiling, boiling, reeking, gasoline-pulsing hole behind the racks, he examined it before a pier-glass. But he caught the tailor assisting the fit by bunching up a roll of cloth at the shoulder. Again Milt snapped, and again the tailor suffered and died, and to a doubting heathen world maintained the true gospel of "What do you vannnnt? It ain't stylish to have the dress-suit too tight! All the gents is wearing 'em loose and graceful." But in the end, after Milt had gone as far as the door, Mr. Silberfarb admitted that one dress-coat wouldn't always fit all persons without some alterations. The coat did bag a little, and it was too long in the sleeves, but as Milt studied himself in his room--by placing his small melancholy mirror on the bureau, then on a chair, then on the floor, finally, to get a complete view, clear out in the hall--he admitted with stirring delight that he looked "pretty fair in the bloomin' outfit." His clear face, his shining hair, his straight shoulders, seemed to go with the costume. He wriggled into his top-coat and marched out of his room, theater-bound, with the well-fed satisfaction of a man who is certain that no one is giggling, "Look at the hand-me-downs." His pumps did alternately pinch his toes and rub his heels; the trousers cramped his waist; and he suspected that his tie had gone wandering. But he swaggered to the trolley, and sat as one rich and famous and very kind to the Common People, till---- Another man in evening clothes got on the car, and Milt saw that he wore a silk hat, and a white knitted scarf; that he took

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who was the limp indoor-dweller, and he who was the ruddy ranger; that as he had admired her at Flathead Lake, so now it was hers to admire, and his to be serenely heroic. She was not far from the worshiping sub-deb in her sighing, "How _did_ you get the scar?" "That? Oh, nothing." "Please tell me." "Really and truly. Nothing at all. Just a drunken fellow with a knife, playing the fool. I didn't have to touch him--quite sure he could have given me a frightful beating and all that sort of thing. It was the Big Chief who got rid of him." "He--cut you? With a kniiiiiife? Ohhhhhhh!" She ran to him, pityingly stroked the scar, looked down at him with filmy eyes. Then she tried to retreat, but he retained her hand, glanced up at her as though he knew her every thought. She felt weak. How could she escape him? "Please!" she begged flutteringly. If he held her hand another moment, she trembled, she'd be on his lap, in his arms--lost. And he was holding it. He was---- Oh, he was too old for her. Yes, and too paternal. But still---- Life with Jeff would be protected, kindly, honorable. Yet all the time she wanted, and stormily knew she wanted, to be fleeing to the boy Milt, her mate; to run away with him, hand in hand, discovering all the colored world, laughing at life, not afraid of losing dignity. In fear of Jeff's very kindliness and honor, she jerked her hand free. Then she tried to smile like a clever fencer. As she retreated to her chair she stammered, "Did you---- Was Alaska interesting?" He did not let her go, this time. Easy, cat-like for all his dry gravity, he sauntered after her, and with a fine high seriousness pleaded his case: "Claire dear, those few weeks of fighting nature were a revelation to me. I'm going to have lots more of it. As it happens, they need me there. There's plenty of copper, but there's big transportation and employment problems that I seem better able to solve than the other chaps--though of course I'm an absolute muff when it comes to engineering problems. But I've had certain training and--I'm going to arrange things so that I get up there at least once a year. Next summer I'll make a much longer trip--see the mountains--oh, glorious mountains--and funny half-Russian towns, and have some fishing---- Wandering. The really big thing. Even finer than your superb plucky trip through----" "Wasn't plucky! I'm a cry baby," she said, like a bad, contradictory little girl. He didn't argue it. He smiled and said "Tut!" and placidly catalogued her with, "You're the pluckiest girl I've ever seen, and it's all the more amazing because you're not a motion-picture Tomboy, but essentially exquisite----" "I'm a grub." "Very well, then. You're a grub. So am I. And I like it. And when I make the big Alaskan trip next year I want you to go along! Claire! Haven't you any idea how terribly close to me the thought of you has been these weeks? You've guided me through the wilderness----" "It's---- I'm glad." She sprang up, beseeching, "Jeff dear, you're going to stay for tea? I must run up and powder my nose." "Not until you say you're glad to see me. Child dear, we've been ambling along and---- No. You aren't a child any more. You're a woman. And if I've never been quite a man, but just a dusty office-machine, that's gone now. I've got the wind of the wilderness in my lungs. Man and woman! My woman! That's all I'm going to say now, but---- Oh my God, Claire, I do need you so!" He drew her head to his shoulder, and for an instant she rested there. But as she looked up, she saw coming age in the granulated skin of his throat. "He needs me--but he'd boss me. I'd be the cunning child-wife, even at fifty," she worried, and "Hang him, it's like his superiority to beat poor Milt even at adventuring--and to be such a confounded Modest Christian Gentleman about it!" "You'd--you're so dreadfully managing," she sighed aloud. For the first time in all their acquaintanceship, Jeff's pride broke, and he held her away from him, while his lips were pathetic, and he mourned, "Why do you always try to hurt me?" "Oh, my dear, I don't." "Is it because you resent the decent things I have managed to do?" "I don't understand." "If I have an idea for a party, you think I'm 'managing.' If I think things out deeply, you say I'm dull." "Oh, you aren't. I didn't mean----" "What are you? A real woman, or one of these flirts, that love to tease a man because he's foolish enough to be honestly in love?" "I'm not--hon-estly I'm not, Jeff. It's---- You don't quite make me---- It's just that I'm not in love with you. I like you, and respect you terribly, but----" "I'm going to make you love me." His clutching fingers hurt her arm, and somehow she was not angry, but stirred. "But I'm not going to try now. Forget the Alaskan caveman. Remember, I haven't even used the word 'love.' I've just chatted about fjords, or whatever they are, but one of these days---- No. I won't do it. I want to stay here in Seattle a few days, and take you on jolly picnics, but---- Would you rather I didn't even do that? I'm----" He dropped her arm, kneaded his forehead with the heel of his palm. "I can't stand being regarded as a bothersome puppy. I can't stand it! I can't!" "Please stay, Jeff! We'll have some darling drives and things. We'll go up Rainier as far as we can." He stayed. He was anecdotal and amusing at tea, that afternoon. Claire saw how the Gilsons, and two girls who dropped in, admired him. That made her uneasy. And when Mrs. Gilson begged him to leave his hotel and stay with them, he refused with a quick look at Claire that hurt her. "He wants me to be free. He's really so much more considerate than Milt. And I hurt him. Even his pride broke down. And I've spoiled Milt's life by meddling. And I've hurt the Gilsons' feelings. And I'm not much of a comfort to father. Oh, I'm absolutely no good," she agonized. CHAPTER XXX THE VIRTUOUS PLOTTERS Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, in Alaskan tan and New York evening clothes and Piccadilly poise, was talking to the Eugene Gilsons while Claire finished dressing for the theater. Mrs. Gilson observed, "She's the dearest thing. We've become awfully fond of her. But I don't think she knows what she wants to do with life. She's rather at loose ends. Who is this Daggett boy--some university student--whom she seems to like?" "Well, since you speak of him---- I hadn't meant to, unless you did. I want to be fair to him. What did she tell you about him?" Jeff asked confidentially. "Nothing, except that he's a young engineer, and frightfully brave and all those uncomfortable virtues, and she met him in Yellowstone Park or somewhere, and he saved her from a bear--or was it a tramp?--from something unnecessary, at any rate." "Eva, I don't want to be supercilious, but the truth is that this young Daggett is a rather dreadful person. He's been here at the house, hasn't he? How did he strike you?" "Not at all. He's silent, and as dull as lukewarm tea, but perfectly inoffensive." "Then he's cleverer than I thought! Daggett is anything but dull and inoffensive, and if he can play that estimable r le----! It seems that he is the son of some common workman in the Middlewest; he isn't an engineer at all; he's really a chauffeur or a taxi-driver or something; and he ran into Claire and Henry B. on the road, and somehow insinuated himself into their graces--far from being silent and commonplace, he appears to have some strange kind of charm which," Jeff sighed, "I don't understand at all. I simply don't understand it! "I met him in Montana with the most gorgeously atrocious person I've ever encountered--one Pinky Westlake, or some such a name--positively, a crook! He tried to get Boltwood and myself interested in the commonest kind of a mining swindle--hinted that we were to join him in cheating the public. And this Daggett was his partner--they actually traveled together. But I do want to be just. I'm not _sure_ that Daggett was aware of his partner's dishonesty. That isn't what worries me about the lad. It's his utter impossibility. He's as crude as iron-ore. When he's being careful, he may manage to be inconspicuous, but give him the chance---- "Really, I'm not exaggerating when I say that at thirty-five he'll be dining in his shirt-sleeves, and sitting down to read the paper with his shoes off and feet up on the table. But Claire--you know what a dear Quixotic soul she is--she fancies that because this fellow repaired a puncture or something of the sort for her on the road, she's indebted to him, and the worse he is, the more she feels that she must help him. And affairs of that kind---- Oh, it's quite too horrible, but there have been cases, you know, where girls as splendid and fine and well-bred as Claire herself have been trapped into low marriages by their loyalty to cadging adventurers!" "Oh!" groaned Mrs. Gilson; and "Good Lord!" lamented Mr. Gilson, delighted by the possibility of tragedy; and "Really, I'm not exaggerating," said Jeff enthusiastically. "What are we going to do?" demanded Mrs. Gilson; while Mr. Gilson, being of a ready and inventive mind, exclaimed, "By Jove, you ought to kidnap her and marry her yourself, Jeff!" "I'd like to. But I'm too old." They beautifully assured him that he was a blithe young thing with milk teeth; and with a certain satisfaction Jeff suggested, "I tell you what we might do. Of course it's an ancient stunt, but it's good. I judge that Daggett hasn't been here at the house much. Why not have him here so often that Claire will awaken to his crudity, and get sick of him?" "We'll do it," thrilled Mrs. Gilson. "We'll have him for everything from nine-course dinners with Grandmother Eaton's napkins on view, to milk and cold ham out of the ice-box. When Claire doesn't invite him, I will!" CHAPTER XXXI THE KITCHEN INTIMATE Milt had become used to the Gilson drawing-room. He was no longer uncomfortable in the presence of its sleek fatness, though at first (not knowing that there were such resources as interior decorators), he had been convinced that, to have created the room, the Gilsons must have known everything in the world. Now he glanced familiarly at its white paneling, its sconces like silver candlesticks, the inevitable davenport inevitably backed by an amethyst-shaded piano lamp and a table crowded with silver boxes and picture-frames. He liked the winsomeness of light upon velvet and polished wood. It was not the drawing-room but the kitchen that dismayed him. In Schoenstrom he had known that there must somewhere be beautiful "parlors," but he had trusted in his experience of kitchens. Kitchens, according to his philosophy, were small smelly rooms of bare floors, and provided with one oilcloth-covered table, one stove (the front draft always broken and propped up with the lid-lifter), one cupboard with panes of tin pierced in rosettes, and one stack of dirty dishes. But the Gilson kitchen had the efficiency of a laboratory and the superciliousness of a hair-dresser's booth. With awe Milt beheld walls of white tiles, a cork floor, a gas-range large as a hotel-stove, a ceiling-high refrigerator of enamel and nickel, zinc-topped tables, and a case of utensils like a surgeon's knives. It frightened him; it made more hopelessly unapproachable than ever the Alexandrian luxury of the great Gilsons.... The Vanderbilts' kitchen must be like this. And maybe King George's. He was viewing the kitchen upon the occasion of an intimate Sunday evening supper to which he had been yearningly invited by Mrs. Gilson. The maids were all out. The Gilsons and Claire, Milt and Jeff Saxton, shoutingly prepared their own supper. While Mrs. Gilson scrambled eggs and made coffee, the others set the table, and brought cold ham and a bowl of salad from the ice-box. Milt had intended to be a silent but deft servitor. When he had heard that he was to come to supper with the returned Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, he had first been panic-shaken, then resolved. He'd "let old iron-face Saxton do the high and mighty. Let him stand around and show off his clothes and adjectives, way he did at Flathead Lake." But he, Milt, would be "on the job." He'd help get supper, and calmly ignore Jeff's rudeness. Only--Jeff wasn't rude. He greeted Milt with, "Ah, Daggett! This is _so_ nice!" And Milt had no chance to help. It was Jeff who anticipated him and with a pleasant, "Let me get that--I'm kitchen-broke," snatched up the cold ham and salad. It was Jeff who found the supper plates, while Milt was blunderingly wondering how any one family could use a "whole furniture-store-full of different kinds of china." It was Jeff who sprang to help Claire wheel in the tea-wagon, and so captured the chance to speak to her for which Milt had been maneuvering these five minutes. When they were settled, Jeff glowed at him, and respectfully offered, "I thought of you so often, Daggett, on a recent little jaunt of mine. You'd have been helpful." "Where was that?" asked Milt suspiciously (wondering, and waiting to see, whether you could take cold ham in your fingers). "Oh, in Alaska." "In--Alaska?" Milt was dismayed. "Yes, just a business trip there. There's something I wish you'd advise me about." He was humble. And Milt was uneasy. He grumbled, "What's that?" "I've been wondering whether it would be possible to use wireless telephony in Alaska. But I'm such a dub at electricity. Do you know---- What would be the cost of installing a wireless telephone plant with a hundred-mile radius?" "Gee, I don't know!" "Oh, so sorry. Well, I wonder if you can tell me about wireless telegraphy, then?" "No, I don't know anything about that either." Milt had desperately tried to make his answer gracious but somehow---- He hated this devil's obsequiousness more than he had his chilliness at Flathead Lake. He had a feeling that the Gilsons had delightedly kicked each other under the table; that, for all her unchanging smile, Claire was unhappy.... And she was so far off, a white wraith floating beyond his frantic grasp. "It doesn't matter, really. But I didn't know---- So you've started in the engineering school at the University of Washington," Saxton was purring. "Have you met Gid Childers there--son of old Senator Childers--charming people." "I've seen him. He has a Stutz--no, his is the Mercer," sighed Milt. He hated himself for it, but he couldn't quite keep the awe out of his voice. People with Mercers---- Claire seemed to be trying to speak. She made a delicate, feminine, clairesque approximation to clearing her throat. But Jeff ignored her and with almost osculatory affection continued to Milt: "Do let me know if there's anything I can do to help you. We're acquainted with two or three of your engineering faculty at the Office. They write in about various things. Do you happen to know Dr. Philgren?" "Oh yes. Say! He's a wonder!" Milt was betrayed into exclaiming. "Yes. Good chap, I believe. He's been trying to get a job with us. We may give him one. Just tell him you're a friend of mine, and that he's to give you any help he can." Milt choked on a "Thanks." "And--now that we're just the family here together--how goes the financial side? Can I be of any assistance in introducing you to some engineering firm where you could do a little work on the side? You could make quite a little money----" So confoundedly affectionate and paternal---- Milt said irritably, "Thanks, but I don't need to do any work. I've got plenty of money." "How pleasant!" Saxton's voice was smooth as marshmallow. "You're fortunate. I had quite a struggle to get through Princeton." Wasn't Mr. Gilson contrasting Saxton's silk shirt with Milt's darned cotton covering, and in light of that contrast chuckling at Milt's boast and Saxton's modesty? Milt became overheated. His scalp prickled and his shoulder-blades were damp. As Saxton turned from him, and crooned to Claire, "More ham, honey?" Milt hated himself. He was in much of the dramatic but undesirable position of a man in pajamas, not very good pajamas, who has been locked out in the hotel corridor by the slamming of his door. He was in the frame of mind of a mongrel, of a real Boys'-Dog, at a Madison Square dog-show. He had a faint shrewd suspicion of Saxton's game. But what could he do about it? He felt even more out of place when the family forgot him and talked about people of whom he had never heard. He sat alone on an extremely distant desert isle and ate cold ham and wished he were in Schoenstrom. Claire had recovered her power of speech. She seemed to be trying to bring him into the conversation, so that the family might appreciate him. She hesitated, and thought with creased brows, and brought out, "Uh, uh, oh---- Oh Milt: How much is gas selling at now?"... * * * * * Milt left that charming and intimate supper-party at nine. He said, "Got to work on--on my analytical geometry," as though it was a lie; and he threw "Good night" at Saxton as though he hated his kind, good benefactor; and when he tried to be gracious to Mrs. Gilson the best he could get out was, "Thanks f' inviting me." They expansively saw him to the door. Just as he thought that he had escaped, Saxton begged, "Oh, Daggett, I was arguing with a chap---- What color are Holstein-Friesian cattle? Red?" "Black and white," Milt said eagerly. He heard Mrs. Gilson giggle. He stood on the terrace wiping his forehead and, without the least struggle, finally and irretrievably admitting that he would never see Claire Boltwood or any of her friends again. Not--never! * * * * * He had received from Mrs. Gilson a note inviting him to share their box at the first night of a three-night Opera Season. He had spent half a day in trying to think of a courteously rude way of declining. A straggly little girl came up from the candy-shop below his room, demanding, "Say, are you Mr. Daggett? Say, there's some woman wants to talk to you on our telephone. Say, tell them we ain't supposed to be no messenger-office. You ain't supposed to call no upstairs people on our telephone. We ain't supposed to leave the store and go trotting all over town to---- Gee, a nickel, gee, thank you, don't mind what ma says, she's always kicking." On the telephone, he heard Claire's voice in an agitated, "Milt! Meet me down-town, at the Imperial Motion Picture Theater, right away. Something I've got to tell you. I'll be in the lobby. Hurry!" When he bolted in she was already in the lobby, agitatedly looking over a frame of "stills." She ran to him, hooked her fingers in his lapel, poured out, "They've invited you to the opera? I want you to come and put it all over them. I'm almost sure there's a plot. They want to show me that you aren't used to tiaras and saxophones and creaking dowagers and tulle. Beat 'em! Beat 'em! Come to the opera and be awf'ly aloof and supercilious. You can! Yes, you can! And be sure--wear evening clothes. Now I've got to hurry." "B-but----" "Don't disappoint me. I depend on you. Oh, say you will!" "I will!" She was gone, whisking into the Gilson limousine. He was in a glow at her loyalty, in a tremor of anger at the meddlers. But he had never worn evening clothes. He called it "a dress-suit," and before the complications of that exotic garb, he was flabby with anxiety. To Milt and to Schoenstrom--to Bill McGolwey, even to Prof Jones and the greasily prosperous Heinie Rauskukle--the dress-suit was the symbol and proof, the indication and manner, of sophisticated wealth. In Schoenstrom even waiters do not wear dress-suits. For one thing there aren't any waiters. There is one waitress at the Leipzig House, Miss Annie Schweigenblat, but you wouldn't expect Miss Schweigenblat to deal them off the arm in black trousers with braid down the side. No; a dress-suit was what the hero wore in the movies; and the hero in the movies, when he wasn't a cowpuncher, was an ex-captain of the Yale football team, and had chambers and a valet. You could tell him from the valet because he wasn't so bald. It is true that Milt had heard that in St. Cloud there were people who wore dress-suits at parties, but then St. Cloud was a city, fifteen or sixteen thousand. "How could he get away with a dress-suit? How could he keep from feeling foolish in a low-cut vest, and what the deuce would he do with the tails? Did you part 'em or roll 'em up, when you sat down? And wouldn't everybody be able to tell from his foolish look that he didn't belong in one?" He could hear A.D.T. boys and loafers in front of pool rooms whispering, "Look at the piker in the rented soup and fish!" For of course he'd rent one. Nobody bought them--except plutes like Henry B. Boltwood. He agitatedly walked up and down for an hour, peering into haberdashery windows, looking for a kind-faced young man. He found him, in Ye Pall Mall Toggery Shoppe & Shoes; an open-faced young man who was gazing through the window as sparklingly as though he was thinking of going as a missionary to India--and liked curry. Milt ironed out his worried face, clumped in, demanded fraternally, "Say, old man, don't some of these gents' furnishings stores have kind of little charts that tell just what you wear with dress-suits and Prince Alberts and everything?" "You bet," said the kind-faced young man. West of Chicago, "You bet" means "Rather," and "Yes indeed," and "On the whole I should be inclined to fancy that there may be some vestiges of accuracy in your curious opinion," and "You're a liar but I can't afford to say so." The kind-faced young man brought from behind the counter a beautiful brochure illustrated with photographs of Phoebus Apollo in what were described as "American Beauty Garments--neat, natty, nobby, new." The center pages faithfully catalogued the ties, shirts, cuff-links, spats, boots, hats, to wear with evening clothes, morning clothes, riding clothes, tennis costumes, polite mourning. As he looked it over Milt felt that his wardrobe already contained all these gentlemanly possessions. With the aid of the clerk and the chart he purchased a tradition-haunted garment with a plate-armor bosom and an opening as crooked as the Missouri River; a white tie which in his strong red hands looked as silly as a dead fish; waistcoat, pearl links, and studs. For the first time, except for seizures of madness during two or three visits to Minneapolis motor accessory stores, he caught the shopping-fever. The long shining counter, the trim red-stained shelves, the glittering cases, the racks of flaunting ties, were beautiful to him and beckoning. He revolved a pleasantly clicking rack of ties, then turned and fought his way out. He bought pumps--which cost exactly twice as much as the largest sum which he had allowed himself. He bought a newspaper, and in the want-columns found the advertisement: Silberfarb the Society Tailor DRESS SUITS TO RENT Snappiest in the City Despite the superlative snappiness of Mr. Silberfarb's dress-suits his establishment was a loft over a delicatessen, approached by a splintery stairway along which hung shabby signs announcing the upstairs offices of "J. L. & T. J. O'Regan, Private Detectives," "The Zenith Spiritualist Church, Messages by Rev. Lulu Paughouse," "The International Order of Live Ones, Seattle Wigwam," and "Mme. Lavourie, Sulphur Baths." The dead air of the hallway suggested petty crookedness. Milt felt that he ought to fight somebody but, there being no one to fight, he banged along the flapping boards of the second-floor hallway to the ground-glass door of Silberfarb the Society Tailor, who was also, as an afterthought on a straggly placard, "Pressng & Cleang While U Wait." He belligerently shouldered into a low room. The light from the one window was almost obscured by racks of musty-smelling black clothes which stretched away from him in two dismal aisles that resembled a morgue of unhappy dead men indecently hung up on hooks. On a long, clumsily carpentered table, a small Jew, collarless, sweaty, unshaven, was darning trousers under an evil mantle gaslight. The Jew wrung out his hands and tried to look benevolent. "Want to rent a dress-suit," said Milt. "I got just the t'ing for you!" The little man unfolded himself, galloped down the aisle, seized the first garment that came to hand, and came back to lay it against Milt's uncomfortable frame, bumbling, "Fine, mister, fy-en!" Milt studied the shiny-seamed, worn-buttonholed, limp object with dislike. Its personality was disintegrated. The only thing he liked about it was the good garage stink of gasoline. "That's almost worn out," he growled. At this sacrilege Mr. Silberfarb threw up his hands, with the dingy suit flapping in them like a bed-quilt shaken from a tenement window. He looked Milt all over, coldly. His red but shining eyes hinted that Milt was a clodhopper and no honest wearer of evening clothes. Milt felt humble, but he snapped, "No good. Want something with class." "Vell, that was good enough for a university professor at the big dance, but if you say so----" In the manner of one who is being put to an unfair amount of trouble, Mr. Silberfarb returned the paranoiac dress-suit to the rack, sighing patiently as he laboriously draped it on a hanger. He peered and pawed. He crowed with throaty triumph and brought back a rich ripe thing of velvet collar and cuffs. He fixed Milt with eyes that had become as sulky as the eyes of a dog in August dust. "Now that--you can't beat that, if you vant class, and it'll fit you like a glove. Oh, that's an ellllegant garment!" Shaking himself out of the spell of those contemptuous eyes Milt opened his brochure, studied the chart, and in a footnote found, "Never wear velvet collars or cuffs with evening coat." "Nope. Nix on the velvet," he remarked. Then the little man went mad and ran around in circles. He flung the ellllegant garment on the table. He flapped his arms, and wailed, "What do you vant? What do you vannnnt? That's a hundred-and-fifty-dollar dress-suit! That belonged to one of the richest men in the city. He sold it to me because he was going to Japan." "Well, you can send it to Japan after him. I want something decent. Have you got it--or shall I go some place else?" The tailor instantly became affectionate. "How about a nice Tuxedo?" he coaxed. "Nope. It says here--let me see--oh yes, here it is--it says here in the book that for the theater-with-ladies, should not wear 'dinner-coat or so-called Tuxedo, but----'" "Oh, dem fellows what writes books they don't know nothing. Absolute! They make it up." "Huh! Well, I guess I'll take my chance on them. The factory knows the ignition better 'n any repair-man." "Vell say, you're a hard fellow to please. I'll give you one of my reserve stock, but you got to leave me ten dollars deposit instead of five." Mr. Silberfarb quite cheerfully unlocked a glass case behind the racked and ghostly dead; he brought out a suit that seemed to Milt almost decent. And it almost fitted when, after changing clothes in a broiling, boiling, reeking, gasoline-pulsing hole behind the racks, he examined it before a pier-glass. But he caught the tailor assisting the fit by bunching up a roll of cloth at the shoulder. Again Milt snapped, and again the tailor suffered and died, and to a doubting heathen world maintained the true gospel of "What do you vannnnt? It ain't stylish to have the dress-suit too tight! All the gents is wearing 'em loose and graceful." But in the end, after Milt had gone as far as the door, Mr. Silberfarb admitted that one dress-coat wouldn't always fit all persons without some alterations. The coat did bag a little, and it was too long in the sleeves, but as Milt studied himself in his room--by placing his small melancholy mirror on the bureau, then on a chair, then on the floor, finally, to get a complete view, clear out in the hall--he admitted with stirring delight that he looked "pretty fair in the bloomin' outfit." His clear face, his shining hair, his straight shoulders, seemed to go with the costume. He wriggled into his top-coat and marched out of his room, theater-bound, with the well-fed satisfaction of a man who is certain that no one is giggling, "Look at the hand-me-downs." His pumps did alternately pinch his toes and rub his heels; the trousers cramped his waist; and he suspected that his tie had gone wandering. But he swaggered to the trolley, and sat as one rich and famous and very kind to the Common People, till---- Another man in evening clothes got on the car, and Milt saw that he wore a silk hat, and a white knitted scarf; that he took

darling

How many times the word 'darling' appears in the text?

who was the limp indoor-dweller, and he who was the ruddy ranger; that as he had admired her at Flathead Lake, so now it was hers to admire, and his to be serenely heroic. She was not far from the worshiping sub-deb in her sighing, "How _did_ you get the scar?" "That? Oh, nothing." "Please tell me." "Really and truly. Nothing at all. Just a drunken fellow with a knife, playing the fool. I didn't have to touch him--quite sure he could have given me a frightful beating and all that sort of thing. It was the Big Chief who got rid of him." "He--cut you? With a kniiiiiife? Ohhhhhhh!" She ran to him, pityingly stroked the scar, looked down at him with filmy eyes. Then she tried to retreat, but he retained her hand, glanced up at her as though he knew her every thought. She felt weak. How could she escape him? "Please!" she begged flutteringly. If he held her hand another moment, she trembled, she'd be on his lap, in his arms--lost. And he was holding it. He was---- Oh, he was too old for her. Yes, and too paternal. But still---- Life with Jeff would be protected, kindly, honorable. Yet all the time she wanted, and stormily knew she wanted, to be fleeing to the boy Milt, her mate; to run away with him, hand in hand, discovering all the colored world, laughing at life, not afraid of losing dignity. In fear of Jeff's very kindliness and honor, she jerked her hand free. Then she tried to smile like a clever fencer. As she retreated to her chair she stammered, "Did you---- Was Alaska interesting?" He did not let her go, this time. Easy, cat-like for all his dry gravity, he sauntered after her, and with a fine high seriousness pleaded his case: "Claire dear, those few weeks of fighting nature were a revelation to me. I'm going to have lots more of it. As it happens, they need me there. There's plenty of copper, but there's big transportation and employment problems that I seem better able to solve than the other chaps--though of course I'm an absolute muff when it comes to engineering problems. But I've had certain training and--I'm going to arrange things so that I get up there at least once a year. Next summer I'll make a much longer trip--see the mountains--oh, glorious mountains--and funny half-Russian towns, and have some fishing---- Wandering. The really big thing. Even finer than your superb plucky trip through----" "Wasn't plucky! I'm a cry baby," she said, like a bad, contradictory little girl. He didn't argue it. He smiled and said "Tut!" and placidly catalogued her with, "You're the pluckiest girl I've ever seen, and it's all the more amazing because you're not a motion-picture Tomboy, but essentially exquisite----" "I'm a grub." "Very well, then. You're a grub. So am I. And I like it. And when I make the big Alaskan trip next year I want you to go along! Claire! Haven't you any idea how terribly close to me the thought of you has been these weeks? You've guided me through the wilderness----" "It's---- I'm glad." She sprang up, beseeching, "Jeff dear, you're going to stay for tea? I must run up and powder my nose." "Not until you say you're glad to see me. Child dear, we've been ambling along and---- No. You aren't a child any more. You're a woman. And if I've never been quite a man, but just a dusty office-machine, that's gone now. I've got the wind of the wilderness in my lungs. Man and woman! My woman! That's all I'm going to say now, but---- Oh my God, Claire, I do need you so!" He drew her head to his shoulder, and for an instant she rested there. But as she looked up, she saw coming age in the granulated skin of his throat. "He needs me--but he'd boss me. I'd be the cunning child-wife, even at fifty," she worried, and "Hang him, it's like his superiority to beat poor Milt even at adventuring--and to be such a confounded Modest Christian Gentleman about it!" "You'd--you're so dreadfully managing," she sighed aloud. For the first time in all their acquaintanceship, Jeff's pride broke, and he held her away from him, while his lips were pathetic, and he mourned, "Why do you always try to hurt me?" "Oh, my dear, I don't." "Is it because you resent the decent things I have managed to do?" "I don't understand." "If I have an idea for a party, you think I'm 'managing.' If I think things out deeply, you say I'm dull." "Oh, you aren't. I didn't mean----" "What are you? A real woman, or one of these flirts, that love to tease a man because he's foolish enough to be honestly in love?" "I'm not--hon-estly I'm not, Jeff. It's---- You don't quite make me---- It's just that I'm not in love with you. I like you, and respect you terribly, but----" "I'm going to make you love me." His clutching fingers hurt her arm, and somehow she was not angry, but stirred. "But I'm not going to try now. Forget the Alaskan caveman. Remember, I haven't even used the word 'love.' I've just chatted about fjords, or whatever they are, but one of these days---- No. I won't do it. I want to stay here in Seattle a few days, and take you on jolly picnics, but---- Would you rather I didn't even do that? I'm----" He dropped her arm, kneaded his forehead with the heel of his palm. "I can't stand being regarded as a bothersome puppy. I can't stand it! I can't!" "Please stay, Jeff! We'll have some darling drives and things. We'll go up Rainier as far as we can." He stayed. He was anecdotal and amusing at tea, that afternoon. Claire saw how the Gilsons, and two girls who dropped in, admired him. That made her uneasy. And when Mrs. Gilson begged him to leave his hotel and stay with them, he refused with a quick look at Claire that hurt her. "He wants me to be free. He's really so much more considerate than Milt. And I hurt him. Even his pride broke down. And I've spoiled Milt's life by meddling. And I've hurt the Gilsons' feelings. And I'm not much of a comfort to father. Oh, I'm absolutely no good," she agonized. CHAPTER XXX THE VIRTUOUS PLOTTERS Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, in Alaskan tan and New York evening clothes and Piccadilly poise, was talking to the Eugene Gilsons while Claire finished dressing for the theater. Mrs. Gilson observed, "She's the dearest thing. We've become awfully fond of her. But I don't think she knows what she wants to do with life. She's rather at loose ends. Who is this Daggett boy--some university student--whom she seems to like?" "Well, since you speak of him---- I hadn't meant to, unless you did. I want to be fair to him. What did she tell you about him?" Jeff asked confidentially. "Nothing, except that he's a young engineer, and frightfully brave and all those uncomfortable virtues, and she met him in Yellowstone Park or somewhere, and he saved her from a bear--or was it a tramp?--from something unnecessary, at any rate." "Eva, I don't want to be supercilious, but the truth is that this young Daggett is a rather dreadful person. He's been here at the house, hasn't he? How did he strike you?" "Not at all. He's silent, and as dull as lukewarm tea, but perfectly inoffensive." "Then he's cleverer than I thought! Daggett is anything but dull and inoffensive, and if he can play that estimable r le----! It seems that he is the son of some common workman in the Middlewest; he isn't an engineer at all; he's really a chauffeur or a taxi-driver or something; and he ran into Claire and Henry B. on the road, and somehow insinuated himself into their graces--far from being silent and commonplace, he appears to have some strange kind of charm which," Jeff sighed, "I don't understand at all. I simply don't understand it! "I met him in Montana with the most gorgeously atrocious person I've ever encountered--one Pinky Westlake, or some such a name--positively, a crook! He tried to get Boltwood and myself interested in the commonest kind of a mining swindle--hinted that we were to join him in cheating the public. And this Daggett was his partner--they actually traveled together. But I do want to be just. I'm not _sure_ that Daggett was aware of his partner's dishonesty. That isn't what worries me about the lad. It's his utter impossibility. He's as crude as iron-ore. When he's being careful, he may manage to be inconspicuous, but give him the chance---- "Really, I'm not exaggerating when I say that at thirty-five he'll be dining in his shirt-sleeves, and sitting down to read the paper with his shoes off and feet up on the table. But Claire--you know what a dear Quixotic soul she is--she fancies that because this fellow repaired a puncture or something of the sort for her on the road, she's indebted to him, and the worse he is, the more she feels that she must help him. And affairs of that kind---- Oh, it's quite too horrible, but there have been cases, you know, where girls as splendid and fine and well-bred as Claire herself have been trapped into low marriages by their loyalty to cadging adventurers!" "Oh!" groaned Mrs. Gilson; and "Good Lord!" lamented Mr. Gilson, delighted by the possibility of tragedy; and "Really, I'm not exaggerating," said Jeff enthusiastically. "What are we going to do?" demanded Mrs. Gilson; while Mr. Gilson, being of a ready and inventive mind, exclaimed, "By Jove, you ought to kidnap her and marry her yourself, Jeff!" "I'd like to. But I'm too old." They beautifully assured him that he was a blithe young thing with milk teeth; and with a certain satisfaction Jeff suggested, "I tell you what we might do. Of course it's an ancient stunt, but it's good. I judge that Daggett hasn't been here at the house much. Why not have him here so often that Claire will awaken to his crudity, and get sick of him?" "We'll do it," thrilled Mrs. Gilson. "We'll have him for everything from nine-course dinners with Grandmother Eaton's napkins on view, to milk and cold ham out of the ice-box. When Claire doesn't invite him, I will!" CHAPTER XXXI THE KITCHEN INTIMATE Milt had become used to the Gilson drawing-room. He was no longer uncomfortable in the presence of its sleek fatness, though at first (not knowing that there were such resources as interior decorators), he had been convinced that, to have created the room, the Gilsons must have known everything in the world. Now he glanced familiarly at its white paneling, its sconces like silver candlesticks, the inevitable davenport inevitably backed by an amethyst-shaded piano lamp and a table crowded with silver boxes and picture-frames. He liked the winsomeness of light upon velvet and polished wood. It was not the drawing-room but the kitchen that dismayed him. In Schoenstrom he had known that there must somewhere be beautiful "parlors," but he had trusted in his experience of kitchens. Kitchens, according to his philosophy, were small smelly rooms of bare floors, and provided with one oilcloth-covered table, one stove (the front draft always broken and propped up with the lid-lifter), one cupboard with panes of tin pierced in rosettes, and one stack of dirty dishes. But the Gilson kitchen had the efficiency of a laboratory and the superciliousness of a hair-dresser's booth. With awe Milt beheld walls of white tiles, a cork floor, a gas-range large as a hotel-stove, a ceiling-high refrigerator of enamel and nickel, zinc-topped tables, and a case of utensils like a surgeon's knives. It frightened him; it made more hopelessly unapproachable than ever the Alexandrian luxury of the great Gilsons.... The Vanderbilts' kitchen must be like this. And maybe King George's. He was viewing the kitchen upon the occasion of an intimate Sunday evening supper to which he had been yearningly invited by Mrs. Gilson. The maids were all out. The Gilsons and Claire, Milt and Jeff Saxton, shoutingly prepared their own supper. While Mrs. Gilson scrambled eggs and made coffee, the others set the table, and brought cold ham and a bowl of salad from the ice-box. Milt had intended to be a silent but deft servitor. When he had heard that he was to come to supper with the returned Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, he had first been panic-shaken, then resolved. He'd "let old iron-face Saxton do the high and mighty. Let him stand around and show off his clothes and adjectives, way he did at Flathead Lake." But he, Milt, would be "on the job." He'd help get supper, and calmly ignore Jeff's rudeness. Only--Jeff wasn't rude. He greeted Milt with, "Ah, Daggett! This is _so_ nice!" And Milt had no chance to help. It was Jeff who anticipated him and with a pleasant, "Let me get that--I'm kitchen-broke," snatched up the cold ham and salad. It was Jeff who found the supper plates, while Milt was blunderingly wondering how any one family could use a "whole furniture-store-full of different kinds of china." It was Jeff who sprang to help Claire wheel in the tea-wagon, and so captured the chance to speak to her for which Milt had been maneuvering these five minutes. When they were settled, Jeff glowed at him, and respectfully offered, "I thought of you so often, Daggett, on a recent little jaunt of mine. You'd have been helpful." "Where was that?" asked Milt suspiciously (wondering, and waiting to see, whether you could take cold ham in your fingers). "Oh, in Alaska." "In--Alaska?" Milt was dismayed. "Yes, just a business trip there. There's something I wish you'd advise me about." He was humble. And Milt was uneasy. He grumbled, "What's that?" "I've been wondering whether it would be possible to use wireless telephony in Alaska. But I'm such a dub at electricity. Do you know---- What would be the cost of installing a wireless telephone plant with a hundred-mile radius?" "Gee, I don't know!" "Oh, so sorry. Well, I wonder if you can tell me about wireless telegraphy, then?" "No, I don't know anything about that either." Milt had desperately tried to make his answer gracious but somehow---- He hated this devil's obsequiousness more than he had his chilliness at Flathead Lake. He had a feeling that the Gilsons had delightedly kicked each other under the table; that, for all her unchanging smile, Claire was unhappy.... And she was so far off, a white wraith floating beyond his frantic grasp. "It doesn't matter, really. But I didn't know---- So you've started in the engineering school at the University of Washington," Saxton was purring. "Have you met Gid Childers there--son of old Senator Childers--charming people." "I've seen him. He has a Stutz--no, his is the Mercer," sighed Milt. He hated himself for it, but he couldn't quite keep the awe out of his voice. People with Mercers---- Claire seemed to be trying to speak. She made a delicate, feminine, clairesque approximation to clearing her throat. But Jeff ignored her and with almost osculatory affection continued to Milt: "Do let me know if there's anything I can do to help you. We're acquainted with two or three of your engineering faculty at the Office. They write in about various things. Do you happen to know Dr. Philgren?" "Oh yes. Say! He's a wonder!" Milt was betrayed into exclaiming. "Yes. Good chap, I believe. He's been trying to get a job with us. We may give him one. Just tell him you're a friend of mine, and that he's to give you any help he can." Milt choked on a "Thanks." "And--now that we're just the family here together--how goes the financial side? Can I be of any assistance in introducing you to some engineering firm where you could do a little work on the side? You could make quite a little money----" So confoundedly affectionate and paternal---- Milt said irritably, "Thanks, but I don't need to do any work. I've got plenty of money." "How pleasant!" Saxton's voice was smooth as marshmallow. "You're fortunate. I had quite a struggle to get through Princeton." Wasn't Mr. Gilson contrasting Saxton's silk shirt with Milt's darned cotton covering, and in light of that contrast chuckling at Milt's boast and Saxton's modesty? Milt became overheated. His scalp prickled and his shoulder-blades were damp. As Saxton turned from him, and crooned to Claire, "More ham, honey?" Milt hated himself. He was in much of the dramatic but undesirable position of a man in pajamas, not very good pajamas, who has been locked out in the hotel corridor by the slamming of his door. He was in the frame of mind of a mongrel, of a real Boys'-Dog, at a Madison Square dog-show. He had a faint shrewd suspicion of Saxton's game. But what could he do about it? He felt even more out of place when the family forgot him and talked about people of whom he had never heard. He sat alone on an extremely distant desert isle and ate cold ham and wished he were in Schoenstrom. Claire had recovered her power of speech. She seemed to be trying to bring him into the conversation, so that the family might appreciate him. She hesitated, and thought with creased brows, and brought out, "Uh, uh, oh---- Oh Milt: How much is gas selling at now?"... * * * * * Milt left that charming and intimate supper-party at nine. He said, "Got to work on--on my analytical geometry," as though it was a lie; and he threw "Good night" at Saxton as though he hated his kind, good benefactor; and when he tried to be gracious to Mrs. Gilson the best he could get out was, "Thanks f' inviting me." They expansively saw him to the door. Just as he thought that he had escaped, Saxton begged, "Oh, Daggett, I was arguing with a chap---- What color are Holstein-Friesian cattle? Red?" "Black and white," Milt said eagerly. He heard Mrs. Gilson giggle. He stood on the terrace wiping his forehead and, without the least struggle, finally and irretrievably admitting that he would never see Claire Boltwood or any of her friends again. Not--never! * * * * * He had received from Mrs. Gilson a note inviting him to share their box at the first night of a three-night Opera Season. He had spent half a day in trying to think of a courteously rude way of declining. A straggly little girl came up from the candy-shop below his room, demanding, "Say, are you Mr. Daggett? Say, there's some woman wants to talk to you on our telephone. Say, tell them we ain't supposed to be no messenger-office. You ain't supposed to call no upstairs people on our telephone. We ain't supposed to leave the store and go trotting all over town to---- Gee, a nickel, gee, thank you, don't mind what ma says, she's always kicking." On the telephone, he heard Claire's voice in an agitated, "Milt! Meet me down-town, at the Imperial Motion Picture Theater, right away. Something I've got to tell you. I'll be in the lobby. Hurry!" When he bolted in she was already in the lobby, agitatedly looking over a frame of "stills." She ran to him, hooked her fingers in his lapel, poured out, "They've invited you to the opera? I want you to come and put it all over them. I'm almost sure there's a plot. They want to show me that you aren't used to tiaras and saxophones and creaking dowagers and tulle. Beat 'em! Beat 'em! Come to the opera and be awf'ly aloof and supercilious. You can! Yes, you can! And be sure--wear evening clothes. Now I've got to hurry." "B-but----" "Don't disappoint me. I depend on you. Oh, say you will!" "I will!" She was gone, whisking into the Gilson limousine. He was in a glow at her loyalty, in a tremor of anger at the meddlers. But he had never worn evening clothes. He called it "a dress-suit," and before the complications of that exotic garb, he was flabby with anxiety. To Milt and to Schoenstrom--to Bill McGolwey, even to Prof Jones and the greasily prosperous Heinie Rauskukle--the dress-suit was the symbol and proof, the indication and manner, of sophisticated wealth. In Schoenstrom even waiters do not wear dress-suits. For one thing there aren't any waiters. There is one waitress at the Leipzig House, Miss Annie Schweigenblat, but you wouldn't expect Miss Schweigenblat to deal them off the arm in black trousers with braid down the side. No; a dress-suit was what the hero wore in the movies; and the hero in the movies, when he wasn't a cowpuncher, was an ex-captain of the Yale football team, and had chambers and a valet. You could tell him from the valet because he wasn't so bald. It is true that Milt had heard that in St. Cloud there were people who wore dress-suits at parties, but then St. Cloud was a city, fifteen or sixteen thousand. "How could he get away with a dress-suit? How could he keep from feeling foolish in a low-cut vest, and what the deuce would he do with the tails? Did you part 'em or roll 'em up, when you sat down? And wouldn't everybody be able to tell from his foolish look that he didn't belong in one?" He could hear A.D.T. boys and loafers in front of pool rooms whispering, "Look at the piker in the rented soup and fish!" For of course he'd rent one. Nobody bought them--except plutes like Henry B. Boltwood. He agitatedly walked up and down for an hour, peering into haberdashery windows, looking for a kind-faced young man. He found him, in Ye Pall Mall Toggery Shoppe & Shoes; an open-faced young man who was gazing through the window as sparklingly as though he was thinking of going as a missionary to India--and liked curry. Milt ironed out his worried face, clumped in, demanded fraternally, "Say, old man, don't some of these gents' furnishings stores have kind of little charts that tell just what you wear with dress-suits and Prince Alberts and everything?" "You bet," said the kind-faced young man. West of Chicago, "You bet" means "Rather," and "Yes indeed," and "On the whole I should be inclined to fancy that there may be some vestiges of accuracy in your curious opinion," and "You're a liar but I can't afford to say so." The kind-faced young man brought from behind the counter a beautiful brochure illustrated with photographs of Phoebus Apollo in what were described as "American Beauty Garments--neat, natty, nobby, new." The center pages faithfully catalogued the ties, shirts, cuff-links, spats, boots, hats, to wear with evening clothes, morning clothes, riding clothes, tennis costumes, polite mourning. As he looked it over Milt felt that his wardrobe already contained all these gentlemanly possessions. With the aid of the clerk and the chart he purchased a tradition-haunted garment with a plate-armor bosom and an opening as crooked as the Missouri River; a white tie which in his strong red hands looked as silly as a dead fish; waistcoat, pearl links, and studs. For the first time, except for seizures of madness during two or three visits to Minneapolis motor accessory stores, he caught the shopping-fever. The long shining counter, the trim red-stained shelves, the glittering cases, the racks of flaunting ties, were beautiful to him and beckoning. He revolved a pleasantly clicking rack of ties, then turned and fought his way out. He bought pumps--which cost exactly twice as much as the largest sum which he had allowed himself. He bought a newspaper, and in the want-columns found the advertisement: Silberfarb the Society Tailor DRESS SUITS TO RENT Snappiest in the City Despite the superlative snappiness of Mr. Silberfarb's dress-suits his establishment was a loft over a delicatessen, approached by a splintery stairway along which hung shabby signs announcing the upstairs offices of "J. L. & T. J. O'Regan, Private Detectives," "The Zenith Spiritualist Church, Messages by Rev. Lulu Paughouse," "The International Order of Live Ones, Seattle Wigwam," and "Mme. Lavourie, Sulphur Baths." The dead air of the hallway suggested petty crookedness. Milt felt that he ought to fight somebody but, there being no one to fight, he banged along the flapping boards of the second-floor hallway to the ground-glass door of Silberfarb the Society Tailor, who was also, as an afterthought on a straggly placard, "Pressng & Cleang While U Wait." He belligerently shouldered into a low room. The light from the one window was almost obscured by racks of musty-smelling black clothes which stretched away from him in two dismal aisles that resembled a morgue of unhappy dead men indecently hung up on hooks. On a long, clumsily carpentered table, a small Jew, collarless, sweaty, unshaven, was darning trousers under an evil mantle gaslight. The Jew wrung out his hands and tried to look benevolent. "Want to rent a dress-suit," said Milt. "I got just the t'ing for you!" The little man unfolded himself, galloped down the aisle, seized the first garment that came to hand, and came back to lay it against Milt's uncomfortable frame, bumbling, "Fine, mister, fy-en!" Milt studied the shiny-seamed, worn-buttonholed, limp object with dislike. Its personality was disintegrated. The only thing he liked about it was the good garage stink of gasoline. "That's almost worn out," he growled. At this sacrilege Mr. Silberfarb threw up his hands, with the dingy suit flapping in them like a bed-quilt shaken from a tenement window. He looked Milt all over, coldly. His red but shining eyes hinted that Milt was a clodhopper and no honest wearer of evening clothes. Milt felt humble, but he snapped, "No good. Want something with class." "Vell, that was good enough for a university professor at the big dance, but if you say so----" In the manner of one who is being put to an unfair amount of trouble, Mr. Silberfarb returned the paranoiac dress-suit to the rack, sighing patiently as he laboriously draped it on a hanger. He peered and pawed. He crowed with throaty triumph and brought back a rich ripe thing of velvet collar and cuffs. He fixed Milt with eyes that had become as sulky as the eyes of a dog in August dust. "Now that--you can't beat that, if you vant class, and it'll fit you like a glove. Oh, that's an ellllegant garment!" Shaking himself out of the spell of those contemptuous eyes Milt opened his brochure, studied the chart, and in a footnote found, "Never wear velvet collars or cuffs with evening coat." "Nope. Nix on the velvet," he remarked. Then the little man went mad and ran around in circles. He flung the ellllegant garment on the table. He flapped his arms, and wailed, "What do you vant? What do you vannnnt? That's a hundred-and-fifty-dollar dress-suit! That belonged to one of the richest men in the city. He sold it to me because he was going to Japan." "Well, you can send it to Japan after him. I want something decent. Have you got it--or shall I go some place else?" The tailor instantly became affectionate. "How about a nice Tuxedo?" he coaxed. "Nope. It says here--let me see--oh yes, here it is--it says here in the book that for the theater-with-ladies, should not wear 'dinner-coat or so-called Tuxedo, but----'" "Oh, dem fellows what writes books they don't know nothing. Absolute! They make it up." "Huh! Well, I guess I'll take my chance on them. The factory knows the ignition better 'n any repair-man." "Vell say, you're a hard fellow to please. I'll give you one of my reserve stock, but you got to leave me ten dollars deposit instead of five." Mr. Silberfarb quite cheerfully unlocked a glass case behind the racked and ghostly dead; he brought out a suit that seemed to Milt almost decent. And it almost fitted when, after changing clothes in a broiling, boiling, reeking, gasoline-pulsing hole behind the racks, he examined it before a pier-glass. But he caught the tailor assisting the fit by bunching up a roll of cloth at the shoulder. Again Milt snapped, and again the tailor suffered and died, and to a doubting heathen world maintained the true gospel of "What do you vannnnt? It ain't stylish to have the dress-suit too tight! All the gents is wearing 'em loose and graceful." But in the end, after Milt had gone as far as the door, Mr. Silberfarb admitted that one dress-coat wouldn't always fit all persons without some alterations. The coat did bag a little, and it was too long in the sleeves, but as Milt studied himself in his room--by placing his small melancholy mirror on the bureau, then on a chair, then on the floor, finally, to get a complete view, clear out in the hall--he admitted with stirring delight that he looked "pretty fair in the bloomin' outfit." His clear face, his shining hair, his straight shoulders, seemed to go with the costume. He wriggled into his top-coat and marched out of his room, theater-bound, with the well-fed satisfaction of a man who is certain that no one is giggling, "Look at the hand-me-downs." His pumps did alternately pinch his toes and rub his heels; the trousers cramped his waist; and he suspected that his tie had gone wandering. But he swaggered to the trolley, and sat as one rich and famous and very kind to the Common People, till---- Another man in evening clothes got on the car, and Milt saw that he wore a silk hat, and a white knitted scarf; that he took

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who was the limp indoor-dweller, and he who was the ruddy ranger; that as he had admired her at Flathead Lake, so now it was hers to admire, and his to be serenely heroic. She was not far from the worshiping sub-deb in her sighing, "How _did_ you get the scar?" "That? Oh, nothing." "Please tell me." "Really and truly. Nothing at all. Just a drunken fellow with a knife, playing the fool. I didn't have to touch him--quite sure he could have given me a frightful beating and all that sort of thing. It was the Big Chief who got rid of him." "He--cut you? With a kniiiiiife? Ohhhhhhh!" She ran to him, pityingly stroked the scar, looked down at him with filmy eyes. Then she tried to retreat, but he retained her hand, glanced up at her as though he knew her every thought. She felt weak. How could she escape him? "Please!" she begged flutteringly. If he held her hand another moment, she trembled, she'd be on his lap, in his arms--lost. And he was holding it. He was---- Oh, he was too old for her. Yes, and too paternal. But still---- Life with Jeff would be protected, kindly, honorable. Yet all the time she wanted, and stormily knew she wanted, to be fleeing to the boy Milt, her mate; to run away with him, hand in hand, discovering all the colored world, laughing at life, not afraid of losing dignity. In fear of Jeff's very kindliness and honor, she jerked her hand free. Then she tried to smile like a clever fencer. As she retreated to her chair she stammered, "Did you---- Was Alaska interesting?" He did not let her go, this time. Easy, cat-like for all his dry gravity, he sauntered after her, and with a fine high seriousness pleaded his case: "Claire dear, those few weeks of fighting nature were a revelation to me. I'm going to have lots more of it. As it happens, they need me there. There's plenty of copper, but there's big transportation and employment problems that I seem better able to solve than the other chaps--though of course I'm an absolute muff when it comes to engineering problems. But I've had certain training and--I'm going to arrange things so that I get up there at least once a year. Next summer I'll make a much longer trip--see the mountains--oh, glorious mountains--and funny half-Russian towns, and have some fishing---- Wandering. The really big thing. Even finer than your superb plucky trip through----" "Wasn't plucky! I'm a cry baby," she said, like a bad, contradictory little girl. He didn't argue it. He smiled and said "Tut!" and placidly catalogued her with, "You're the pluckiest girl I've ever seen, and it's all the more amazing because you're not a motion-picture Tomboy, but essentially exquisite----" "I'm a grub." "Very well, then. You're a grub. So am I. And I like it. And when I make the big Alaskan trip next year I want you to go along! Claire! Haven't you any idea how terribly close to me the thought of you has been these weeks? You've guided me through the wilderness----" "It's---- I'm glad." She sprang up, beseeching, "Jeff dear, you're going to stay for tea? I must run up and powder my nose." "Not until you say you're glad to see me. Child dear, we've been ambling along and---- No. You aren't a child any more. You're a woman. And if I've never been quite a man, but just a dusty office-machine, that's gone now. I've got the wind of the wilderness in my lungs. Man and woman! My woman! That's all I'm going to say now, but---- Oh my God, Claire, I do need you so!" He drew her head to his shoulder, and for an instant she rested there. But as she looked up, she saw coming age in the granulated skin of his throat. "He needs me--but he'd boss me. I'd be the cunning child-wife, even at fifty," she worried, and "Hang him, it's like his superiority to beat poor Milt even at adventuring--and to be such a confounded Modest Christian Gentleman about it!" "You'd--you're so dreadfully managing," she sighed aloud. For the first time in all their acquaintanceship, Jeff's pride broke, and he held her away from him, while his lips were pathetic, and he mourned, "Why do you always try to hurt me?" "Oh, my dear, I don't." "Is it because you resent the decent things I have managed to do?" "I don't understand." "If I have an idea for a party, you think I'm 'managing.' If I think things out deeply, you say I'm dull." "Oh, you aren't. I didn't mean----" "What are you? A real woman, or one of these flirts, that love to tease a man because he's foolish enough to be honestly in love?" "I'm not--hon-estly I'm not, Jeff. It's---- You don't quite make me---- It's just that I'm not in love with you. I like you, and respect you terribly, but----" "I'm going to make you love me." His clutching fingers hurt her arm, and somehow she was not angry, but stirred. "But I'm not going to try now. Forget the Alaskan caveman. Remember, I haven't even used the word 'love.' I've just chatted about fjords, or whatever they are, but one of these days---- No. I won't do it. I want to stay here in Seattle a few days, and take you on jolly picnics, but---- Would you rather I didn't even do that? I'm----" He dropped her arm, kneaded his forehead with the heel of his palm. "I can't stand being regarded as a bothersome puppy. I can't stand it! I can't!" "Please stay, Jeff! We'll have some darling drives and things. We'll go up Rainier as far as we can." He stayed. He was anecdotal and amusing at tea, that afternoon. Claire saw how the Gilsons, and two girls who dropped in, admired him. That made her uneasy. And when Mrs. Gilson begged him to leave his hotel and stay with them, he refused with a quick look at Claire that hurt her. "He wants me to be free. He's really so much more considerate than Milt. And I hurt him. Even his pride broke down. And I've spoiled Milt's life by meddling. And I've hurt the Gilsons' feelings. And I'm not much of a comfort to father. Oh, I'm absolutely no good," she agonized. CHAPTER XXX THE VIRTUOUS PLOTTERS Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, in Alaskan tan and New York evening clothes and Piccadilly poise, was talking to the Eugene Gilsons while Claire finished dressing for the theater. Mrs. Gilson observed, "She's the dearest thing. We've become awfully fond of her. But I don't think she knows what she wants to do with life. She's rather at loose ends. Who is this Daggett boy--some university student--whom she seems to like?" "Well, since you speak of him---- I hadn't meant to, unless you did. I want to be fair to him. What did she tell you about him?" Jeff asked confidentially. "Nothing, except that he's a young engineer, and frightfully brave and all those uncomfortable virtues, and she met him in Yellowstone Park or somewhere, and he saved her from a bear--or was it a tramp?--from something unnecessary, at any rate." "Eva, I don't want to be supercilious, but the truth is that this young Daggett is a rather dreadful person. He's been here at the house, hasn't he? How did he strike you?" "Not at all. He's silent, and as dull as lukewarm tea, but perfectly inoffensive." "Then he's cleverer than I thought! Daggett is anything but dull and inoffensive, and if he can play that estimable r le----! It seems that he is the son of some common workman in the Middlewest; he isn't an engineer at all; he's really a chauffeur or a taxi-driver or something; and he ran into Claire and Henry B. on the road, and somehow insinuated himself into their graces--far from being silent and commonplace, he appears to have some strange kind of charm which," Jeff sighed, "I don't understand at all. I simply don't understand it! "I met him in Montana with the most gorgeously atrocious person I've ever encountered--one Pinky Westlake, or some such a name--positively, a crook! He tried to get Boltwood and myself interested in the commonest kind of a mining swindle--hinted that we were to join him in cheating the public. And this Daggett was his partner--they actually traveled together. But I do want to be just. I'm not _sure_ that Daggett was aware of his partner's dishonesty. That isn't what worries me about the lad. It's his utter impossibility. He's as crude as iron-ore. When he's being careful, he may manage to be inconspicuous, but give him the chance---- "Really, I'm not exaggerating when I say that at thirty-five he'll be dining in his shirt-sleeves, and sitting down to read the paper with his shoes off and feet up on the table. But Claire--you know what a dear Quixotic soul she is--she fancies that because this fellow repaired a puncture or something of the sort for her on the road, she's indebted to him, and the worse he is, the more she feels that she must help him. And affairs of that kind---- Oh, it's quite too horrible, but there have been cases, you know, where girls as splendid and fine and well-bred as Claire herself have been trapped into low marriages by their loyalty to cadging adventurers!" "Oh!" groaned Mrs. Gilson; and "Good Lord!" lamented Mr. Gilson, delighted by the possibility of tragedy; and "Really, I'm not exaggerating," said Jeff enthusiastically. "What are we going to do?" demanded Mrs. Gilson; while Mr. Gilson, being of a ready and inventive mind, exclaimed, "By Jove, you ought to kidnap her and marry her yourself, Jeff!" "I'd like to. But I'm too old." They beautifully assured him that he was a blithe young thing with milk teeth; and with a certain satisfaction Jeff suggested, "I tell you what we might do. Of course it's an ancient stunt, but it's good. I judge that Daggett hasn't been here at the house much. Why not have him here so often that Claire will awaken to his crudity, and get sick of him?" "We'll do it," thrilled Mrs. Gilson. "We'll have him for everything from nine-course dinners with Grandmother Eaton's napkins on view, to milk and cold ham out of the ice-box. When Claire doesn't invite him, I will!" CHAPTER XXXI THE KITCHEN INTIMATE Milt had become used to the Gilson drawing-room. He was no longer uncomfortable in the presence of its sleek fatness, though at first (not knowing that there were such resources as interior decorators), he had been convinced that, to have created the room, the Gilsons must have known everything in the world. Now he glanced familiarly at its white paneling, its sconces like silver candlesticks, the inevitable davenport inevitably backed by an amethyst-shaded piano lamp and a table crowded with silver boxes and picture-frames. He liked the winsomeness of light upon velvet and polished wood. It was not the drawing-room but the kitchen that dismayed him. In Schoenstrom he had known that there must somewhere be beautiful "parlors," but he had trusted in his experience of kitchens. Kitchens, according to his philosophy, were small smelly rooms of bare floors, and provided with one oilcloth-covered table, one stove (the front draft always broken and propped up with the lid-lifter), one cupboard with panes of tin pierced in rosettes, and one stack of dirty dishes. But the Gilson kitchen had the efficiency of a laboratory and the superciliousness of a hair-dresser's booth. With awe Milt beheld walls of white tiles, a cork floor, a gas-range large as a hotel-stove, a ceiling-high refrigerator of enamel and nickel, zinc-topped tables, and a case of utensils like a surgeon's knives. It frightened him; it made more hopelessly unapproachable than ever the Alexandrian luxury of the great Gilsons.... The Vanderbilts' kitchen must be like this. And maybe King George's. He was viewing the kitchen upon the occasion of an intimate Sunday evening supper to which he had been yearningly invited by Mrs. Gilson. The maids were all out. The Gilsons and Claire, Milt and Jeff Saxton, shoutingly prepared their own supper. While Mrs. Gilson scrambled eggs and made coffee, the others set the table, and brought cold ham and a bowl of salad from the ice-box. Milt had intended to be a silent but deft servitor. When he had heard that he was to come to supper with the returned Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, he had first been panic-shaken, then resolved. He'd "let old iron-face Saxton do the high and mighty. Let him stand around and show off his clothes and adjectives, way he did at Flathead Lake." But he, Milt, would be "on the job." He'd help get supper, and calmly ignore Jeff's rudeness. Only--Jeff wasn't rude. He greeted Milt with, "Ah, Daggett! This is _so_ nice!" And Milt had no chance to help. It was Jeff who anticipated him and with a pleasant, "Let me get that--I'm kitchen-broke," snatched up the cold ham and salad. It was Jeff who found the supper plates, while Milt was blunderingly wondering how any one family could use a "whole furniture-store-full of different kinds of china." It was Jeff who sprang to help Claire wheel in the tea-wagon, and so captured the chance to speak to her for which Milt had been maneuvering these five minutes. When they were settled, Jeff glowed at him, and respectfully offered, "I thought of you so often, Daggett, on a recent little jaunt of mine. You'd have been helpful." "Where was that?" asked Milt suspiciously (wondering, and waiting to see, whether you could take cold ham in your fingers). "Oh, in Alaska." "In--Alaska?" Milt was dismayed. "Yes, just a business trip there. There's something I wish you'd advise me about." He was humble. And Milt was uneasy. He grumbled, "What's that?" "I've been wondering whether it would be possible to use wireless telephony in Alaska. But I'm such a dub at electricity. Do you know---- What would be the cost of installing a wireless telephone plant with a hundred-mile radius?" "Gee, I don't know!" "Oh, so sorry. Well, I wonder if you can tell me about wireless telegraphy, then?" "No, I don't know anything about that either." Milt had desperately tried to make his answer gracious but somehow---- He hated this devil's obsequiousness more than he had his chilliness at Flathead Lake. He had a feeling that the Gilsons had delightedly kicked each other under the table; that, for all her unchanging smile, Claire was unhappy.... And she was so far off, a white wraith floating beyond his frantic grasp. "It doesn't matter, really. But I didn't know---- So you've started in the engineering school at the University of Washington," Saxton was purring. "Have you met Gid Childers there--son of old Senator Childers--charming people." "I've seen him. He has a Stutz--no, his is the Mercer," sighed Milt. He hated himself for it, but he couldn't quite keep the awe out of his voice. People with Mercers---- Claire seemed to be trying to speak. She made a delicate, feminine, clairesque approximation to clearing her throat. But Jeff ignored her and with almost osculatory affection continued to Milt: "Do let me know if there's anything I can do to help you. We're acquainted with two or three of your engineering faculty at the Office. They write in about various things. Do you happen to know Dr. Philgren?" "Oh yes. Say! He's a wonder!" Milt was betrayed into exclaiming. "Yes. Good chap, I believe. He's been trying to get a job with us. We may give him one. Just tell him you're a friend of mine, and that he's to give you any help he can." Milt choked on a "Thanks." "And--now that we're just the family here together--how goes the financial side? Can I be of any assistance in introducing you to some engineering firm where you could do a little work on the side? You could make quite a little money----" So confoundedly affectionate and paternal---- Milt said irritably, "Thanks, but I don't need to do any work. I've got plenty of money." "How pleasant!" Saxton's voice was smooth as marshmallow. "You're fortunate. I had quite a struggle to get through Princeton." Wasn't Mr. Gilson contrasting Saxton's silk shirt with Milt's darned cotton covering, and in light of that contrast chuckling at Milt's boast and Saxton's modesty? Milt became overheated. His scalp prickled and his shoulder-blades were damp. As Saxton turned from him, and crooned to Claire, "More ham, honey?" Milt hated himself. He was in much of the dramatic but undesirable position of a man in pajamas, not very good pajamas, who has been locked out in the hotel corridor by the slamming of his door. He was in the frame of mind of a mongrel, of a real Boys'-Dog, at a Madison Square dog-show. He had a faint shrewd suspicion of Saxton's game. But what could he do about it? He felt even more out of place when the family forgot him and talked about people of whom he had never heard. He sat alone on an extremely distant desert isle and ate cold ham and wished he were in Schoenstrom. Claire had recovered her power of speech. She seemed to be trying to bring him into the conversation, so that the family might appreciate him. She hesitated, and thought with creased brows, and brought out, "Uh, uh, oh---- Oh Milt: How much is gas selling at now?"... * * * * * Milt left that charming and intimate supper-party at nine. He said, "Got to work on--on my analytical geometry," as though it was a lie; and he threw "Good night" at Saxton as though he hated his kind, good benefactor; and when he tried to be gracious to Mrs. Gilson the best he could get out was, "Thanks f' inviting me." They expansively saw him to the door. Just as he thought that he had escaped, Saxton begged, "Oh, Daggett, I was arguing with a chap---- What color are Holstein-Friesian cattle? Red?" "Black and white," Milt said eagerly. He heard Mrs. Gilson giggle. He stood on the terrace wiping his forehead and, without the least struggle, finally and irretrievably admitting that he would never see Claire Boltwood or any of her friends again. Not--never! * * * * * He had received from Mrs. Gilson a note inviting him to share their box at the first night of a three-night Opera Season. He had spent half a day in trying to think of a courteously rude way of declining. A straggly little girl came up from the candy-shop below his room, demanding, "Say, are you Mr. Daggett? Say, there's some woman wants to talk to you on our telephone. Say, tell them we ain't supposed to be no messenger-office. You ain't supposed to call no upstairs people on our telephone. We ain't supposed to leave the store and go trotting all over town to---- Gee, a nickel, gee, thank you, don't mind what ma says, she's always kicking." On the telephone, he heard Claire's voice in an agitated, "Milt! Meet me down-town, at the Imperial Motion Picture Theater, right away. Something I've got to tell you. I'll be in the lobby. Hurry!" When he bolted in she was already in the lobby, agitatedly looking over a frame of "stills." She ran to him, hooked her fingers in his lapel, poured out, "They've invited you to the opera? I want you to come and put it all over them. I'm almost sure there's a plot. They want to show me that you aren't used to tiaras and saxophones and creaking dowagers and tulle. Beat 'em! Beat 'em! Come to the opera and be awf'ly aloof and supercilious. You can! Yes, you can! And be sure--wear evening clothes. Now I've got to hurry." "B-but----" "Don't disappoint me. I depend on you. Oh, say you will!" "I will!" She was gone, whisking into the Gilson limousine. He was in a glow at her loyalty, in a tremor of anger at the meddlers. But he had never worn evening clothes. He called it "a dress-suit," and before the complications of that exotic garb, he was flabby with anxiety. To Milt and to Schoenstrom--to Bill McGolwey, even to Prof Jones and the greasily prosperous Heinie Rauskukle--the dress-suit was the symbol and proof, the indication and manner, of sophisticated wealth. In Schoenstrom even waiters do not wear dress-suits. For one thing there aren't any waiters. There is one waitress at the Leipzig House, Miss Annie Schweigenblat, but you wouldn't expect Miss Schweigenblat to deal them off the arm in black trousers with braid down the side. No; a dress-suit was what the hero wore in the movies; and the hero in the movies, when he wasn't a cowpuncher, was an ex-captain of the Yale football team, and had chambers and a valet. You could tell him from the valet because he wasn't so bald. It is true that Milt had heard that in St. Cloud there were people who wore dress-suits at parties, but then St. Cloud was a city, fifteen or sixteen thousand. "How could he get away with a dress-suit? How could he keep from feeling foolish in a low-cut vest, and what the deuce would he do with the tails? Did you part 'em or roll 'em up, when you sat down? And wouldn't everybody be able to tell from his foolish look that he didn't belong in one?" He could hear A.D.T. boys and loafers in front of pool rooms whispering, "Look at the piker in the rented soup and fish!" For of course he'd rent one. Nobody bought them--except plutes like Henry B. Boltwood. He agitatedly walked up and down for an hour, peering into haberdashery windows, looking for a kind-faced young man. He found him, in Ye Pall Mall Toggery Shoppe & Shoes; an open-faced young man who was gazing through the window as sparklingly as though he was thinking of going as a missionary to India--and liked curry. Milt ironed out his worried face, clumped in, demanded fraternally, "Say, old man, don't some of these gents' furnishings stores have kind of little charts that tell just what you wear with dress-suits and Prince Alberts and everything?" "You bet," said the kind-faced young man. West of Chicago, "You bet" means "Rather," and "Yes indeed," and "On the whole I should be inclined to fancy that there may be some vestiges of accuracy in your curious opinion," and "You're a liar but I can't afford to say so." The kind-faced young man brought from behind the counter a beautiful brochure illustrated with photographs of Phoebus Apollo in what were described as "American Beauty Garments--neat, natty, nobby, new." The center pages faithfully catalogued the ties, shirts, cuff-links, spats, boots, hats, to wear with evening clothes, morning clothes, riding clothes, tennis costumes, polite mourning. As he looked it over Milt felt that his wardrobe already contained all these gentlemanly possessions. With the aid of the clerk and the chart he purchased a tradition-haunted garment with a plate-armor bosom and an opening as crooked as the Missouri River; a white tie which in his strong red hands looked as silly as a dead fish; waistcoat, pearl links, and studs. For the first time, except for seizures of madness during two or three visits to Minneapolis motor accessory stores, he caught the shopping-fever. The long shining counter, the trim red-stained shelves, the glittering cases, the racks of flaunting ties, were beautiful to him and beckoning. He revolved a pleasantly clicking rack of ties, then turned and fought his way out. He bought pumps--which cost exactly twice as much as the largest sum which he had allowed himself. He bought a newspaper, and in the want-columns found the advertisement: Silberfarb the Society Tailor DRESS SUITS TO RENT Snappiest in the City Despite the superlative snappiness of Mr. Silberfarb's dress-suits his establishment was a loft over a delicatessen, approached by a splintery stairway along which hung shabby signs announcing the upstairs offices of "J. L. & T. J. O'Regan, Private Detectives," "The Zenith Spiritualist Church, Messages by Rev. Lulu Paughouse," "The International Order of Live Ones, Seattle Wigwam," and "Mme. Lavourie, Sulphur Baths." The dead air of the hallway suggested petty crookedness. Milt felt that he ought to fight somebody but, there being no one to fight, he banged along the flapping boards of the second-floor hallway to the ground-glass door of Silberfarb the Society Tailor, who was also, as an afterthought on a straggly placard, "Pressng & Cleang While U Wait." He belligerently shouldered into a low room. The light from the one window was almost obscured by racks of musty-smelling black clothes which stretched away from him in two dismal aisles that resembled a morgue of unhappy dead men indecently hung up on hooks. On a long, clumsily carpentered table, a small Jew, collarless, sweaty, unshaven, was darning trousers under an evil mantle gaslight. The Jew wrung out his hands and tried to look benevolent. "Want to rent a dress-suit," said Milt. "I got just the t'ing for you!" The little man unfolded himself, galloped down the aisle, seized the first garment that came to hand, and came back to lay it against Milt's uncomfortable frame, bumbling, "Fine, mister, fy-en!" Milt studied the shiny-seamed, worn-buttonholed, limp object with dislike. Its personality was disintegrated. The only thing he liked about it was the good garage stink of gasoline. "That's almost worn out," he growled. At this sacrilege Mr. Silberfarb threw up his hands, with the dingy suit flapping in them like a bed-quilt shaken from a tenement window. He looked Milt all over, coldly. His red but shining eyes hinted that Milt was a clodhopper and no honest wearer of evening clothes. Milt felt humble, but he snapped, "No good. Want something with class." "Vell, that was good enough for a university professor at the big dance, but if you say so----" In the manner of one who is being put to an unfair amount of trouble, Mr. Silberfarb returned the paranoiac dress-suit to the rack, sighing patiently as he laboriously draped it on a hanger. He peered and pawed. He crowed with throaty triumph and brought back a rich ripe thing of velvet collar and cuffs. He fixed Milt with eyes that had become as sulky as the eyes of a dog in August dust. "Now that--you can't beat that, if you vant class, and it'll fit you like a glove. Oh, that's an ellllegant garment!" Shaking himself out of the spell of those contemptuous eyes Milt opened his brochure, studied the chart, and in a footnote found, "Never wear velvet collars or cuffs with evening coat." "Nope. Nix on the velvet," he remarked. Then the little man went mad and ran around in circles. He flung the ellllegant garment on the table. He flapped his arms, and wailed, "What do you vant? What do you vannnnt? That's a hundred-and-fifty-dollar dress-suit! That belonged to one of the richest men in the city. He sold it to me because he was going to Japan." "Well, you can send it to Japan after him. I want something decent. Have you got it--or shall I go some place else?" The tailor instantly became affectionate. "How about a nice Tuxedo?" he coaxed. "Nope. It says here--let me see--oh yes, here it is--it says here in the book that for the theater-with-ladies, should not wear 'dinner-coat or so-called Tuxedo, but----'" "Oh, dem fellows what writes books they don't know nothing. Absolute! They make it up." "Huh! Well, I guess I'll take my chance on them. The factory knows the ignition better 'n any repair-man." "Vell say, you're a hard fellow to please. I'll give you one of my reserve stock, but you got to leave me ten dollars deposit instead of five." Mr. Silberfarb quite cheerfully unlocked a glass case behind the racked and ghostly dead; he brought out a suit that seemed to Milt almost decent. And it almost fitted when, after changing clothes in a broiling, boiling, reeking, gasoline-pulsing hole behind the racks, he examined it before a pier-glass. But he caught the tailor assisting the fit by bunching up a roll of cloth at the shoulder. Again Milt snapped, and again the tailor suffered and died, and to a doubting heathen world maintained the true gospel of "What do you vannnnt? It ain't stylish to have the dress-suit too tight! All the gents is wearing 'em loose and graceful." But in the end, after Milt had gone as far as the door, Mr. Silberfarb admitted that one dress-coat wouldn't always fit all persons without some alterations. The coat did bag a little, and it was too long in the sleeves, but as Milt studied himself in his room--by placing his small melancholy mirror on the bureau, then on a chair, then on the floor, finally, to get a complete view, clear out in the hall--he admitted with stirring delight that he looked "pretty fair in the bloomin' outfit." His clear face, his shining hair, his straight shoulders, seemed to go with the costume. He wriggled into his top-coat and marched out of his room, theater-bound, with the well-fed satisfaction of a man who is certain that no one is giggling, "Look at the hand-me-downs." His pumps did alternately pinch his toes and rub his heels; the trousers cramped his waist; and he suspected that his tie had gone wandering. But he swaggered to the trolley, and sat as one rich and famous and very kind to the Common People, till---- Another man in evening clothes got on the car, and Milt saw that he wore a silk hat, and a white knitted scarf; that he took

does

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who was the limp indoor-dweller, and he who was the ruddy ranger; that as he had admired her at Flathead Lake, so now it was hers to admire, and his to be serenely heroic. She was not far from the worshiping sub-deb in her sighing, "How _did_ you get the scar?" "That? Oh, nothing." "Please tell me." "Really and truly. Nothing at all. Just a drunken fellow with a knife, playing the fool. I didn't have to touch him--quite sure he could have given me a frightful beating and all that sort of thing. It was the Big Chief who got rid of him." "He--cut you? With a kniiiiiife? Ohhhhhhh!" She ran to him, pityingly stroked the scar, looked down at him with filmy eyes. Then she tried to retreat, but he retained her hand, glanced up at her as though he knew her every thought. She felt weak. How could she escape him? "Please!" she begged flutteringly. If he held her hand another moment, she trembled, she'd be on his lap, in his arms--lost. And he was holding it. He was---- Oh, he was too old for her. Yes, and too paternal. But still---- Life with Jeff would be protected, kindly, honorable. Yet all the time she wanted, and stormily knew she wanted, to be fleeing to the boy Milt, her mate; to run away with him, hand in hand, discovering all the colored world, laughing at life, not afraid of losing dignity. In fear of Jeff's very kindliness and honor, she jerked her hand free. Then she tried to smile like a clever fencer. As she retreated to her chair she stammered, "Did you---- Was Alaska interesting?" He did not let her go, this time. Easy, cat-like for all his dry gravity, he sauntered after her, and with a fine high seriousness pleaded his case: "Claire dear, those few weeks of fighting nature were a revelation to me. I'm going to have lots more of it. As it happens, they need me there. There's plenty of copper, but there's big transportation and employment problems that I seem better able to solve than the other chaps--though of course I'm an absolute muff when it comes to engineering problems. But I've had certain training and--I'm going to arrange things so that I get up there at least once a year. Next summer I'll make a much longer trip--see the mountains--oh, glorious mountains--and funny half-Russian towns, and have some fishing---- Wandering. The really big thing. Even finer than your superb plucky trip through----" "Wasn't plucky! I'm a cry baby," she said, like a bad, contradictory little girl. He didn't argue it. He smiled and said "Tut!" and placidly catalogued her with, "You're the pluckiest girl I've ever seen, and it's all the more amazing because you're not a motion-picture Tomboy, but essentially exquisite----" "I'm a grub." "Very well, then. You're a grub. So am I. And I like it. And when I make the big Alaskan trip next year I want you to go along! Claire! Haven't you any idea how terribly close to me the thought of you has been these weeks? You've guided me through the wilderness----" "It's---- I'm glad." She sprang up, beseeching, "Jeff dear, you're going to stay for tea? I must run up and powder my nose." "Not until you say you're glad to see me. Child dear, we've been ambling along and---- No. You aren't a child any more. You're a woman. And if I've never been quite a man, but just a dusty office-machine, that's gone now. I've got the wind of the wilderness in my lungs. Man and woman! My woman! That's all I'm going to say now, but---- Oh my God, Claire, I do need you so!" He drew her head to his shoulder, and for an instant she rested there. But as she looked up, she saw coming age in the granulated skin of his throat. "He needs me--but he'd boss me. I'd be the cunning child-wife, even at fifty," she worried, and "Hang him, it's like his superiority to beat poor Milt even at adventuring--and to be such a confounded Modest Christian Gentleman about it!" "You'd--you're so dreadfully managing," she sighed aloud. For the first time in all their acquaintanceship, Jeff's pride broke, and he held her away from him, while his lips were pathetic, and he mourned, "Why do you always try to hurt me?" "Oh, my dear, I don't." "Is it because you resent the decent things I have managed to do?" "I don't understand." "If I have an idea for a party, you think I'm 'managing.' If I think things out deeply, you say I'm dull." "Oh, you aren't. I didn't mean----" "What are you? A real woman, or one of these flirts, that love to tease a man because he's foolish enough to be honestly in love?" "I'm not--hon-estly I'm not, Jeff. It's---- You don't quite make me---- It's just that I'm not in love with you. I like you, and respect you terribly, but----" "I'm going to make you love me." His clutching fingers hurt her arm, and somehow she was not angry, but stirred. "But I'm not going to try now. Forget the Alaskan caveman. Remember, I haven't even used the word 'love.' I've just chatted about fjords, or whatever they are, but one of these days---- No. I won't do it. I want to stay here in Seattle a few days, and take you on jolly picnics, but---- Would you rather I didn't even do that? I'm----" He dropped her arm, kneaded his forehead with the heel of his palm. "I can't stand being regarded as a bothersome puppy. I can't stand it! I can't!" "Please stay, Jeff! We'll have some darling drives and things. We'll go up Rainier as far as we can." He stayed. He was anecdotal and amusing at tea, that afternoon. Claire saw how the Gilsons, and two girls who dropped in, admired him. That made her uneasy. And when Mrs. Gilson begged him to leave his hotel and stay with them, he refused with a quick look at Claire that hurt her. "He wants me to be free. He's really so much more considerate than Milt. And I hurt him. Even his pride broke down. And I've spoiled Milt's life by meddling. And I've hurt the Gilsons' feelings. And I'm not much of a comfort to father. Oh, I'm absolutely no good," she agonized. CHAPTER XXX THE VIRTUOUS PLOTTERS Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, in Alaskan tan and New York evening clothes and Piccadilly poise, was talking to the Eugene Gilsons while Claire finished dressing for the theater. Mrs. Gilson observed, "She's the dearest thing. We've become awfully fond of her. But I don't think she knows what she wants to do with life. She's rather at loose ends. Who is this Daggett boy--some university student--whom she seems to like?" "Well, since you speak of him---- I hadn't meant to, unless you did. I want to be fair to him. What did she tell you about him?" Jeff asked confidentially. "Nothing, except that he's a young engineer, and frightfully brave and all those uncomfortable virtues, and she met him in Yellowstone Park or somewhere, and he saved her from a bear--or was it a tramp?--from something unnecessary, at any rate." "Eva, I don't want to be supercilious, but the truth is that this young Daggett is a rather dreadful person. He's been here at the house, hasn't he? How did he strike you?" "Not at all. He's silent, and as dull as lukewarm tea, but perfectly inoffensive." "Then he's cleverer than I thought! Daggett is anything but dull and inoffensive, and if he can play that estimable r le----! It seems that he is the son of some common workman in the Middlewest; he isn't an engineer at all; he's really a chauffeur or a taxi-driver or something; and he ran into Claire and Henry B. on the road, and somehow insinuated himself into their graces--far from being silent and commonplace, he appears to have some strange kind of charm which," Jeff sighed, "I don't understand at all. I simply don't understand it! "I met him in Montana with the most gorgeously atrocious person I've ever encountered--one Pinky Westlake, or some such a name--positively, a crook! He tried to get Boltwood and myself interested in the commonest kind of a mining swindle--hinted that we were to join him in cheating the public. And this Daggett was his partner--they actually traveled together. But I do want to be just. I'm not _sure_ that Daggett was aware of his partner's dishonesty. That isn't what worries me about the lad. It's his utter impossibility. He's as crude as iron-ore. When he's being careful, he may manage to be inconspicuous, but give him the chance---- "Really, I'm not exaggerating when I say that at thirty-five he'll be dining in his shirt-sleeves, and sitting down to read the paper with his shoes off and feet up on the table. But Claire--you know what a dear Quixotic soul she is--she fancies that because this fellow repaired a puncture or something of the sort for her on the road, she's indebted to him, and the worse he is, the more she feels that she must help him. And affairs of that kind---- Oh, it's quite too horrible, but there have been cases, you know, where girls as splendid and fine and well-bred as Claire herself have been trapped into low marriages by their loyalty to cadging adventurers!" "Oh!" groaned Mrs. Gilson; and "Good Lord!" lamented Mr. Gilson, delighted by the possibility of tragedy; and "Really, I'm not exaggerating," said Jeff enthusiastically. "What are we going to do?" demanded Mrs. Gilson; while Mr. Gilson, being of a ready and inventive mind, exclaimed, "By Jove, you ought to kidnap her and marry her yourself, Jeff!" "I'd like to. But I'm too old." They beautifully assured him that he was a blithe young thing with milk teeth; and with a certain satisfaction Jeff suggested, "I tell you what we might do. Of course it's an ancient stunt, but it's good. I judge that Daggett hasn't been here at the house much. Why not have him here so often that Claire will awaken to his crudity, and get sick of him?" "We'll do it," thrilled Mrs. Gilson. "We'll have him for everything from nine-course dinners with Grandmother Eaton's napkins on view, to milk and cold ham out of the ice-box. When Claire doesn't invite him, I will!" CHAPTER XXXI THE KITCHEN INTIMATE Milt had become used to the Gilson drawing-room. He was no longer uncomfortable in the presence of its sleek fatness, though at first (not knowing that there were such resources as interior decorators), he had been convinced that, to have created the room, the Gilsons must have known everything in the world. Now he glanced familiarly at its white paneling, its sconces like silver candlesticks, the inevitable davenport inevitably backed by an amethyst-shaded piano lamp and a table crowded with silver boxes and picture-frames. He liked the winsomeness of light upon velvet and polished wood. It was not the drawing-room but the kitchen that dismayed him. In Schoenstrom he had known that there must somewhere be beautiful "parlors," but he had trusted in his experience of kitchens. Kitchens, according to his philosophy, were small smelly rooms of bare floors, and provided with one oilcloth-covered table, one stove (the front draft always broken and propped up with the lid-lifter), one cupboard with panes of tin pierced in rosettes, and one stack of dirty dishes. But the Gilson kitchen had the efficiency of a laboratory and the superciliousness of a hair-dresser's booth. With awe Milt beheld walls of white tiles, a cork floor, a gas-range large as a hotel-stove, a ceiling-high refrigerator of enamel and nickel, zinc-topped tables, and a case of utensils like a surgeon's knives. It frightened him; it made more hopelessly unapproachable than ever the Alexandrian luxury of the great Gilsons.... The Vanderbilts' kitchen must be like this. And maybe King George's. He was viewing the kitchen upon the occasion of an intimate Sunday evening supper to which he had been yearningly invited by Mrs. Gilson. The maids were all out. The Gilsons and Claire, Milt and Jeff Saxton, shoutingly prepared their own supper. While Mrs. Gilson scrambled eggs and made coffee, the others set the table, and brought cold ham and a bowl of salad from the ice-box. Milt had intended to be a silent but deft servitor. When he had heard that he was to come to supper with the returned Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, he had first been panic-shaken, then resolved. He'd "let old iron-face Saxton do the high and mighty. Let him stand around and show off his clothes and adjectives, way he did at Flathead Lake." But he, Milt, would be "on the job." He'd help get supper, and calmly ignore Jeff's rudeness. Only--Jeff wasn't rude. He greeted Milt with, "Ah, Daggett! This is _so_ nice!" And Milt had no chance to help. It was Jeff who anticipated him and with a pleasant, "Let me get that--I'm kitchen-broke," snatched up the cold ham and salad. It was Jeff who found the supper plates, while Milt was blunderingly wondering how any one family could use a "whole furniture-store-full of different kinds of china." It was Jeff who sprang to help Claire wheel in the tea-wagon, and so captured the chance to speak to her for which Milt had been maneuvering these five minutes. When they were settled, Jeff glowed at him, and respectfully offered, "I thought of you so often, Daggett, on a recent little jaunt of mine. You'd have been helpful." "Where was that?" asked Milt suspiciously (wondering, and waiting to see, whether you could take cold ham in your fingers). "Oh, in Alaska." "In--Alaska?" Milt was dismayed. "Yes, just a business trip there. There's something I wish you'd advise me about." He was humble. And Milt was uneasy. He grumbled, "What's that?" "I've been wondering whether it would be possible to use wireless telephony in Alaska. But I'm such a dub at electricity. Do you know---- What would be the cost of installing a wireless telephone plant with a hundred-mile radius?" "Gee, I don't know!" "Oh, so sorry. Well, I wonder if you can tell me about wireless telegraphy, then?" "No, I don't know anything about that either." Milt had desperately tried to make his answer gracious but somehow---- He hated this devil's obsequiousness more than he had his chilliness at Flathead Lake. He had a feeling that the Gilsons had delightedly kicked each other under the table; that, for all her unchanging smile, Claire was unhappy.... And she was so far off, a white wraith floating beyond his frantic grasp. "It doesn't matter, really. But I didn't know---- So you've started in the engineering school at the University of Washington," Saxton was purring. "Have you met Gid Childers there--son of old Senator Childers--charming people." "I've seen him. He has a Stutz--no, his is the Mercer," sighed Milt. He hated himself for it, but he couldn't quite keep the awe out of his voice. People with Mercers---- Claire seemed to be trying to speak. She made a delicate, feminine, clairesque approximation to clearing her throat. But Jeff ignored her and with almost osculatory affection continued to Milt: "Do let me know if there's anything I can do to help you. We're acquainted with two or three of your engineering faculty at the Office. They write in about various things. Do you happen to know Dr. Philgren?" "Oh yes. Say! He's a wonder!" Milt was betrayed into exclaiming. "Yes. Good chap, I believe. He's been trying to get a job with us. We may give him one. Just tell him you're a friend of mine, and that he's to give you any help he can." Milt choked on a "Thanks." "And--now that we're just the family here together--how goes the financial side? Can I be of any assistance in introducing you to some engineering firm where you could do a little work on the side? You could make quite a little money----" So confoundedly affectionate and paternal---- Milt said irritably, "Thanks, but I don't need to do any work. I've got plenty of money." "How pleasant!" Saxton's voice was smooth as marshmallow. "You're fortunate. I had quite a struggle to get through Princeton." Wasn't Mr. Gilson contrasting Saxton's silk shirt with Milt's darned cotton covering, and in light of that contrast chuckling at Milt's boast and Saxton's modesty? Milt became overheated. His scalp prickled and his shoulder-blades were damp. As Saxton turned from him, and crooned to Claire, "More ham, honey?" Milt hated himself. He was in much of the dramatic but undesirable position of a man in pajamas, not very good pajamas, who has been locked out in the hotel corridor by the slamming of his door. He was in the frame of mind of a mongrel, of a real Boys'-Dog, at a Madison Square dog-show. He had a faint shrewd suspicion of Saxton's game. But what could he do about it? He felt even more out of place when the family forgot him and talked about people of whom he had never heard. He sat alone on an extremely distant desert isle and ate cold ham and wished he were in Schoenstrom. Claire had recovered her power of speech. She seemed to be trying to bring him into the conversation, so that the family might appreciate him. She hesitated, and thought with creased brows, and brought out, "Uh, uh, oh---- Oh Milt: How much is gas selling at now?"... * * * * * Milt left that charming and intimate supper-party at nine. He said, "Got to work on--on my analytical geometry," as though it was a lie; and he threw "Good night" at Saxton as though he hated his kind, good benefactor; and when he tried to be gracious to Mrs. Gilson the best he could get out was, "Thanks f' inviting me." They expansively saw him to the door. Just as he thought that he had escaped, Saxton begged, "Oh, Daggett, I was arguing with a chap---- What color are Holstein-Friesian cattle? Red?" "Black and white," Milt said eagerly. He heard Mrs. Gilson giggle. He stood on the terrace wiping his forehead and, without the least struggle, finally and irretrievably admitting that he would never see Claire Boltwood or any of her friends again. Not--never! * * * * * He had received from Mrs. Gilson a note inviting him to share their box at the first night of a three-night Opera Season. He had spent half a day in trying to think of a courteously rude way of declining. A straggly little girl came up from the candy-shop below his room, demanding, "Say, are you Mr. Daggett? Say, there's some woman wants to talk to you on our telephone. Say, tell them we ain't supposed to be no messenger-office. You ain't supposed to call no upstairs people on our telephone. We ain't supposed to leave the store and go trotting all over town to---- Gee, a nickel, gee, thank you, don't mind what ma says, she's always kicking." On the telephone, he heard Claire's voice in an agitated, "Milt! Meet me down-town, at the Imperial Motion Picture Theater, right away. Something I've got to tell you. I'll be in the lobby. Hurry!" When he bolted in she was already in the lobby, agitatedly looking over a frame of "stills." She ran to him, hooked her fingers in his lapel, poured out, "They've invited you to the opera? I want you to come and put it all over them. I'm almost sure there's a plot. They want to show me that you aren't used to tiaras and saxophones and creaking dowagers and tulle. Beat 'em! Beat 'em! Come to the opera and be awf'ly aloof and supercilious. You can! Yes, you can! And be sure--wear evening clothes. Now I've got to hurry." "B-but----" "Don't disappoint me. I depend on you. Oh, say you will!" "I will!" She was gone, whisking into the Gilson limousine. He was in a glow at her loyalty, in a tremor of anger at the meddlers. But he had never worn evening clothes. He called it "a dress-suit," and before the complications of that exotic garb, he was flabby with anxiety. To Milt and to Schoenstrom--to Bill McGolwey, even to Prof Jones and the greasily prosperous Heinie Rauskukle--the dress-suit was the symbol and proof, the indication and manner, of sophisticated wealth. In Schoenstrom even waiters do not wear dress-suits. For one thing there aren't any waiters. There is one waitress at the Leipzig House, Miss Annie Schweigenblat, but you wouldn't expect Miss Schweigenblat to deal them off the arm in black trousers with braid down the side. No; a dress-suit was what the hero wore in the movies; and the hero in the movies, when he wasn't a cowpuncher, was an ex-captain of the Yale football team, and had chambers and a valet. You could tell him from the valet because he wasn't so bald. It is true that Milt had heard that in St. Cloud there were people who wore dress-suits at parties, but then St. Cloud was a city, fifteen or sixteen thousand. "How could he get away with a dress-suit? How could he keep from feeling foolish in a low-cut vest, and what the deuce would he do with the tails? Did you part 'em or roll 'em up, when you sat down? And wouldn't everybody be able to tell from his foolish look that he didn't belong in one?" He could hear A.D.T. boys and loafers in front of pool rooms whispering, "Look at the piker in the rented soup and fish!" For of course he'd rent one. Nobody bought them--except plutes like Henry B. Boltwood. He agitatedly walked up and down for an hour, peering into haberdashery windows, looking for a kind-faced young man. He found him, in Ye Pall Mall Toggery Shoppe & Shoes; an open-faced young man who was gazing through the window as sparklingly as though he was thinking of going as a missionary to India--and liked curry. Milt ironed out his worried face, clumped in, demanded fraternally, "Say, old man, don't some of these gents' furnishings stores have kind of little charts that tell just what you wear with dress-suits and Prince Alberts and everything?" "You bet," said the kind-faced young man. West of Chicago, "You bet" means "Rather," and "Yes indeed," and "On the whole I should be inclined to fancy that there may be some vestiges of accuracy in your curious opinion," and "You're a liar but I can't afford to say so." The kind-faced young man brought from behind the counter a beautiful brochure illustrated with photographs of Phoebus Apollo in what were described as "American Beauty Garments--neat, natty, nobby, new." The center pages faithfully catalogued the ties, shirts, cuff-links, spats, boots, hats, to wear with evening clothes, morning clothes, riding clothes, tennis costumes, polite mourning. As he looked it over Milt felt that his wardrobe already contained all these gentlemanly possessions. With the aid of the clerk and the chart he purchased a tradition-haunted garment with a plate-armor bosom and an opening as crooked as the Missouri River; a white tie which in his strong red hands looked as silly as a dead fish; waistcoat, pearl links, and studs. For the first time, except for seizures of madness during two or three visits to Minneapolis motor accessory stores, he caught the shopping-fever. The long shining counter, the trim red-stained shelves, the glittering cases, the racks of flaunting ties, were beautiful to him and beckoning. He revolved a pleasantly clicking rack of ties, then turned and fought his way out. He bought pumps--which cost exactly twice as much as the largest sum which he had allowed himself. He bought a newspaper, and in the want-columns found the advertisement: Silberfarb the Society Tailor DRESS SUITS TO RENT Snappiest in the City Despite the superlative snappiness of Mr. Silberfarb's dress-suits his establishment was a loft over a delicatessen, approached by a splintery stairway along which hung shabby signs announcing the upstairs offices of "J. L. & T. J. O'Regan, Private Detectives," "The Zenith Spiritualist Church, Messages by Rev. Lulu Paughouse," "The International Order of Live Ones, Seattle Wigwam," and "Mme. Lavourie, Sulphur Baths." The dead air of the hallway suggested petty crookedness. Milt felt that he ought to fight somebody but, there being no one to fight, he banged along the flapping boards of the second-floor hallway to the ground-glass door of Silberfarb the Society Tailor, who was also, as an afterthought on a straggly placard, "Pressng & Cleang While U Wait." He belligerently shouldered into a low room. The light from the one window was almost obscured by racks of musty-smelling black clothes which stretched away from him in two dismal aisles that resembled a morgue of unhappy dead men indecently hung up on hooks. On a long, clumsily carpentered table, a small Jew, collarless, sweaty, unshaven, was darning trousers under an evil mantle gaslight. The Jew wrung out his hands and tried to look benevolent. "Want to rent a dress-suit," said Milt. "I got just the t'ing for you!" The little man unfolded himself, galloped down the aisle, seized the first garment that came to hand, and came back to lay it against Milt's uncomfortable frame, bumbling, "Fine, mister, fy-en!" Milt studied the shiny-seamed, worn-buttonholed, limp object with dislike. Its personality was disintegrated. The only thing he liked about it was the good garage stink of gasoline. "That's almost worn out," he growled. At this sacrilege Mr. Silberfarb threw up his hands, with the dingy suit flapping in them like a bed-quilt shaken from a tenement window. He looked Milt all over, coldly. His red but shining eyes hinted that Milt was a clodhopper and no honest wearer of evening clothes. Milt felt humble, but he snapped, "No good. Want something with class." "Vell, that was good enough for a university professor at the big dance, but if you say so----" In the manner of one who is being put to an unfair amount of trouble, Mr. Silberfarb returned the paranoiac dress-suit to the rack, sighing patiently as he laboriously draped it on a hanger. He peered and pawed. He crowed with throaty triumph and brought back a rich ripe thing of velvet collar and cuffs. He fixed Milt with eyes that had become as sulky as the eyes of a dog in August dust. "Now that--you can't beat that, if you vant class, and it'll fit you like a glove. Oh, that's an ellllegant garment!" Shaking himself out of the spell of those contemptuous eyes Milt opened his brochure, studied the chart, and in a footnote found, "Never wear velvet collars or cuffs with evening coat." "Nope. Nix on the velvet," he remarked. Then the little man went mad and ran around in circles. He flung the ellllegant garment on the table. He flapped his arms, and wailed, "What do you vant? What do you vannnnt? That's a hundred-and-fifty-dollar dress-suit! That belonged to one of the richest men in the city. He sold it to me because he was going to Japan." "Well, you can send it to Japan after him. I want something decent. Have you got it--or shall I go some place else?" The tailor instantly became affectionate. "How about a nice Tuxedo?" he coaxed. "Nope. It says here--let me see--oh yes, here it is--it says here in the book that for the theater-with-ladies, should not wear 'dinner-coat or so-called Tuxedo, but----'" "Oh, dem fellows what writes books they don't know nothing. Absolute! They make it up." "Huh! Well, I guess I'll take my chance on them. The factory knows the ignition better 'n any repair-man." "Vell say, you're a hard fellow to please. I'll give you one of my reserve stock, but you got to leave me ten dollars deposit instead of five." Mr. Silberfarb quite cheerfully unlocked a glass case behind the racked and ghostly dead; he brought out a suit that seemed to Milt almost decent. And it almost fitted when, after changing clothes in a broiling, boiling, reeking, gasoline-pulsing hole behind the racks, he examined it before a pier-glass. But he caught the tailor assisting the fit by bunching up a roll of cloth at the shoulder. Again Milt snapped, and again the tailor suffered and died, and to a doubting heathen world maintained the true gospel of "What do you vannnnt? It ain't stylish to have the dress-suit too tight! All the gents is wearing 'em loose and graceful." But in the end, after Milt had gone as far as the door, Mr. Silberfarb admitted that one dress-coat wouldn't always fit all persons without some alterations. The coat did bag a little, and it was too long in the sleeves, but as Milt studied himself in his room--by placing his small melancholy mirror on the bureau, then on a chair, then on the floor, finally, to get a complete view, clear out in the hall--he admitted with stirring delight that he looked "pretty fair in the bloomin' outfit." His clear face, his shining hair, his straight shoulders, seemed to go with the costume. He wriggled into his top-coat and marched out of his room, theater-bound, with the well-fed satisfaction of a man who is certain that no one is giggling, "Look at the hand-me-downs." His pumps did alternately pinch his toes and rub his heels; the trousers cramped his waist; and he suspected that his tie had gone wandering. But he swaggered to the trolley, and sat as one rich and famous and very kind to the Common People, till---- Another man in evening clothes got on the car, and Milt saw that he wore a silk hat, and a white knitted scarf; that he took

les

How many times the word 'les' appears in the text?

why I'm here. Electra wants to scream. The speedometer is climbing over 100. RATH I really think you should slow down. INT. HOTEL SUITE - NIGHT The room is immaculate; near the door, several over-sized suitcases line the wall. Bain is sitting at the desk. His WALKMAN is on, MUSIC BLASTING, as he flips casually through the telephone directory. His finger eases down a column stopping at "Morgan Jennifer." There is a KNOCK at the door. He smiles and tears out the page. There is another, LOUDER KNOCK which Bain hears this time. He TURN OFF the WALKMAN and opens the door; a BELLBOY is waiting with a luggage cart. BELLBOY Hello, sir. Have you some luggage you need carried. Bain gives him a wink and a smile. BAIN Indeed I do. INT. ELECTRA'S CAR - NIGHT The red "low fuel" light is on. ELECTRA Now what? RATH Turn off the engine. Electra twists the ignition and the CAR DIES. Rath glances around and we see the car is parked in a gas station. ELECTRA You want me to pump? RATH No, stay in the car. I want you to understand something. If I intended to kill you, you would already be dead. Electra says nothing. He reaches over and takes the car keys. When he is out of the car, Electra slowly releases the strangle-hold she had on the steering wheel. ELECTRA Okay, Nikita, stay calm, think, breathe, think... Electra checks the rear view mirror, listening as Rath pumps the gas. Her eyes flash down to her bag. Outside, Rath watches Electra through the windows. She appears motionless. The electric gas counter races like a stop watch. In the car, Electra eases her hand into her bag. The tank full, Rath re-hangs the pump. He walks around the car and heads for the station. Electra waits until his back is turned. She pulls her tool pouch from her bag, throws it open and finds her wire stripper. Reaching under the dash, she yanks out a tangled handful of wire. She looks up; Rath is inside paying. ELECTRA Come on, come on, it's a cake walk. Her fingers fly with surgical precision, snipping, stripping, twisting. Rath steps out of the station as her head pops up, looking for him. It takes only a second for him to realize what she is doing. RATH Oh shit. He runs at the car as she strips the last set of wires and strikes them; the BATTERY GRINDS. ELECTRA Please, please. He is almost there when the ENGINE FIRES. She stomps on the gas, ramming the shift into drive. TIRES SQUEALING, the car swerves forward as Rath slams into it. He bounces backward, falling to the ground. The car fishtails away, accelerating as Rath rolls to one knee, his gun automatically in his hand. He draws a bead, but, he does not shoot. With a concerted effort, he puts the gun away. RATH Dammit. EXT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT BUILDING - NIGHT Electra's car is parked out front. She unlocks the lobby door and drags herself inside. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT LOBBY Standing at the mailboxes flipping through her mail is Jennifer Morgan. What she was hoping for is not there. She looks up and sees Electra. JENNIFER Excuse me -- Electra stops. JENNIFER You live here, don't you? Electra nods. JENNIFER I'm sorry, this may sound really weird, but my friend told me he slipped a letter under the door here and I was wondering if you happened to see it? Electra is in a daze, her hand moving into her pocket. ELECTRA Letter? JENNIFER Yeah. He said he saw a woman with dark hair going into the building when he dropped it off. ELECTRA No. I don't have it. Electra's mouth opens and she backs away. Jennifer is bothered by her reaction and she doesn't push it. JENNIFER I'm sorry. I didn't mean to -- I'm sorry. She shrugs and unlocks the interior door, leaving Electra in the lobby. Electra watches her, as her hand moves from pocket to pocket. A worried expression tightens her face; the letter is gone. She opens the interior door, following Jennifer up the stairs. INT. STAIRCASE Electra climbs the stairs, her mind pouring through the possibilities, filled with fear. By the time Electra reaches the top floor, Jennifer is entering her apartment. Electra hurries past Jennifer's door to her own. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT - NIGHT Electra flies across the living room to the monitors. She clicks them on, putting on Jennifer's channel. On the screen we see Jennifer in her living room checking her phone messages. One from her mother. Electra throws a few switches so that Jennifer's entire apartment is in front of her. On one of the monitors we see a shadow slide across the oak floor as something moves along the edge of the room. Jennifer has moved to the bathroom and is drawing a bath. Electra clamps her hand over her mouth when he steps out. Bain moves into the dining room where Jennifer had just been. Wearing rubber surgeon's gloves, he picks up the mail that she had dropped on the table and sorts through it. Bain moves about the apartment with complete indifference to Jennifer's presence; as if he were invisible, as though he knew she couldn't see him. He moves into a room, just as she moves out. Electra watches, dizzy, sick with terror, but she is unable to turn away. Bain searches through a desk drawer, while Jennifer starts undressing for her bath. He walks down the hall and stands outside of the bathroom. If Jennifer would turn around she would see him. Electra is about to run, to call out when -- Something catches Bain's eye. He moves into the bedroom, and is turned so that he is looking straight up into the camera. He inches towards it, not sure what it is. The fiber optic cable is hidden in the light fixture hanging over the bed. Staring at it, he is looking right at Electra. Bain steps up onto the bed, his face distorting as he moves close to the fish-eye lens. Poking it with his finger, he realizes what it is. A warped smile stretches across his face as he whispers -- BAIN (V.O.) Oh, you sick little bitch -- Electra tears away from the screen, panic seizing hold of her. She rips entire drawers out of her dresser, dumping them into a suitcase, stuffing in anything that looks important. She grabs Nikita in the "travel kitty." EXT. BACK PORCH The door opens and Electra jumps out, slamming it behind her as -- Bain turns from the back stairs. She leaps back inside as he whips out his GUN, PUMPING TWO HOLES in the door. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT She scrambles from the kitchen, throwing her suitcase, still clutching the "travel kitty," as -- The back DOOR EXPLODES from its hinges, Bain charging, FIRING his GUN. BULLETS HISSING past her, Electra crashes through the front door into the hall. INT. HALL The stairs are at the far end. She is only halfway, when -- Rath rises up the stairs, his gun cocked. Electra drops to the floor as -- Behind her, Bain barrels from the apartment. Rath FIRES. The wood DOOR SPLINTERS, BULLET HOLES surrounding Bain. Off balance, he lunges back into the apartment. Rath continues FIRING, grabbing hold of Electra. They run down the stairs. EXT. REAR STAIRCASE Bain leaps down the flights. EXT. ALLEY Bain rushes into the street, looking in every direction. They are gone. BAIN Fuck me! EXT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL - NIGHT Somewhere in the city. INT. HOTEL ROOM Electra and Rath enter the room together but they are both immediately alone. She walks across the room to a chair in the corner, curling into it even as Nikita jumps up and curls into her lap. He sets his briefcase on the table at the opposite end of the room and sits. They watch each other. Silence. Between then is the liquor cabinet. Rath knows a good idea when he sees one. RATH Want a drink? Her face is as expressionless as Nikita's. He pours himself a very large bourbon and slugs it down. Takes a deep breath, then pours himself another one. RATH Okay... He returns to his table with his drink. RATH I'm not good at this sort of thing, but we don't have a lot of time, so I'll just go ahead and get started. First: you. I ask myself, 'What is she thinking?' Her body tightens, coils. RATH Simple. She's scared. She's almost been killed twice and now she is alone in a room with a man that she believes is an... assassin. Another deep pull on the bourbon. RATH Furthermore she was brought here not entirely on her own accord which only increases her fear and suspicion. Thus, as long as she is afraid, her first, maybe her only thought will be escape. Does that leave me any other option? He slugs down the rest of his drink and stands, whipping out his gun. RATH No. Crossing the room, he turns the gun around and offers it to her. She looks at it. Back at him. He puts it on the bed beside her, turns his back and walks to the bar. She picks up the gun. RATH The gun is silenced. She could shoot me right now. She stands, Nikita jumping from her lap. RATH She could take the car and be far from here before the maid comes in the morning, but -- She starts squeezing OFF ROUNDS; the LAMP EXPLODES, the CHAIRS around him ERUPT, tufts of white stuffing leaping into the air. ELECTRA Shut up! He freezes, bottle in one hand, glass in the other. ELECTRA Stop trying to tell me what I'm thinking! She moves closer to him, the gun squeezed in her fist. ELECTRA I'll tell you what you're thinking -- you think I'm not going to shoot you but right now you're not so sure, are you? A slight shake of the head, no. ELECTRA You're thinking that maybe it was a mistake to give me this gun, that maybe I'm not going to think about things logically because I'm a woman and I'm freaked out and I'm going to do something impulsive and irrational -- right? She FIRES the GUN to both sides of his head. He's surprised to be alive. ELECTRA You don't know shit about me! Now sit down! He returns to his chair and sits with the same expression she had worn sitting a moment ago. She opens the cabinet and grabs one of the sample bottles of liquor. She sucks it all down and throws the bottle across the room. Grabbing another, she sits on the edge of the bed. ELECTRA Okay. How did you find me? RATH You're the computer hacker, you tell me. ELECTRA You didn't know anything about me. Nikita rubs up against her leg. ELECTRA Nikita? RATH Yellow Pages. V for veterinarian. There aren't that many. She nods, slurping at her bottle. ELECTRA You're one of them, aren't you? RATH 'Them'? ELECTRA An assassin? RATH Until a minute ago. ELECTRA What does that mean? RATH If I still was what I used to be, you would not be pointing that at me. Electra eyes him, considers shooting him right now. ELECTRA Who is that other guy? RATH Another contractor. ELECTRA Someone hired both of you? RATH No. They hired Bain. The contract would have been mine, but Bain took it from me as he took the previous one. ELECTRA So this is something between you and him? RATH He stole the contract knowing that I would come after him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he is trying to retire me. ELECTRA He wants to kill you? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Why? RATH The nature of the business. You remove your competition. ELECTRA And you want to use me to get him? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Forget it! RATH We don't have a choice. She FIRES the GUN, pocking the wall behind him. ELECTRA Don't tell me I don't have a choice! RATH Right. ELECTRA I'm two seconds away from making my choice which means you've got two seconds to tell me why I shouldn't shoot you. RATH It's simple. You need me. I need you. And we will both need money. ELECTRA I don't need you to get the money -- my money! RATH If it hadn't been for me, you would be dead. She's up pacing, knowing there is some truth in that. ELECTRA I don't need the money. RATH This is something that is never going to end. You can never work in the business again with this contract, because he will find you. To survive, you have to go into deep hiding. And that's going to take money, a lot of money. ELECTRA Then you can have the disks and I'll just walk out that door -- RATH If you walk out that door, Bain will still come after you. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he took a contract on you. He'll come for you and he'll find you. ELECTRA You don't know that -- you're trying to scare me. RATH No. It's the truth. I know what you are. Like me, like Bain, you're a ghost, you're not part of the real world. You don't have a social security number. You don't pay taxes. You've probably used ten different names over the last ten years. A long time ago something probably happened, something illegal and you ran, you disappeared and it was easy. You think you can do it again. But I'm telling you, fading from the law is nothing. No matter what you do, where you go, I swear to you that Bain will find you. ELECTRA How? RATH Right now, as we sit here, he is tearing through your apartment. He is digging through your drawers, emptying your closets. He will take your telephone and address books, your appointment books. If you keep a diary, he is reading it. He'll go into the kitchen and find out what kind of food you eat, liquor you drink, cigarettes you smoke. In the bathroom he will find any prescription drugs you take and where you get them filled. If you have video tape or recordings he will watch and listen to all of them. She is coming unglued. Imagining him watching her tapes, going through her possessions. She is moving, pacing, ready to explode. ELECTRA Oh Jesus Jesus... RATH He will know everything about you. Everything. I know, because I've done it. Once you've been inside a mark's home, you're in their head. If you're any good, you'll find the mark in a week, and Bain is good because I was the best and I couldn't take him. She whirls and starts FIRING the GUN, firing it everywhere, fear and anger rocketing out of her in WHISTLING hot wads of LEAD. When she stops, he starts to say something but she levels the gun at him. ELECTRA Shut up! All right! You've said enough! She forces herself back, grabbing handfuls of the sample bottles. ELECTRA I need to think... To be alone. With the gun and an armful of booze and Nikita following at her feet, she goes into the bathroom and slams the door. INT. BATHROOM She locks the door and then collapses. Her body seems to fold up onto itself as she slides down the wall; the GUN and the BOTTLES falling from her arms, CLATTERING SOFTLY on the bath rug as she buries her face in her hands. INT. BEDROOM Very mechanically, Rath begins setting up his chess board, putting the pieces into the same positions. It is a ritual, and with it he enters a kind of trance. From the bathroom, almost inaudible, he hears Electra CRYING. INT. BATHROOM With her head now buried in her arms and knees, she is sobbing, her body rocking. The crying seems very similar to Jennifer's; a complete emotional release. INT. BEDROOM Rath stares at the board. The CRYING grows LOUDER. He stands and walks to the door. He starts to knock but stops himself. Like Electra with Jennifer, Rath would like to help, he just has no idea how to. He turns back to the desk, to his chess game. INT. BATHROOM Her eyes are now burning red. She stops crying long enough to suck down an entire sample of Scotch. Nikita rubs against her and she strokes her. ELECTRA Oh shit, Nikita. INT. BEDROOM Rath is setting up his computer system. He hears the TUB FILLING UP. INT. BATHROOM Nikita jumps up onto the toilet seat and starts drinking. ELECTRA Cheers. Electra finishes another sample and drops it to the floor where we see that many of the bottles are now empty. In the tub, steam rising off the surface, she wrings out a wash cloth and covers her face, sinking deeper into the water. INT. BEDROOM When Electra comes out of the bathroom, Rath is again at his chess game. She sits down across from him and sets the gun on the table between them. Rath looks up at her. ELECTRA Listen -- I don't even know your name. RATH Rath. Robert Rath. ELECTRA Electra. RATH Just Electra? ELECTRA Yeah. RATH As in daughter of Agamemnon? ELECTRA No. Just Electra. The conversation dies. ELECTRA What I'm trying to say is that -- I'm not sure I can do this, help you, unless I know more about you. RATH What do you want to know? ELECTRA If Bain hadn't taken the contract on me, would you have? He stares at her. RATH No. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because I'm done. ELECTRA This is crazy. I can't trust you. You can't trust me. How can we possibly help each other? They sit in silence, the gun and the chess game lying between them. RATH Do you play? She looks at the chess board. ELECTRA With computers. RATH It's not the same, is it? ELECTRA Better than playing with yourself. He smiles. RATH I had an opponent. She understands that he is trying to tell her something. ELECTRA Had? RATH He was Russian. Nicholai Tachlinkov. A legend in the business when I was just starting. I admired him. When I heard he loved chess I became obsessed with the game. Electra studies the board. ELECTRA He was white? Rath nods. ELECTRA It looks like white's game. RATH We played with a code using The New York Times obituaries. Over three years we played twelve matches. I never won. ELECTRA Why didn't you finish this game? She reaches over and lifts a White Knight and takes a Bishop. Rath counters, taking her Knight. RATH He was... taken. ELECTRA He was killed. Rath nods. Throughout the entire conversation they continue to play out the chess game. ELECTRA By who? A long beat. RATH I killed him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because that's how it works. That's what it's about. He was the best. He was on top. ELECTRA Where you wanted to be? RATH Yes. As soon as you get into this business, all you can think about is getting to the top. That's all there is. Until then, there is nothing. You are nothing. ELECTRA How did you get into the business? RATH The same way everyone does; the government, the Agency. ELECTRA The C.I.A.? RATH More or less. ELECTRA How old were you? RATH They recruited me when I was in high school. ELECTRA Jesus -- why? RATH Languages. I was already fluent in nine languages. ELECTRA You were like a boy genius? RATH Some people said that. I never thought so. ELECTRA Why not? RATH I was just different. ELECTRA You went from high school to the Agency? RATH No. I graduated from George Washington University. Then I entered the Agency training program. ELECTRA They didn't give you a choice, did they? RATH No, they didn't. ELECTRA But you knew what they were training you for? RATH Of course. I was going to be James Bond. ELECTRA Ahhhh... RATH They are very good at what they do. It's very seductive. The training, the weapons, the travel -- ELECTRA The exotic women. RATH Women? No... not really. ELECTRA Why not? RATH Women... I don't... I don't want to talk about women. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because you are a women. ELECTRA Why did you leave the Agency? RATH The same reason everyone does. You hear your name on C-SPAN and you realize you're a skeleton in someone's closet and they're coming to bury you. ELECTRA They tried to kill you? RATH Yes. It didn't matter much to them as long as I disappeared. ELECTRA Then you went freelance? RATH The only thing different about the private sector is that a General Contractor takes less of a percentage than the government, so you make more money. Then once you make the transition, you realize you were never working for the government; it was always the private sector, the vested interests and it's the same vested interests that continue to buy your plane tickets. ELECTRA Tell me about the first time. RATH My first take? ELECTRA Yes. RATH Why? ELECTRA Because I want to know. RATH It was... mechanical. Very precise. It was exactly like the training drill except for the adrenaline. ELECTRA Are they usually like that? RATH No. Just the first one. ELECTRA After that? RATH They become complicated... messy. ELECTRA Did it ever bother you? RATH Did it ever bother James Bond? ELECTRA That's fiction. RATH This is fiction! Don't you see that? This is another reality. And the people that come into the world to play this game -- nobody forces them! They're here, they know the rules, the stakes, the risks! Do you understand what I am saying? No one is innocent -- including you! ELECTRA Does that mean it didn't bother you? Rath leans back and stares at her. She waits. RATH You get a job swinging a hammer, the first day you get a blister, it tears open, it bleeds and it stays sore a long time. You keep swinging the hammer, you get a good hard callous that covers that spot and it never bothers you again. Electra says nothing. He leans forward and slides a rook into her back row. RATH Check. He leans back. RATH Is that what you wanted to hear? Something cold blooded... something remorseless... ELECTRA No. Something honest. A beat. Rath likes this woman. She moves her Queen. ELECTRA Mate. He smiles. ELECTRA I hope your plan is better than your game. INT. CHEAP HOTEL - NIGHT The room is ugly. Shag carpeting, wood paneling and polyester patterned curtains. We hear a COMPUTER KEYBOARD CLICKING away as we MOVE ACROSS a table. The hotel phone is in a modem, which is held together with duct tape. Between the modem and the computer is a scrambler constructed out of a series of naked circuit boards. It is a very similar set up to Rath's, only it has been put together with a fraction of the resources. Bain sits, typing at the computer, his shirt off. Beside the desk-top is a six pack of Old Style beer, a bag of Doritos and his Gameboy. On the floor, disassembled neatly on a small white towel is his cleaned gun. Bain finishes punching in a code, sits back and sucks down his beer. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Where have you been, Michael? He belches. He is communicating with his General Contractor. On the table is a collection of personal objects, much of it stuffed in pillow cases, taken from Electra's house. BAIN/SCREEN Tracking the mark. Bain fingers a pair of satin panties. He smiles as he smells them. BAIN I'm on the scent. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN You're too late. Bain slams his beer down. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN I've learned from MicroCell, Rath fulfilled the contract. BAIN/SCREEN How? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN He took out the mark and sold the disks back to MicroCell. Bain falls back in his chair, thinking. He runs his hands through his sweaty hair. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Michael? BAIN No. No. No. I don't believe it. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN They money will be standard bank transfer. We believe we will know where and when. BAIN What? BAIN/SCREEN How? There is no response. BAIN/SCREEN How in the fuck do you know that? A long beat. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Such language in front of a lady. BAIN I don't give a fuck what you are. I asked you -- He hits the repeat key. BAIN (types) How in the fuck do you know that? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Do you want Rath or not? Bain stares at the screen, thinking. Thinking hard. INT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL ROOM - NIGHT Another computer screen, but we don't know that it is different. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN It will take three days to arrange the transfer. ELECTRA Three days? We are in Electra and Rath's hotel room. She is standing behind him, reading as he types. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA Are you going to tell him? RATH It. Tell it. For all I know it could be a machine. ELECTRA You said you didn't trust it. RATH I don't. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA What kind of bank is going to allow us to withdraw ten million dollars the day it is transferred? RATH The kind preferred by drug smugglers, arms dealers and politicians. Rath types in an account number. RATH Do you have a passport? ELECTRA Several. RATH Good. ELECTRA Where is it? RATH Mexico. INT. AIRPLANE - DAY Rath and Electra are sitting in the first class section, which she is obviously enjoying, smiling and sipping champagne. ELECTRA God, I love first class. I remember when I was a little girl, I would wonder what it was like up here. I would always try to peek through the curtains. Rath says nothing, staring out the window. Electra shakes her head. ELECTRA I hope Nikita's all right. He still does not respond. ELECTRA Hey, where are you? RATH Thinking. ELECTRA About? RATH Nothing. Electra sips the last of her champagne. ELECTRA I've never been to the Gulf of Mexico. Is it as nice as they say? RATH I don't know. ELECTRA You were there? A long beat. RATH Yes. EXT. SMALL MEXICAN AIRPORT - DAY The plane lands. EXT. TERMINAL CAB STAND Rath and Electra hand their bags to a CABBY who puts them in his trunk. INT. CAB Rath speaks perfect Spanish. RATH (in Spanish) Good afternoon. We have reservations at the Hotel Paraiso in Costa Blanca. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes, sir. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - DAY The cab pulls up in front of a large, brand new glass hotel, which shimmers in the blue green reflection of the gulf water. Rath is upset. RATH (in Spanish) No, no. I said the Hotel Paraiso. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes. This is the Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) No, the other Hotel Paraiso, in the city. Near the Plaza del Sol. CABBY (in Spanish) I'm sorry, sir. A year ago there was a fire in the old Hotel Paraiso. This is the new Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) Take us there. EXT. COSTA BLANCA - DAY American tourist dollars have built up the coasts, but much of the out-lying city is very poor. The old Hotel Paraiso is a five story blackened husk. The face of the building is burnt black and it seems to hang in space as something non-corporeal, like the shadow of the building rather than the building itself. Rath stares at it, remembering. Electra is behind him, standing in the midst of the Plaza del Sol. He looks up to the fifth story window, then turns directly opposite of that. The International Banco de Mexico, an enormous, beautiful old building; its exterior walls are white-washed concrete, blindingly bright white. Electra looks at the bank and smiles. ELECTRA So, that's where all that S & L money is? Rath is not listening to her. He is somewhere else. He turns back to the fourth story window. RATH That's where he'll be. ELECTRA What? RATH I wasn't expecting this. I need to think. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - NIGHT Beyond the lights of the hotel the gulf darkens to midnight oil. INT. HOTEL PARAISO ELEVATOR On one side of the elevator is a young couple who look like newlyweds. They are cuddling, kissing and giggling as though they are alone. Electra and Rath are on the other side of the elevator. It is a strange contrast. Electra is staring at them. Rath, behind his sunglasses, is in his own world. The ELEVATOR CHIMES and opens. Nobody moves. The DOORS CHIME again and start to close, as everyone realizes that this is their floor. Rath and the other man grab the doors, which spring back open. It is a funny, awkward moment, as everyone apologizes and smiles politely, on the way out. INT. HALL The couple move down the hall, the newlyweds finding their door first. Rath reaches the door to their room, opens it and enters. Electra lingers, watching the other couple, watching as he fumbles for his keys, her hand running up between his legs and over his ass. He finally manages to open the door and she pushes him inside. Electra softly closes her door. INT. HOTEL PARAISO - HOTEL ROOM Rath is sitting in a desk chair staring out of the sliding balcony doors at the dark gulf water. ELECTRA Did you see them? Electra moves about the large suite. ELECTRA They looked like they were in love. Rath says nothing. ELECTRA Well, I think I'll take a bath. Come on, Nikita! The two of them walk into the bathroom, leaving Rath to himself. INT. BATHROOM Electra sits on the edge of the over-sized tub, water running through her fingers as she adjusts the temperature. After a beat she hears a SMALL CRASH, a GLASS BREAKING. It is followed by other MUFFLED NOISES, a WOMAN GIGGLING and a THUMPING.

bottle

How many times the word 'bottle' appears in the text?

why I'm here. Electra wants to scream. The speedometer is climbing over 100. RATH I really think you should slow down. INT. HOTEL SUITE - NIGHT The room is immaculate; near the door, several over-sized suitcases line the wall. Bain is sitting at the desk. His WALKMAN is on, MUSIC BLASTING, as he flips casually through the telephone directory. His finger eases down a column stopping at "Morgan Jennifer." There is a KNOCK at the door. He smiles and tears out the page. There is another, LOUDER KNOCK which Bain hears this time. He TURN OFF the WALKMAN and opens the door; a BELLBOY is waiting with a luggage cart. BELLBOY Hello, sir. Have you some luggage you need carried. Bain gives him a wink and a smile. BAIN Indeed I do. INT. ELECTRA'S CAR - NIGHT The red "low fuel" light is on. ELECTRA Now what? RATH Turn off the engine. Electra twists the ignition and the CAR DIES. Rath glances around and we see the car is parked in a gas station. ELECTRA You want me to pump? RATH No, stay in the car. I want you to understand something. If I intended to kill you, you would already be dead. Electra says nothing. He reaches over and takes the car keys. When he is out of the car, Electra slowly releases the strangle-hold she had on the steering wheel. ELECTRA Okay, Nikita, stay calm, think, breathe, think... Electra checks the rear view mirror, listening as Rath pumps the gas. Her eyes flash down to her bag. Outside, Rath watches Electra through the windows. She appears motionless. The electric gas counter races like a stop watch. In the car, Electra eases her hand into her bag. The tank full, Rath re-hangs the pump. He walks around the car and heads for the station. Electra waits until his back is turned. She pulls her tool pouch from her bag, throws it open and finds her wire stripper. Reaching under the dash, she yanks out a tangled handful of wire. She looks up; Rath is inside paying. ELECTRA Come on, come on, it's a cake walk. Her fingers fly with surgical precision, snipping, stripping, twisting. Rath steps out of the station as her head pops up, looking for him. It takes only a second for him to realize what she is doing. RATH Oh shit. He runs at the car as she strips the last set of wires and strikes them; the BATTERY GRINDS. ELECTRA Please, please. He is almost there when the ENGINE FIRES. She stomps on the gas, ramming the shift into drive. TIRES SQUEALING, the car swerves forward as Rath slams into it. He bounces backward, falling to the ground. The car fishtails away, accelerating as Rath rolls to one knee, his gun automatically in his hand. He draws a bead, but, he does not shoot. With a concerted effort, he puts the gun away. RATH Dammit. EXT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT BUILDING - NIGHT Electra's car is parked out front. She unlocks the lobby door and drags herself inside. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT LOBBY Standing at the mailboxes flipping through her mail is Jennifer Morgan. What she was hoping for is not there. She looks up and sees Electra. JENNIFER Excuse me -- Electra stops. JENNIFER You live here, don't you? Electra nods. JENNIFER I'm sorry, this may sound really weird, but my friend told me he slipped a letter under the door here and I was wondering if you happened to see it? Electra is in a daze, her hand moving into her pocket. ELECTRA Letter? JENNIFER Yeah. He said he saw a woman with dark hair going into the building when he dropped it off. ELECTRA No. I don't have it. Electra's mouth opens and she backs away. Jennifer is bothered by her reaction and she doesn't push it. JENNIFER I'm sorry. I didn't mean to -- I'm sorry. She shrugs and unlocks the interior door, leaving Electra in the lobby. Electra watches her, as her hand moves from pocket to pocket. A worried expression tightens her face; the letter is gone. She opens the interior door, following Jennifer up the stairs. INT. STAIRCASE Electra climbs the stairs, her mind pouring through the possibilities, filled with fear. By the time Electra reaches the top floor, Jennifer is entering her apartment. Electra hurries past Jennifer's door to her own. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT - NIGHT Electra flies across the living room to the monitors. She clicks them on, putting on Jennifer's channel. On the screen we see Jennifer in her living room checking her phone messages. One from her mother. Electra throws a few switches so that Jennifer's entire apartment is in front of her. On one of the monitors we see a shadow slide across the oak floor as something moves along the edge of the room. Jennifer has moved to the bathroom and is drawing a bath. Electra clamps her hand over her mouth when he steps out. Bain moves into the dining room where Jennifer had just been. Wearing rubber surgeon's gloves, he picks up the mail that she had dropped on the table and sorts through it. Bain moves about the apartment with complete indifference to Jennifer's presence; as if he were invisible, as though he knew she couldn't see him. He moves into a room, just as she moves out. Electra watches, dizzy, sick with terror, but she is unable to turn away. Bain searches through a desk drawer, while Jennifer starts undressing for her bath. He walks down the hall and stands outside of the bathroom. If Jennifer would turn around she would see him. Electra is about to run, to call out when -- Something catches Bain's eye. He moves into the bedroom, and is turned so that he is looking straight up into the camera. He inches towards it, not sure what it is. The fiber optic cable is hidden in the light fixture hanging over the bed. Staring at it, he is looking right at Electra. Bain steps up onto the bed, his face distorting as he moves close to the fish-eye lens. Poking it with his finger, he realizes what it is. A warped smile stretches across his face as he whispers -- BAIN (V.O.) Oh, you sick little bitch -- Electra tears away from the screen, panic seizing hold of her. She rips entire drawers out of her dresser, dumping them into a suitcase, stuffing in anything that looks important. She grabs Nikita in the "travel kitty." EXT. BACK PORCH The door opens and Electra jumps out, slamming it behind her as -- Bain turns from the back stairs. She leaps back inside as he whips out his GUN, PUMPING TWO HOLES in the door. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT She scrambles from the kitchen, throwing her suitcase, still clutching the "travel kitty," as -- The back DOOR EXPLODES from its hinges, Bain charging, FIRING his GUN. BULLETS HISSING past her, Electra crashes through the front door into the hall. INT. HALL The stairs are at the far end. She is only halfway, when -- Rath rises up the stairs, his gun cocked. Electra drops to the floor as -- Behind her, Bain barrels from the apartment. Rath FIRES. The wood DOOR SPLINTERS, BULLET HOLES surrounding Bain. Off balance, he lunges back into the apartment. Rath continues FIRING, grabbing hold of Electra. They run down the stairs. EXT. REAR STAIRCASE Bain leaps down the flights. EXT. ALLEY Bain rushes into the street, looking in every direction. They are gone. BAIN Fuck me! EXT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL - NIGHT Somewhere in the city. INT. HOTEL ROOM Electra and Rath enter the room together but they are both immediately alone. She walks across the room to a chair in the corner, curling into it even as Nikita jumps up and curls into her lap. He sets his briefcase on the table at the opposite end of the room and sits. They watch each other. Silence. Between then is the liquor cabinet. Rath knows a good idea when he sees one. RATH Want a drink? Her face is as expressionless as Nikita's. He pours himself a very large bourbon and slugs it down. Takes a deep breath, then pours himself another one. RATH Okay... He returns to his table with his drink. RATH I'm not good at this sort of thing, but we don't have a lot of time, so I'll just go ahead and get started. First: you. I ask myself, 'What is she thinking?' Her body tightens, coils. RATH Simple. She's scared. She's almost been killed twice and now she is alone in a room with a man that she believes is an... assassin. Another deep pull on the bourbon. RATH Furthermore she was brought here not entirely on her own accord which only increases her fear and suspicion. Thus, as long as she is afraid, her first, maybe her only thought will be escape. Does that leave me any other option? He slugs down the rest of his drink and stands, whipping out his gun. RATH No. Crossing the room, he turns the gun around and offers it to her. She looks at it. Back at him. He puts it on the bed beside her, turns his back and walks to the bar. She picks up the gun. RATH The gun is silenced. She could shoot me right now. She stands, Nikita jumping from her lap. RATH She could take the car and be far from here before the maid comes in the morning, but -- She starts squeezing OFF ROUNDS; the LAMP EXPLODES, the CHAIRS around him ERUPT, tufts of white stuffing leaping into the air. ELECTRA Shut up! He freezes, bottle in one hand, glass in the other. ELECTRA Stop trying to tell me what I'm thinking! She moves closer to him, the gun squeezed in her fist. ELECTRA I'll tell you what you're thinking -- you think I'm not going to shoot you but right now you're not so sure, are you? A slight shake of the head, no. ELECTRA You're thinking that maybe it was a mistake to give me this gun, that maybe I'm not going to think about things logically because I'm a woman and I'm freaked out and I'm going to do something impulsive and irrational -- right? She FIRES the GUN to both sides of his head. He's surprised to be alive. ELECTRA You don't know shit about me! Now sit down! He returns to his chair and sits with the same expression she had worn sitting a moment ago. She opens the cabinet and grabs one of the sample bottles of liquor. She sucks it all down and throws the bottle across the room. Grabbing another, she sits on the edge of the bed. ELECTRA Okay. How did you find me? RATH You're the computer hacker, you tell me. ELECTRA You didn't know anything about me. Nikita rubs up against her leg. ELECTRA Nikita? RATH Yellow Pages. V for veterinarian. There aren't that many. She nods, slurping at her bottle. ELECTRA You're one of them, aren't you? RATH 'Them'? ELECTRA An assassin? RATH Until a minute ago. ELECTRA What does that mean? RATH If I still was what I used to be, you would not be pointing that at me. Electra eyes him, considers shooting him right now. ELECTRA Who is that other guy? RATH Another contractor. ELECTRA Someone hired both of you? RATH No. They hired Bain. The contract would have been mine, but Bain took it from me as he took the previous one. ELECTRA So this is something between you and him? RATH He stole the contract knowing that I would come after him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he is trying to retire me. ELECTRA He wants to kill you? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Why? RATH The nature of the business. You remove your competition. ELECTRA And you want to use me to get him? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Forget it! RATH We don't have a choice. She FIRES the GUN, pocking the wall behind him. ELECTRA Don't tell me I don't have a choice! RATH Right. ELECTRA I'm two seconds away from making my choice which means you've got two seconds to tell me why I shouldn't shoot you. RATH It's simple. You need me. I need you. And we will both need money. ELECTRA I don't need you to get the money -- my money! RATH If it hadn't been for me, you would be dead. She's up pacing, knowing there is some truth in that. ELECTRA I don't need the money. RATH This is something that is never going to end. You can never work in the business again with this contract, because he will find you. To survive, you have to go into deep hiding. And that's going to take money, a lot of money. ELECTRA Then you can have the disks and I'll just walk out that door -- RATH If you walk out that door, Bain will still come after you. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he took a contract on you. He'll come for you and he'll find you. ELECTRA You don't know that -- you're trying to scare me. RATH No. It's the truth. I know what you are. Like me, like Bain, you're a ghost, you're not part of the real world. You don't have a social security number. You don't pay taxes. You've probably used ten different names over the last ten years. A long time ago something probably happened, something illegal and you ran, you disappeared and it was easy. You think you can do it again. But I'm telling you, fading from the law is nothing. No matter what you do, where you go, I swear to you that Bain will find you. ELECTRA How? RATH Right now, as we sit here, he is tearing through your apartment. He is digging through your drawers, emptying your closets. He will take your telephone and address books, your appointment books. If you keep a diary, he is reading it. He'll go into the kitchen and find out what kind of food you eat, liquor you drink, cigarettes you smoke. In the bathroom he will find any prescription drugs you take and where you get them filled. If you have video tape or recordings he will watch and listen to all of them. She is coming unglued. Imagining him watching her tapes, going through her possessions. She is moving, pacing, ready to explode. ELECTRA Oh Jesus Jesus... RATH He will know everything about you. Everything. I know, because I've done it. Once you've been inside a mark's home, you're in their head. If you're any good, you'll find the mark in a week, and Bain is good because I was the best and I couldn't take him. She whirls and starts FIRING the GUN, firing it everywhere, fear and anger rocketing out of her in WHISTLING hot wads of LEAD. When she stops, he starts to say something but she levels the gun at him. ELECTRA Shut up! All right! You've said enough! She forces herself back, grabbing handfuls of the sample bottles. ELECTRA I need to think... To be alone. With the gun and an armful of booze and Nikita following at her feet, she goes into the bathroom and slams the door. INT. BATHROOM She locks the door and then collapses. Her body seems to fold up onto itself as she slides down the wall; the GUN and the BOTTLES falling from her arms, CLATTERING SOFTLY on the bath rug as she buries her face in her hands. INT. BEDROOM Very mechanically, Rath begins setting up his chess board, putting the pieces into the same positions. It is a ritual, and with it he enters a kind of trance. From the bathroom, almost inaudible, he hears Electra CRYING. INT. BATHROOM With her head now buried in her arms and knees, she is sobbing, her body rocking. The crying seems very similar to Jennifer's; a complete emotional release. INT. BEDROOM Rath stares at the board. The CRYING grows LOUDER. He stands and walks to the door. He starts to knock but stops himself. Like Electra with Jennifer, Rath would like to help, he just has no idea how to. He turns back to the desk, to his chess game. INT. BATHROOM Her eyes are now burning red. She stops crying long enough to suck down an entire sample of Scotch. Nikita rubs against her and she strokes her. ELECTRA Oh shit, Nikita. INT. BEDROOM Rath is setting up his computer system. He hears the TUB FILLING UP. INT. BATHROOM Nikita jumps up onto the toilet seat and starts drinking. ELECTRA Cheers. Electra finishes another sample and drops it to the floor where we see that many of the bottles are now empty. In the tub, steam rising off the surface, she wrings out a wash cloth and covers her face, sinking deeper into the water. INT. BEDROOM When Electra comes out of the bathroom, Rath is again at his chess game. She sits down across from him and sets the gun on the table between them. Rath looks up at her. ELECTRA Listen -- I don't even know your name. RATH Rath. Robert Rath. ELECTRA Electra. RATH Just Electra? ELECTRA Yeah. RATH As in daughter of Agamemnon? ELECTRA No. Just Electra. The conversation dies. ELECTRA What I'm trying to say is that -- I'm not sure I can do this, help you, unless I know more about you. RATH What do you want to know? ELECTRA If Bain hadn't taken the contract on me, would you have? He stares at her. RATH No. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because I'm done. ELECTRA This is crazy. I can't trust you. You can't trust me. How can we possibly help each other? They sit in silence, the gun and the chess game lying between them. RATH Do you play? She looks at the chess board. ELECTRA With computers. RATH It's not the same, is it? ELECTRA Better than playing with yourself. He smiles. RATH I had an opponent. She understands that he is trying to tell her something. ELECTRA Had? RATH He was Russian. Nicholai Tachlinkov. A legend in the business when I was just starting. I admired him. When I heard he loved chess I became obsessed with the game. Electra studies the board. ELECTRA He was white? Rath nods. ELECTRA It looks like white's game. RATH We played with a code using The New York Times obituaries. Over three years we played twelve matches. I never won. ELECTRA Why didn't you finish this game? She reaches over and lifts a White Knight and takes a Bishop. Rath counters, taking her Knight. RATH He was... taken. ELECTRA He was killed. Rath nods. Throughout the entire conversation they continue to play out the chess game. ELECTRA By who? A long beat. RATH I killed him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because that's how it works. That's what it's about. He was the best. He was on top. ELECTRA Where you wanted to be? RATH Yes. As soon as you get into this business, all you can think about is getting to the top. That's all there is. Until then, there is nothing. You are nothing. ELECTRA How did you get into the business? RATH The same way everyone does; the government, the Agency. ELECTRA The C.I.A.? RATH More or less. ELECTRA How old were you? RATH They recruited me when I was in high school. ELECTRA Jesus -- why? RATH Languages. I was already fluent in nine languages. ELECTRA You were like a boy genius? RATH Some people said that. I never thought so. ELECTRA Why not? RATH I was just different. ELECTRA You went from high school to the Agency? RATH No. I graduated from George Washington University. Then I entered the Agency training program. ELECTRA They didn't give you a choice, did they? RATH No, they didn't. ELECTRA But you knew what they were training you for? RATH Of course. I was going to be James Bond. ELECTRA Ahhhh... RATH They are very good at what they do. It's very seductive. The training, the weapons, the travel -- ELECTRA The exotic women. RATH Women? No... not really. ELECTRA Why not? RATH Women... I don't... I don't want to talk about women. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because you are a women. ELECTRA Why did you leave the Agency? RATH The same reason everyone does. You hear your name on C-SPAN and you realize you're a skeleton in someone's closet and they're coming to bury you. ELECTRA They tried to kill you? RATH Yes. It didn't matter much to them as long as I disappeared. ELECTRA Then you went freelance? RATH The only thing different about the private sector is that a General Contractor takes less of a percentage than the government, so you make more money. Then once you make the transition, you realize you were never working for the government; it was always the private sector, the vested interests and it's the same vested interests that continue to buy your plane tickets. ELECTRA Tell me about the first time. RATH My first take? ELECTRA Yes. RATH Why? ELECTRA Because I want to know. RATH It was... mechanical. Very precise. It was exactly like the training drill except for the adrenaline. ELECTRA Are they usually like that? RATH No. Just the first one. ELECTRA After that? RATH They become complicated... messy. ELECTRA Did it ever bother you? RATH Did it ever bother James Bond? ELECTRA That's fiction. RATH This is fiction! Don't you see that? This is another reality. And the people that come into the world to play this game -- nobody forces them! They're here, they know the rules, the stakes, the risks! Do you understand what I am saying? No one is innocent -- including you! ELECTRA Does that mean it didn't bother you? Rath leans back and stares at her. She waits. RATH You get a job swinging a hammer, the first day you get a blister, it tears open, it bleeds and it stays sore a long time. You keep swinging the hammer, you get a good hard callous that covers that spot and it never bothers you again. Electra says nothing. He leans forward and slides a rook into her back row. RATH Check. He leans back. RATH Is that what you wanted to hear? Something cold blooded... something remorseless... ELECTRA No. Something honest. A beat. Rath likes this woman. She moves her Queen. ELECTRA Mate. He smiles. ELECTRA I hope your plan is better than your game. INT. CHEAP HOTEL - NIGHT The room is ugly. Shag carpeting, wood paneling and polyester patterned curtains. We hear a COMPUTER KEYBOARD CLICKING away as we MOVE ACROSS a table. The hotel phone is in a modem, which is held together with duct tape. Between the modem and the computer is a scrambler constructed out of a series of naked circuit boards. It is a very similar set up to Rath's, only it has been put together with a fraction of the resources. Bain sits, typing at the computer, his shirt off. Beside the desk-top is a six pack of Old Style beer, a bag of Doritos and his Gameboy. On the floor, disassembled neatly on a small white towel is his cleaned gun. Bain finishes punching in a code, sits back and sucks down his beer. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Where have you been, Michael? He belches. He is communicating with his General Contractor. On the table is a collection of personal objects, much of it stuffed in pillow cases, taken from Electra's house. BAIN/SCREEN Tracking the mark. Bain fingers a pair of satin panties. He smiles as he smells them. BAIN I'm on the scent. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN You're too late. Bain slams his beer down. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN I've learned from MicroCell, Rath fulfilled the contract. BAIN/SCREEN How? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN He took out the mark and sold the disks back to MicroCell. Bain falls back in his chair, thinking. He runs his hands through his sweaty hair. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Michael? BAIN No. No. No. I don't believe it. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN They money will be standard bank transfer. We believe we will know where and when. BAIN What? BAIN/SCREEN How? There is no response. BAIN/SCREEN How in the fuck do you know that? A long beat. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Such language in front of a lady. BAIN I don't give a fuck what you are. I asked you -- He hits the repeat key. BAIN (types) How in the fuck do you know that? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Do you want Rath or not? Bain stares at the screen, thinking. Thinking hard. INT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL ROOM - NIGHT Another computer screen, but we don't know that it is different. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN It will take three days to arrange the transfer. ELECTRA Three days? We are in Electra and Rath's hotel room. She is standing behind him, reading as he types. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA Are you going to tell him? RATH It. Tell it. For all I know it could be a machine. ELECTRA You said you didn't trust it. RATH I don't. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA What kind of bank is going to allow us to withdraw ten million dollars the day it is transferred? RATH The kind preferred by drug smugglers, arms dealers and politicians. Rath types in an account number. RATH Do you have a passport? ELECTRA Several. RATH Good. ELECTRA Where is it? RATH Mexico. INT. AIRPLANE - DAY Rath and Electra are sitting in the first class section, which she is obviously enjoying, smiling and sipping champagne. ELECTRA God, I love first class. I remember when I was a little girl, I would wonder what it was like up here. I would always try to peek through the curtains. Rath says nothing, staring out the window. Electra shakes her head. ELECTRA I hope Nikita's all right. He still does not respond. ELECTRA Hey, where are you? RATH Thinking. ELECTRA About? RATH Nothing. Electra sips the last of her champagne. ELECTRA I've never been to the Gulf of Mexico. Is it as nice as they say? RATH I don't know. ELECTRA You were there? A long beat. RATH Yes. EXT. SMALL MEXICAN AIRPORT - DAY The plane lands. EXT. TERMINAL CAB STAND Rath and Electra hand their bags to a CABBY who puts them in his trunk. INT. CAB Rath speaks perfect Spanish. RATH (in Spanish) Good afternoon. We have reservations at the Hotel Paraiso in Costa Blanca. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes, sir. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - DAY The cab pulls up in front of a large, brand new glass hotel, which shimmers in the blue green reflection of the gulf water. Rath is upset. RATH (in Spanish) No, no. I said the Hotel Paraiso. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes. This is the Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) No, the other Hotel Paraiso, in the city. Near the Plaza del Sol. CABBY (in Spanish) I'm sorry, sir. A year ago there was a fire in the old Hotel Paraiso. This is the new Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) Take us there. EXT. COSTA BLANCA - DAY American tourist dollars have built up the coasts, but much of the out-lying city is very poor. The old Hotel Paraiso is a five story blackened husk. The face of the building is burnt black and it seems to hang in space as something non-corporeal, like the shadow of the building rather than the building itself. Rath stares at it, remembering. Electra is behind him, standing in the midst of the Plaza del Sol. He looks up to the fifth story window, then turns directly opposite of that. The International Banco de Mexico, an enormous, beautiful old building; its exterior walls are white-washed concrete, blindingly bright white. Electra looks at the bank and smiles. ELECTRA So, that's where all that S & L money is? Rath is not listening to her. He is somewhere else. He turns back to the fourth story window. RATH That's where he'll be. ELECTRA What? RATH I wasn't expecting this. I need to think. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - NIGHT Beyond the lights of the hotel the gulf darkens to midnight oil. INT. HOTEL PARAISO ELEVATOR On one side of the elevator is a young couple who look like newlyweds. They are cuddling, kissing and giggling as though they are alone. Electra and Rath are on the other side of the elevator. It is a strange contrast. Electra is staring at them. Rath, behind his sunglasses, is in his own world. The ELEVATOR CHIMES and opens. Nobody moves. The DOORS CHIME again and start to close, as everyone realizes that this is their floor. Rath and the other man grab the doors, which spring back open. It is a funny, awkward moment, as everyone apologizes and smiles politely, on the way out. INT. HALL The couple move down the hall, the newlyweds finding their door first. Rath reaches the door to their room, opens it and enters. Electra lingers, watching the other couple, watching as he fumbles for his keys, her hand running up between his legs and over his ass. He finally manages to open the door and she pushes him inside. Electra softly closes her door. INT. HOTEL PARAISO - HOTEL ROOM Rath is sitting in a desk chair staring out of the sliding balcony doors at the dark gulf water. ELECTRA Did you see them? Electra moves about the large suite. ELECTRA They looked like they were in love. Rath says nothing. ELECTRA Well, I think I'll take a bath. Come on, Nikita! The two of them walk into the bathroom, leaving Rath to himself. INT. BATHROOM Electra sits on the edge of the over-sized tub, water running through her fingers as she adjusts the temperature. After a beat she hears a SMALL CRASH, a GLASS BREAKING. It is followed by other MUFFLED NOISES, a WOMAN GIGGLING and a THUMPING.

terror

How many times the word 'terror' appears in the text?

why I'm here. Electra wants to scream. The speedometer is climbing over 100. RATH I really think you should slow down. INT. HOTEL SUITE - NIGHT The room is immaculate; near the door, several over-sized suitcases line the wall. Bain is sitting at the desk. His WALKMAN is on, MUSIC BLASTING, as he flips casually through the telephone directory. His finger eases down a column stopping at "Morgan Jennifer." There is a KNOCK at the door. He smiles and tears out the page. There is another, LOUDER KNOCK which Bain hears this time. He TURN OFF the WALKMAN and opens the door; a BELLBOY is waiting with a luggage cart. BELLBOY Hello, sir. Have you some luggage you need carried. Bain gives him a wink and a smile. BAIN Indeed I do. INT. ELECTRA'S CAR - NIGHT The red "low fuel" light is on. ELECTRA Now what? RATH Turn off the engine. Electra twists the ignition and the CAR DIES. Rath glances around and we see the car is parked in a gas station. ELECTRA You want me to pump? RATH No, stay in the car. I want you to understand something. If I intended to kill you, you would already be dead. Electra says nothing. He reaches over and takes the car keys. When he is out of the car, Electra slowly releases the strangle-hold she had on the steering wheel. ELECTRA Okay, Nikita, stay calm, think, breathe, think... Electra checks the rear view mirror, listening as Rath pumps the gas. Her eyes flash down to her bag. Outside, Rath watches Electra through the windows. She appears motionless. The electric gas counter races like a stop watch. In the car, Electra eases her hand into her bag. The tank full, Rath re-hangs the pump. He walks around the car and heads for the station. Electra waits until his back is turned. She pulls her tool pouch from her bag, throws it open and finds her wire stripper. Reaching under the dash, she yanks out a tangled handful of wire. She looks up; Rath is inside paying. ELECTRA Come on, come on, it's a cake walk. Her fingers fly with surgical precision, snipping, stripping, twisting. Rath steps out of the station as her head pops up, looking for him. It takes only a second for him to realize what she is doing. RATH Oh shit. He runs at the car as she strips the last set of wires and strikes them; the BATTERY GRINDS. ELECTRA Please, please. He is almost there when the ENGINE FIRES. She stomps on the gas, ramming the shift into drive. TIRES SQUEALING, the car swerves forward as Rath slams into it. He bounces backward, falling to the ground. The car fishtails away, accelerating as Rath rolls to one knee, his gun automatically in his hand. He draws a bead, but, he does not shoot. With a concerted effort, he puts the gun away. RATH Dammit. EXT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT BUILDING - NIGHT Electra's car is parked out front. She unlocks the lobby door and drags herself inside. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT LOBBY Standing at the mailboxes flipping through her mail is Jennifer Morgan. What she was hoping for is not there. She looks up and sees Electra. JENNIFER Excuse me -- Electra stops. JENNIFER You live here, don't you? Electra nods. JENNIFER I'm sorry, this may sound really weird, but my friend told me he slipped a letter under the door here and I was wondering if you happened to see it? Electra is in a daze, her hand moving into her pocket. ELECTRA Letter? JENNIFER Yeah. He said he saw a woman with dark hair going into the building when he dropped it off. ELECTRA No. I don't have it. Electra's mouth opens and she backs away. Jennifer is bothered by her reaction and she doesn't push it. JENNIFER I'm sorry. I didn't mean to -- I'm sorry. She shrugs and unlocks the interior door, leaving Electra in the lobby. Electra watches her, as her hand moves from pocket to pocket. A worried expression tightens her face; the letter is gone. She opens the interior door, following Jennifer up the stairs. INT. STAIRCASE Electra climbs the stairs, her mind pouring through the possibilities, filled with fear. By the time Electra reaches the top floor, Jennifer is entering her apartment. Electra hurries past Jennifer's door to her own. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT - NIGHT Electra flies across the living room to the monitors. She clicks them on, putting on Jennifer's channel. On the screen we see Jennifer in her living room checking her phone messages. One from her mother. Electra throws a few switches so that Jennifer's entire apartment is in front of her. On one of the monitors we see a shadow slide across the oak floor as something moves along the edge of the room. Jennifer has moved to the bathroom and is drawing a bath. Electra clamps her hand over her mouth when he steps out. Bain moves into the dining room where Jennifer had just been. Wearing rubber surgeon's gloves, he picks up the mail that she had dropped on the table and sorts through it. Bain moves about the apartment with complete indifference to Jennifer's presence; as if he were invisible, as though he knew she couldn't see him. He moves into a room, just as she moves out. Electra watches, dizzy, sick with terror, but she is unable to turn away. Bain searches through a desk drawer, while Jennifer starts undressing for her bath. He walks down the hall and stands outside of the bathroom. If Jennifer would turn around she would see him. Electra is about to run, to call out when -- Something catches Bain's eye. He moves into the bedroom, and is turned so that he is looking straight up into the camera. He inches towards it, not sure what it is. The fiber optic cable is hidden in the light fixture hanging over the bed. Staring at it, he is looking right at Electra. Bain steps up onto the bed, his face distorting as he moves close to the fish-eye lens. Poking it with his finger, he realizes what it is. A warped smile stretches across his face as he whispers -- BAIN (V.O.) Oh, you sick little bitch -- Electra tears away from the screen, panic seizing hold of her. She rips entire drawers out of her dresser, dumping them into a suitcase, stuffing in anything that looks important. She grabs Nikita in the "travel kitty." EXT. BACK PORCH The door opens and Electra jumps out, slamming it behind her as -- Bain turns from the back stairs. She leaps back inside as he whips out his GUN, PUMPING TWO HOLES in the door. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT She scrambles from the kitchen, throwing her suitcase, still clutching the "travel kitty," as -- The back DOOR EXPLODES from its hinges, Bain charging, FIRING his GUN. BULLETS HISSING past her, Electra crashes through the front door into the hall. INT. HALL The stairs are at the far end. She is only halfway, when -- Rath rises up the stairs, his gun cocked. Electra drops to the floor as -- Behind her, Bain barrels from the apartment. Rath FIRES. The wood DOOR SPLINTERS, BULLET HOLES surrounding Bain. Off balance, he lunges back into the apartment. Rath continues FIRING, grabbing hold of Electra. They run down the stairs. EXT. REAR STAIRCASE Bain leaps down the flights. EXT. ALLEY Bain rushes into the street, looking in every direction. They are gone. BAIN Fuck me! EXT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL - NIGHT Somewhere in the city. INT. HOTEL ROOM Electra and Rath enter the room together but they are both immediately alone. She walks across the room to a chair in the corner, curling into it even as Nikita jumps up and curls into her lap. He sets his briefcase on the table at the opposite end of the room and sits. They watch each other. Silence. Between then is the liquor cabinet. Rath knows a good idea when he sees one. RATH Want a drink? Her face is as expressionless as Nikita's. He pours himself a very large bourbon and slugs it down. Takes a deep breath, then pours himself another one. RATH Okay... He returns to his table with his drink. RATH I'm not good at this sort of thing, but we don't have a lot of time, so I'll just go ahead and get started. First: you. I ask myself, 'What is she thinking?' Her body tightens, coils. RATH Simple. She's scared. She's almost been killed twice and now she is alone in a room with a man that she believes is an... assassin. Another deep pull on the bourbon. RATH Furthermore she was brought here not entirely on her own accord which only increases her fear and suspicion. Thus, as long as she is afraid, her first, maybe her only thought will be escape. Does that leave me any other option? He slugs down the rest of his drink and stands, whipping out his gun. RATH No. Crossing the room, he turns the gun around and offers it to her. She looks at it. Back at him. He puts it on the bed beside her, turns his back and walks to the bar. She picks up the gun. RATH The gun is silenced. She could shoot me right now. She stands, Nikita jumping from her lap. RATH She could take the car and be far from here before the maid comes in the morning, but -- She starts squeezing OFF ROUNDS; the LAMP EXPLODES, the CHAIRS around him ERUPT, tufts of white stuffing leaping into the air. ELECTRA Shut up! He freezes, bottle in one hand, glass in the other. ELECTRA Stop trying to tell me what I'm thinking! She moves closer to him, the gun squeezed in her fist. ELECTRA I'll tell you what you're thinking -- you think I'm not going to shoot you but right now you're not so sure, are you? A slight shake of the head, no. ELECTRA You're thinking that maybe it was a mistake to give me this gun, that maybe I'm not going to think about things logically because I'm a woman and I'm freaked out and I'm going to do something impulsive and irrational -- right? She FIRES the GUN to both sides of his head. He's surprised to be alive. ELECTRA You don't know shit about me! Now sit down! He returns to his chair and sits with the same expression she had worn sitting a moment ago. She opens the cabinet and grabs one of the sample bottles of liquor. She sucks it all down and throws the bottle across the room. Grabbing another, she sits on the edge of the bed. ELECTRA Okay. How did you find me? RATH You're the computer hacker, you tell me. ELECTRA You didn't know anything about me. Nikita rubs up against her leg. ELECTRA Nikita? RATH Yellow Pages. V for veterinarian. There aren't that many. She nods, slurping at her bottle. ELECTRA You're one of them, aren't you? RATH 'Them'? ELECTRA An assassin? RATH Until a minute ago. ELECTRA What does that mean? RATH If I still was what I used to be, you would not be pointing that at me. Electra eyes him, considers shooting him right now. ELECTRA Who is that other guy? RATH Another contractor. ELECTRA Someone hired both of you? RATH No. They hired Bain. The contract would have been mine, but Bain took it from me as he took the previous one. ELECTRA So this is something between you and him? RATH He stole the contract knowing that I would come after him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he is trying to retire me. ELECTRA He wants to kill you? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Why? RATH The nature of the business. You remove your competition. ELECTRA And you want to use me to get him? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Forget it! RATH We don't have a choice. She FIRES the GUN, pocking the wall behind him. ELECTRA Don't tell me I don't have a choice! RATH Right. ELECTRA I'm two seconds away from making my choice which means you've got two seconds to tell me why I shouldn't shoot you. RATH It's simple. You need me. I need you. And we will both need money. ELECTRA I don't need you to get the money -- my money! RATH If it hadn't been for me, you would be dead. She's up pacing, knowing there is some truth in that. ELECTRA I don't need the money. RATH This is something that is never going to end. You can never work in the business again with this contract, because he will find you. To survive, you have to go into deep hiding. And that's going to take money, a lot of money. ELECTRA Then you can have the disks and I'll just walk out that door -- RATH If you walk out that door, Bain will still come after you. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he took a contract on you. He'll come for you and he'll find you. ELECTRA You don't know that -- you're trying to scare me. RATH No. It's the truth. I know what you are. Like me, like Bain, you're a ghost, you're not part of the real world. You don't have a social security number. You don't pay taxes. You've probably used ten different names over the last ten years. A long time ago something probably happened, something illegal and you ran, you disappeared and it was easy. You think you can do it again. But I'm telling you, fading from the law is nothing. No matter what you do, where you go, I swear to you that Bain will find you. ELECTRA How? RATH Right now, as we sit here, he is tearing through your apartment. He is digging through your drawers, emptying your closets. He will take your telephone and address books, your appointment books. If you keep a diary, he is reading it. He'll go into the kitchen and find out what kind of food you eat, liquor you drink, cigarettes you smoke. In the bathroom he will find any prescription drugs you take and where you get them filled. If you have video tape or recordings he will watch and listen to all of them. She is coming unglued. Imagining him watching her tapes, going through her possessions. She is moving, pacing, ready to explode. ELECTRA Oh Jesus Jesus... RATH He will know everything about you. Everything. I know, because I've done it. Once you've been inside a mark's home, you're in their head. If you're any good, you'll find the mark in a week, and Bain is good because I was the best and I couldn't take him. She whirls and starts FIRING the GUN, firing it everywhere, fear and anger rocketing out of her in WHISTLING hot wads of LEAD. When she stops, he starts to say something but she levels the gun at him. ELECTRA Shut up! All right! You've said enough! She forces herself back, grabbing handfuls of the sample bottles. ELECTRA I need to think... To be alone. With the gun and an armful of booze and Nikita following at her feet, she goes into the bathroom and slams the door. INT. BATHROOM She locks the door and then collapses. Her body seems to fold up onto itself as she slides down the wall; the GUN and the BOTTLES falling from her arms, CLATTERING SOFTLY on the bath rug as she buries her face in her hands. INT. BEDROOM Very mechanically, Rath begins setting up his chess board, putting the pieces into the same positions. It is a ritual, and with it he enters a kind of trance. From the bathroom, almost inaudible, he hears Electra CRYING. INT. BATHROOM With her head now buried in her arms and knees, she is sobbing, her body rocking. The crying seems very similar to Jennifer's; a complete emotional release. INT. BEDROOM Rath stares at the board. The CRYING grows LOUDER. He stands and walks to the door. He starts to knock but stops himself. Like Electra with Jennifer, Rath would like to help, he just has no idea how to. He turns back to the desk, to his chess game. INT. BATHROOM Her eyes are now burning red. She stops crying long enough to suck down an entire sample of Scotch. Nikita rubs against her and she strokes her. ELECTRA Oh shit, Nikita. INT. BEDROOM Rath is setting up his computer system. He hears the TUB FILLING UP. INT. BATHROOM Nikita jumps up onto the toilet seat and starts drinking. ELECTRA Cheers. Electra finishes another sample and drops it to the floor where we see that many of the bottles are now empty. In the tub, steam rising off the surface, she wrings out a wash cloth and covers her face, sinking deeper into the water. INT. BEDROOM When Electra comes out of the bathroom, Rath is again at his chess game. She sits down across from him and sets the gun on the table between them. Rath looks up at her. ELECTRA Listen -- I don't even know your name. RATH Rath. Robert Rath. ELECTRA Electra. RATH Just Electra? ELECTRA Yeah. RATH As in daughter of Agamemnon? ELECTRA No. Just Electra. The conversation dies. ELECTRA What I'm trying to say is that -- I'm not sure I can do this, help you, unless I know more about you. RATH What do you want to know? ELECTRA If Bain hadn't taken the contract on me, would you have? He stares at her. RATH No. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because I'm done. ELECTRA This is crazy. I can't trust you. You can't trust me. How can we possibly help each other? They sit in silence, the gun and the chess game lying between them. RATH Do you play? She looks at the chess board. ELECTRA With computers. RATH It's not the same, is it? ELECTRA Better than playing with yourself. He smiles. RATH I had an opponent. She understands that he is trying to tell her something. ELECTRA Had? RATH He was Russian. Nicholai Tachlinkov. A legend in the business when I was just starting. I admired him. When I heard he loved chess I became obsessed with the game. Electra studies the board. ELECTRA He was white? Rath nods. ELECTRA It looks like white's game. RATH We played with a code using The New York Times obituaries. Over three years we played twelve matches. I never won. ELECTRA Why didn't you finish this game? She reaches over and lifts a White Knight and takes a Bishop. Rath counters, taking her Knight. RATH He was... taken. ELECTRA He was killed. Rath nods. Throughout the entire conversation they continue to play out the chess game. ELECTRA By who? A long beat. RATH I killed him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because that's how it works. That's what it's about. He was the best. He was on top. ELECTRA Where you wanted to be? RATH Yes. As soon as you get into this business, all you can think about is getting to the top. That's all there is. Until then, there is nothing. You are nothing. ELECTRA How did you get into the business? RATH The same way everyone does; the government, the Agency. ELECTRA The C.I.A.? RATH More or less. ELECTRA How old were you? RATH They recruited me when I was in high school. ELECTRA Jesus -- why? RATH Languages. I was already fluent in nine languages. ELECTRA You were like a boy genius? RATH Some people said that. I never thought so. ELECTRA Why not? RATH I was just different. ELECTRA You went from high school to the Agency? RATH No. I graduated from George Washington University. Then I entered the Agency training program. ELECTRA They didn't give you a choice, did they? RATH No, they didn't. ELECTRA But you knew what they were training you for? RATH Of course. I was going to be James Bond. ELECTRA Ahhhh... RATH They are very good at what they do. It's very seductive. The training, the weapons, the travel -- ELECTRA The exotic women. RATH Women? No... not really. ELECTRA Why not? RATH Women... I don't... I don't want to talk about women. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because you are a women. ELECTRA Why did you leave the Agency? RATH The same reason everyone does. You hear your name on C-SPAN and you realize you're a skeleton in someone's closet and they're coming to bury you. ELECTRA They tried to kill you? RATH Yes. It didn't matter much to them as long as I disappeared. ELECTRA Then you went freelance? RATH The only thing different about the private sector is that a General Contractor takes less of a percentage than the government, so you make more money. Then once you make the transition, you realize you were never working for the government; it was always the private sector, the vested interests and it's the same vested interests that continue to buy your plane tickets. ELECTRA Tell me about the first time. RATH My first take? ELECTRA Yes. RATH Why? ELECTRA Because I want to know. RATH It was... mechanical. Very precise. It was exactly like the training drill except for the adrenaline. ELECTRA Are they usually like that? RATH No. Just the first one. ELECTRA After that? RATH They become complicated... messy. ELECTRA Did it ever bother you? RATH Did it ever bother James Bond? ELECTRA That's fiction. RATH This is fiction! Don't you see that? This is another reality. And the people that come into the world to play this game -- nobody forces them! They're here, they know the rules, the stakes, the risks! Do you understand what I am saying? No one is innocent -- including you! ELECTRA Does that mean it didn't bother you? Rath leans back and stares at her. She waits. RATH You get a job swinging a hammer, the first day you get a blister, it tears open, it bleeds and it stays sore a long time. You keep swinging the hammer, you get a good hard callous that covers that spot and it never bothers you again. Electra says nothing. He leans forward and slides a rook into her back row. RATH Check. He leans back. RATH Is that what you wanted to hear? Something cold blooded... something remorseless... ELECTRA No. Something honest. A beat. Rath likes this woman. She moves her Queen. ELECTRA Mate. He smiles. ELECTRA I hope your plan is better than your game. INT. CHEAP HOTEL - NIGHT The room is ugly. Shag carpeting, wood paneling and polyester patterned curtains. We hear a COMPUTER KEYBOARD CLICKING away as we MOVE ACROSS a table. The hotel phone is in a modem, which is held together with duct tape. Between the modem and the computer is a scrambler constructed out of a series of naked circuit boards. It is a very similar set up to Rath's, only it has been put together with a fraction of the resources. Bain sits, typing at the computer, his shirt off. Beside the desk-top is a six pack of Old Style beer, a bag of Doritos and his Gameboy. On the floor, disassembled neatly on a small white towel is his cleaned gun. Bain finishes punching in a code, sits back and sucks down his beer. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Where have you been, Michael? He belches. He is communicating with his General Contractor. On the table is a collection of personal objects, much of it stuffed in pillow cases, taken from Electra's house. BAIN/SCREEN Tracking the mark. Bain fingers a pair of satin panties. He smiles as he smells them. BAIN I'm on the scent. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN You're too late. Bain slams his beer down. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN I've learned from MicroCell, Rath fulfilled the contract. BAIN/SCREEN How? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN He took out the mark and sold the disks back to MicroCell. Bain falls back in his chair, thinking. He runs his hands through his sweaty hair. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Michael? BAIN No. No. No. I don't believe it. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN They money will be standard bank transfer. We believe we will know where and when. BAIN What? BAIN/SCREEN How? There is no response. BAIN/SCREEN How in the fuck do you know that? A long beat. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Such language in front of a lady. BAIN I don't give a fuck what you are. I asked you -- He hits the repeat key. BAIN (types) How in the fuck do you know that? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Do you want Rath or not? Bain stares at the screen, thinking. Thinking hard. INT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL ROOM - NIGHT Another computer screen, but we don't know that it is different. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN It will take three days to arrange the transfer. ELECTRA Three days? We are in Electra and Rath's hotel room. She is standing behind him, reading as he types. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA Are you going to tell him? RATH It. Tell it. For all I know it could be a machine. ELECTRA You said you didn't trust it. RATH I don't. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA What kind of bank is going to allow us to withdraw ten million dollars the day it is transferred? RATH The kind preferred by drug smugglers, arms dealers and politicians. Rath types in an account number. RATH Do you have a passport? ELECTRA Several. RATH Good. ELECTRA Where is it? RATH Mexico. INT. AIRPLANE - DAY Rath and Electra are sitting in the first class section, which she is obviously enjoying, smiling and sipping champagne. ELECTRA God, I love first class. I remember when I was a little girl, I would wonder what it was like up here. I would always try to peek through the curtains. Rath says nothing, staring out the window. Electra shakes her head. ELECTRA I hope Nikita's all right. He still does not respond. ELECTRA Hey, where are you? RATH Thinking. ELECTRA About? RATH Nothing. Electra sips the last of her champagne. ELECTRA I've never been to the Gulf of Mexico. Is it as nice as they say? RATH I don't know. ELECTRA You were there? A long beat. RATH Yes. EXT. SMALL MEXICAN AIRPORT - DAY The plane lands. EXT. TERMINAL CAB STAND Rath and Electra hand their bags to a CABBY who puts them in his trunk. INT. CAB Rath speaks perfect Spanish. RATH (in Spanish) Good afternoon. We have reservations at the Hotel Paraiso in Costa Blanca. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes, sir. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - DAY The cab pulls up in front of a large, brand new glass hotel, which shimmers in the blue green reflection of the gulf water. Rath is upset. RATH (in Spanish) No, no. I said the Hotel Paraiso. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes. This is the Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) No, the other Hotel Paraiso, in the city. Near the Plaza del Sol. CABBY (in Spanish) I'm sorry, sir. A year ago there was a fire in the old Hotel Paraiso. This is the new Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) Take us there. EXT. COSTA BLANCA - DAY American tourist dollars have built up the coasts, but much of the out-lying city is very poor. The old Hotel Paraiso is a five story blackened husk. The face of the building is burnt black and it seems to hang in space as something non-corporeal, like the shadow of the building rather than the building itself. Rath stares at it, remembering. Electra is behind him, standing in the midst of the Plaza del Sol. He looks up to the fifth story window, then turns directly opposite of that. The International Banco de Mexico, an enormous, beautiful old building; its exterior walls are white-washed concrete, blindingly bright white. Electra looks at the bank and smiles. ELECTRA So, that's where all that S & L money is? Rath is not listening to her. He is somewhere else. He turns back to the fourth story window. RATH That's where he'll be. ELECTRA What? RATH I wasn't expecting this. I need to think. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - NIGHT Beyond the lights of the hotel the gulf darkens to midnight oil. INT. HOTEL PARAISO ELEVATOR On one side of the elevator is a young couple who look like newlyweds. They are cuddling, kissing and giggling as though they are alone. Electra and Rath are on the other side of the elevator. It is a strange contrast. Electra is staring at them. Rath, behind his sunglasses, is in his own world. The ELEVATOR CHIMES and opens. Nobody moves. The DOORS CHIME again and start to close, as everyone realizes that this is their floor. Rath and the other man grab the doors, which spring back open. It is a funny, awkward moment, as everyone apologizes and smiles politely, on the way out. INT. HALL The couple move down the hall, the newlyweds finding their door first. Rath reaches the door to their room, opens it and enters. Electra lingers, watching the other couple, watching as he fumbles for his keys, her hand running up between his legs and over his ass. He finally manages to open the door and she pushes him inside. Electra softly closes her door. INT. HOTEL PARAISO - HOTEL ROOM Rath is sitting in a desk chair staring out of the sliding balcony doors at the dark gulf water. ELECTRA Did you see them? Electra moves about the large suite. ELECTRA They looked like they were in love. Rath says nothing. ELECTRA Well, I think I'll take a bath. Come on, Nikita! The two of them walk into the bathroom, leaving Rath to himself. INT. BATHROOM Electra sits on the edge of the over-sized tub, water running through her fingers as she adjusts the temperature. After a beat she hears a SMALL CRASH, a GLASS BREAKING. It is followed by other MUFFLED NOISES, a WOMAN GIGGLING and a THUMPING.

fear

How many times the word 'fear' appears in the text?

why I'm here. Electra wants to scream. The speedometer is climbing over 100. RATH I really think you should slow down. INT. HOTEL SUITE - NIGHT The room is immaculate; near the door, several over-sized suitcases line the wall. Bain is sitting at the desk. His WALKMAN is on, MUSIC BLASTING, as he flips casually through the telephone directory. His finger eases down a column stopping at "Morgan Jennifer." There is a KNOCK at the door. He smiles and tears out the page. There is another, LOUDER KNOCK which Bain hears this time. He TURN OFF the WALKMAN and opens the door; a BELLBOY is waiting with a luggage cart. BELLBOY Hello, sir. Have you some luggage you need carried. Bain gives him a wink and a smile. BAIN Indeed I do. INT. ELECTRA'S CAR - NIGHT The red "low fuel" light is on. ELECTRA Now what? RATH Turn off the engine. Electra twists the ignition and the CAR DIES. Rath glances around and we see the car is parked in a gas station. ELECTRA You want me to pump? RATH No, stay in the car. I want you to understand something. If I intended to kill you, you would already be dead. Electra says nothing. He reaches over and takes the car keys. When he is out of the car, Electra slowly releases the strangle-hold she had on the steering wheel. ELECTRA Okay, Nikita, stay calm, think, breathe, think... Electra checks the rear view mirror, listening as Rath pumps the gas. Her eyes flash down to her bag. Outside, Rath watches Electra through the windows. She appears motionless. The electric gas counter races like a stop watch. In the car, Electra eases her hand into her bag. The tank full, Rath re-hangs the pump. He walks around the car and heads for the station. Electra waits until his back is turned. She pulls her tool pouch from her bag, throws it open and finds her wire stripper. Reaching under the dash, she yanks out a tangled handful of wire. She looks up; Rath is inside paying. ELECTRA Come on, come on, it's a cake walk. Her fingers fly with surgical precision, snipping, stripping, twisting. Rath steps out of the station as her head pops up, looking for him. It takes only a second for him to realize what she is doing. RATH Oh shit. He runs at the car as she strips the last set of wires and strikes them; the BATTERY GRINDS. ELECTRA Please, please. He is almost there when the ENGINE FIRES. She stomps on the gas, ramming the shift into drive. TIRES SQUEALING, the car swerves forward as Rath slams into it. He bounces backward, falling to the ground. The car fishtails away, accelerating as Rath rolls to one knee, his gun automatically in his hand. He draws a bead, but, he does not shoot. With a concerted effort, he puts the gun away. RATH Dammit. EXT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT BUILDING - NIGHT Electra's car is parked out front. She unlocks the lobby door and drags herself inside. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT LOBBY Standing at the mailboxes flipping through her mail is Jennifer Morgan. What she was hoping for is not there. She looks up and sees Electra. JENNIFER Excuse me -- Electra stops. JENNIFER You live here, don't you? Electra nods. JENNIFER I'm sorry, this may sound really weird, but my friend told me he slipped a letter under the door here and I was wondering if you happened to see it? Electra is in a daze, her hand moving into her pocket. ELECTRA Letter? JENNIFER Yeah. He said he saw a woman with dark hair going into the building when he dropped it off. ELECTRA No. I don't have it. Electra's mouth opens and she backs away. Jennifer is bothered by her reaction and she doesn't push it. JENNIFER I'm sorry. I didn't mean to -- I'm sorry. She shrugs and unlocks the interior door, leaving Electra in the lobby. Electra watches her, as her hand moves from pocket to pocket. A worried expression tightens her face; the letter is gone. She opens the interior door, following Jennifer up the stairs. INT. STAIRCASE Electra climbs the stairs, her mind pouring through the possibilities, filled with fear. By the time Electra reaches the top floor, Jennifer is entering her apartment. Electra hurries past Jennifer's door to her own. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT - NIGHT Electra flies across the living room to the monitors. She clicks them on, putting on Jennifer's channel. On the screen we see Jennifer in her living room checking her phone messages. One from her mother. Electra throws a few switches so that Jennifer's entire apartment is in front of her. On one of the monitors we see a shadow slide across the oak floor as something moves along the edge of the room. Jennifer has moved to the bathroom and is drawing a bath. Electra clamps her hand over her mouth when he steps out. Bain moves into the dining room where Jennifer had just been. Wearing rubber surgeon's gloves, he picks up the mail that she had dropped on the table and sorts through it. Bain moves about the apartment with complete indifference to Jennifer's presence; as if he were invisible, as though he knew she couldn't see him. He moves into a room, just as she moves out. Electra watches, dizzy, sick with terror, but she is unable to turn away. Bain searches through a desk drawer, while Jennifer starts undressing for her bath. He walks down the hall and stands outside of the bathroom. If Jennifer would turn around she would see him. Electra is about to run, to call out when -- Something catches Bain's eye. He moves into the bedroom, and is turned so that he is looking straight up into the camera. He inches towards it, not sure what it is. The fiber optic cable is hidden in the light fixture hanging over the bed. Staring at it, he is looking right at Electra. Bain steps up onto the bed, his face distorting as he moves close to the fish-eye lens. Poking it with his finger, he realizes what it is. A warped smile stretches across his face as he whispers -- BAIN (V.O.) Oh, you sick little bitch -- Electra tears away from the screen, panic seizing hold of her. She rips entire drawers out of her dresser, dumping them into a suitcase, stuffing in anything that looks important. She grabs Nikita in the "travel kitty." EXT. BACK PORCH The door opens and Electra jumps out, slamming it behind her as -- Bain turns from the back stairs. She leaps back inside as he whips out his GUN, PUMPING TWO HOLES in the door. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT She scrambles from the kitchen, throwing her suitcase, still clutching the "travel kitty," as -- The back DOOR EXPLODES from its hinges, Bain charging, FIRING his GUN. BULLETS HISSING past her, Electra crashes through the front door into the hall. INT. HALL The stairs are at the far end. She is only halfway, when -- Rath rises up the stairs, his gun cocked. Electra drops to the floor as -- Behind her, Bain barrels from the apartment. Rath FIRES. The wood DOOR SPLINTERS, BULLET HOLES surrounding Bain. Off balance, he lunges back into the apartment. Rath continues FIRING, grabbing hold of Electra. They run down the stairs. EXT. REAR STAIRCASE Bain leaps down the flights. EXT. ALLEY Bain rushes into the street, looking in every direction. They are gone. BAIN Fuck me! EXT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL - NIGHT Somewhere in the city. INT. HOTEL ROOM Electra and Rath enter the room together but they are both immediately alone. She walks across the room to a chair in the corner, curling into it even as Nikita jumps up and curls into her lap. He sets his briefcase on the table at the opposite end of the room and sits. They watch each other. Silence. Between then is the liquor cabinet. Rath knows a good idea when he sees one. RATH Want a drink? Her face is as expressionless as Nikita's. He pours himself a very large bourbon and slugs it down. Takes a deep breath, then pours himself another one. RATH Okay... He returns to his table with his drink. RATH I'm not good at this sort of thing, but we don't have a lot of time, so I'll just go ahead and get started. First: you. I ask myself, 'What is she thinking?' Her body tightens, coils. RATH Simple. She's scared. She's almost been killed twice and now she is alone in a room with a man that she believes is an... assassin. Another deep pull on the bourbon. RATH Furthermore she was brought here not entirely on her own accord which only increases her fear and suspicion. Thus, as long as she is afraid, her first, maybe her only thought will be escape. Does that leave me any other option? He slugs down the rest of his drink and stands, whipping out his gun. RATH No. Crossing the room, he turns the gun around and offers it to her. She looks at it. Back at him. He puts it on the bed beside her, turns his back and walks to the bar. She picks up the gun. RATH The gun is silenced. She could shoot me right now. She stands, Nikita jumping from her lap. RATH She could take the car and be far from here before the maid comes in the morning, but -- She starts squeezing OFF ROUNDS; the LAMP EXPLODES, the CHAIRS around him ERUPT, tufts of white stuffing leaping into the air. ELECTRA Shut up! He freezes, bottle in one hand, glass in the other. ELECTRA Stop trying to tell me what I'm thinking! She moves closer to him, the gun squeezed in her fist. ELECTRA I'll tell you what you're thinking -- you think I'm not going to shoot you but right now you're not so sure, are you? A slight shake of the head, no. ELECTRA You're thinking that maybe it was a mistake to give me this gun, that maybe I'm not going to think about things logically because I'm a woman and I'm freaked out and I'm going to do something impulsive and irrational -- right? She FIRES the GUN to both sides of his head. He's surprised to be alive. ELECTRA You don't know shit about me! Now sit down! He returns to his chair and sits with the same expression she had worn sitting a moment ago. She opens the cabinet and grabs one of the sample bottles of liquor. She sucks it all down and throws the bottle across the room. Grabbing another, she sits on the edge of the bed. ELECTRA Okay. How did you find me? RATH You're the computer hacker, you tell me. ELECTRA You didn't know anything about me. Nikita rubs up against her leg. ELECTRA Nikita? RATH Yellow Pages. V for veterinarian. There aren't that many. She nods, slurping at her bottle. ELECTRA You're one of them, aren't you? RATH 'Them'? ELECTRA An assassin? RATH Until a minute ago. ELECTRA What does that mean? RATH If I still was what I used to be, you would not be pointing that at me. Electra eyes him, considers shooting him right now. ELECTRA Who is that other guy? RATH Another contractor. ELECTRA Someone hired both of you? RATH No. They hired Bain. The contract would have been mine, but Bain took it from me as he took the previous one. ELECTRA So this is something between you and him? RATH He stole the contract knowing that I would come after him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he is trying to retire me. ELECTRA He wants to kill you? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Why? RATH The nature of the business. You remove your competition. ELECTRA And you want to use me to get him? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Forget it! RATH We don't have a choice. She FIRES the GUN, pocking the wall behind him. ELECTRA Don't tell me I don't have a choice! RATH Right. ELECTRA I'm two seconds away from making my choice which means you've got two seconds to tell me why I shouldn't shoot you. RATH It's simple. You need me. I need you. And we will both need money. ELECTRA I don't need you to get the money -- my money! RATH If it hadn't been for me, you would be dead. She's up pacing, knowing there is some truth in that. ELECTRA I don't need the money. RATH This is something that is never going to end. You can never work in the business again with this contract, because he will find you. To survive, you have to go into deep hiding. And that's going to take money, a lot of money. ELECTRA Then you can have the disks and I'll just walk out that door -- RATH If you walk out that door, Bain will still come after you. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he took a contract on you. He'll come for you and he'll find you. ELECTRA You don't know that -- you're trying to scare me. RATH No. It's the truth. I know what you are. Like me, like Bain, you're a ghost, you're not part of the real world. You don't have a social security number. You don't pay taxes. You've probably used ten different names over the last ten years. A long time ago something probably happened, something illegal and you ran, you disappeared and it was easy. You think you can do it again. But I'm telling you, fading from the law is nothing. No matter what you do, where you go, I swear to you that Bain will find you. ELECTRA How? RATH Right now, as we sit here, he is tearing through your apartment. He is digging through your drawers, emptying your closets. He will take your telephone and address books, your appointment books. If you keep a diary, he is reading it. He'll go into the kitchen and find out what kind of food you eat, liquor you drink, cigarettes you smoke. In the bathroom he will find any prescription drugs you take and where you get them filled. If you have video tape or recordings he will watch and listen to all of them. She is coming unglued. Imagining him watching her tapes, going through her possessions. She is moving, pacing, ready to explode. ELECTRA Oh Jesus Jesus... RATH He will know everything about you. Everything. I know, because I've done it. Once you've been inside a mark's home, you're in their head. If you're any good, you'll find the mark in a week, and Bain is good because I was the best and I couldn't take him. She whirls and starts FIRING the GUN, firing it everywhere, fear and anger rocketing out of her in WHISTLING hot wads of LEAD. When she stops, he starts to say something but she levels the gun at him. ELECTRA Shut up! All right! You've said enough! She forces herself back, grabbing handfuls of the sample bottles. ELECTRA I need to think... To be alone. With the gun and an armful of booze and Nikita following at her feet, she goes into the bathroom and slams the door. INT. BATHROOM She locks the door and then collapses. Her body seems to fold up onto itself as she slides down the wall; the GUN and the BOTTLES falling from her arms, CLATTERING SOFTLY on the bath rug as she buries her face in her hands. INT. BEDROOM Very mechanically, Rath begins setting up his chess board, putting the pieces into the same positions. It is a ritual, and with it he enters a kind of trance. From the bathroom, almost inaudible, he hears Electra CRYING. INT. BATHROOM With her head now buried in her arms and knees, she is sobbing, her body rocking. The crying seems very similar to Jennifer's; a complete emotional release. INT. BEDROOM Rath stares at the board. The CRYING grows LOUDER. He stands and walks to the door. He starts to knock but stops himself. Like Electra with Jennifer, Rath would like to help, he just has no idea how to. He turns back to the desk, to his chess game. INT. BATHROOM Her eyes are now burning red. She stops crying long enough to suck down an entire sample of Scotch. Nikita rubs against her and she strokes her. ELECTRA Oh shit, Nikita. INT. BEDROOM Rath is setting up his computer system. He hears the TUB FILLING UP. INT. BATHROOM Nikita jumps up onto the toilet seat and starts drinking. ELECTRA Cheers. Electra finishes another sample and drops it to the floor where we see that many of the bottles are now empty. In the tub, steam rising off the surface, she wrings out a wash cloth and covers her face, sinking deeper into the water. INT. BEDROOM When Electra comes out of the bathroom, Rath is again at his chess game. She sits down across from him and sets the gun on the table between them. Rath looks up at her. ELECTRA Listen -- I don't even know your name. RATH Rath. Robert Rath. ELECTRA Electra. RATH Just Electra? ELECTRA Yeah. RATH As in daughter of Agamemnon? ELECTRA No. Just Electra. The conversation dies. ELECTRA What I'm trying to say is that -- I'm not sure I can do this, help you, unless I know more about you. RATH What do you want to know? ELECTRA If Bain hadn't taken the contract on me, would you have? He stares at her. RATH No. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because I'm done. ELECTRA This is crazy. I can't trust you. You can't trust me. How can we possibly help each other? They sit in silence, the gun and the chess game lying between them. RATH Do you play? She looks at the chess board. ELECTRA With computers. RATH It's not the same, is it? ELECTRA Better than playing with yourself. He smiles. RATH I had an opponent. She understands that he is trying to tell her something. ELECTRA Had? RATH He was Russian. Nicholai Tachlinkov. A legend in the business when I was just starting. I admired him. When I heard he loved chess I became obsessed with the game. Electra studies the board. ELECTRA He was white? Rath nods. ELECTRA It looks like white's game. RATH We played with a code using The New York Times obituaries. Over three years we played twelve matches. I never won. ELECTRA Why didn't you finish this game? She reaches over and lifts a White Knight and takes a Bishop. Rath counters, taking her Knight. RATH He was... taken. ELECTRA He was killed. Rath nods. Throughout the entire conversation they continue to play out the chess game. ELECTRA By who? A long beat. RATH I killed him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because that's how it works. That's what it's about. He was the best. He was on top. ELECTRA Where you wanted to be? RATH Yes. As soon as you get into this business, all you can think about is getting to the top. That's all there is. Until then, there is nothing. You are nothing. ELECTRA How did you get into the business? RATH The same way everyone does; the government, the Agency. ELECTRA The C.I.A.? RATH More or less. ELECTRA How old were you? RATH They recruited me when I was in high school. ELECTRA Jesus -- why? RATH Languages. I was already fluent in nine languages. ELECTRA You were like a boy genius? RATH Some people said that. I never thought so. ELECTRA Why not? RATH I was just different. ELECTRA You went from high school to the Agency? RATH No. I graduated from George Washington University. Then I entered the Agency training program. ELECTRA They didn't give you a choice, did they? RATH No, they didn't. ELECTRA But you knew what they were training you for? RATH Of course. I was going to be James Bond. ELECTRA Ahhhh... RATH They are very good at what they do. It's very seductive. The training, the weapons, the travel -- ELECTRA The exotic women. RATH Women? No... not really. ELECTRA Why not? RATH Women... I don't... I don't want to talk about women. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because you are a women. ELECTRA Why did you leave the Agency? RATH The same reason everyone does. You hear your name on C-SPAN and you realize you're a skeleton in someone's closet and they're coming to bury you. ELECTRA They tried to kill you? RATH Yes. It didn't matter much to them as long as I disappeared. ELECTRA Then you went freelance? RATH The only thing different about the private sector is that a General Contractor takes less of a percentage than the government, so you make more money. Then once you make the transition, you realize you were never working for the government; it was always the private sector, the vested interests and it's the same vested interests that continue to buy your plane tickets. ELECTRA Tell me about the first time. RATH My first take? ELECTRA Yes. RATH Why? ELECTRA Because I want to know. RATH It was... mechanical. Very precise. It was exactly like the training drill except for the adrenaline. ELECTRA Are they usually like that? RATH No. Just the first one. ELECTRA After that? RATH They become complicated... messy. ELECTRA Did it ever bother you? RATH Did it ever bother James Bond? ELECTRA That's fiction. RATH This is fiction! Don't you see that? This is another reality. And the people that come into the world to play this game -- nobody forces them! They're here, they know the rules, the stakes, the risks! Do you understand what I am saying? No one is innocent -- including you! ELECTRA Does that mean it didn't bother you? Rath leans back and stares at her. She waits. RATH You get a job swinging a hammer, the first day you get a blister, it tears open, it bleeds and it stays sore a long time. You keep swinging the hammer, you get a good hard callous that covers that spot and it never bothers you again. Electra says nothing. He leans forward and slides a rook into her back row. RATH Check. He leans back. RATH Is that what you wanted to hear? Something cold blooded... something remorseless... ELECTRA No. Something honest. A beat. Rath likes this woman. She moves her Queen. ELECTRA Mate. He smiles. ELECTRA I hope your plan is better than your game. INT. CHEAP HOTEL - NIGHT The room is ugly. Shag carpeting, wood paneling and polyester patterned curtains. We hear a COMPUTER KEYBOARD CLICKING away as we MOVE ACROSS a table. The hotel phone is in a modem, which is held together with duct tape. Between the modem and the computer is a scrambler constructed out of a series of naked circuit boards. It is a very similar set up to Rath's, only it has been put together with a fraction of the resources. Bain sits, typing at the computer, his shirt off. Beside the desk-top is a six pack of Old Style beer, a bag of Doritos and his Gameboy. On the floor, disassembled neatly on a small white towel is his cleaned gun. Bain finishes punching in a code, sits back and sucks down his beer. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Where have you been, Michael? He belches. He is communicating with his General Contractor. On the table is a collection of personal objects, much of it stuffed in pillow cases, taken from Electra's house. BAIN/SCREEN Tracking the mark. Bain fingers a pair of satin panties. He smiles as he smells them. BAIN I'm on the scent. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN You're too late. Bain slams his beer down. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN I've learned from MicroCell, Rath fulfilled the contract. BAIN/SCREEN How? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN He took out the mark and sold the disks back to MicroCell. Bain falls back in his chair, thinking. He runs his hands through his sweaty hair. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Michael? BAIN No. No. No. I don't believe it. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN They money will be standard bank transfer. We believe we will know where and when. BAIN What? BAIN/SCREEN How? There is no response. BAIN/SCREEN How in the fuck do you know that? A long beat. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Such language in front of a lady. BAIN I don't give a fuck what you are. I asked you -- He hits the repeat key. BAIN (types) How in the fuck do you know that? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Do you want Rath or not? Bain stares at the screen, thinking. Thinking hard. INT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL ROOM - NIGHT Another computer screen, but we don't know that it is different. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN It will take three days to arrange the transfer. ELECTRA Three days? We are in Electra and Rath's hotel room. She is standing behind him, reading as he types. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA Are you going to tell him? RATH It. Tell it. For all I know it could be a machine. ELECTRA You said you didn't trust it. RATH I don't. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA What kind of bank is going to allow us to withdraw ten million dollars the day it is transferred? RATH The kind preferred by drug smugglers, arms dealers and politicians. Rath types in an account number. RATH Do you have a passport? ELECTRA Several. RATH Good. ELECTRA Where is it? RATH Mexico. INT. AIRPLANE - DAY Rath and Electra are sitting in the first class section, which she is obviously enjoying, smiling and sipping champagne. ELECTRA God, I love first class. I remember when I was a little girl, I would wonder what it was like up here. I would always try to peek through the curtains. Rath says nothing, staring out the window. Electra shakes her head. ELECTRA I hope Nikita's all right. He still does not respond. ELECTRA Hey, where are you? RATH Thinking. ELECTRA About? RATH Nothing. Electra sips the last of her champagne. ELECTRA I've never been to the Gulf of Mexico. Is it as nice as they say? RATH I don't know. ELECTRA You were there? A long beat. RATH Yes. EXT. SMALL MEXICAN AIRPORT - DAY The plane lands. EXT. TERMINAL CAB STAND Rath and Electra hand their bags to a CABBY who puts them in his trunk. INT. CAB Rath speaks perfect Spanish. RATH (in Spanish) Good afternoon. We have reservations at the Hotel Paraiso in Costa Blanca. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes, sir. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - DAY The cab pulls up in front of a large, brand new glass hotel, which shimmers in the blue green reflection of the gulf water. Rath is upset. RATH (in Spanish) No, no. I said the Hotel Paraiso. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes. This is the Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) No, the other Hotel Paraiso, in the city. Near the Plaza del Sol. CABBY (in Spanish) I'm sorry, sir. A year ago there was a fire in the old Hotel Paraiso. This is the new Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) Take us there. EXT. COSTA BLANCA - DAY American tourist dollars have built up the coasts, but much of the out-lying city is very poor. The old Hotel Paraiso is a five story blackened husk. The face of the building is burnt black and it seems to hang in space as something non-corporeal, like the shadow of the building rather than the building itself. Rath stares at it, remembering. Electra is behind him, standing in the midst of the Plaza del Sol. He looks up to the fifth story window, then turns directly opposite of that. The International Banco de Mexico, an enormous, beautiful old building; its exterior walls are white-washed concrete, blindingly bright white. Electra looks at the bank and smiles. ELECTRA So, that's where all that S & L money is? Rath is not listening to her. He is somewhere else. He turns back to the fourth story window. RATH That's where he'll be. ELECTRA What? RATH I wasn't expecting this. I need to think. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - NIGHT Beyond the lights of the hotel the gulf darkens to midnight oil. INT. HOTEL PARAISO ELEVATOR On one side of the elevator is a young couple who look like newlyweds. They are cuddling, kissing and giggling as though they are alone. Electra and Rath are on the other side of the elevator. It is a strange contrast. Electra is staring at them. Rath, behind his sunglasses, is in his own world. The ELEVATOR CHIMES and opens. Nobody moves. The DOORS CHIME again and start to close, as everyone realizes that this is their floor. Rath and the other man grab the doors, which spring back open. It is a funny, awkward moment, as everyone apologizes and smiles politely, on the way out. INT. HALL The couple move down the hall, the newlyweds finding their door first. Rath reaches the door to their room, opens it and enters. Electra lingers, watching the other couple, watching as he fumbles for his keys, her hand running up between his legs and over his ass. He finally manages to open the door and she pushes him inside. Electra softly closes her door. INT. HOTEL PARAISO - HOTEL ROOM Rath is sitting in a desk chair staring out of the sliding balcony doors at the dark gulf water. ELECTRA Did you see them? Electra moves about the large suite. ELECTRA They looked like they were in love. Rath says nothing. ELECTRA Well, I think I'll take a bath. Come on, Nikita! The two of them walk into the bathroom, leaving Rath to himself. INT. BATHROOM Electra sits on the edge of the over-sized tub, water running through her fingers as she adjusts the temperature. After a beat she hears a SMALL CRASH, a GLASS BREAKING. It is followed by other MUFFLED NOISES, a WOMAN GIGGLING and a THUMPING.

cabinet

How many times the word 'cabinet' appears in the text?

why I'm here. Electra wants to scream. The speedometer is climbing over 100. RATH I really think you should slow down. INT. HOTEL SUITE - NIGHT The room is immaculate; near the door, several over-sized suitcases line the wall. Bain is sitting at the desk. His WALKMAN is on, MUSIC BLASTING, as he flips casually through the telephone directory. His finger eases down a column stopping at "Morgan Jennifer." There is a KNOCK at the door. He smiles and tears out the page. There is another, LOUDER KNOCK which Bain hears this time. He TURN OFF the WALKMAN and opens the door; a BELLBOY is waiting with a luggage cart. BELLBOY Hello, sir. Have you some luggage you need carried. Bain gives him a wink and a smile. BAIN Indeed I do. INT. ELECTRA'S CAR - NIGHT The red "low fuel" light is on. ELECTRA Now what? RATH Turn off the engine. Electra twists the ignition and the CAR DIES. Rath glances around and we see the car is parked in a gas station. ELECTRA You want me to pump? RATH No, stay in the car. I want you to understand something. If I intended to kill you, you would already be dead. Electra says nothing. He reaches over and takes the car keys. When he is out of the car, Electra slowly releases the strangle-hold she had on the steering wheel. ELECTRA Okay, Nikita, stay calm, think, breathe, think... Electra checks the rear view mirror, listening as Rath pumps the gas. Her eyes flash down to her bag. Outside, Rath watches Electra through the windows. She appears motionless. The electric gas counter races like a stop watch. In the car, Electra eases her hand into her bag. The tank full, Rath re-hangs the pump. He walks around the car and heads for the station. Electra waits until his back is turned. She pulls her tool pouch from her bag, throws it open and finds her wire stripper. Reaching under the dash, she yanks out a tangled handful of wire. She looks up; Rath is inside paying. ELECTRA Come on, come on, it's a cake walk. Her fingers fly with surgical precision, snipping, stripping, twisting. Rath steps out of the station as her head pops up, looking for him. It takes only a second for him to realize what she is doing. RATH Oh shit. He runs at the car as she strips the last set of wires and strikes them; the BATTERY GRINDS. ELECTRA Please, please. He is almost there when the ENGINE FIRES. She stomps on the gas, ramming the shift into drive. TIRES SQUEALING, the car swerves forward as Rath slams into it. He bounces backward, falling to the ground. The car fishtails away, accelerating as Rath rolls to one knee, his gun automatically in his hand. He draws a bead, but, he does not shoot. With a concerted effort, he puts the gun away. RATH Dammit. EXT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT BUILDING - NIGHT Electra's car is parked out front. She unlocks the lobby door and drags herself inside. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT LOBBY Standing at the mailboxes flipping through her mail is Jennifer Morgan. What she was hoping for is not there. She looks up and sees Electra. JENNIFER Excuse me -- Electra stops. JENNIFER You live here, don't you? Electra nods. JENNIFER I'm sorry, this may sound really weird, but my friend told me he slipped a letter under the door here and I was wondering if you happened to see it? Electra is in a daze, her hand moving into her pocket. ELECTRA Letter? JENNIFER Yeah. He said he saw a woman with dark hair going into the building when he dropped it off. ELECTRA No. I don't have it. Electra's mouth opens and she backs away. Jennifer is bothered by her reaction and she doesn't push it. JENNIFER I'm sorry. I didn't mean to -- I'm sorry. She shrugs and unlocks the interior door, leaving Electra in the lobby. Electra watches her, as her hand moves from pocket to pocket. A worried expression tightens her face; the letter is gone. She opens the interior door, following Jennifer up the stairs. INT. STAIRCASE Electra climbs the stairs, her mind pouring through the possibilities, filled with fear. By the time Electra reaches the top floor, Jennifer is entering her apartment. Electra hurries past Jennifer's door to her own. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT - NIGHT Electra flies across the living room to the monitors. She clicks them on, putting on Jennifer's channel. On the screen we see Jennifer in her living room checking her phone messages. One from her mother. Electra throws a few switches so that Jennifer's entire apartment is in front of her. On one of the monitors we see a shadow slide across the oak floor as something moves along the edge of the room. Jennifer has moved to the bathroom and is drawing a bath. Electra clamps her hand over her mouth when he steps out. Bain moves into the dining room where Jennifer had just been. Wearing rubber surgeon's gloves, he picks up the mail that she had dropped on the table and sorts through it. Bain moves about the apartment with complete indifference to Jennifer's presence; as if he were invisible, as though he knew she couldn't see him. He moves into a room, just as she moves out. Electra watches, dizzy, sick with terror, but she is unable to turn away. Bain searches through a desk drawer, while Jennifer starts undressing for her bath. He walks down the hall and stands outside of the bathroom. If Jennifer would turn around she would see him. Electra is about to run, to call out when -- Something catches Bain's eye. He moves into the bedroom, and is turned so that he is looking straight up into the camera. He inches towards it, not sure what it is. The fiber optic cable is hidden in the light fixture hanging over the bed. Staring at it, he is looking right at Electra. Bain steps up onto the bed, his face distorting as he moves close to the fish-eye lens. Poking it with his finger, he realizes what it is. A warped smile stretches across his face as he whispers -- BAIN (V.O.) Oh, you sick little bitch -- Electra tears away from the screen, panic seizing hold of her. She rips entire drawers out of her dresser, dumping them into a suitcase, stuffing in anything that looks important. She grabs Nikita in the "travel kitty." EXT. BACK PORCH The door opens and Electra jumps out, slamming it behind her as -- Bain turns from the back stairs. She leaps back inside as he whips out his GUN, PUMPING TWO HOLES in the door. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT She scrambles from the kitchen, throwing her suitcase, still clutching the "travel kitty," as -- The back DOOR EXPLODES from its hinges, Bain charging, FIRING his GUN. BULLETS HISSING past her, Electra crashes through the front door into the hall. INT. HALL The stairs are at the far end. She is only halfway, when -- Rath rises up the stairs, his gun cocked. Electra drops to the floor as -- Behind her, Bain barrels from the apartment. Rath FIRES. The wood DOOR SPLINTERS, BULLET HOLES surrounding Bain. Off balance, he lunges back into the apartment. Rath continues FIRING, grabbing hold of Electra. They run down the stairs. EXT. REAR STAIRCASE Bain leaps down the flights. EXT. ALLEY Bain rushes into the street, looking in every direction. They are gone. BAIN Fuck me! EXT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL - NIGHT Somewhere in the city. INT. HOTEL ROOM Electra and Rath enter the room together but they are both immediately alone. She walks across the room to a chair in the corner, curling into it even as Nikita jumps up and curls into her lap. He sets his briefcase on the table at the opposite end of the room and sits. They watch each other. Silence. Between then is the liquor cabinet. Rath knows a good idea when he sees one. RATH Want a drink? Her face is as expressionless as Nikita's. He pours himself a very large bourbon and slugs it down. Takes a deep breath, then pours himself another one. RATH Okay... He returns to his table with his drink. RATH I'm not good at this sort of thing, but we don't have a lot of time, so I'll just go ahead and get started. First: you. I ask myself, 'What is she thinking?' Her body tightens, coils. RATH Simple. She's scared. She's almost been killed twice and now she is alone in a room with a man that she believes is an... assassin. Another deep pull on the bourbon. RATH Furthermore she was brought here not entirely on her own accord which only increases her fear and suspicion. Thus, as long as she is afraid, her first, maybe her only thought will be escape. Does that leave me any other option? He slugs down the rest of his drink and stands, whipping out his gun. RATH No. Crossing the room, he turns the gun around and offers it to her. She looks at it. Back at him. He puts it on the bed beside her, turns his back and walks to the bar. She picks up the gun. RATH The gun is silenced. She could shoot me right now. She stands, Nikita jumping from her lap. RATH She could take the car and be far from here before the maid comes in the morning, but -- She starts squeezing OFF ROUNDS; the LAMP EXPLODES, the CHAIRS around him ERUPT, tufts of white stuffing leaping into the air. ELECTRA Shut up! He freezes, bottle in one hand, glass in the other. ELECTRA Stop trying to tell me what I'm thinking! She moves closer to him, the gun squeezed in her fist. ELECTRA I'll tell you what you're thinking -- you think I'm not going to shoot you but right now you're not so sure, are you? A slight shake of the head, no. ELECTRA You're thinking that maybe it was a mistake to give me this gun, that maybe I'm not going to think about things logically because I'm a woman and I'm freaked out and I'm going to do something impulsive and irrational -- right? She FIRES the GUN to both sides of his head. He's surprised to be alive. ELECTRA You don't know shit about me! Now sit down! He returns to his chair and sits with the same expression she had worn sitting a moment ago. She opens the cabinet and grabs one of the sample bottles of liquor. She sucks it all down and throws the bottle across the room. Grabbing another, she sits on the edge of the bed. ELECTRA Okay. How did you find me? RATH You're the computer hacker, you tell me. ELECTRA You didn't know anything about me. Nikita rubs up against her leg. ELECTRA Nikita? RATH Yellow Pages. V for veterinarian. There aren't that many. She nods, slurping at her bottle. ELECTRA You're one of them, aren't you? RATH 'Them'? ELECTRA An assassin? RATH Until a minute ago. ELECTRA What does that mean? RATH If I still was what I used to be, you would not be pointing that at me. Electra eyes him, considers shooting him right now. ELECTRA Who is that other guy? RATH Another contractor. ELECTRA Someone hired both of you? RATH No. They hired Bain. The contract would have been mine, but Bain took it from me as he took the previous one. ELECTRA So this is something between you and him? RATH He stole the contract knowing that I would come after him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he is trying to retire me. ELECTRA He wants to kill you? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Why? RATH The nature of the business. You remove your competition. ELECTRA And you want to use me to get him? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Forget it! RATH We don't have a choice. She FIRES the GUN, pocking the wall behind him. ELECTRA Don't tell me I don't have a choice! RATH Right. ELECTRA I'm two seconds away from making my choice which means you've got two seconds to tell me why I shouldn't shoot you. RATH It's simple. You need me. I need you. And we will both need money. ELECTRA I don't need you to get the money -- my money! RATH If it hadn't been for me, you would be dead. She's up pacing, knowing there is some truth in that. ELECTRA I don't need the money. RATH This is something that is never going to end. You can never work in the business again with this contract, because he will find you. To survive, you have to go into deep hiding. And that's going to take money, a lot of money. ELECTRA Then you can have the disks and I'll just walk out that door -- RATH If you walk out that door, Bain will still come after you. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he took a contract on you. He'll come for you and he'll find you. ELECTRA You don't know that -- you're trying to scare me. RATH No. It's the truth. I know what you are. Like me, like Bain, you're a ghost, you're not part of the real world. You don't have a social security number. You don't pay taxes. You've probably used ten different names over the last ten years. A long time ago something probably happened, something illegal and you ran, you disappeared and it was easy. You think you can do it again. But I'm telling you, fading from the law is nothing. No matter what you do, where you go, I swear to you that Bain will find you. ELECTRA How? RATH Right now, as we sit here, he is tearing through your apartment. He is digging through your drawers, emptying your closets. He will take your telephone and address books, your appointment books. If you keep a diary, he is reading it. He'll go into the kitchen and find out what kind of food you eat, liquor you drink, cigarettes you smoke. In the bathroom he will find any prescription drugs you take and where you get them filled. If you have video tape or recordings he will watch and listen to all of them. She is coming unglued. Imagining him watching her tapes, going through her possessions. She is moving, pacing, ready to explode. ELECTRA Oh Jesus Jesus... RATH He will know everything about you. Everything. I know, because I've done it. Once you've been inside a mark's home, you're in their head. If you're any good, you'll find the mark in a week, and Bain is good because I was the best and I couldn't take him. She whirls and starts FIRING the GUN, firing it everywhere, fear and anger rocketing out of her in WHISTLING hot wads of LEAD. When she stops, he starts to say something but she levels the gun at him. ELECTRA Shut up! All right! You've said enough! She forces herself back, grabbing handfuls of the sample bottles. ELECTRA I need to think... To be alone. With the gun and an armful of booze and Nikita following at her feet, she goes into the bathroom and slams the door. INT. BATHROOM She locks the door and then collapses. Her body seems to fold up onto itself as she slides down the wall; the GUN and the BOTTLES falling from her arms, CLATTERING SOFTLY on the bath rug as she buries her face in her hands. INT. BEDROOM Very mechanically, Rath begins setting up his chess board, putting the pieces into the same positions. It is a ritual, and with it he enters a kind of trance. From the bathroom, almost inaudible, he hears Electra CRYING. INT. BATHROOM With her head now buried in her arms and knees, she is sobbing, her body rocking. The crying seems very similar to Jennifer's; a complete emotional release. INT. BEDROOM Rath stares at the board. The CRYING grows LOUDER. He stands and walks to the door. He starts to knock but stops himself. Like Electra with Jennifer, Rath would like to help, he just has no idea how to. He turns back to the desk, to his chess game. INT. BATHROOM Her eyes are now burning red. She stops crying long enough to suck down an entire sample of Scotch. Nikita rubs against her and she strokes her. ELECTRA Oh shit, Nikita. INT. BEDROOM Rath is setting up his computer system. He hears the TUB FILLING UP. INT. BATHROOM Nikita jumps up onto the toilet seat and starts drinking. ELECTRA Cheers. Electra finishes another sample and drops it to the floor where we see that many of the bottles are now empty. In the tub, steam rising off the surface, she wrings out a wash cloth and covers her face, sinking deeper into the water. INT. BEDROOM When Electra comes out of the bathroom, Rath is again at his chess game. She sits down across from him and sets the gun on the table between them. Rath looks up at her. ELECTRA Listen -- I don't even know your name. RATH Rath. Robert Rath. ELECTRA Electra. RATH Just Electra? ELECTRA Yeah. RATH As in daughter of Agamemnon? ELECTRA No. Just Electra. The conversation dies. ELECTRA What I'm trying to say is that -- I'm not sure I can do this, help you, unless I know more about you. RATH What do you want to know? ELECTRA If Bain hadn't taken the contract on me, would you have? He stares at her. RATH No. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because I'm done. ELECTRA This is crazy. I can't trust you. You can't trust me. How can we possibly help each other? They sit in silence, the gun and the chess game lying between them. RATH Do you play? She looks at the chess board. ELECTRA With computers. RATH It's not the same, is it? ELECTRA Better than playing with yourself. He smiles. RATH I had an opponent. She understands that he is trying to tell her something. ELECTRA Had? RATH He was Russian. Nicholai Tachlinkov. A legend in the business when I was just starting. I admired him. When I heard he loved chess I became obsessed with the game. Electra studies the board. ELECTRA He was white? Rath nods. ELECTRA It looks like white's game. RATH We played with a code using The New York Times obituaries. Over three years we played twelve matches. I never won. ELECTRA Why didn't you finish this game? She reaches over and lifts a White Knight and takes a Bishop. Rath counters, taking her Knight. RATH He was... taken. ELECTRA He was killed. Rath nods. Throughout the entire conversation they continue to play out the chess game. ELECTRA By who? A long beat. RATH I killed him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because that's how it works. That's what it's about. He was the best. He was on top. ELECTRA Where you wanted to be? RATH Yes. As soon as you get into this business, all you can think about is getting to the top. That's all there is. Until then, there is nothing. You are nothing. ELECTRA How did you get into the business? RATH The same way everyone does; the government, the Agency. ELECTRA The C.I.A.? RATH More or less. ELECTRA How old were you? RATH They recruited me when I was in high school. ELECTRA Jesus -- why? RATH Languages. I was already fluent in nine languages. ELECTRA You were like a boy genius? RATH Some people said that. I never thought so. ELECTRA Why not? RATH I was just different. ELECTRA You went from high school to the Agency? RATH No. I graduated from George Washington University. Then I entered the Agency training program. ELECTRA They didn't give you a choice, did they? RATH No, they didn't. ELECTRA But you knew what they were training you for? RATH Of course. I was going to be James Bond. ELECTRA Ahhhh... RATH They are very good at what they do. It's very seductive. The training, the weapons, the travel -- ELECTRA The exotic women. RATH Women? No... not really. ELECTRA Why not? RATH Women... I don't... I don't want to talk about women. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because you are a women. ELECTRA Why did you leave the Agency? RATH The same reason everyone does. You hear your name on C-SPAN and you realize you're a skeleton in someone's closet and they're coming to bury you. ELECTRA They tried to kill you? RATH Yes. It didn't matter much to them as long as I disappeared. ELECTRA Then you went freelance? RATH The only thing different about the private sector is that a General Contractor takes less of a percentage than the government, so you make more money. Then once you make the transition, you realize you were never working for the government; it was always the private sector, the vested interests and it's the same vested interests that continue to buy your plane tickets. ELECTRA Tell me about the first time. RATH My first take? ELECTRA Yes. RATH Why? ELECTRA Because I want to know. RATH It was... mechanical. Very precise. It was exactly like the training drill except for the adrenaline. ELECTRA Are they usually like that? RATH No. Just the first one. ELECTRA After that? RATH They become complicated... messy. ELECTRA Did it ever bother you? RATH Did it ever bother James Bond? ELECTRA That's fiction. RATH This is fiction! Don't you see that? This is another reality. And the people that come into the world to play this game -- nobody forces them! They're here, they know the rules, the stakes, the risks! Do you understand what I am saying? No one is innocent -- including you! ELECTRA Does that mean it didn't bother you? Rath leans back and stares at her. She waits. RATH You get a job swinging a hammer, the first day you get a blister, it tears open, it bleeds and it stays sore a long time. You keep swinging the hammer, you get a good hard callous that covers that spot and it never bothers you again. Electra says nothing. He leans forward and slides a rook into her back row. RATH Check. He leans back. RATH Is that what you wanted to hear? Something cold blooded... something remorseless... ELECTRA No. Something honest. A beat. Rath likes this woman. She moves her Queen. ELECTRA Mate. He smiles. ELECTRA I hope your plan is better than your game. INT. CHEAP HOTEL - NIGHT The room is ugly. Shag carpeting, wood paneling and polyester patterned curtains. We hear a COMPUTER KEYBOARD CLICKING away as we MOVE ACROSS a table. The hotel phone is in a modem, which is held together with duct tape. Between the modem and the computer is a scrambler constructed out of a series of naked circuit boards. It is a very similar set up to Rath's, only it has been put together with a fraction of the resources. Bain sits, typing at the computer, his shirt off. Beside the desk-top is a six pack of Old Style beer, a bag of Doritos and his Gameboy. On the floor, disassembled neatly on a small white towel is his cleaned gun. Bain finishes punching in a code, sits back and sucks down his beer. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Where have you been, Michael? He belches. He is communicating with his General Contractor. On the table is a collection of personal objects, much of it stuffed in pillow cases, taken from Electra's house. BAIN/SCREEN Tracking the mark. Bain fingers a pair of satin panties. He smiles as he smells them. BAIN I'm on the scent. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN You're too late. Bain slams his beer down. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN I've learned from MicroCell, Rath fulfilled the contract. BAIN/SCREEN How? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN He took out the mark and sold the disks back to MicroCell. Bain falls back in his chair, thinking. He runs his hands through his sweaty hair. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Michael? BAIN No. No. No. I don't believe it. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN They money will be standard bank transfer. We believe we will know where and when. BAIN What? BAIN/SCREEN How? There is no response. BAIN/SCREEN How in the fuck do you know that? A long beat. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Such language in front of a lady. BAIN I don't give a fuck what you are. I asked you -- He hits the repeat key. BAIN (types) How in the fuck do you know that? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Do you want Rath or not? Bain stares at the screen, thinking. Thinking hard. INT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL ROOM - NIGHT Another computer screen, but we don't know that it is different. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN It will take three days to arrange the transfer. ELECTRA Three days? We are in Electra and Rath's hotel room. She is standing behind him, reading as he types. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA Are you going to tell him? RATH It. Tell it. For all I know it could be a machine. ELECTRA You said you didn't trust it. RATH I don't. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA What kind of bank is going to allow us to withdraw ten million dollars the day it is transferred? RATH The kind preferred by drug smugglers, arms dealers and politicians. Rath types in an account number. RATH Do you have a passport? ELECTRA Several. RATH Good. ELECTRA Where is it? RATH Mexico. INT. AIRPLANE - DAY Rath and Electra are sitting in the first class section, which she is obviously enjoying, smiling and sipping champagne. ELECTRA God, I love first class. I remember when I was a little girl, I would wonder what it was like up here. I would always try to peek through the curtains. Rath says nothing, staring out the window. Electra shakes her head. ELECTRA I hope Nikita's all right. He still does not respond. ELECTRA Hey, where are you? RATH Thinking. ELECTRA About? RATH Nothing. Electra sips the last of her champagne. ELECTRA I've never been to the Gulf of Mexico. Is it as nice as they say? RATH I don't know. ELECTRA You were there? A long beat. RATH Yes. EXT. SMALL MEXICAN AIRPORT - DAY The plane lands. EXT. TERMINAL CAB STAND Rath and Electra hand their bags to a CABBY who puts them in his trunk. INT. CAB Rath speaks perfect Spanish. RATH (in Spanish) Good afternoon. We have reservations at the Hotel Paraiso in Costa Blanca. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes, sir. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - DAY The cab pulls up in front of a large, brand new glass hotel, which shimmers in the blue green reflection of the gulf water. Rath is upset. RATH (in Spanish) No, no. I said the Hotel Paraiso. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes. This is the Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) No, the other Hotel Paraiso, in the city. Near the Plaza del Sol. CABBY (in Spanish) I'm sorry, sir. A year ago there was a fire in the old Hotel Paraiso. This is the new Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) Take us there. EXT. COSTA BLANCA - DAY American tourist dollars have built up the coasts, but much of the out-lying city is very poor. The old Hotel Paraiso is a five story blackened husk. The face of the building is burnt black and it seems to hang in space as something non-corporeal, like the shadow of the building rather than the building itself. Rath stares at it, remembering. Electra is behind him, standing in the midst of the Plaza del Sol. He looks up to the fifth story window, then turns directly opposite of that. The International Banco de Mexico, an enormous, beautiful old building; its exterior walls are white-washed concrete, blindingly bright white. Electra looks at the bank and smiles. ELECTRA So, that's where all that S & L money is? Rath is not listening to her. He is somewhere else. He turns back to the fourth story window. RATH That's where he'll be. ELECTRA What? RATH I wasn't expecting this. I need to think. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - NIGHT Beyond the lights of the hotel the gulf darkens to midnight oil. INT. HOTEL PARAISO ELEVATOR On one side of the elevator is a young couple who look like newlyweds. They are cuddling, kissing and giggling as though they are alone. Electra and Rath are on the other side of the elevator. It is a strange contrast. Electra is staring at them. Rath, behind his sunglasses, is in his own world. The ELEVATOR CHIMES and opens. Nobody moves. The DOORS CHIME again and start to close, as everyone realizes that this is their floor. Rath and the other man grab the doors, which spring back open. It is a funny, awkward moment, as everyone apologizes and smiles politely, on the way out. INT. HALL The couple move down the hall, the newlyweds finding their door first. Rath reaches the door to their room, opens it and enters. Electra lingers, watching the other couple, watching as he fumbles for his keys, her hand running up between his legs and over his ass. He finally manages to open the door and she pushes him inside. Electra softly closes her door. INT. HOTEL PARAISO - HOTEL ROOM Rath is sitting in a desk chair staring out of the sliding balcony doors at the dark gulf water. ELECTRA Did you see them? Electra moves about the large suite. ELECTRA They looked like they were in love. Rath says nothing. ELECTRA Well, I think I'll take a bath. Come on, Nikita! The two of them walk into the bathroom, leaving Rath to himself. INT. BATHROOM Electra sits on the edge of the over-sized tub, water running through her fingers as she adjusts the temperature. After a beat she hears a SMALL CRASH, a GLASS BREAKING. It is followed by other MUFFLED NOISES, a WOMAN GIGGLING and a THUMPING.

v.o.

How many times the word 'v.o.' appears in the text?

why I'm here. Electra wants to scream. The speedometer is climbing over 100. RATH I really think you should slow down. INT. HOTEL SUITE - NIGHT The room is immaculate; near the door, several over-sized suitcases line the wall. Bain is sitting at the desk. His WALKMAN is on, MUSIC BLASTING, as he flips casually through the telephone directory. His finger eases down a column stopping at "Morgan Jennifer." There is a KNOCK at the door. He smiles and tears out the page. There is another, LOUDER KNOCK which Bain hears this time. He TURN OFF the WALKMAN and opens the door; a BELLBOY is waiting with a luggage cart. BELLBOY Hello, sir. Have you some luggage you need carried. Bain gives him a wink and a smile. BAIN Indeed I do. INT. ELECTRA'S CAR - NIGHT The red "low fuel" light is on. ELECTRA Now what? RATH Turn off the engine. Electra twists the ignition and the CAR DIES. Rath glances around and we see the car is parked in a gas station. ELECTRA You want me to pump? RATH No, stay in the car. I want you to understand something. If I intended to kill you, you would already be dead. Electra says nothing. He reaches over and takes the car keys. When he is out of the car, Electra slowly releases the strangle-hold she had on the steering wheel. ELECTRA Okay, Nikita, stay calm, think, breathe, think... Electra checks the rear view mirror, listening as Rath pumps the gas. Her eyes flash down to her bag. Outside, Rath watches Electra through the windows. She appears motionless. The electric gas counter races like a stop watch. In the car, Electra eases her hand into her bag. The tank full, Rath re-hangs the pump. He walks around the car and heads for the station. Electra waits until his back is turned. She pulls her tool pouch from her bag, throws it open and finds her wire stripper. Reaching under the dash, she yanks out a tangled handful of wire. She looks up; Rath is inside paying. ELECTRA Come on, come on, it's a cake walk. Her fingers fly with surgical precision, snipping, stripping, twisting. Rath steps out of the station as her head pops up, looking for him. It takes only a second for him to realize what she is doing. RATH Oh shit. He runs at the car as she strips the last set of wires and strikes them; the BATTERY GRINDS. ELECTRA Please, please. He is almost there when the ENGINE FIRES. She stomps on the gas, ramming the shift into drive. TIRES SQUEALING, the car swerves forward as Rath slams into it. He bounces backward, falling to the ground. The car fishtails away, accelerating as Rath rolls to one knee, his gun automatically in his hand. He draws a bead, but, he does not shoot. With a concerted effort, he puts the gun away. RATH Dammit. EXT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT BUILDING - NIGHT Electra's car is parked out front. She unlocks the lobby door and drags herself inside. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT LOBBY Standing at the mailboxes flipping through her mail is Jennifer Morgan. What she was hoping for is not there. She looks up and sees Electra. JENNIFER Excuse me -- Electra stops. JENNIFER You live here, don't you? Electra nods. JENNIFER I'm sorry, this may sound really weird, but my friend told me he slipped a letter under the door here and I was wondering if you happened to see it? Electra is in a daze, her hand moving into her pocket. ELECTRA Letter? JENNIFER Yeah. He said he saw a woman with dark hair going into the building when he dropped it off. ELECTRA No. I don't have it. Electra's mouth opens and she backs away. Jennifer is bothered by her reaction and she doesn't push it. JENNIFER I'm sorry. I didn't mean to -- I'm sorry. She shrugs and unlocks the interior door, leaving Electra in the lobby. Electra watches her, as her hand moves from pocket to pocket. A worried expression tightens her face; the letter is gone. She opens the interior door, following Jennifer up the stairs. INT. STAIRCASE Electra climbs the stairs, her mind pouring through the possibilities, filled with fear. By the time Electra reaches the top floor, Jennifer is entering her apartment. Electra hurries past Jennifer's door to her own. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT - NIGHT Electra flies across the living room to the monitors. She clicks them on, putting on Jennifer's channel. On the screen we see Jennifer in her living room checking her phone messages. One from her mother. Electra throws a few switches so that Jennifer's entire apartment is in front of her. On one of the monitors we see a shadow slide across the oak floor as something moves along the edge of the room. Jennifer has moved to the bathroom and is drawing a bath. Electra clamps her hand over her mouth when he steps out. Bain moves into the dining room where Jennifer had just been. Wearing rubber surgeon's gloves, he picks up the mail that she had dropped on the table and sorts through it. Bain moves about the apartment with complete indifference to Jennifer's presence; as if he were invisible, as though he knew she couldn't see him. He moves into a room, just as she moves out. Electra watches, dizzy, sick with terror, but she is unable to turn away. Bain searches through a desk drawer, while Jennifer starts undressing for her bath. He walks down the hall and stands outside of the bathroom. If Jennifer would turn around she would see him. Electra is about to run, to call out when -- Something catches Bain's eye. He moves into the bedroom, and is turned so that he is looking straight up into the camera. He inches towards it, not sure what it is. The fiber optic cable is hidden in the light fixture hanging over the bed. Staring at it, he is looking right at Electra. Bain steps up onto the bed, his face distorting as he moves close to the fish-eye lens. Poking it with his finger, he realizes what it is. A warped smile stretches across his face as he whispers -- BAIN (V.O.) Oh, you sick little bitch -- Electra tears away from the screen, panic seizing hold of her. She rips entire drawers out of her dresser, dumping them into a suitcase, stuffing in anything that looks important. She grabs Nikita in the "travel kitty." EXT. BACK PORCH The door opens and Electra jumps out, slamming it behind her as -- Bain turns from the back stairs. She leaps back inside as he whips out his GUN, PUMPING TWO HOLES in the door. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT She scrambles from the kitchen, throwing her suitcase, still clutching the "travel kitty," as -- The back DOOR EXPLODES from its hinges, Bain charging, FIRING his GUN. BULLETS HISSING past her, Electra crashes through the front door into the hall. INT. HALL The stairs are at the far end. She is only halfway, when -- Rath rises up the stairs, his gun cocked. Electra drops to the floor as -- Behind her, Bain barrels from the apartment. Rath FIRES. The wood DOOR SPLINTERS, BULLET HOLES surrounding Bain. Off balance, he lunges back into the apartment. Rath continues FIRING, grabbing hold of Electra. They run down the stairs. EXT. REAR STAIRCASE Bain leaps down the flights. EXT. ALLEY Bain rushes into the street, looking in every direction. They are gone. BAIN Fuck me! EXT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL - NIGHT Somewhere in the city. INT. HOTEL ROOM Electra and Rath enter the room together but they are both immediately alone. She walks across the room to a chair in the corner, curling into it even as Nikita jumps up and curls into her lap. He sets his briefcase on the table at the opposite end of the room and sits. They watch each other. Silence. Between then is the liquor cabinet. Rath knows a good idea when he sees one. RATH Want a drink? Her face is as expressionless as Nikita's. He pours himself a very large bourbon and slugs it down. Takes a deep breath, then pours himself another one. RATH Okay... He returns to his table with his drink. RATH I'm not good at this sort of thing, but we don't have a lot of time, so I'll just go ahead and get started. First: you. I ask myself, 'What is she thinking?' Her body tightens, coils. RATH Simple. She's scared. She's almost been killed twice and now she is alone in a room with a man that she believes is an... assassin. Another deep pull on the bourbon. RATH Furthermore she was brought here not entirely on her own accord which only increases her fear and suspicion. Thus, as long as she is afraid, her first, maybe her only thought will be escape. Does that leave me any other option? He slugs down the rest of his drink and stands, whipping out his gun. RATH No. Crossing the room, he turns the gun around and offers it to her. She looks at it. Back at him. He puts it on the bed beside her, turns his back and walks to the bar. She picks up the gun. RATH The gun is silenced. She could shoot me right now. She stands, Nikita jumping from her lap. RATH She could take the car and be far from here before the maid comes in the morning, but -- She starts squeezing OFF ROUNDS; the LAMP EXPLODES, the CHAIRS around him ERUPT, tufts of white stuffing leaping into the air. ELECTRA Shut up! He freezes, bottle in one hand, glass in the other. ELECTRA Stop trying to tell me what I'm thinking! She moves closer to him, the gun squeezed in her fist. ELECTRA I'll tell you what you're thinking -- you think I'm not going to shoot you but right now you're not so sure, are you? A slight shake of the head, no. ELECTRA You're thinking that maybe it was a mistake to give me this gun, that maybe I'm not going to think about things logically because I'm a woman and I'm freaked out and I'm going to do something impulsive and irrational -- right? She FIRES the GUN to both sides of his head. He's surprised to be alive. ELECTRA You don't know shit about me! Now sit down! He returns to his chair and sits with the same expression she had worn sitting a moment ago. She opens the cabinet and grabs one of the sample bottles of liquor. She sucks it all down and throws the bottle across the room. Grabbing another, she sits on the edge of the bed. ELECTRA Okay. How did you find me? RATH You're the computer hacker, you tell me. ELECTRA You didn't know anything about me. Nikita rubs up against her leg. ELECTRA Nikita? RATH Yellow Pages. V for veterinarian. There aren't that many. She nods, slurping at her bottle. ELECTRA You're one of them, aren't you? RATH 'Them'? ELECTRA An assassin? RATH Until a minute ago. ELECTRA What does that mean? RATH If I still was what I used to be, you would not be pointing that at me. Electra eyes him, considers shooting him right now. ELECTRA Who is that other guy? RATH Another contractor. ELECTRA Someone hired both of you? RATH No. They hired Bain. The contract would have been mine, but Bain took it from me as he took the previous one. ELECTRA So this is something between you and him? RATH He stole the contract knowing that I would come after him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he is trying to retire me. ELECTRA He wants to kill you? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Why? RATH The nature of the business. You remove your competition. ELECTRA And you want to use me to get him? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Forget it! RATH We don't have a choice. She FIRES the GUN, pocking the wall behind him. ELECTRA Don't tell me I don't have a choice! RATH Right. ELECTRA I'm two seconds away from making my choice which means you've got two seconds to tell me why I shouldn't shoot you. RATH It's simple. You need me. I need you. And we will both need money. ELECTRA I don't need you to get the money -- my money! RATH If it hadn't been for me, you would be dead. She's up pacing, knowing there is some truth in that. ELECTRA I don't need the money. RATH This is something that is never going to end. You can never work in the business again with this contract, because he will find you. To survive, you have to go into deep hiding. And that's going to take money, a lot of money. ELECTRA Then you can have the disks and I'll just walk out that door -- RATH If you walk out that door, Bain will still come after you. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he took a contract on you. He'll come for you and he'll find you. ELECTRA You don't know that -- you're trying to scare me. RATH No. It's the truth. I know what you are. Like me, like Bain, you're a ghost, you're not part of the real world. You don't have a social security number. You don't pay taxes. You've probably used ten different names over the last ten years. A long time ago something probably happened, something illegal and you ran, you disappeared and it was easy. You think you can do it again. But I'm telling you, fading from the law is nothing. No matter what you do, where you go, I swear to you that Bain will find you. ELECTRA How? RATH Right now, as we sit here, he is tearing through your apartment. He is digging through your drawers, emptying your closets. He will take your telephone and address books, your appointment books. If you keep a diary, he is reading it. He'll go into the kitchen and find out what kind of food you eat, liquor you drink, cigarettes you smoke. In the bathroom he will find any prescription drugs you take and where you get them filled. If you have video tape or recordings he will watch and listen to all of them. She is coming unglued. Imagining him watching her tapes, going through her possessions. She is moving, pacing, ready to explode. ELECTRA Oh Jesus Jesus... RATH He will know everything about you. Everything. I know, because I've done it. Once you've been inside a mark's home, you're in their head. If you're any good, you'll find the mark in a week, and Bain is good because I was the best and I couldn't take him. She whirls and starts FIRING the GUN, firing it everywhere, fear and anger rocketing out of her in WHISTLING hot wads of LEAD. When she stops, he starts to say something but she levels the gun at him. ELECTRA Shut up! All right! You've said enough! She forces herself back, grabbing handfuls of the sample bottles. ELECTRA I need to think... To be alone. With the gun and an armful of booze and Nikita following at her feet, she goes into the bathroom and slams the door. INT. BATHROOM She locks the door and then collapses. Her body seems to fold up onto itself as she slides down the wall; the GUN and the BOTTLES falling from her arms, CLATTERING SOFTLY on the bath rug as she buries her face in her hands. INT. BEDROOM Very mechanically, Rath begins setting up his chess board, putting the pieces into the same positions. It is a ritual, and with it he enters a kind of trance. From the bathroom, almost inaudible, he hears Electra CRYING. INT. BATHROOM With her head now buried in her arms and knees, she is sobbing, her body rocking. The crying seems very similar to Jennifer's; a complete emotional release. INT. BEDROOM Rath stares at the board. The CRYING grows LOUDER. He stands and walks to the door. He starts to knock but stops himself. Like Electra with Jennifer, Rath would like to help, he just has no idea how to. He turns back to the desk, to his chess game. INT. BATHROOM Her eyes are now burning red. She stops crying long enough to suck down an entire sample of Scotch. Nikita rubs against her and she strokes her. ELECTRA Oh shit, Nikita. INT. BEDROOM Rath is setting up his computer system. He hears the TUB FILLING UP. INT. BATHROOM Nikita jumps up onto the toilet seat and starts drinking. ELECTRA Cheers. Electra finishes another sample and drops it to the floor where we see that many of the bottles are now empty. In the tub, steam rising off the surface, she wrings out a wash cloth and covers her face, sinking deeper into the water. INT. BEDROOM When Electra comes out of the bathroom, Rath is again at his chess game. She sits down across from him and sets the gun on the table between them. Rath looks up at her. ELECTRA Listen -- I don't even know your name. RATH Rath. Robert Rath. ELECTRA Electra. RATH Just Electra? ELECTRA Yeah. RATH As in daughter of Agamemnon? ELECTRA No. Just Electra. The conversation dies. ELECTRA What I'm trying to say is that -- I'm not sure I can do this, help you, unless I know more about you. RATH What do you want to know? ELECTRA If Bain hadn't taken the contract on me, would you have? He stares at her. RATH No. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because I'm done. ELECTRA This is crazy. I can't trust you. You can't trust me. How can we possibly help each other? They sit in silence, the gun and the chess game lying between them. RATH Do you play? She looks at the chess board. ELECTRA With computers. RATH It's not the same, is it? ELECTRA Better than playing with yourself. He smiles. RATH I had an opponent. She understands that he is trying to tell her something. ELECTRA Had? RATH He was Russian. Nicholai Tachlinkov. A legend in the business when I was just starting. I admired him. When I heard he loved chess I became obsessed with the game. Electra studies the board. ELECTRA He was white? Rath nods. ELECTRA It looks like white's game. RATH We played with a code using The New York Times obituaries. Over three years we played twelve matches. I never won. ELECTRA Why didn't you finish this game? She reaches over and lifts a White Knight and takes a Bishop. Rath counters, taking her Knight. RATH He was... taken. ELECTRA He was killed. Rath nods. Throughout the entire conversation they continue to play out the chess game. ELECTRA By who? A long beat. RATH I killed him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because that's how it works. That's what it's about. He was the best. He was on top. ELECTRA Where you wanted to be? RATH Yes. As soon as you get into this business, all you can think about is getting to the top. That's all there is. Until then, there is nothing. You are nothing. ELECTRA How did you get into the business? RATH The same way everyone does; the government, the Agency. ELECTRA The C.I.A.? RATH More or less. ELECTRA How old were you? RATH They recruited me when I was in high school. ELECTRA Jesus -- why? RATH Languages. I was already fluent in nine languages. ELECTRA You were like a boy genius? RATH Some people said that. I never thought so. ELECTRA Why not? RATH I was just different. ELECTRA You went from high school to the Agency? RATH No. I graduated from George Washington University. Then I entered the Agency training program. ELECTRA They didn't give you a choice, did they? RATH No, they didn't. ELECTRA But you knew what they were training you for? RATH Of course. I was going to be James Bond. ELECTRA Ahhhh... RATH They are very good at what they do. It's very seductive. The training, the weapons, the travel -- ELECTRA The exotic women. RATH Women? No... not really. ELECTRA Why not? RATH Women... I don't... I don't want to talk about women. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because you are a women. ELECTRA Why did you leave the Agency? RATH The same reason everyone does. You hear your name on C-SPAN and you realize you're a skeleton in someone's closet and they're coming to bury you. ELECTRA They tried to kill you? RATH Yes. It didn't matter much to them as long as I disappeared. ELECTRA Then you went freelance? RATH The only thing different about the private sector is that a General Contractor takes less of a percentage than the government, so you make more money. Then once you make the transition, you realize you were never working for the government; it was always the private sector, the vested interests and it's the same vested interests that continue to buy your plane tickets. ELECTRA Tell me about the first time. RATH My first take? ELECTRA Yes. RATH Why? ELECTRA Because I want to know. RATH It was... mechanical. Very precise. It was exactly like the training drill except for the adrenaline. ELECTRA Are they usually like that? RATH No. Just the first one. ELECTRA After that? RATH They become complicated... messy. ELECTRA Did it ever bother you? RATH Did it ever bother James Bond? ELECTRA That's fiction. RATH This is fiction! Don't you see that? This is another reality. And the people that come into the world to play this game -- nobody forces them! They're here, they know the rules, the stakes, the risks! Do you understand what I am saying? No one is innocent -- including you! ELECTRA Does that mean it didn't bother you? Rath leans back and stares at her. She waits. RATH You get a job swinging a hammer, the first day you get a blister, it tears open, it bleeds and it stays sore a long time. You keep swinging the hammer, you get a good hard callous that covers that spot and it never bothers you again. Electra says nothing. He leans forward and slides a rook into her back row. RATH Check. He leans back. RATH Is that what you wanted to hear? Something cold blooded... something remorseless... ELECTRA No. Something honest. A beat. Rath likes this woman. She moves her Queen. ELECTRA Mate. He smiles. ELECTRA I hope your plan is better than your game. INT. CHEAP HOTEL - NIGHT The room is ugly. Shag carpeting, wood paneling and polyester patterned curtains. We hear a COMPUTER KEYBOARD CLICKING away as we MOVE ACROSS a table. The hotel phone is in a modem, which is held together with duct tape. Between the modem and the computer is a scrambler constructed out of a series of naked circuit boards. It is a very similar set up to Rath's, only it has been put together with a fraction of the resources. Bain sits, typing at the computer, his shirt off. Beside the desk-top is a six pack of Old Style beer, a bag of Doritos and his Gameboy. On the floor, disassembled neatly on a small white towel is his cleaned gun. Bain finishes punching in a code, sits back and sucks down his beer. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Where have you been, Michael? He belches. He is communicating with his General Contractor. On the table is a collection of personal objects, much of it stuffed in pillow cases, taken from Electra's house. BAIN/SCREEN Tracking the mark. Bain fingers a pair of satin panties. He smiles as he smells them. BAIN I'm on the scent. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN You're too late. Bain slams his beer down. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN I've learned from MicroCell, Rath fulfilled the contract. BAIN/SCREEN How? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN He took out the mark and sold the disks back to MicroCell. Bain falls back in his chair, thinking. He runs his hands through his sweaty hair. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Michael? BAIN No. No. No. I don't believe it. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN They money will be standard bank transfer. We believe we will know where and when. BAIN What? BAIN/SCREEN How? There is no response. BAIN/SCREEN How in the fuck do you know that? A long beat. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Such language in front of a lady. BAIN I don't give a fuck what you are. I asked you -- He hits the repeat key. BAIN (types) How in the fuck do you know that? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Do you want Rath or not? Bain stares at the screen, thinking. Thinking hard. INT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL ROOM - NIGHT Another computer screen, but we don't know that it is different. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN It will take three days to arrange the transfer. ELECTRA Three days? We are in Electra and Rath's hotel room. She is standing behind him, reading as he types. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA Are you going to tell him? RATH It. Tell it. For all I know it could be a machine. ELECTRA You said you didn't trust it. RATH I don't. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA What kind of bank is going to allow us to withdraw ten million dollars the day it is transferred? RATH The kind preferred by drug smugglers, arms dealers and politicians. Rath types in an account number. RATH Do you have a passport? ELECTRA Several. RATH Good. ELECTRA Where is it? RATH Mexico. INT. AIRPLANE - DAY Rath and Electra are sitting in the first class section, which she is obviously enjoying, smiling and sipping champagne. ELECTRA God, I love first class. I remember when I was a little girl, I would wonder what it was like up here. I would always try to peek through the curtains. Rath says nothing, staring out the window. Electra shakes her head. ELECTRA I hope Nikita's all right. He still does not respond. ELECTRA Hey, where are you? RATH Thinking. ELECTRA About? RATH Nothing. Electra sips the last of her champagne. ELECTRA I've never been to the Gulf of Mexico. Is it as nice as they say? RATH I don't know. ELECTRA You were there? A long beat. RATH Yes. EXT. SMALL MEXICAN AIRPORT - DAY The plane lands. EXT. TERMINAL CAB STAND Rath and Electra hand their bags to a CABBY who puts them in his trunk. INT. CAB Rath speaks perfect Spanish. RATH (in Spanish) Good afternoon. We have reservations at the Hotel Paraiso in Costa Blanca. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes, sir. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - DAY The cab pulls up in front of a large, brand new glass hotel, which shimmers in the blue green reflection of the gulf water. Rath is upset. RATH (in Spanish) No, no. I said the Hotel Paraiso. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes. This is the Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) No, the other Hotel Paraiso, in the city. Near the Plaza del Sol. CABBY (in Spanish) I'm sorry, sir. A year ago there was a fire in the old Hotel Paraiso. This is the new Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) Take us there. EXT. COSTA BLANCA - DAY American tourist dollars have built up the coasts, but much of the out-lying city is very poor. The old Hotel Paraiso is a five story blackened husk. The face of the building is burnt black and it seems to hang in space as something non-corporeal, like the shadow of the building rather than the building itself. Rath stares at it, remembering. Electra is behind him, standing in the midst of the Plaza del Sol. He looks up to the fifth story window, then turns directly opposite of that. The International Banco de Mexico, an enormous, beautiful old building; its exterior walls are white-washed concrete, blindingly bright white. Electra looks at the bank and smiles. ELECTRA So, that's where all that S & L money is? Rath is not listening to her. He is somewhere else. He turns back to the fourth story window. RATH That's where he'll be. ELECTRA What? RATH I wasn't expecting this. I need to think. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - NIGHT Beyond the lights of the hotel the gulf darkens to midnight oil. INT. HOTEL PARAISO ELEVATOR On one side of the elevator is a young couple who look like newlyweds. They are cuddling, kissing and giggling as though they are alone. Electra and Rath are on the other side of the elevator. It is a strange contrast. Electra is staring at them. Rath, behind his sunglasses, is in his own world. The ELEVATOR CHIMES and opens. Nobody moves. The DOORS CHIME again and start to close, as everyone realizes that this is their floor. Rath and the other man grab the doors, which spring back open. It is a funny, awkward moment, as everyone apologizes and smiles politely, on the way out. INT. HALL The couple move down the hall, the newlyweds finding their door first. Rath reaches the door to their room, opens it and enters. Electra lingers, watching the other couple, watching as he fumbles for his keys, her hand running up between his legs and over his ass. He finally manages to open the door and she pushes him inside. Electra softly closes her door. INT. HOTEL PARAISO - HOTEL ROOM Rath is sitting in a desk chair staring out of the sliding balcony doors at the dark gulf water. ELECTRA Did you see them? Electra moves about the large suite. ELECTRA They looked like they were in love. Rath says nothing. ELECTRA Well, I think I'll take a bath. Come on, Nikita! The two of them walk into the bathroom, leaving Rath to himself. INT. BATHROOM Electra sits on the edge of the over-sized tub, water running through her fingers as she adjusts the temperature. After a beat she hears a SMALL CRASH, a GLASS BREAKING. It is followed by other MUFFLED NOISES, a WOMAN GIGGLING and a THUMPING.

nikita

How many times the word 'nikita' appears in the text?

why I'm here. Electra wants to scream. The speedometer is climbing over 100. RATH I really think you should slow down. INT. HOTEL SUITE - NIGHT The room is immaculate; near the door, several over-sized suitcases line the wall. Bain is sitting at the desk. His WALKMAN is on, MUSIC BLASTING, as he flips casually through the telephone directory. His finger eases down a column stopping at "Morgan Jennifer." There is a KNOCK at the door. He smiles and tears out the page. There is another, LOUDER KNOCK which Bain hears this time. He TURN OFF the WALKMAN and opens the door; a BELLBOY is waiting with a luggage cart. BELLBOY Hello, sir. Have you some luggage you need carried. Bain gives him a wink and a smile. BAIN Indeed I do. INT. ELECTRA'S CAR - NIGHT The red "low fuel" light is on. ELECTRA Now what? RATH Turn off the engine. Electra twists the ignition and the CAR DIES. Rath glances around and we see the car is parked in a gas station. ELECTRA You want me to pump? RATH No, stay in the car. I want you to understand something. If I intended to kill you, you would already be dead. Electra says nothing. He reaches over and takes the car keys. When he is out of the car, Electra slowly releases the strangle-hold she had on the steering wheel. ELECTRA Okay, Nikita, stay calm, think, breathe, think... Electra checks the rear view mirror, listening as Rath pumps the gas. Her eyes flash down to her bag. Outside, Rath watches Electra through the windows. She appears motionless. The electric gas counter races like a stop watch. In the car, Electra eases her hand into her bag. The tank full, Rath re-hangs the pump. He walks around the car and heads for the station. Electra waits until his back is turned. She pulls her tool pouch from her bag, throws it open and finds her wire stripper. Reaching under the dash, she yanks out a tangled handful of wire. She looks up; Rath is inside paying. ELECTRA Come on, come on, it's a cake walk. Her fingers fly with surgical precision, snipping, stripping, twisting. Rath steps out of the station as her head pops up, looking for him. It takes only a second for him to realize what she is doing. RATH Oh shit. He runs at the car as she strips the last set of wires and strikes them; the BATTERY GRINDS. ELECTRA Please, please. He is almost there when the ENGINE FIRES. She stomps on the gas, ramming the shift into drive. TIRES SQUEALING, the car swerves forward as Rath slams into it. He bounces backward, falling to the ground. The car fishtails away, accelerating as Rath rolls to one knee, his gun automatically in his hand. He draws a bead, but, he does not shoot. With a concerted effort, he puts the gun away. RATH Dammit. EXT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT BUILDING - NIGHT Electra's car is parked out front. She unlocks the lobby door and drags herself inside. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT LOBBY Standing at the mailboxes flipping through her mail is Jennifer Morgan. What she was hoping for is not there. She looks up and sees Electra. JENNIFER Excuse me -- Electra stops. JENNIFER You live here, don't you? Electra nods. JENNIFER I'm sorry, this may sound really weird, but my friend told me he slipped a letter under the door here and I was wondering if you happened to see it? Electra is in a daze, her hand moving into her pocket. ELECTRA Letter? JENNIFER Yeah. He said he saw a woman with dark hair going into the building when he dropped it off. ELECTRA No. I don't have it. Electra's mouth opens and she backs away. Jennifer is bothered by her reaction and she doesn't push it. JENNIFER I'm sorry. I didn't mean to -- I'm sorry. She shrugs and unlocks the interior door, leaving Electra in the lobby. Electra watches her, as her hand moves from pocket to pocket. A worried expression tightens her face; the letter is gone. She opens the interior door, following Jennifer up the stairs. INT. STAIRCASE Electra climbs the stairs, her mind pouring through the possibilities, filled with fear. By the time Electra reaches the top floor, Jennifer is entering her apartment. Electra hurries past Jennifer's door to her own. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT - NIGHT Electra flies across the living room to the monitors. She clicks them on, putting on Jennifer's channel. On the screen we see Jennifer in her living room checking her phone messages. One from her mother. Electra throws a few switches so that Jennifer's entire apartment is in front of her. On one of the monitors we see a shadow slide across the oak floor as something moves along the edge of the room. Jennifer has moved to the bathroom and is drawing a bath. Electra clamps her hand over her mouth when he steps out. Bain moves into the dining room where Jennifer had just been. Wearing rubber surgeon's gloves, he picks up the mail that she had dropped on the table and sorts through it. Bain moves about the apartment with complete indifference to Jennifer's presence; as if he were invisible, as though he knew she couldn't see him. He moves into a room, just as she moves out. Electra watches, dizzy, sick with terror, but she is unable to turn away. Bain searches through a desk drawer, while Jennifer starts undressing for her bath. He walks down the hall and stands outside of the bathroom. If Jennifer would turn around she would see him. Electra is about to run, to call out when -- Something catches Bain's eye. He moves into the bedroom, and is turned so that he is looking straight up into the camera. He inches towards it, not sure what it is. The fiber optic cable is hidden in the light fixture hanging over the bed. Staring at it, he is looking right at Electra. Bain steps up onto the bed, his face distorting as he moves close to the fish-eye lens. Poking it with his finger, he realizes what it is. A warped smile stretches across his face as he whispers -- BAIN (V.O.) Oh, you sick little bitch -- Electra tears away from the screen, panic seizing hold of her. She rips entire drawers out of her dresser, dumping them into a suitcase, stuffing in anything that looks important. She grabs Nikita in the "travel kitty." EXT. BACK PORCH The door opens and Electra jumps out, slamming it behind her as -- Bain turns from the back stairs. She leaps back inside as he whips out his GUN, PUMPING TWO HOLES in the door. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT She scrambles from the kitchen, throwing her suitcase, still clutching the "travel kitty," as -- The back DOOR EXPLODES from its hinges, Bain charging, FIRING his GUN. BULLETS HISSING past her, Electra crashes through the front door into the hall. INT. HALL The stairs are at the far end. She is only halfway, when -- Rath rises up the stairs, his gun cocked. Electra drops to the floor as -- Behind her, Bain barrels from the apartment. Rath FIRES. The wood DOOR SPLINTERS, BULLET HOLES surrounding Bain. Off balance, he lunges back into the apartment. Rath continues FIRING, grabbing hold of Electra. They run down the stairs. EXT. REAR STAIRCASE Bain leaps down the flights. EXT. ALLEY Bain rushes into the street, looking in every direction. They are gone. BAIN Fuck me! EXT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL - NIGHT Somewhere in the city. INT. HOTEL ROOM Electra and Rath enter the room together but they are both immediately alone. She walks across the room to a chair in the corner, curling into it even as Nikita jumps up and curls into her lap. He sets his briefcase on the table at the opposite end of the room and sits. They watch each other. Silence. Between then is the liquor cabinet. Rath knows a good idea when he sees one. RATH Want a drink? Her face is as expressionless as Nikita's. He pours himself a very large bourbon and slugs it down. Takes a deep breath, then pours himself another one. RATH Okay... He returns to his table with his drink. RATH I'm not good at this sort of thing, but we don't have a lot of time, so I'll just go ahead and get started. First: you. I ask myself, 'What is she thinking?' Her body tightens, coils. RATH Simple. She's scared. She's almost been killed twice and now she is alone in a room with a man that she believes is an... assassin. Another deep pull on the bourbon. RATH Furthermore she was brought here not entirely on her own accord which only increases her fear and suspicion. Thus, as long as she is afraid, her first, maybe her only thought will be escape. Does that leave me any other option? He slugs down the rest of his drink and stands, whipping out his gun. RATH No. Crossing the room, he turns the gun around and offers it to her. She looks at it. Back at him. He puts it on the bed beside her, turns his back and walks to the bar. She picks up the gun. RATH The gun is silenced. She could shoot me right now. She stands, Nikita jumping from her lap. RATH She could take the car and be far from here before the maid comes in the morning, but -- She starts squeezing OFF ROUNDS; the LAMP EXPLODES, the CHAIRS around him ERUPT, tufts of white stuffing leaping into the air. ELECTRA Shut up! He freezes, bottle in one hand, glass in the other. ELECTRA Stop trying to tell me what I'm thinking! She moves closer to him, the gun squeezed in her fist. ELECTRA I'll tell you what you're thinking -- you think I'm not going to shoot you but right now you're not so sure, are you? A slight shake of the head, no. ELECTRA You're thinking that maybe it was a mistake to give me this gun, that maybe I'm not going to think about things logically because I'm a woman and I'm freaked out and I'm going to do something impulsive and irrational -- right? She FIRES the GUN to both sides of his head. He's surprised to be alive. ELECTRA You don't know shit about me! Now sit down! He returns to his chair and sits with the same expression she had worn sitting a moment ago. She opens the cabinet and grabs one of the sample bottles of liquor. She sucks it all down and throws the bottle across the room. Grabbing another, she sits on the edge of the bed. ELECTRA Okay. How did you find me? RATH You're the computer hacker, you tell me. ELECTRA You didn't know anything about me. Nikita rubs up against her leg. ELECTRA Nikita? RATH Yellow Pages. V for veterinarian. There aren't that many. She nods, slurping at her bottle. ELECTRA You're one of them, aren't you? RATH 'Them'? ELECTRA An assassin? RATH Until a minute ago. ELECTRA What does that mean? RATH If I still was what I used to be, you would not be pointing that at me. Electra eyes him, considers shooting him right now. ELECTRA Who is that other guy? RATH Another contractor. ELECTRA Someone hired both of you? RATH No. They hired Bain. The contract would have been mine, but Bain took it from me as he took the previous one. ELECTRA So this is something between you and him? RATH He stole the contract knowing that I would come after him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he is trying to retire me. ELECTRA He wants to kill you? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Why? RATH The nature of the business. You remove your competition. ELECTRA And you want to use me to get him? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Forget it! RATH We don't have a choice. She FIRES the GUN, pocking the wall behind him. ELECTRA Don't tell me I don't have a choice! RATH Right. ELECTRA I'm two seconds away from making my choice which means you've got two seconds to tell me why I shouldn't shoot you. RATH It's simple. You need me. I need you. And we will both need money. ELECTRA I don't need you to get the money -- my money! RATH If it hadn't been for me, you would be dead. She's up pacing, knowing there is some truth in that. ELECTRA I don't need the money. RATH This is something that is never going to end. You can never work in the business again with this contract, because he will find you. To survive, you have to go into deep hiding. And that's going to take money, a lot of money. ELECTRA Then you can have the disks and I'll just walk out that door -- RATH If you walk out that door, Bain will still come after you. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he took a contract on you. He'll come for you and he'll find you. ELECTRA You don't know that -- you're trying to scare me. RATH No. It's the truth. I know what you are. Like me, like Bain, you're a ghost, you're not part of the real world. You don't have a social security number. You don't pay taxes. You've probably used ten different names over the last ten years. A long time ago something probably happened, something illegal and you ran, you disappeared and it was easy. You think you can do it again. But I'm telling you, fading from the law is nothing. No matter what you do, where you go, I swear to you that Bain will find you. ELECTRA How? RATH Right now, as we sit here, he is tearing through your apartment. He is digging through your drawers, emptying your closets. He will take your telephone and address books, your appointment books. If you keep a diary, he is reading it. He'll go into the kitchen and find out what kind of food you eat, liquor you drink, cigarettes you smoke. In the bathroom he will find any prescription drugs you take and where you get them filled. If you have video tape or recordings he will watch and listen to all of them. She is coming unglued. Imagining him watching her tapes, going through her possessions. She is moving, pacing, ready to explode. ELECTRA Oh Jesus Jesus... RATH He will know everything about you. Everything. I know, because I've done it. Once you've been inside a mark's home, you're in their head. If you're any good, you'll find the mark in a week, and Bain is good because I was the best and I couldn't take him. She whirls and starts FIRING the GUN, firing it everywhere, fear and anger rocketing out of her in WHISTLING hot wads of LEAD. When she stops, he starts to say something but she levels the gun at him. ELECTRA Shut up! All right! You've said enough! She forces herself back, grabbing handfuls of the sample bottles. ELECTRA I need to think... To be alone. With the gun and an armful of booze and Nikita following at her feet, she goes into the bathroom and slams the door. INT. BATHROOM She locks the door and then collapses. Her body seems to fold up onto itself as she slides down the wall; the GUN and the BOTTLES falling from her arms, CLATTERING SOFTLY on the bath rug as she buries her face in her hands. INT. BEDROOM Very mechanically, Rath begins setting up his chess board, putting the pieces into the same positions. It is a ritual, and with it he enters a kind of trance. From the bathroom, almost inaudible, he hears Electra CRYING. INT. BATHROOM With her head now buried in her arms and knees, she is sobbing, her body rocking. The crying seems very similar to Jennifer's; a complete emotional release. INT. BEDROOM Rath stares at the board. The CRYING grows LOUDER. He stands and walks to the door. He starts to knock but stops himself. Like Electra with Jennifer, Rath would like to help, he just has no idea how to. He turns back to the desk, to his chess game. INT. BATHROOM Her eyes are now burning red. She stops crying long enough to suck down an entire sample of Scotch. Nikita rubs against her and she strokes her. ELECTRA Oh shit, Nikita. INT. BEDROOM Rath is setting up his computer system. He hears the TUB FILLING UP. INT. BATHROOM Nikita jumps up onto the toilet seat and starts drinking. ELECTRA Cheers. Electra finishes another sample and drops it to the floor where we see that many of the bottles are now empty. In the tub, steam rising off the surface, she wrings out a wash cloth and covers her face, sinking deeper into the water. INT. BEDROOM When Electra comes out of the bathroom, Rath is again at his chess game. She sits down across from him and sets the gun on the table between them. Rath looks up at her. ELECTRA Listen -- I don't even know your name. RATH Rath. Robert Rath. ELECTRA Electra. RATH Just Electra? ELECTRA Yeah. RATH As in daughter of Agamemnon? ELECTRA No. Just Electra. The conversation dies. ELECTRA What I'm trying to say is that -- I'm not sure I can do this, help you, unless I know more about you. RATH What do you want to know? ELECTRA If Bain hadn't taken the contract on me, would you have? He stares at her. RATH No. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because I'm done. ELECTRA This is crazy. I can't trust you. You can't trust me. How can we possibly help each other? They sit in silence, the gun and the chess game lying between them. RATH Do you play? She looks at the chess board. ELECTRA With computers. RATH It's not the same, is it? ELECTRA Better than playing with yourself. He smiles. RATH I had an opponent. She understands that he is trying to tell her something. ELECTRA Had? RATH He was Russian. Nicholai Tachlinkov. A legend in the business when I was just starting. I admired him. When I heard he loved chess I became obsessed with the game. Electra studies the board. ELECTRA He was white? Rath nods. ELECTRA It looks like white's game. RATH We played with a code using The New York Times obituaries. Over three years we played twelve matches. I never won. ELECTRA Why didn't you finish this game? She reaches over and lifts a White Knight and takes a Bishop. Rath counters, taking her Knight. RATH He was... taken. ELECTRA He was killed. Rath nods. Throughout the entire conversation they continue to play out the chess game. ELECTRA By who? A long beat. RATH I killed him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because that's how it works. That's what it's about. He was the best. He was on top. ELECTRA Where you wanted to be? RATH Yes. As soon as you get into this business, all you can think about is getting to the top. That's all there is. Until then, there is nothing. You are nothing. ELECTRA How did you get into the business? RATH The same way everyone does; the government, the Agency. ELECTRA The C.I.A.? RATH More or less. ELECTRA How old were you? RATH They recruited me when I was in high school. ELECTRA Jesus -- why? RATH Languages. I was already fluent in nine languages. ELECTRA You were like a boy genius? RATH Some people said that. I never thought so. ELECTRA Why not? RATH I was just different. ELECTRA You went from high school to the Agency? RATH No. I graduated from George Washington University. Then I entered the Agency training program. ELECTRA They didn't give you a choice, did they? RATH No, they didn't. ELECTRA But you knew what they were training you for? RATH Of course. I was going to be James Bond. ELECTRA Ahhhh... RATH They are very good at what they do. It's very seductive. The training, the weapons, the travel -- ELECTRA The exotic women. RATH Women? No... not really. ELECTRA Why not? RATH Women... I don't... I don't want to talk about women. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because you are a women. ELECTRA Why did you leave the Agency? RATH The same reason everyone does. You hear your name on C-SPAN and you realize you're a skeleton in someone's closet and they're coming to bury you. ELECTRA They tried to kill you? RATH Yes. It didn't matter much to them as long as I disappeared. ELECTRA Then you went freelance? RATH The only thing different about the private sector is that a General Contractor takes less of a percentage than the government, so you make more money. Then once you make the transition, you realize you were never working for the government; it was always the private sector, the vested interests and it's the same vested interests that continue to buy your plane tickets. ELECTRA Tell me about the first time. RATH My first take? ELECTRA Yes. RATH Why? ELECTRA Because I want to know. RATH It was... mechanical. Very precise. It was exactly like the training drill except for the adrenaline. ELECTRA Are they usually like that? RATH No. Just the first one. ELECTRA After that? RATH They become complicated... messy. ELECTRA Did it ever bother you? RATH Did it ever bother James Bond? ELECTRA That's fiction. RATH This is fiction! Don't you see that? This is another reality. And the people that come into the world to play this game -- nobody forces them! They're here, they know the rules, the stakes, the risks! Do you understand what I am saying? No one is innocent -- including you! ELECTRA Does that mean it didn't bother you? Rath leans back and stares at her. She waits. RATH You get a job swinging a hammer, the first day you get a blister, it tears open, it bleeds and it stays sore a long time. You keep swinging the hammer, you get a good hard callous that covers that spot and it never bothers you again. Electra says nothing. He leans forward and slides a rook into her back row. RATH Check. He leans back. RATH Is that what you wanted to hear? Something cold blooded... something remorseless... ELECTRA No. Something honest. A beat. Rath likes this woman. She moves her Queen. ELECTRA Mate. He smiles. ELECTRA I hope your plan is better than your game. INT. CHEAP HOTEL - NIGHT The room is ugly. Shag carpeting, wood paneling and polyester patterned curtains. We hear a COMPUTER KEYBOARD CLICKING away as we MOVE ACROSS a table. The hotel phone is in a modem, which is held together with duct tape. Between the modem and the computer is a scrambler constructed out of a series of naked circuit boards. It is a very similar set up to Rath's, only it has been put together with a fraction of the resources. Bain sits, typing at the computer, his shirt off. Beside the desk-top is a six pack of Old Style beer, a bag of Doritos and his Gameboy. On the floor, disassembled neatly on a small white towel is his cleaned gun. Bain finishes punching in a code, sits back and sucks down his beer. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Where have you been, Michael? He belches. He is communicating with his General Contractor. On the table is a collection of personal objects, much of it stuffed in pillow cases, taken from Electra's house. BAIN/SCREEN Tracking the mark. Bain fingers a pair of satin panties. He smiles as he smells them. BAIN I'm on the scent. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN You're too late. Bain slams his beer down. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN I've learned from MicroCell, Rath fulfilled the contract. BAIN/SCREEN How? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN He took out the mark and sold the disks back to MicroCell. Bain falls back in his chair, thinking. He runs his hands through his sweaty hair. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Michael? BAIN No. No. No. I don't believe it. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN They money will be standard bank transfer. We believe we will know where and when. BAIN What? BAIN/SCREEN How? There is no response. BAIN/SCREEN How in the fuck do you know that? A long beat. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Such language in front of a lady. BAIN I don't give a fuck what you are. I asked you -- He hits the repeat key. BAIN (types) How in the fuck do you know that? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Do you want Rath or not? Bain stares at the screen, thinking. Thinking hard. INT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL ROOM - NIGHT Another computer screen, but we don't know that it is different. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN It will take three days to arrange the transfer. ELECTRA Three days? We are in Electra and Rath's hotel room. She is standing behind him, reading as he types. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA Are you going to tell him? RATH It. Tell it. For all I know it could be a machine. ELECTRA You said you didn't trust it. RATH I don't. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA What kind of bank is going to allow us to withdraw ten million dollars the day it is transferred? RATH The kind preferred by drug smugglers, arms dealers and politicians. Rath types in an account number. RATH Do you have a passport? ELECTRA Several. RATH Good. ELECTRA Where is it? RATH Mexico. INT. AIRPLANE - DAY Rath and Electra are sitting in the first class section, which she is obviously enjoying, smiling and sipping champagne. ELECTRA God, I love first class. I remember when I was a little girl, I would wonder what it was like up here. I would always try to peek through the curtains. Rath says nothing, staring out the window. Electra shakes her head. ELECTRA I hope Nikita's all right. He still does not respond. ELECTRA Hey, where are you? RATH Thinking. ELECTRA About? RATH Nothing. Electra sips the last of her champagne. ELECTRA I've never been to the Gulf of Mexico. Is it as nice as they say? RATH I don't know. ELECTRA You were there? A long beat. RATH Yes. EXT. SMALL MEXICAN AIRPORT - DAY The plane lands. EXT. TERMINAL CAB STAND Rath and Electra hand their bags to a CABBY who puts them in his trunk. INT. CAB Rath speaks perfect Spanish. RATH (in Spanish) Good afternoon. We have reservations at the Hotel Paraiso in Costa Blanca. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes, sir. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - DAY The cab pulls up in front of a large, brand new glass hotel, which shimmers in the blue green reflection of the gulf water. Rath is upset. RATH (in Spanish) No, no. I said the Hotel Paraiso. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes. This is the Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) No, the other Hotel Paraiso, in the city. Near the Plaza del Sol. CABBY (in Spanish) I'm sorry, sir. A year ago there was a fire in the old Hotel Paraiso. This is the new Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) Take us there. EXT. COSTA BLANCA - DAY American tourist dollars have built up the coasts, but much of the out-lying city is very poor. The old Hotel Paraiso is a five story blackened husk. The face of the building is burnt black and it seems to hang in space as something non-corporeal, like the shadow of the building rather than the building itself. Rath stares at it, remembering. Electra is behind him, standing in the midst of the Plaza del Sol. He looks up to the fifth story window, then turns directly opposite of that. The International Banco de Mexico, an enormous, beautiful old building; its exterior walls are white-washed concrete, blindingly bright white. Electra looks at the bank and smiles. ELECTRA So, that's where all that S & L money is? Rath is not listening to her. He is somewhere else. He turns back to the fourth story window. RATH That's where he'll be. ELECTRA What? RATH I wasn't expecting this. I need to think. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - NIGHT Beyond the lights of the hotel the gulf darkens to midnight oil. INT. HOTEL PARAISO ELEVATOR On one side of the elevator is a young couple who look like newlyweds. They are cuddling, kissing and giggling as though they are alone. Electra and Rath are on the other side of the elevator. It is a strange contrast. Electra is staring at them. Rath, behind his sunglasses, is in his own world. The ELEVATOR CHIMES and opens. Nobody moves. The DOORS CHIME again and start to close, as everyone realizes that this is their floor. Rath and the other man grab the doors, which spring back open. It is a funny, awkward moment, as everyone apologizes and smiles politely, on the way out. INT. HALL The couple move down the hall, the newlyweds finding their door first. Rath reaches the door to their room, opens it and enters. Electra lingers, watching the other couple, watching as he fumbles for his keys, her hand running up between his legs and over his ass. He finally manages to open the door and she pushes him inside. Electra softly closes her door. INT. HOTEL PARAISO - HOTEL ROOM Rath is sitting in a desk chair staring out of the sliding balcony doors at the dark gulf water. ELECTRA Did you see them? Electra moves about the large suite. ELECTRA They looked like they were in love. Rath says nothing. ELECTRA Well, I think I'll take a bath. Come on, Nikita! The two of them walk into the bathroom, leaving Rath to himself. INT. BATHROOM Electra sits on the edge of the over-sized tub, water running through her fingers as she adjusts the temperature. After a beat she hears a SMALL CRASH, a GLASS BREAKING. It is followed by other MUFFLED NOISES, a WOMAN GIGGLING and a THUMPING.

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why I'm here. Electra wants to scream. The speedometer is climbing over 100. RATH I really think you should slow down. INT. HOTEL SUITE - NIGHT The room is immaculate; near the door, several over-sized suitcases line the wall. Bain is sitting at the desk. His WALKMAN is on, MUSIC BLASTING, as he flips casually through the telephone directory. His finger eases down a column stopping at "Morgan Jennifer." There is a KNOCK at the door. He smiles and tears out the page. There is another, LOUDER KNOCK which Bain hears this time. He TURN OFF the WALKMAN and opens the door; a BELLBOY is waiting with a luggage cart. BELLBOY Hello, sir. Have you some luggage you need carried. Bain gives him a wink and a smile. BAIN Indeed I do. INT. ELECTRA'S CAR - NIGHT The red "low fuel" light is on. ELECTRA Now what? RATH Turn off the engine. Electra twists the ignition and the CAR DIES. Rath glances around and we see the car is parked in a gas station. ELECTRA You want me to pump? RATH No, stay in the car. I want you to understand something. If I intended to kill you, you would already be dead. Electra says nothing. He reaches over and takes the car keys. When he is out of the car, Electra slowly releases the strangle-hold she had on the steering wheel. ELECTRA Okay, Nikita, stay calm, think, breathe, think... Electra checks the rear view mirror, listening as Rath pumps the gas. Her eyes flash down to her bag. Outside, Rath watches Electra through the windows. She appears motionless. The electric gas counter races like a stop watch. In the car, Electra eases her hand into her bag. The tank full, Rath re-hangs the pump. He walks around the car and heads for the station. Electra waits until his back is turned. She pulls her tool pouch from her bag, throws it open and finds her wire stripper. Reaching under the dash, she yanks out a tangled handful of wire. She looks up; Rath is inside paying. ELECTRA Come on, come on, it's a cake walk. Her fingers fly with surgical precision, snipping, stripping, twisting. Rath steps out of the station as her head pops up, looking for him. It takes only a second for him to realize what she is doing. RATH Oh shit. He runs at the car as she strips the last set of wires and strikes them; the BATTERY GRINDS. ELECTRA Please, please. He is almost there when the ENGINE FIRES. She stomps on the gas, ramming the shift into drive. TIRES SQUEALING, the car swerves forward as Rath slams into it. He bounces backward, falling to the ground. The car fishtails away, accelerating as Rath rolls to one knee, his gun automatically in his hand. He draws a bead, but, he does not shoot. With a concerted effort, he puts the gun away. RATH Dammit. EXT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT BUILDING - NIGHT Electra's car is parked out front. She unlocks the lobby door and drags herself inside. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT LOBBY Standing at the mailboxes flipping through her mail is Jennifer Morgan. What she was hoping for is not there. She looks up and sees Electra. JENNIFER Excuse me -- Electra stops. JENNIFER You live here, don't you? Electra nods. JENNIFER I'm sorry, this may sound really weird, but my friend told me he slipped a letter under the door here and I was wondering if you happened to see it? Electra is in a daze, her hand moving into her pocket. ELECTRA Letter? JENNIFER Yeah. He said he saw a woman with dark hair going into the building when he dropped it off. ELECTRA No. I don't have it. Electra's mouth opens and she backs away. Jennifer is bothered by her reaction and she doesn't push it. JENNIFER I'm sorry. I didn't mean to -- I'm sorry. She shrugs and unlocks the interior door, leaving Electra in the lobby. Electra watches her, as her hand moves from pocket to pocket. A worried expression tightens her face; the letter is gone. She opens the interior door, following Jennifer up the stairs. INT. STAIRCASE Electra climbs the stairs, her mind pouring through the possibilities, filled with fear. By the time Electra reaches the top floor, Jennifer is entering her apartment. Electra hurries past Jennifer's door to her own. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT - NIGHT Electra flies across the living room to the monitors. She clicks them on, putting on Jennifer's channel. On the screen we see Jennifer in her living room checking her phone messages. One from her mother. Electra throws a few switches so that Jennifer's entire apartment is in front of her. On one of the monitors we see a shadow slide across the oak floor as something moves along the edge of the room. Jennifer has moved to the bathroom and is drawing a bath. Electra clamps her hand over her mouth when he steps out. Bain moves into the dining room where Jennifer had just been. Wearing rubber surgeon's gloves, he picks up the mail that she had dropped on the table and sorts through it. Bain moves about the apartment with complete indifference to Jennifer's presence; as if he were invisible, as though he knew she couldn't see him. He moves into a room, just as she moves out. Electra watches, dizzy, sick with terror, but she is unable to turn away. Bain searches through a desk drawer, while Jennifer starts undressing for her bath. He walks down the hall and stands outside of the bathroom. If Jennifer would turn around she would see him. Electra is about to run, to call out when -- Something catches Bain's eye. He moves into the bedroom, and is turned so that he is looking straight up into the camera. He inches towards it, not sure what it is. The fiber optic cable is hidden in the light fixture hanging over the bed. Staring at it, he is looking right at Electra. Bain steps up onto the bed, his face distorting as he moves close to the fish-eye lens. Poking it with his finger, he realizes what it is. A warped smile stretches across his face as he whispers -- BAIN (V.O.) Oh, you sick little bitch -- Electra tears away from the screen, panic seizing hold of her. She rips entire drawers out of her dresser, dumping them into a suitcase, stuffing in anything that looks important. She grabs Nikita in the "travel kitty." EXT. BACK PORCH The door opens and Electra jumps out, slamming it behind her as -- Bain turns from the back stairs. She leaps back inside as he whips out his GUN, PUMPING TWO HOLES in the door. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT She scrambles from the kitchen, throwing her suitcase, still clutching the "travel kitty," as -- The back DOOR EXPLODES from its hinges, Bain charging, FIRING his GUN. BULLETS HISSING past her, Electra crashes through the front door into the hall. INT. HALL The stairs are at the far end. She is only halfway, when -- Rath rises up the stairs, his gun cocked. Electra drops to the floor as -- Behind her, Bain barrels from the apartment. Rath FIRES. The wood DOOR SPLINTERS, BULLET HOLES surrounding Bain. Off balance, he lunges back into the apartment. Rath continues FIRING, grabbing hold of Electra. They run down the stairs. EXT. REAR STAIRCASE Bain leaps down the flights. EXT. ALLEY Bain rushes into the street, looking in every direction. They are gone. BAIN Fuck me! EXT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL - NIGHT Somewhere in the city. INT. HOTEL ROOM Electra and Rath enter the room together but they are both immediately alone. She walks across the room to a chair in the corner, curling into it even as Nikita jumps up and curls into her lap. He sets his briefcase on the table at the opposite end of the room and sits. They watch each other. Silence. Between then is the liquor cabinet. Rath knows a good idea when he sees one. RATH Want a drink? Her face is as expressionless as Nikita's. He pours himself a very large bourbon and slugs it down. Takes a deep breath, then pours himself another one. RATH Okay... He returns to his table with his drink. RATH I'm not good at this sort of thing, but we don't have a lot of time, so I'll just go ahead and get started. First: you. I ask myself, 'What is she thinking?' Her body tightens, coils. RATH Simple. She's scared. She's almost been killed twice and now she is alone in a room with a man that she believes is an... assassin. Another deep pull on the bourbon. RATH Furthermore she was brought here not entirely on her own accord which only increases her fear and suspicion. Thus, as long as she is afraid, her first, maybe her only thought will be escape. Does that leave me any other option? He slugs down the rest of his drink and stands, whipping out his gun. RATH No. Crossing the room, he turns the gun around and offers it to her. She looks at it. Back at him. He puts it on the bed beside her, turns his back and walks to the bar. She picks up the gun. RATH The gun is silenced. She could shoot me right now. She stands, Nikita jumping from her lap. RATH She could take the car and be far from here before the maid comes in the morning, but -- She starts squeezing OFF ROUNDS; the LAMP EXPLODES, the CHAIRS around him ERUPT, tufts of white stuffing leaping into the air. ELECTRA Shut up! He freezes, bottle in one hand, glass in the other. ELECTRA Stop trying to tell me what I'm thinking! She moves closer to him, the gun squeezed in her fist. ELECTRA I'll tell you what you're thinking -- you think I'm not going to shoot you but right now you're not so sure, are you? A slight shake of the head, no. ELECTRA You're thinking that maybe it was a mistake to give me this gun, that maybe I'm not going to think about things logically because I'm a woman and I'm freaked out and I'm going to do something impulsive and irrational -- right? She FIRES the GUN to both sides of his head. He's surprised to be alive. ELECTRA You don't know shit about me! Now sit down! He returns to his chair and sits with the same expression she had worn sitting a moment ago. She opens the cabinet and grabs one of the sample bottles of liquor. She sucks it all down and throws the bottle across the room. Grabbing another, she sits on the edge of the bed. ELECTRA Okay. How did you find me? RATH You're the computer hacker, you tell me. ELECTRA You didn't know anything about me. Nikita rubs up against her leg. ELECTRA Nikita? RATH Yellow Pages. V for veterinarian. There aren't that many. She nods, slurping at her bottle. ELECTRA You're one of them, aren't you? RATH 'Them'? ELECTRA An assassin? RATH Until a minute ago. ELECTRA What does that mean? RATH If I still was what I used to be, you would not be pointing that at me. Electra eyes him, considers shooting him right now. ELECTRA Who is that other guy? RATH Another contractor. ELECTRA Someone hired both of you? RATH No. They hired Bain. The contract would have been mine, but Bain took it from me as he took the previous one. ELECTRA So this is something between you and him? RATH He stole the contract knowing that I would come after him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he is trying to retire me. ELECTRA He wants to kill you? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Why? RATH The nature of the business. You remove your competition. ELECTRA And you want to use me to get him? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Forget it! RATH We don't have a choice. She FIRES the GUN, pocking the wall behind him. ELECTRA Don't tell me I don't have a choice! RATH Right. ELECTRA I'm two seconds away from making my choice which means you've got two seconds to tell me why I shouldn't shoot you. RATH It's simple. You need me. I need you. And we will both need money. ELECTRA I don't need you to get the money -- my money! RATH If it hadn't been for me, you would be dead. She's up pacing, knowing there is some truth in that. ELECTRA I don't need the money. RATH This is something that is never going to end. You can never work in the business again with this contract, because he will find you. To survive, you have to go into deep hiding. And that's going to take money, a lot of money. ELECTRA Then you can have the disks and I'll just walk out that door -- RATH If you walk out that door, Bain will still come after you. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he took a contract on you. He'll come for you and he'll find you. ELECTRA You don't know that -- you're trying to scare me. RATH No. It's the truth. I know what you are. Like me, like Bain, you're a ghost, you're not part of the real world. You don't have a social security number. You don't pay taxes. You've probably used ten different names over the last ten years. A long time ago something probably happened, something illegal and you ran, you disappeared and it was easy. You think you can do it again. But I'm telling you, fading from the law is nothing. No matter what you do, where you go, I swear to you that Bain will find you. ELECTRA How? RATH Right now, as we sit here, he is tearing through your apartment. He is digging through your drawers, emptying your closets. He will take your telephone and address books, your appointment books. If you keep a diary, he is reading it. He'll go into the kitchen and find out what kind of food you eat, liquor you drink, cigarettes you smoke. In the bathroom he will find any prescription drugs you take and where you get them filled. If you have video tape or recordings he will watch and listen to all of them. She is coming unglued. Imagining him watching her tapes, going through her possessions. She is moving, pacing, ready to explode. ELECTRA Oh Jesus Jesus... RATH He will know everything about you. Everything. I know, because I've done it. Once you've been inside a mark's home, you're in their head. If you're any good, you'll find the mark in a week, and Bain is good because I was the best and I couldn't take him. She whirls and starts FIRING the GUN, firing it everywhere, fear and anger rocketing out of her in WHISTLING hot wads of LEAD. When she stops, he starts to say something but she levels the gun at him. ELECTRA Shut up! All right! You've said enough! She forces herself back, grabbing handfuls of the sample bottles. ELECTRA I need to think... To be alone. With the gun and an armful of booze and Nikita following at her feet, she goes into the bathroom and slams the door. INT. BATHROOM She locks the door and then collapses. Her body seems to fold up onto itself as she slides down the wall; the GUN and the BOTTLES falling from her arms, CLATTERING SOFTLY on the bath rug as she buries her face in her hands. INT. BEDROOM Very mechanically, Rath begins setting up his chess board, putting the pieces into the same positions. It is a ritual, and with it he enters a kind of trance. From the bathroom, almost inaudible, he hears Electra CRYING. INT. BATHROOM With her head now buried in her arms and knees, she is sobbing, her body rocking. The crying seems very similar to Jennifer's; a complete emotional release. INT. BEDROOM Rath stares at the board. The CRYING grows LOUDER. He stands and walks to the door. He starts to knock but stops himself. Like Electra with Jennifer, Rath would like to help, he just has no idea how to. He turns back to the desk, to his chess game. INT. BATHROOM Her eyes are now burning red. She stops crying long enough to suck down an entire sample of Scotch. Nikita rubs against her and she strokes her. ELECTRA Oh shit, Nikita. INT. BEDROOM Rath is setting up his computer system. He hears the TUB FILLING UP. INT. BATHROOM Nikita jumps up onto the toilet seat and starts drinking. ELECTRA Cheers. Electra finishes another sample and drops it to the floor where we see that many of the bottles are now empty. In the tub, steam rising off the surface, she wrings out a wash cloth and covers her face, sinking deeper into the water. INT. BEDROOM When Electra comes out of the bathroom, Rath is again at his chess game. She sits down across from him and sets the gun on the table between them. Rath looks up at her. ELECTRA Listen -- I don't even know your name. RATH Rath. Robert Rath. ELECTRA Electra. RATH Just Electra? ELECTRA Yeah. RATH As in daughter of Agamemnon? ELECTRA No. Just Electra. The conversation dies. ELECTRA What I'm trying to say is that -- I'm not sure I can do this, help you, unless I know more about you. RATH What do you want to know? ELECTRA If Bain hadn't taken the contract on me, would you have? He stares at her. RATH No. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because I'm done. ELECTRA This is crazy. I can't trust you. You can't trust me. How can we possibly help each other? They sit in silence, the gun and the chess game lying between them. RATH Do you play? She looks at the chess board. ELECTRA With computers. RATH It's not the same, is it? ELECTRA Better than playing with yourself. He smiles. RATH I had an opponent. She understands that he is trying to tell her something. ELECTRA Had? RATH He was Russian. Nicholai Tachlinkov. A legend in the business when I was just starting. I admired him. When I heard he loved chess I became obsessed with the game. Electra studies the board. ELECTRA He was white? Rath nods. ELECTRA It looks like white's game. RATH We played with a code using The New York Times obituaries. Over three years we played twelve matches. I never won. ELECTRA Why didn't you finish this game? She reaches over and lifts a White Knight and takes a Bishop. Rath counters, taking her Knight. RATH He was... taken. ELECTRA He was killed. Rath nods. Throughout the entire conversation they continue to play out the chess game. ELECTRA By who? A long beat. RATH I killed him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because that's how it works. That's what it's about. He was the best. He was on top. ELECTRA Where you wanted to be? RATH Yes. As soon as you get into this business, all you can think about is getting to the top. That's all there is. Until then, there is nothing. You are nothing. ELECTRA How did you get into the business? RATH The same way everyone does; the government, the Agency. ELECTRA The C.I.A.? RATH More or less. ELECTRA How old were you? RATH They recruited me when I was in high school. ELECTRA Jesus -- why? RATH Languages. I was already fluent in nine languages. ELECTRA You were like a boy genius? RATH Some people said that. I never thought so. ELECTRA Why not? RATH I was just different. ELECTRA You went from high school to the Agency? RATH No. I graduated from George Washington University. Then I entered the Agency training program. ELECTRA They didn't give you a choice, did they? RATH No, they didn't. ELECTRA But you knew what they were training you for? RATH Of course. I was going to be James Bond. ELECTRA Ahhhh... RATH They are very good at what they do. It's very seductive. The training, the weapons, the travel -- ELECTRA The exotic women. RATH Women? No... not really. ELECTRA Why not? RATH Women... I don't... I don't want to talk about women. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because you are a women. ELECTRA Why did you leave the Agency? RATH The same reason everyone does. You hear your name on C-SPAN and you realize you're a skeleton in someone's closet and they're coming to bury you. ELECTRA They tried to kill you? RATH Yes. It didn't matter much to them as long as I disappeared. ELECTRA Then you went freelance? RATH The only thing different about the private sector is that a General Contractor takes less of a percentage than the government, so you make more money. Then once you make the transition, you realize you were never working for the government; it was always the private sector, the vested interests and it's the same vested interests that continue to buy your plane tickets. ELECTRA Tell me about the first time. RATH My first take? ELECTRA Yes. RATH Why? ELECTRA Because I want to know. RATH It was... mechanical. Very precise. It was exactly like the training drill except for the adrenaline. ELECTRA Are they usually like that? RATH No. Just the first one. ELECTRA After that? RATH They become complicated... messy. ELECTRA Did it ever bother you? RATH Did it ever bother James Bond? ELECTRA That's fiction. RATH This is fiction! Don't you see that? This is another reality. And the people that come into the world to play this game -- nobody forces them! They're here, they know the rules, the stakes, the risks! Do you understand what I am saying? No one is innocent -- including you! ELECTRA Does that mean it didn't bother you? Rath leans back and stares at her. She waits. RATH You get a job swinging a hammer, the first day you get a blister, it tears open, it bleeds and it stays sore a long time. You keep swinging the hammer, you get a good hard callous that covers that spot and it never bothers you again. Electra says nothing. He leans forward and slides a rook into her back row. RATH Check. He leans back. RATH Is that what you wanted to hear? Something cold blooded... something remorseless... ELECTRA No. Something honest. A beat. Rath likes this woman. She moves her Queen. ELECTRA Mate. He smiles. ELECTRA I hope your plan is better than your game. INT. CHEAP HOTEL - NIGHT The room is ugly. Shag carpeting, wood paneling and polyester patterned curtains. We hear a COMPUTER KEYBOARD CLICKING away as we MOVE ACROSS a table. The hotel phone is in a modem, which is held together with duct tape. Between the modem and the computer is a scrambler constructed out of a series of naked circuit boards. It is a very similar set up to Rath's, only it has been put together with a fraction of the resources. Bain sits, typing at the computer, his shirt off. Beside the desk-top is a six pack of Old Style beer, a bag of Doritos and his Gameboy. On the floor, disassembled neatly on a small white towel is his cleaned gun. Bain finishes punching in a code, sits back and sucks down his beer. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Where have you been, Michael? He belches. He is communicating with his General Contractor. On the table is a collection of personal objects, much of it stuffed in pillow cases, taken from Electra's house. BAIN/SCREEN Tracking the mark. Bain fingers a pair of satin panties. He smiles as he smells them. BAIN I'm on the scent. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN You're too late. Bain slams his beer down. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN I've learned from MicroCell, Rath fulfilled the contract. BAIN/SCREEN How? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN He took out the mark and sold the disks back to MicroCell. Bain falls back in his chair, thinking. He runs his hands through his sweaty hair. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Michael? BAIN No. No. No. I don't believe it. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN They money will be standard bank transfer. We believe we will know where and when. BAIN What? BAIN/SCREEN How? There is no response. BAIN/SCREEN How in the fuck do you know that? A long beat. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Such language in front of a lady. BAIN I don't give a fuck what you are. I asked you -- He hits the repeat key. BAIN (types) How in the fuck do you know that? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Do you want Rath or not? Bain stares at the screen, thinking. Thinking hard. INT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL ROOM - NIGHT Another computer screen, but we don't know that it is different. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN It will take three days to arrange the transfer. ELECTRA Three days? We are in Electra and Rath's hotel room. She is standing behind him, reading as he types. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA Are you going to tell him? RATH It. Tell it. For all I know it could be a machine. ELECTRA You said you didn't trust it. RATH I don't. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA What kind of bank is going to allow us to withdraw ten million dollars the day it is transferred? RATH The kind preferred by drug smugglers, arms dealers and politicians. Rath types in an account number. RATH Do you have a passport? ELECTRA Several. RATH Good. ELECTRA Where is it? RATH Mexico. INT. AIRPLANE - DAY Rath and Electra are sitting in the first class section, which she is obviously enjoying, smiling and sipping champagne. ELECTRA God, I love first class. I remember when I was a little girl, I would wonder what it was like up here. I would always try to peek through the curtains. Rath says nothing, staring out the window. Electra shakes her head. ELECTRA I hope Nikita's all right. He still does not respond. ELECTRA Hey, where are you? RATH Thinking. ELECTRA About? RATH Nothing. Electra sips the last of her champagne. ELECTRA I've never been to the Gulf of Mexico. Is it as nice as they say? RATH I don't know. ELECTRA You were there? A long beat. RATH Yes. EXT. SMALL MEXICAN AIRPORT - DAY The plane lands. EXT. TERMINAL CAB STAND Rath and Electra hand their bags to a CABBY who puts them in his trunk. INT. CAB Rath speaks perfect Spanish. RATH (in Spanish) Good afternoon. We have reservations at the Hotel Paraiso in Costa Blanca. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes, sir. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - DAY The cab pulls up in front of a large, brand new glass hotel, which shimmers in the blue green reflection of the gulf water. Rath is upset. RATH (in Spanish) No, no. I said the Hotel Paraiso. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes. This is the Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) No, the other Hotel Paraiso, in the city. Near the Plaza del Sol. CABBY (in Spanish) I'm sorry, sir. A year ago there was a fire in the old Hotel Paraiso. This is the new Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) Take us there. EXT. COSTA BLANCA - DAY American tourist dollars have built up the coasts, but much of the out-lying city is very poor. The old Hotel Paraiso is a five story blackened husk. The face of the building is burnt black and it seems to hang in space as something non-corporeal, like the shadow of the building rather than the building itself. Rath stares at it, remembering. Electra is behind him, standing in the midst of the Plaza del Sol. He looks up to the fifth story window, then turns directly opposite of that. The International Banco de Mexico, an enormous, beautiful old building; its exterior walls are white-washed concrete, blindingly bright white. Electra looks at the bank and smiles. ELECTRA So, that's where all that S & L money is? Rath is not listening to her. He is somewhere else. He turns back to the fourth story window. RATH That's where he'll be. ELECTRA What? RATH I wasn't expecting this. I need to think. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - NIGHT Beyond the lights of the hotel the gulf darkens to midnight oil. INT. HOTEL PARAISO ELEVATOR On one side of the elevator is a young couple who look like newlyweds. They are cuddling, kissing and giggling as though they are alone. Electra and Rath are on the other side of the elevator. It is a strange contrast. Electra is staring at them. Rath, behind his sunglasses, is in his own world. The ELEVATOR CHIMES and opens. Nobody moves. The DOORS CHIME again and start to close, as everyone realizes that this is their floor. Rath and the other man grab the doors, which spring back open. It is a funny, awkward moment, as everyone apologizes and smiles politely, on the way out. INT. HALL The couple move down the hall, the newlyweds finding their door first. Rath reaches the door to their room, opens it and enters. Electra lingers, watching the other couple, watching as he fumbles for his keys, her hand running up between his legs and over his ass. He finally manages to open the door and she pushes him inside. Electra softly closes her door. INT. HOTEL PARAISO - HOTEL ROOM Rath is sitting in a desk chair staring out of the sliding balcony doors at the dark gulf water. ELECTRA Did you see them? Electra moves about the large suite. ELECTRA They looked like they were in love. Rath says nothing. ELECTRA Well, I think I'll take a bath. Come on, Nikita! The two of them walk into the bathroom, leaving Rath to himself. INT. BATHROOM Electra sits on the edge of the over-sized tub, water running through her fingers as she adjusts the temperature. After a beat she hears a SMALL CRASH, a GLASS BREAKING. It is followed by other MUFFLED NOISES, a WOMAN GIGGLING and a THUMPING.

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why I'm here. Electra wants to scream. The speedometer is climbing over 100. RATH I really think you should slow down. INT. HOTEL SUITE - NIGHT The room is immaculate; near the door, several over-sized suitcases line the wall. Bain is sitting at the desk. His WALKMAN is on, MUSIC BLASTING, as he flips casually through the telephone directory. His finger eases down a column stopping at "Morgan Jennifer." There is a KNOCK at the door. He smiles and tears out the page. There is another, LOUDER KNOCK which Bain hears this time. He TURN OFF the WALKMAN and opens the door; a BELLBOY is waiting with a luggage cart. BELLBOY Hello, sir. Have you some luggage you need carried. Bain gives him a wink and a smile. BAIN Indeed I do. INT. ELECTRA'S CAR - NIGHT The red "low fuel" light is on. ELECTRA Now what? RATH Turn off the engine. Electra twists the ignition and the CAR DIES. Rath glances around and we see the car is parked in a gas station. ELECTRA You want me to pump? RATH No, stay in the car. I want you to understand something. If I intended to kill you, you would already be dead. Electra says nothing. He reaches over and takes the car keys. When he is out of the car, Electra slowly releases the strangle-hold she had on the steering wheel. ELECTRA Okay, Nikita, stay calm, think, breathe, think... Electra checks the rear view mirror, listening as Rath pumps the gas. Her eyes flash down to her bag. Outside, Rath watches Electra through the windows. She appears motionless. The electric gas counter races like a stop watch. In the car, Electra eases her hand into her bag. The tank full, Rath re-hangs the pump. He walks around the car and heads for the station. Electra waits until his back is turned. She pulls her tool pouch from her bag, throws it open and finds her wire stripper. Reaching under the dash, she yanks out a tangled handful of wire. She looks up; Rath is inside paying. ELECTRA Come on, come on, it's a cake walk. Her fingers fly with surgical precision, snipping, stripping, twisting. Rath steps out of the station as her head pops up, looking for him. It takes only a second for him to realize what she is doing. RATH Oh shit. He runs at the car as she strips the last set of wires and strikes them; the BATTERY GRINDS. ELECTRA Please, please. He is almost there when the ENGINE FIRES. She stomps on the gas, ramming the shift into drive. TIRES SQUEALING, the car swerves forward as Rath slams into it. He bounces backward, falling to the ground. The car fishtails away, accelerating as Rath rolls to one knee, his gun automatically in his hand. He draws a bead, but, he does not shoot. With a concerted effort, he puts the gun away. RATH Dammit. EXT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT BUILDING - NIGHT Electra's car is parked out front. She unlocks the lobby door and drags herself inside. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT LOBBY Standing at the mailboxes flipping through her mail is Jennifer Morgan. What she was hoping for is not there. She looks up and sees Electra. JENNIFER Excuse me -- Electra stops. JENNIFER You live here, don't you? Electra nods. JENNIFER I'm sorry, this may sound really weird, but my friend told me he slipped a letter under the door here and I was wondering if you happened to see it? Electra is in a daze, her hand moving into her pocket. ELECTRA Letter? JENNIFER Yeah. He said he saw a woman with dark hair going into the building when he dropped it off. ELECTRA No. I don't have it. Electra's mouth opens and she backs away. Jennifer is bothered by her reaction and she doesn't push it. JENNIFER I'm sorry. I didn't mean to -- I'm sorry. She shrugs and unlocks the interior door, leaving Electra in the lobby. Electra watches her, as her hand moves from pocket to pocket. A worried expression tightens her face; the letter is gone. She opens the interior door, following Jennifer up the stairs. INT. STAIRCASE Electra climbs the stairs, her mind pouring through the possibilities, filled with fear. By the time Electra reaches the top floor, Jennifer is entering her apartment. Electra hurries past Jennifer's door to her own. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT - NIGHT Electra flies across the living room to the monitors. She clicks them on, putting on Jennifer's channel. On the screen we see Jennifer in her living room checking her phone messages. One from her mother. Electra throws a few switches so that Jennifer's entire apartment is in front of her. On one of the monitors we see a shadow slide across the oak floor as something moves along the edge of the room. Jennifer has moved to the bathroom and is drawing a bath. Electra clamps her hand over her mouth when he steps out. Bain moves into the dining room where Jennifer had just been. Wearing rubber surgeon's gloves, he picks up the mail that she had dropped on the table and sorts through it. Bain moves about the apartment with complete indifference to Jennifer's presence; as if he were invisible, as though he knew she couldn't see him. He moves into a room, just as she moves out. Electra watches, dizzy, sick with terror, but she is unable to turn away. Bain searches through a desk drawer, while Jennifer starts undressing for her bath. He walks down the hall and stands outside of the bathroom. If Jennifer would turn around she would see him. Electra is about to run, to call out when -- Something catches Bain's eye. He moves into the bedroom, and is turned so that he is looking straight up into the camera. He inches towards it, not sure what it is. The fiber optic cable is hidden in the light fixture hanging over the bed. Staring at it, he is looking right at Electra. Bain steps up onto the bed, his face distorting as he moves close to the fish-eye lens. Poking it with his finger, he realizes what it is. A warped smile stretches across his face as he whispers -- BAIN (V.O.) Oh, you sick little bitch -- Electra tears away from the screen, panic seizing hold of her. She rips entire drawers out of her dresser, dumping them into a suitcase, stuffing in anything that looks important. She grabs Nikita in the "travel kitty." EXT. BACK PORCH The door opens and Electra jumps out, slamming it behind her as -- Bain turns from the back stairs. She leaps back inside as he whips out his GUN, PUMPING TWO HOLES in the door. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT She scrambles from the kitchen, throwing her suitcase, still clutching the "travel kitty," as -- The back DOOR EXPLODES from its hinges, Bain charging, FIRING his GUN. BULLETS HISSING past her, Electra crashes through the front door into the hall. INT. HALL The stairs are at the far end. She is only halfway, when -- Rath rises up the stairs, his gun cocked. Electra drops to the floor as -- Behind her, Bain barrels from the apartment. Rath FIRES. The wood DOOR SPLINTERS, BULLET HOLES surrounding Bain. Off balance, he lunges back into the apartment. Rath continues FIRING, grabbing hold of Electra. They run down the stairs. EXT. REAR STAIRCASE Bain leaps down the flights. EXT. ALLEY Bain rushes into the street, looking in every direction. They are gone. BAIN Fuck me! EXT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL - NIGHT Somewhere in the city. INT. HOTEL ROOM Electra and Rath enter the room together but they are both immediately alone. She walks across the room to a chair in the corner, curling into it even as Nikita jumps up and curls into her lap. He sets his briefcase on the table at the opposite end of the room and sits. They watch each other. Silence. Between then is the liquor cabinet. Rath knows a good idea when he sees one. RATH Want a drink? Her face is as expressionless as Nikita's. He pours himself a very large bourbon and slugs it down. Takes a deep breath, then pours himself another one. RATH Okay... He returns to his table with his drink. RATH I'm not good at this sort of thing, but we don't have a lot of time, so I'll just go ahead and get started. First: you. I ask myself, 'What is she thinking?' Her body tightens, coils. RATH Simple. She's scared. She's almost been killed twice and now she is alone in a room with a man that she believes is an... assassin. Another deep pull on the bourbon. RATH Furthermore she was brought here not entirely on her own accord which only increases her fear and suspicion. Thus, as long as she is afraid, her first, maybe her only thought will be escape. Does that leave me any other option? He slugs down the rest of his drink and stands, whipping out his gun. RATH No. Crossing the room, he turns the gun around and offers it to her. She looks at it. Back at him. He puts it on the bed beside her, turns his back and walks to the bar. She picks up the gun. RATH The gun is silenced. She could shoot me right now. She stands, Nikita jumping from her lap. RATH She could take the car and be far from here before the maid comes in the morning, but -- She starts squeezing OFF ROUNDS; the LAMP EXPLODES, the CHAIRS around him ERUPT, tufts of white stuffing leaping into the air. ELECTRA Shut up! He freezes, bottle in one hand, glass in the other. ELECTRA Stop trying to tell me what I'm thinking! She moves closer to him, the gun squeezed in her fist. ELECTRA I'll tell you what you're thinking -- you think I'm not going to shoot you but right now you're not so sure, are you? A slight shake of the head, no. ELECTRA You're thinking that maybe it was a mistake to give me this gun, that maybe I'm not going to think about things logically because I'm a woman and I'm freaked out and I'm going to do something impulsive and irrational -- right? She FIRES the GUN to both sides of his head. He's surprised to be alive. ELECTRA You don't know shit about me! Now sit down! He returns to his chair and sits with the same expression she had worn sitting a moment ago. She opens the cabinet and grabs one of the sample bottles of liquor. She sucks it all down and throws the bottle across the room. Grabbing another, she sits on the edge of the bed. ELECTRA Okay. How did you find me? RATH You're the computer hacker, you tell me. ELECTRA You didn't know anything about me. Nikita rubs up against her leg. ELECTRA Nikita? RATH Yellow Pages. V for veterinarian. There aren't that many. She nods, slurping at her bottle. ELECTRA You're one of them, aren't you? RATH 'Them'? ELECTRA An assassin? RATH Until a minute ago. ELECTRA What does that mean? RATH If I still was what I used to be, you would not be pointing that at me. Electra eyes him, considers shooting him right now. ELECTRA Who is that other guy? RATH Another contractor. ELECTRA Someone hired both of you? RATH No. They hired Bain. The contract would have been mine, but Bain took it from me as he took the previous one. ELECTRA So this is something between you and him? RATH He stole the contract knowing that I would come after him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he is trying to retire me. ELECTRA He wants to kill you? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Why? RATH The nature of the business. You remove your competition. ELECTRA And you want to use me to get him? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Forget it! RATH We don't have a choice. She FIRES the GUN, pocking the wall behind him. ELECTRA Don't tell me I don't have a choice! RATH Right. ELECTRA I'm two seconds away from making my choice which means you've got two seconds to tell me why I shouldn't shoot you. RATH It's simple. You need me. I need you. And we will both need money. ELECTRA I don't need you to get the money -- my money! RATH If it hadn't been for me, you would be dead. She's up pacing, knowing there is some truth in that. ELECTRA I don't need the money. RATH This is something that is never going to end. You can never work in the business again with this contract, because he will find you. To survive, you have to go into deep hiding. And that's going to take money, a lot of money. ELECTRA Then you can have the disks and I'll just walk out that door -- RATH If you walk out that door, Bain will still come after you. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he took a contract on you. He'll come for you and he'll find you. ELECTRA You don't know that -- you're trying to scare me. RATH No. It's the truth. I know what you are. Like me, like Bain, you're a ghost, you're not part of the real world. You don't have a social security number. You don't pay taxes. You've probably used ten different names over the last ten years. A long time ago something probably happened, something illegal and you ran, you disappeared and it was easy. You think you can do it again. But I'm telling you, fading from the law is nothing. No matter what you do, where you go, I swear to you that Bain will find you. ELECTRA How? RATH Right now, as we sit here, he is tearing through your apartment. He is digging through your drawers, emptying your closets. He will take your telephone and address books, your appointment books. If you keep a diary, he is reading it. He'll go into the kitchen and find out what kind of food you eat, liquor you drink, cigarettes you smoke. In the bathroom he will find any prescription drugs you take and where you get them filled. If you have video tape or recordings he will watch and listen to all of them. She is coming unglued. Imagining him watching her tapes, going through her possessions. She is moving, pacing, ready to explode. ELECTRA Oh Jesus Jesus... RATH He will know everything about you. Everything. I know, because I've done it. Once you've been inside a mark's home, you're in their head. If you're any good, you'll find the mark in a week, and Bain is good because I was the best and I couldn't take him. She whirls and starts FIRING the GUN, firing it everywhere, fear and anger rocketing out of her in WHISTLING hot wads of LEAD. When she stops, he starts to say something but she levels the gun at him. ELECTRA Shut up! All right! You've said enough! She forces herself back, grabbing handfuls of the sample bottles. ELECTRA I need to think... To be alone. With the gun and an armful of booze and Nikita following at her feet, she goes into the bathroom and slams the door. INT. BATHROOM She locks the door and then collapses. Her body seems to fold up onto itself as she slides down the wall; the GUN and the BOTTLES falling from her arms, CLATTERING SOFTLY on the bath rug as she buries her face in her hands. INT. BEDROOM Very mechanically, Rath begins setting up his chess board, putting the pieces into the same positions. It is a ritual, and with it he enters a kind of trance. From the bathroom, almost inaudible, he hears Electra CRYING. INT. BATHROOM With her head now buried in her arms and knees, she is sobbing, her body rocking. The crying seems very similar to Jennifer's; a complete emotional release. INT. BEDROOM Rath stares at the board. The CRYING grows LOUDER. He stands and walks to the door. He starts to knock but stops himself. Like Electra with Jennifer, Rath would like to help, he just has no idea how to. He turns back to the desk, to his chess game. INT. BATHROOM Her eyes are now burning red. She stops crying long enough to suck down an entire sample of Scotch. Nikita rubs against her and she strokes her. ELECTRA Oh shit, Nikita. INT. BEDROOM Rath is setting up his computer system. He hears the TUB FILLING UP. INT. BATHROOM Nikita jumps up onto the toilet seat and starts drinking. ELECTRA Cheers. Electra finishes another sample and drops it to the floor where we see that many of the bottles are now empty. In the tub, steam rising off the surface, she wrings out a wash cloth and covers her face, sinking deeper into the water. INT. BEDROOM When Electra comes out of the bathroom, Rath is again at his chess game. She sits down across from him and sets the gun on the table between them. Rath looks up at her. ELECTRA Listen -- I don't even know your name. RATH Rath. Robert Rath. ELECTRA Electra. RATH Just Electra? ELECTRA Yeah. RATH As in daughter of Agamemnon? ELECTRA No. Just Electra. The conversation dies. ELECTRA What I'm trying to say is that -- I'm not sure I can do this, help you, unless I know more about you. RATH What do you want to know? ELECTRA If Bain hadn't taken the contract on me, would you have? He stares at her. RATH No. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because I'm done. ELECTRA This is crazy. I can't trust you. You can't trust me. How can we possibly help each other? They sit in silence, the gun and the chess game lying between them. RATH Do you play? She looks at the chess board. ELECTRA With computers. RATH It's not the same, is it? ELECTRA Better than playing with yourself. He smiles. RATH I had an opponent. She understands that he is trying to tell her something. ELECTRA Had? RATH He was Russian. Nicholai Tachlinkov. A legend in the business when I was just starting. I admired him. When I heard he loved chess I became obsessed with the game. Electra studies the board. ELECTRA He was white? Rath nods. ELECTRA It looks like white's game. RATH We played with a code using The New York Times obituaries. Over three years we played twelve matches. I never won. ELECTRA Why didn't you finish this game? She reaches over and lifts a White Knight and takes a Bishop. Rath counters, taking her Knight. RATH He was... taken. ELECTRA He was killed. Rath nods. Throughout the entire conversation they continue to play out the chess game. ELECTRA By who? A long beat. RATH I killed him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because that's how it works. That's what it's about. He was the best. He was on top. ELECTRA Where you wanted to be? RATH Yes. As soon as you get into this business, all you can think about is getting to the top. That's all there is. Until then, there is nothing. You are nothing. ELECTRA How did you get into the business? RATH The same way everyone does; the government, the Agency. ELECTRA The C.I.A.? RATH More or less. ELECTRA How old were you? RATH They recruited me when I was in high school. ELECTRA Jesus -- why? RATH Languages. I was already fluent in nine languages. ELECTRA You were like a boy genius? RATH Some people said that. I never thought so. ELECTRA Why not? RATH I was just different. ELECTRA You went from high school to the Agency? RATH No. I graduated from George Washington University. Then I entered the Agency training program. ELECTRA They didn't give you a choice, did they? RATH No, they didn't. ELECTRA But you knew what they were training you for? RATH Of course. I was going to be James Bond. ELECTRA Ahhhh... RATH They are very good at what they do. It's very seductive. The training, the weapons, the travel -- ELECTRA The exotic women. RATH Women? No... not really. ELECTRA Why not? RATH Women... I don't... I don't want to talk about women. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because you are a women. ELECTRA Why did you leave the Agency? RATH The same reason everyone does. You hear your name on C-SPAN and you realize you're a skeleton in someone's closet and they're coming to bury you. ELECTRA They tried to kill you? RATH Yes. It didn't matter much to them as long as I disappeared. ELECTRA Then you went freelance? RATH The only thing different about the private sector is that a General Contractor takes less of a percentage than the government, so you make more money. Then once you make the transition, you realize you were never working for the government; it was always the private sector, the vested interests and it's the same vested interests that continue to buy your plane tickets. ELECTRA Tell me about the first time. RATH My first take? ELECTRA Yes. RATH Why? ELECTRA Because I want to know. RATH It was... mechanical. Very precise. It was exactly like the training drill except for the adrenaline. ELECTRA Are they usually like that? RATH No. Just the first one. ELECTRA After that? RATH They become complicated... messy. ELECTRA Did it ever bother you? RATH Did it ever bother James Bond? ELECTRA That's fiction. RATH This is fiction! Don't you see that? This is another reality. And the people that come into the world to play this game -- nobody forces them! They're here, they know the rules, the stakes, the risks! Do you understand what I am saying? No one is innocent -- including you! ELECTRA Does that mean it didn't bother you? Rath leans back and stares at her. She waits. RATH You get a job swinging a hammer, the first day you get a blister, it tears open, it bleeds and it stays sore a long time. You keep swinging the hammer, you get a good hard callous that covers that spot and it never bothers you again. Electra says nothing. He leans forward and slides a rook into her back row. RATH Check. He leans back. RATH Is that what you wanted to hear? Something cold blooded... something remorseless... ELECTRA No. Something honest. A beat. Rath likes this woman. She moves her Queen. ELECTRA Mate. He smiles. ELECTRA I hope your plan is better than your game. INT. CHEAP HOTEL - NIGHT The room is ugly. Shag carpeting, wood paneling and polyester patterned curtains. We hear a COMPUTER KEYBOARD CLICKING away as we MOVE ACROSS a table. The hotel phone is in a modem, which is held together with duct tape. Between the modem and the computer is a scrambler constructed out of a series of naked circuit boards. It is a very similar set up to Rath's, only it has been put together with a fraction of the resources. Bain sits, typing at the computer, his shirt off. Beside the desk-top is a six pack of Old Style beer, a bag of Doritos and his Gameboy. On the floor, disassembled neatly on a small white towel is his cleaned gun. Bain finishes punching in a code, sits back and sucks down his beer. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Where have you been, Michael? He belches. He is communicating with his General Contractor. On the table is a collection of personal objects, much of it stuffed in pillow cases, taken from Electra's house. BAIN/SCREEN Tracking the mark. Bain fingers a pair of satin panties. He smiles as he smells them. BAIN I'm on the scent. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN You're too late. Bain slams his beer down. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN I've learned from MicroCell, Rath fulfilled the contract. BAIN/SCREEN How? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN He took out the mark and sold the disks back to MicroCell. Bain falls back in his chair, thinking. He runs his hands through his sweaty hair. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Michael? BAIN No. No. No. I don't believe it. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN They money will be standard bank transfer. We believe we will know where and when. BAIN What? BAIN/SCREEN How? There is no response. BAIN/SCREEN How in the fuck do you know that? A long beat. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Such language in front of a lady. BAIN I don't give a fuck what you are. I asked you -- He hits the repeat key. BAIN (types) How in the fuck do you know that? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Do you want Rath or not? Bain stares at the screen, thinking. Thinking hard. INT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL ROOM - NIGHT Another computer screen, but we don't know that it is different. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN It will take three days to arrange the transfer. ELECTRA Three days? We are in Electra and Rath's hotel room. She is standing behind him, reading as he types. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA Are you going to tell him? RATH It. Tell it. For all I know it could be a machine. ELECTRA You said you didn't trust it. RATH I don't. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA What kind of bank is going to allow us to withdraw ten million dollars the day it is transferred? RATH The kind preferred by drug smugglers, arms dealers and politicians. Rath types in an account number. RATH Do you have a passport? ELECTRA Several. RATH Good. ELECTRA Where is it? RATH Mexico. INT. AIRPLANE - DAY Rath and Electra are sitting in the first class section, which she is obviously enjoying, smiling and sipping champagne. ELECTRA God, I love first class. I remember when I was a little girl, I would wonder what it was like up here. I would always try to peek through the curtains. Rath says nothing, staring out the window. Electra shakes her head. ELECTRA I hope Nikita's all right. He still does not respond. ELECTRA Hey, where are you? RATH Thinking. ELECTRA About? RATH Nothing. Electra sips the last of her champagne. ELECTRA I've never been to the Gulf of Mexico. Is it as nice as they say? RATH I don't know. ELECTRA You were there? A long beat. RATH Yes. EXT. SMALL MEXICAN AIRPORT - DAY The plane lands. EXT. TERMINAL CAB STAND Rath and Electra hand their bags to a CABBY who puts them in his trunk. INT. CAB Rath speaks perfect Spanish. RATH (in Spanish) Good afternoon. We have reservations at the Hotel Paraiso in Costa Blanca. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes, sir. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - DAY The cab pulls up in front of a large, brand new glass hotel, which shimmers in the blue green reflection of the gulf water. Rath is upset. RATH (in Spanish) No, no. I said the Hotel Paraiso. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes. This is the Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) No, the other Hotel Paraiso, in the city. Near the Plaza del Sol. CABBY (in Spanish) I'm sorry, sir. A year ago there was a fire in the old Hotel Paraiso. This is the new Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) Take us there. EXT. COSTA BLANCA - DAY American tourist dollars have built up the coasts, but much of the out-lying city is very poor. The old Hotel Paraiso is a five story blackened husk. The face of the building is burnt black and it seems to hang in space as something non-corporeal, like the shadow of the building rather than the building itself. Rath stares at it, remembering. Electra is behind him, standing in the midst of the Plaza del Sol. He looks up to the fifth story window, then turns directly opposite of that. The International Banco de Mexico, an enormous, beautiful old building; its exterior walls are white-washed concrete, blindingly bright white. Electra looks at the bank and smiles. ELECTRA So, that's where all that S & L money is? Rath is not listening to her. He is somewhere else. He turns back to the fourth story window. RATH That's where he'll be. ELECTRA What? RATH I wasn't expecting this. I need to think. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - NIGHT Beyond the lights of the hotel the gulf darkens to midnight oil. INT. HOTEL PARAISO ELEVATOR On one side of the elevator is a young couple who look like newlyweds. They are cuddling, kissing and giggling as though they are alone. Electra and Rath are on the other side of the elevator. It is a strange contrast. Electra is staring at them. Rath, behind his sunglasses, is in his own world. The ELEVATOR CHIMES and opens. Nobody moves. The DOORS CHIME again and start to close, as everyone realizes that this is their floor. Rath and the other man grab the doors, which spring back open. It is a funny, awkward moment, as everyone apologizes and smiles politely, on the way out. INT. HALL The couple move down the hall, the newlyweds finding their door first. Rath reaches the door to their room, opens it and enters. Electra lingers, watching the other couple, watching as he fumbles for his keys, her hand running up between his legs and over his ass. He finally manages to open the door and she pushes him inside. Electra softly closes her door. INT. HOTEL PARAISO - HOTEL ROOM Rath is sitting in a desk chair staring out of the sliding balcony doors at the dark gulf water. ELECTRA Did you see them? Electra moves about the large suite. ELECTRA They looked like they were in love. Rath says nothing. ELECTRA Well, I think I'll take a bath. Come on, Nikita! The two of them walk into the bathroom, leaving Rath to himself. INT. BATHROOM Electra sits on the edge of the over-sized tub, water running through her fingers as she adjusts the temperature. After a beat she hears a SMALL CRASH, a GLASS BREAKING. It is followed by other MUFFLED NOISES, a WOMAN GIGGLING and a THUMPING.

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why I'm here. Electra wants to scream. The speedometer is climbing over 100. RATH I really think you should slow down. INT. HOTEL SUITE - NIGHT The room is immaculate; near the door, several over-sized suitcases line the wall. Bain is sitting at the desk. His WALKMAN is on, MUSIC BLASTING, as he flips casually through the telephone directory. His finger eases down a column stopping at "Morgan Jennifer." There is a KNOCK at the door. He smiles and tears out the page. There is another, LOUDER KNOCK which Bain hears this time. He TURN OFF the WALKMAN and opens the door; a BELLBOY is waiting with a luggage cart. BELLBOY Hello, sir. Have you some luggage you need carried. Bain gives him a wink and a smile. BAIN Indeed I do. INT. ELECTRA'S CAR - NIGHT The red "low fuel" light is on. ELECTRA Now what? RATH Turn off the engine. Electra twists the ignition and the CAR DIES. Rath glances around and we see the car is parked in a gas station. ELECTRA You want me to pump? RATH No, stay in the car. I want you to understand something. If I intended to kill you, you would already be dead. Electra says nothing. He reaches over and takes the car keys. When he is out of the car, Electra slowly releases the strangle-hold she had on the steering wheel. ELECTRA Okay, Nikita, stay calm, think, breathe, think... Electra checks the rear view mirror, listening as Rath pumps the gas. Her eyes flash down to her bag. Outside, Rath watches Electra through the windows. She appears motionless. The electric gas counter races like a stop watch. In the car, Electra eases her hand into her bag. The tank full, Rath re-hangs the pump. He walks around the car and heads for the station. Electra waits until his back is turned. She pulls her tool pouch from her bag, throws it open and finds her wire stripper. Reaching under the dash, she yanks out a tangled handful of wire. She looks up; Rath is inside paying. ELECTRA Come on, come on, it's a cake walk. Her fingers fly with surgical precision, snipping, stripping, twisting. Rath steps out of the station as her head pops up, looking for him. It takes only a second for him to realize what she is doing. RATH Oh shit. He runs at the car as she strips the last set of wires and strikes them; the BATTERY GRINDS. ELECTRA Please, please. He is almost there when the ENGINE FIRES. She stomps on the gas, ramming the shift into drive. TIRES SQUEALING, the car swerves forward as Rath slams into it. He bounces backward, falling to the ground. The car fishtails away, accelerating as Rath rolls to one knee, his gun automatically in his hand. He draws a bead, but, he does not shoot. With a concerted effort, he puts the gun away. RATH Dammit. EXT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT BUILDING - NIGHT Electra's car is parked out front. She unlocks the lobby door and drags herself inside. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT LOBBY Standing at the mailboxes flipping through her mail is Jennifer Morgan. What she was hoping for is not there. She looks up and sees Electra. JENNIFER Excuse me -- Electra stops. JENNIFER You live here, don't you? Electra nods. JENNIFER I'm sorry, this may sound really weird, but my friend told me he slipped a letter under the door here and I was wondering if you happened to see it? Electra is in a daze, her hand moving into her pocket. ELECTRA Letter? JENNIFER Yeah. He said he saw a woman with dark hair going into the building when he dropped it off. ELECTRA No. I don't have it. Electra's mouth opens and she backs away. Jennifer is bothered by her reaction and she doesn't push it. JENNIFER I'm sorry. I didn't mean to -- I'm sorry. She shrugs and unlocks the interior door, leaving Electra in the lobby. Electra watches her, as her hand moves from pocket to pocket. A worried expression tightens her face; the letter is gone. She opens the interior door, following Jennifer up the stairs. INT. STAIRCASE Electra climbs the stairs, her mind pouring through the possibilities, filled with fear. By the time Electra reaches the top floor, Jennifer is entering her apartment. Electra hurries past Jennifer's door to her own. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT - NIGHT Electra flies across the living room to the monitors. She clicks them on, putting on Jennifer's channel. On the screen we see Jennifer in her living room checking her phone messages. One from her mother. Electra throws a few switches so that Jennifer's entire apartment is in front of her. On one of the monitors we see a shadow slide across the oak floor as something moves along the edge of the room. Jennifer has moved to the bathroom and is drawing a bath. Electra clamps her hand over her mouth when he steps out. Bain moves into the dining room where Jennifer had just been. Wearing rubber surgeon's gloves, he picks up the mail that she had dropped on the table and sorts through it. Bain moves about the apartment with complete indifference to Jennifer's presence; as if he were invisible, as though he knew she couldn't see him. He moves into a room, just as she moves out. Electra watches, dizzy, sick with terror, but she is unable to turn away. Bain searches through a desk drawer, while Jennifer starts undressing for her bath. He walks down the hall and stands outside of the bathroom. If Jennifer would turn around she would see him. Electra is about to run, to call out when -- Something catches Bain's eye. He moves into the bedroom, and is turned so that he is looking straight up into the camera. He inches towards it, not sure what it is. The fiber optic cable is hidden in the light fixture hanging over the bed. Staring at it, he is looking right at Electra. Bain steps up onto the bed, his face distorting as he moves close to the fish-eye lens. Poking it with his finger, he realizes what it is. A warped smile stretches across his face as he whispers -- BAIN (V.O.) Oh, you sick little bitch -- Electra tears away from the screen, panic seizing hold of her. She rips entire drawers out of her dresser, dumping them into a suitcase, stuffing in anything that looks important. She grabs Nikita in the "travel kitty." EXT. BACK PORCH The door opens and Electra jumps out, slamming it behind her as -- Bain turns from the back stairs. She leaps back inside as he whips out his GUN, PUMPING TWO HOLES in the door. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT She scrambles from the kitchen, throwing her suitcase, still clutching the "travel kitty," as -- The back DOOR EXPLODES from its hinges, Bain charging, FIRING his GUN. BULLETS HISSING past her, Electra crashes through the front door into the hall. INT. HALL The stairs are at the far end. She is only halfway, when -- Rath rises up the stairs, his gun cocked. Electra drops to the floor as -- Behind her, Bain barrels from the apartment. Rath FIRES. The wood DOOR SPLINTERS, BULLET HOLES surrounding Bain. Off balance, he lunges back into the apartment. Rath continues FIRING, grabbing hold of Electra. They run down the stairs. EXT. REAR STAIRCASE Bain leaps down the flights. EXT. ALLEY Bain rushes into the street, looking in every direction. They are gone. BAIN Fuck me! EXT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL - NIGHT Somewhere in the city. INT. HOTEL ROOM Electra and Rath enter the room together but they are both immediately alone. She walks across the room to a chair in the corner, curling into it even as Nikita jumps up and curls into her lap. He sets his briefcase on the table at the opposite end of the room and sits. They watch each other. Silence. Between then is the liquor cabinet. Rath knows a good idea when he sees one. RATH Want a drink? Her face is as expressionless as Nikita's. He pours himself a very large bourbon and slugs it down. Takes a deep breath, then pours himself another one. RATH Okay... He returns to his table with his drink. RATH I'm not good at this sort of thing, but we don't have a lot of time, so I'll just go ahead and get started. First: you. I ask myself, 'What is she thinking?' Her body tightens, coils. RATH Simple. She's scared. She's almost been killed twice and now she is alone in a room with a man that she believes is an... assassin. Another deep pull on the bourbon. RATH Furthermore she was brought here not entirely on her own accord which only increases her fear and suspicion. Thus, as long as she is afraid, her first, maybe her only thought will be escape. Does that leave me any other option? He slugs down the rest of his drink and stands, whipping out his gun. RATH No. Crossing the room, he turns the gun around and offers it to her. She looks at it. Back at him. He puts it on the bed beside her, turns his back and walks to the bar. She picks up the gun. RATH The gun is silenced. She could shoot me right now. She stands, Nikita jumping from her lap. RATH She could take the car and be far from here before the maid comes in the morning, but -- She starts squeezing OFF ROUNDS; the LAMP EXPLODES, the CHAIRS around him ERUPT, tufts of white stuffing leaping into the air. ELECTRA Shut up! He freezes, bottle in one hand, glass in the other. ELECTRA Stop trying to tell me what I'm thinking! She moves closer to him, the gun squeezed in her fist. ELECTRA I'll tell you what you're thinking -- you think I'm not going to shoot you but right now you're not so sure, are you? A slight shake of the head, no. ELECTRA You're thinking that maybe it was a mistake to give me this gun, that maybe I'm not going to think about things logically because I'm a woman and I'm freaked out and I'm going to do something impulsive and irrational -- right? She FIRES the GUN to both sides of his head. He's surprised to be alive. ELECTRA You don't know shit about me! Now sit down! He returns to his chair and sits with the same expression she had worn sitting a moment ago. She opens the cabinet and grabs one of the sample bottles of liquor. She sucks it all down and throws the bottle across the room. Grabbing another, she sits on the edge of the bed. ELECTRA Okay. How did you find me? RATH You're the computer hacker, you tell me. ELECTRA You didn't know anything about me. Nikita rubs up against her leg. ELECTRA Nikita? RATH Yellow Pages. V for veterinarian. There aren't that many. She nods, slurping at her bottle. ELECTRA You're one of them, aren't you? RATH 'Them'? ELECTRA An assassin? RATH Until a minute ago. ELECTRA What does that mean? RATH If I still was what I used to be, you would not be pointing that at me. Electra eyes him, considers shooting him right now. ELECTRA Who is that other guy? RATH Another contractor. ELECTRA Someone hired both of you? RATH No. They hired Bain. The contract would have been mine, but Bain took it from me as he took the previous one. ELECTRA So this is something between you and him? RATH He stole the contract knowing that I would come after him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he is trying to retire me. ELECTRA He wants to kill you? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Why? RATH The nature of the business. You remove your competition. ELECTRA And you want to use me to get him? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Forget it! RATH We don't have a choice. She FIRES the GUN, pocking the wall behind him. ELECTRA Don't tell me I don't have a choice! RATH Right. ELECTRA I'm two seconds away from making my choice which means you've got two seconds to tell me why I shouldn't shoot you. RATH It's simple. You need me. I need you. And we will both need money. ELECTRA I don't need you to get the money -- my money! RATH If it hadn't been for me, you would be dead. She's up pacing, knowing there is some truth in that. ELECTRA I don't need the money. RATH This is something that is never going to end. You can never work in the business again with this contract, because he will find you. To survive, you have to go into deep hiding. And that's going to take money, a lot of money. ELECTRA Then you can have the disks and I'll just walk out that door -- RATH If you walk out that door, Bain will still come after you. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he took a contract on you. He'll come for you and he'll find you. ELECTRA You don't know that -- you're trying to scare me. RATH No. It's the truth. I know what you are. Like me, like Bain, you're a ghost, you're not part of the real world. You don't have a social security number. You don't pay taxes. You've probably used ten different names over the last ten years. A long time ago something probably happened, something illegal and you ran, you disappeared and it was easy. You think you can do it again. But I'm telling you, fading from the law is nothing. No matter what you do, where you go, I swear to you that Bain will find you. ELECTRA How? RATH Right now, as we sit here, he is tearing through your apartment. He is digging through your drawers, emptying your closets. He will take your telephone and address books, your appointment books. If you keep a diary, he is reading it. He'll go into the kitchen and find out what kind of food you eat, liquor you drink, cigarettes you smoke. In the bathroom he will find any prescription drugs you take and where you get them filled. If you have video tape or recordings he will watch and listen to all of them. She is coming unglued. Imagining him watching her tapes, going through her possessions. She is moving, pacing, ready to explode. ELECTRA Oh Jesus Jesus... RATH He will know everything about you. Everything. I know, because I've done it. Once you've been inside a mark's home, you're in their head. If you're any good, you'll find the mark in a week, and Bain is good because I was the best and I couldn't take him. She whirls and starts FIRING the GUN, firing it everywhere, fear and anger rocketing out of her in WHISTLING hot wads of LEAD. When she stops, he starts to say something but she levels the gun at him. ELECTRA Shut up! All right! You've said enough! She forces herself back, grabbing handfuls of the sample bottles. ELECTRA I need to think... To be alone. With the gun and an armful of booze and Nikita following at her feet, she goes into the bathroom and slams the door. INT. BATHROOM She locks the door and then collapses. Her body seems to fold up onto itself as she slides down the wall; the GUN and the BOTTLES falling from her arms, CLATTERING SOFTLY on the bath rug as she buries her face in her hands. INT. BEDROOM Very mechanically, Rath begins setting up his chess board, putting the pieces into the same positions. It is a ritual, and with it he enters a kind of trance. From the bathroom, almost inaudible, he hears Electra CRYING. INT. BATHROOM With her head now buried in her arms and knees, she is sobbing, her body rocking. The crying seems very similar to Jennifer's; a complete emotional release. INT. BEDROOM Rath stares at the board. The CRYING grows LOUDER. He stands and walks to the door. He starts to knock but stops himself. Like Electra with Jennifer, Rath would like to help, he just has no idea how to. He turns back to the desk, to his chess game. INT. BATHROOM Her eyes are now burning red. She stops crying long enough to suck down an entire sample of Scotch. Nikita rubs against her and she strokes her. ELECTRA Oh shit, Nikita. INT. BEDROOM Rath is setting up his computer system. He hears the TUB FILLING UP. INT. BATHROOM Nikita jumps up onto the toilet seat and starts drinking. ELECTRA Cheers. Electra finishes another sample and drops it to the floor where we see that many of the bottles are now empty. In the tub, steam rising off the surface, she wrings out a wash cloth and covers her face, sinking deeper into the water. INT. BEDROOM When Electra comes out of the bathroom, Rath is again at his chess game. She sits down across from him and sets the gun on the table between them. Rath looks up at her. ELECTRA Listen -- I don't even know your name. RATH Rath. Robert Rath. ELECTRA Electra. RATH Just Electra? ELECTRA Yeah. RATH As in daughter of Agamemnon? ELECTRA No. Just Electra. The conversation dies. ELECTRA What I'm trying to say is that -- I'm not sure I can do this, help you, unless I know more about you. RATH What do you want to know? ELECTRA If Bain hadn't taken the contract on me, would you have? He stares at her. RATH No. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because I'm done. ELECTRA This is crazy. I can't trust you. You can't trust me. How can we possibly help each other? They sit in silence, the gun and the chess game lying between them. RATH Do you play? She looks at the chess board. ELECTRA With computers. RATH It's not the same, is it? ELECTRA Better than playing with yourself. He smiles. RATH I had an opponent. She understands that he is trying to tell her something. ELECTRA Had? RATH He was Russian. Nicholai Tachlinkov. A legend in the business when I was just starting. I admired him. When I heard he loved chess I became obsessed with the game. Electra studies the board. ELECTRA He was white? Rath nods. ELECTRA It looks like white's game. RATH We played with a code using The New York Times obituaries. Over three years we played twelve matches. I never won. ELECTRA Why didn't you finish this game? She reaches over and lifts a White Knight and takes a Bishop. Rath counters, taking her Knight. RATH He was... taken. ELECTRA He was killed. Rath nods. Throughout the entire conversation they continue to play out the chess game. ELECTRA By who? A long beat. RATH I killed him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because that's how it works. That's what it's about. He was the best. He was on top. ELECTRA Where you wanted to be? RATH Yes. As soon as you get into this business, all you can think about is getting to the top. That's all there is. Until then, there is nothing. You are nothing. ELECTRA How did you get into the business? RATH The same way everyone does; the government, the Agency. ELECTRA The C.I.A.? RATH More or less. ELECTRA How old were you? RATH They recruited me when I was in high school. ELECTRA Jesus -- why? RATH Languages. I was already fluent in nine languages. ELECTRA You were like a boy genius? RATH Some people said that. I never thought so. ELECTRA Why not? RATH I was just different. ELECTRA You went from high school to the Agency? RATH No. I graduated from George Washington University. Then I entered the Agency training program. ELECTRA They didn't give you a choice, did they? RATH No, they didn't. ELECTRA But you knew what they were training you for? RATH Of course. I was going to be James Bond. ELECTRA Ahhhh... RATH They are very good at what they do. It's very seductive. The training, the weapons, the travel -- ELECTRA The exotic women. RATH Women? No... not really. ELECTRA Why not? RATH Women... I don't... I don't want to talk about women. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because you are a women. ELECTRA Why did you leave the Agency? RATH The same reason everyone does. You hear your name on C-SPAN and you realize you're a skeleton in someone's closet and they're coming to bury you. ELECTRA They tried to kill you? RATH Yes. It didn't matter much to them as long as I disappeared. ELECTRA Then you went freelance? RATH The only thing different about the private sector is that a General Contractor takes less of a percentage than the government, so you make more money. Then once you make the transition, you realize you were never working for the government; it was always the private sector, the vested interests and it's the same vested interests that continue to buy your plane tickets. ELECTRA Tell me about the first time. RATH My first take? ELECTRA Yes. RATH Why? ELECTRA Because I want to know. RATH It was... mechanical. Very precise. It was exactly like the training drill except for the adrenaline. ELECTRA Are they usually like that? RATH No. Just the first one. ELECTRA After that? RATH They become complicated... messy. ELECTRA Did it ever bother you? RATH Did it ever bother James Bond? ELECTRA That's fiction. RATH This is fiction! Don't you see that? This is another reality. And the people that come into the world to play this game -- nobody forces them! They're here, they know the rules, the stakes, the risks! Do you understand what I am saying? No one is innocent -- including you! ELECTRA Does that mean it didn't bother you? Rath leans back and stares at her. She waits. RATH You get a job swinging a hammer, the first day you get a blister, it tears open, it bleeds and it stays sore a long time. You keep swinging the hammer, you get a good hard callous that covers that spot and it never bothers you again. Electra says nothing. He leans forward and slides a rook into her back row. RATH Check. He leans back. RATH Is that what you wanted to hear? Something cold blooded... something remorseless... ELECTRA No. Something honest. A beat. Rath likes this woman. She moves her Queen. ELECTRA Mate. He smiles. ELECTRA I hope your plan is better than your game. INT. CHEAP HOTEL - NIGHT The room is ugly. Shag carpeting, wood paneling and polyester patterned curtains. We hear a COMPUTER KEYBOARD CLICKING away as we MOVE ACROSS a table. The hotel phone is in a modem, which is held together with duct tape. Between the modem and the computer is a scrambler constructed out of a series of naked circuit boards. It is a very similar set up to Rath's, only it has been put together with a fraction of the resources. Bain sits, typing at the computer, his shirt off. Beside the desk-top is a six pack of Old Style beer, a bag of Doritos and his Gameboy. On the floor, disassembled neatly on a small white towel is his cleaned gun. Bain finishes punching in a code, sits back and sucks down his beer. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Where have you been, Michael? He belches. He is communicating with his General Contractor. On the table is a collection of personal objects, much of it stuffed in pillow cases, taken from Electra's house. BAIN/SCREEN Tracking the mark. Bain fingers a pair of satin panties. He smiles as he smells them. BAIN I'm on the scent. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN You're too late. Bain slams his beer down. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN I've learned from MicroCell, Rath fulfilled the contract. BAIN/SCREEN How? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN He took out the mark and sold the disks back to MicroCell. Bain falls back in his chair, thinking. He runs his hands through his sweaty hair. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Michael? BAIN No. No. No. I don't believe it. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN They money will be standard bank transfer. We believe we will know where and when. BAIN What? BAIN/SCREEN How? There is no response. BAIN/SCREEN How in the fuck do you know that? A long beat. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Such language in front of a lady. BAIN I don't give a fuck what you are. I asked you -- He hits the repeat key. BAIN (types) How in the fuck do you know that? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Do you want Rath or not? Bain stares at the screen, thinking. Thinking hard. INT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL ROOM - NIGHT Another computer screen, but we don't know that it is different. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN It will take three days to arrange the transfer. ELECTRA Three days? We are in Electra and Rath's hotel room. She is standing behind him, reading as he types. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA Are you going to tell him? RATH It. Tell it. For all I know it could be a machine. ELECTRA You said you didn't trust it. RATH I don't. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA What kind of bank is going to allow us to withdraw ten million dollars the day it is transferred? RATH The kind preferred by drug smugglers, arms dealers and politicians. Rath types in an account number. RATH Do you have a passport? ELECTRA Several. RATH Good. ELECTRA Where is it? RATH Mexico. INT. AIRPLANE - DAY Rath and Electra are sitting in the first class section, which she is obviously enjoying, smiling and sipping champagne. ELECTRA God, I love first class. I remember when I was a little girl, I would wonder what it was like up here. I would always try to peek through the curtains. Rath says nothing, staring out the window. Electra shakes her head. ELECTRA I hope Nikita's all right. He still does not respond. ELECTRA Hey, where are you? RATH Thinking. ELECTRA About? RATH Nothing. Electra sips the last of her champagne. ELECTRA I've never been to the Gulf of Mexico. Is it as nice as they say? RATH I don't know. ELECTRA You were there? A long beat. RATH Yes. EXT. SMALL MEXICAN AIRPORT - DAY The plane lands. EXT. TERMINAL CAB STAND Rath and Electra hand their bags to a CABBY who puts them in his trunk. INT. CAB Rath speaks perfect Spanish. RATH (in Spanish) Good afternoon. We have reservations at the Hotel Paraiso in Costa Blanca. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes, sir. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - DAY The cab pulls up in front of a large, brand new glass hotel, which shimmers in the blue green reflection of the gulf water. Rath is upset. RATH (in Spanish) No, no. I said the Hotel Paraiso. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes. This is the Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) No, the other Hotel Paraiso, in the city. Near the Plaza del Sol. CABBY (in Spanish) I'm sorry, sir. A year ago there was a fire in the old Hotel Paraiso. This is the new Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) Take us there. EXT. COSTA BLANCA - DAY American tourist dollars have built up the coasts, but much of the out-lying city is very poor. The old Hotel Paraiso is a five story blackened husk. The face of the building is burnt black and it seems to hang in space as something non-corporeal, like the shadow of the building rather than the building itself. Rath stares at it, remembering. Electra is behind him, standing in the midst of the Plaza del Sol. He looks up to the fifth story window, then turns directly opposite of that. The International Banco de Mexico, an enormous, beautiful old building; its exterior walls are white-washed concrete, blindingly bright white. Electra looks at the bank and smiles. ELECTRA So, that's where all that S & L money is? Rath is not listening to her. He is somewhere else. He turns back to the fourth story window. RATH That's where he'll be. ELECTRA What? RATH I wasn't expecting this. I need to think. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - NIGHT Beyond the lights of the hotel the gulf darkens to midnight oil. INT. HOTEL PARAISO ELEVATOR On one side of the elevator is a young couple who look like newlyweds. They are cuddling, kissing and giggling as though they are alone. Electra and Rath are on the other side of the elevator. It is a strange contrast. Electra is staring at them. Rath, behind his sunglasses, is in his own world. The ELEVATOR CHIMES and opens. Nobody moves. The DOORS CHIME again and start to close, as everyone realizes that this is their floor. Rath and the other man grab the doors, which spring back open. It is a funny, awkward moment, as everyone apologizes and smiles politely, on the way out. INT. HALL The couple move down the hall, the newlyweds finding their door first. Rath reaches the door to their room, opens it and enters. Electra lingers, watching the other couple, watching as he fumbles for his keys, her hand running up between his legs and over his ass. He finally manages to open the door and she pushes him inside. Electra softly closes her door. INT. HOTEL PARAISO - HOTEL ROOM Rath is sitting in a desk chair staring out of the sliding balcony doors at the dark gulf water. ELECTRA Did you see them? Electra moves about the large suite. ELECTRA They looked like they were in love. Rath says nothing. ELECTRA Well, I think I'll take a bath. Come on, Nikita! The two of them walk into the bathroom, leaving Rath to himself. INT. BATHROOM Electra sits on the edge of the over-sized tub, water running through her fingers as she adjusts the temperature. After a beat she hears a SMALL CRASH, a GLASS BREAKING. It is followed by other MUFFLED NOISES, a WOMAN GIGGLING and a THUMPING.

starts

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why I'm here. Electra wants to scream. The speedometer is climbing over 100. RATH I really think you should slow down. INT. HOTEL SUITE - NIGHT The room is immaculate; near the door, several over-sized suitcases line the wall. Bain is sitting at the desk. His WALKMAN is on, MUSIC BLASTING, as he flips casually through the telephone directory. His finger eases down a column stopping at "Morgan Jennifer." There is a KNOCK at the door. He smiles and tears out the page. There is another, LOUDER KNOCK which Bain hears this time. He TURN OFF the WALKMAN and opens the door; a BELLBOY is waiting with a luggage cart. BELLBOY Hello, sir. Have you some luggage you need carried. Bain gives him a wink and a smile. BAIN Indeed I do. INT. ELECTRA'S CAR - NIGHT The red "low fuel" light is on. ELECTRA Now what? RATH Turn off the engine. Electra twists the ignition and the CAR DIES. Rath glances around and we see the car is parked in a gas station. ELECTRA You want me to pump? RATH No, stay in the car. I want you to understand something. If I intended to kill you, you would already be dead. Electra says nothing. He reaches over and takes the car keys. When he is out of the car, Electra slowly releases the strangle-hold she had on the steering wheel. ELECTRA Okay, Nikita, stay calm, think, breathe, think... Electra checks the rear view mirror, listening as Rath pumps the gas. Her eyes flash down to her bag. Outside, Rath watches Electra through the windows. She appears motionless. The electric gas counter races like a stop watch. In the car, Electra eases her hand into her bag. The tank full, Rath re-hangs the pump. He walks around the car and heads for the station. Electra waits until his back is turned. She pulls her tool pouch from her bag, throws it open and finds her wire stripper. Reaching under the dash, she yanks out a tangled handful of wire. She looks up; Rath is inside paying. ELECTRA Come on, come on, it's a cake walk. Her fingers fly with surgical precision, snipping, stripping, twisting. Rath steps out of the station as her head pops up, looking for him. It takes only a second for him to realize what she is doing. RATH Oh shit. He runs at the car as she strips the last set of wires and strikes them; the BATTERY GRINDS. ELECTRA Please, please. He is almost there when the ENGINE FIRES. She stomps on the gas, ramming the shift into drive. TIRES SQUEALING, the car swerves forward as Rath slams into it. He bounces backward, falling to the ground. The car fishtails away, accelerating as Rath rolls to one knee, his gun automatically in his hand. He draws a bead, but, he does not shoot. With a concerted effort, he puts the gun away. RATH Dammit. EXT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT BUILDING - NIGHT Electra's car is parked out front. She unlocks the lobby door and drags herself inside. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT LOBBY Standing at the mailboxes flipping through her mail is Jennifer Morgan. What she was hoping for is not there. She looks up and sees Electra. JENNIFER Excuse me -- Electra stops. JENNIFER You live here, don't you? Electra nods. JENNIFER I'm sorry, this may sound really weird, but my friend told me he slipped a letter under the door here and I was wondering if you happened to see it? Electra is in a daze, her hand moving into her pocket. ELECTRA Letter? JENNIFER Yeah. He said he saw a woman with dark hair going into the building when he dropped it off. ELECTRA No. I don't have it. Electra's mouth opens and she backs away. Jennifer is bothered by her reaction and she doesn't push it. JENNIFER I'm sorry. I didn't mean to -- I'm sorry. She shrugs and unlocks the interior door, leaving Electra in the lobby. Electra watches her, as her hand moves from pocket to pocket. A worried expression tightens her face; the letter is gone. She opens the interior door, following Jennifer up the stairs. INT. STAIRCASE Electra climbs the stairs, her mind pouring through the possibilities, filled with fear. By the time Electra reaches the top floor, Jennifer is entering her apartment. Electra hurries past Jennifer's door to her own. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT - NIGHT Electra flies across the living room to the monitors. She clicks them on, putting on Jennifer's channel. On the screen we see Jennifer in her living room checking her phone messages. One from her mother. Electra throws a few switches so that Jennifer's entire apartment is in front of her. On one of the monitors we see a shadow slide across the oak floor as something moves along the edge of the room. Jennifer has moved to the bathroom and is drawing a bath. Electra clamps her hand over her mouth when he steps out. Bain moves into the dining room where Jennifer had just been. Wearing rubber surgeon's gloves, he picks up the mail that she had dropped on the table and sorts through it. Bain moves about the apartment with complete indifference to Jennifer's presence; as if he were invisible, as though he knew she couldn't see him. He moves into a room, just as she moves out. Electra watches, dizzy, sick with terror, but she is unable to turn away. Bain searches through a desk drawer, while Jennifer starts undressing for her bath. He walks down the hall and stands outside of the bathroom. If Jennifer would turn around she would see him. Electra is about to run, to call out when -- Something catches Bain's eye. He moves into the bedroom, and is turned so that he is looking straight up into the camera. He inches towards it, not sure what it is. The fiber optic cable is hidden in the light fixture hanging over the bed. Staring at it, he is looking right at Electra. Bain steps up onto the bed, his face distorting as he moves close to the fish-eye lens. Poking it with his finger, he realizes what it is. A warped smile stretches across his face as he whispers -- BAIN (V.O.) Oh, you sick little bitch -- Electra tears away from the screen, panic seizing hold of her. She rips entire drawers out of her dresser, dumping them into a suitcase, stuffing in anything that looks important. She grabs Nikita in the "travel kitty." EXT. BACK PORCH The door opens and Electra jumps out, slamming it behind her as -- Bain turns from the back stairs. She leaps back inside as he whips out his GUN, PUMPING TWO HOLES in the door. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT She scrambles from the kitchen, throwing her suitcase, still clutching the "travel kitty," as -- The back DOOR EXPLODES from its hinges, Bain charging, FIRING his GUN. BULLETS HISSING past her, Electra crashes through the front door into the hall. INT. HALL The stairs are at the far end. She is only halfway, when -- Rath rises up the stairs, his gun cocked. Electra drops to the floor as -- Behind her, Bain barrels from the apartment. Rath FIRES. The wood DOOR SPLINTERS, BULLET HOLES surrounding Bain. Off balance, he lunges back into the apartment. Rath continues FIRING, grabbing hold of Electra. They run down the stairs. EXT. REAR STAIRCASE Bain leaps down the flights. EXT. ALLEY Bain rushes into the street, looking in every direction. They are gone. BAIN Fuck me! EXT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL - NIGHT Somewhere in the city. INT. HOTEL ROOM Electra and Rath enter the room together but they are both immediately alone. She walks across the room to a chair in the corner, curling into it even as Nikita jumps up and curls into her lap. He sets his briefcase on the table at the opposite end of the room and sits. They watch each other. Silence. Between then is the liquor cabinet. Rath knows a good idea when he sees one. RATH Want a drink? Her face is as expressionless as Nikita's. He pours himself a very large bourbon and slugs it down. Takes a deep breath, then pours himself another one. RATH Okay... He returns to his table with his drink. RATH I'm not good at this sort of thing, but we don't have a lot of time, so I'll just go ahead and get started. First: you. I ask myself, 'What is she thinking?' Her body tightens, coils. RATH Simple. She's scared. She's almost been killed twice and now she is alone in a room with a man that she believes is an... assassin. Another deep pull on the bourbon. RATH Furthermore she was brought here not entirely on her own accord which only increases her fear and suspicion. Thus, as long as she is afraid, her first, maybe her only thought will be escape. Does that leave me any other option? He slugs down the rest of his drink and stands, whipping out his gun. RATH No. Crossing the room, he turns the gun around and offers it to her. She looks at it. Back at him. He puts it on the bed beside her, turns his back and walks to the bar. She picks up the gun. RATH The gun is silenced. She could shoot me right now. She stands, Nikita jumping from her lap. RATH She could take the car and be far from here before the maid comes in the morning, but -- She starts squeezing OFF ROUNDS; the LAMP EXPLODES, the CHAIRS around him ERUPT, tufts of white stuffing leaping into the air. ELECTRA Shut up! He freezes, bottle in one hand, glass in the other. ELECTRA Stop trying to tell me what I'm thinking! She moves closer to him, the gun squeezed in her fist. ELECTRA I'll tell you what you're thinking -- you think I'm not going to shoot you but right now you're not so sure, are you? A slight shake of the head, no. ELECTRA You're thinking that maybe it was a mistake to give me this gun, that maybe I'm not going to think about things logically because I'm a woman and I'm freaked out and I'm going to do something impulsive and irrational -- right? She FIRES the GUN to both sides of his head. He's surprised to be alive. ELECTRA You don't know shit about me! Now sit down! He returns to his chair and sits with the same expression she had worn sitting a moment ago. She opens the cabinet and grabs one of the sample bottles of liquor. She sucks it all down and throws the bottle across the room. Grabbing another, she sits on the edge of the bed. ELECTRA Okay. How did you find me? RATH You're the computer hacker, you tell me. ELECTRA You didn't know anything about me. Nikita rubs up against her leg. ELECTRA Nikita? RATH Yellow Pages. V for veterinarian. There aren't that many. She nods, slurping at her bottle. ELECTRA You're one of them, aren't you? RATH 'Them'? ELECTRA An assassin? RATH Until a minute ago. ELECTRA What does that mean? RATH If I still was what I used to be, you would not be pointing that at me. Electra eyes him, considers shooting him right now. ELECTRA Who is that other guy? RATH Another contractor. ELECTRA Someone hired both of you? RATH No. They hired Bain. The contract would have been mine, but Bain took it from me as he took the previous one. ELECTRA So this is something between you and him? RATH He stole the contract knowing that I would come after him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he is trying to retire me. ELECTRA He wants to kill you? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Why? RATH The nature of the business. You remove your competition. ELECTRA And you want to use me to get him? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Forget it! RATH We don't have a choice. She FIRES the GUN, pocking the wall behind him. ELECTRA Don't tell me I don't have a choice! RATH Right. ELECTRA I'm two seconds away from making my choice which means you've got two seconds to tell me why I shouldn't shoot you. RATH It's simple. You need me. I need you. And we will both need money. ELECTRA I don't need you to get the money -- my money! RATH If it hadn't been for me, you would be dead. She's up pacing, knowing there is some truth in that. ELECTRA I don't need the money. RATH This is something that is never going to end. You can never work in the business again with this contract, because he will find you. To survive, you have to go into deep hiding. And that's going to take money, a lot of money. ELECTRA Then you can have the disks and I'll just walk out that door -- RATH If you walk out that door, Bain will still come after you. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he took a contract on you. He'll come for you and he'll find you. ELECTRA You don't know that -- you're trying to scare me. RATH No. It's the truth. I know what you are. Like me, like Bain, you're a ghost, you're not part of the real world. You don't have a social security number. You don't pay taxes. You've probably used ten different names over the last ten years. A long time ago something probably happened, something illegal and you ran, you disappeared and it was easy. You think you can do it again. But I'm telling you, fading from the law is nothing. No matter what you do, where you go, I swear to you that Bain will find you. ELECTRA How? RATH Right now, as we sit here, he is tearing through your apartment. He is digging through your drawers, emptying your closets. He will take your telephone and address books, your appointment books. If you keep a diary, he is reading it. He'll go into the kitchen and find out what kind of food you eat, liquor you drink, cigarettes you smoke. In the bathroom he will find any prescription drugs you take and where you get them filled. If you have video tape or recordings he will watch and listen to all of them. She is coming unglued. Imagining him watching her tapes, going through her possessions. She is moving, pacing, ready to explode. ELECTRA Oh Jesus Jesus... RATH He will know everything about you. Everything. I know, because I've done it. Once you've been inside a mark's home, you're in their head. If you're any good, you'll find the mark in a week, and Bain is good because I was the best and I couldn't take him. She whirls and starts FIRING the GUN, firing it everywhere, fear and anger rocketing out of her in WHISTLING hot wads of LEAD. When she stops, he starts to say something but she levels the gun at him. ELECTRA Shut up! All right! You've said enough! She forces herself back, grabbing handfuls of the sample bottles. ELECTRA I need to think... To be alone. With the gun and an armful of booze and Nikita following at her feet, she goes into the bathroom and slams the door. INT. BATHROOM She locks the door and then collapses. Her body seems to fold up onto itself as she slides down the wall; the GUN and the BOTTLES falling from her arms, CLATTERING SOFTLY on the bath rug as she buries her face in her hands. INT. BEDROOM Very mechanically, Rath begins setting up his chess board, putting the pieces into the same positions. It is a ritual, and with it he enters a kind of trance. From the bathroom, almost inaudible, he hears Electra CRYING. INT. BATHROOM With her head now buried in her arms and knees, she is sobbing, her body rocking. The crying seems very similar to Jennifer's; a complete emotional release. INT. BEDROOM Rath stares at the board. The CRYING grows LOUDER. He stands and walks to the door. He starts to knock but stops himself. Like Electra with Jennifer, Rath would like to help, he just has no idea how to. He turns back to the desk, to his chess game. INT. BATHROOM Her eyes are now burning red. She stops crying long enough to suck down an entire sample of Scotch. Nikita rubs against her and she strokes her. ELECTRA Oh shit, Nikita. INT. BEDROOM Rath is setting up his computer system. He hears the TUB FILLING UP. INT. BATHROOM Nikita jumps up onto the toilet seat and starts drinking. ELECTRA Cheers. Electra finishes another sample and drops it to the floor where we see that many of the bottles are now empty. In the tub, steam rising off the surface, she wrings out a wash cloth and covers her face, sinking deeper into the water. INT. BEDROOM When Electra comes out of the bathroom, Rath is again at his chess game. She sits down across from him and sets the gun on the table between them. Rath looks up at her. ELECTRA Listen -- I don't even know your name. RATH Rath. Robert Rath. ELECTRA Electra. RATH Just Electra? ELECTRA Yeah. RATH As in daughter of Agamemnon? ELECTRA No. Just Electra. The conversation dies. ELECTRA What I'm trying to say is that -- I'm not sure I can do this, help you, unless I know more about you. RATH What do you want to know? ELECTRA If Bain hadn't taken the contract on me, would you have? He stares at her. RATH No. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because I'm done. ELECTRA This is crazy. I can't trust you. You can't trust me. How can we possibly help each other? They sit in silence, the gun and the chess game lying between them. RATH Do you play? She looks at the chess board. ELECTRA With computers. RATH It's not the same, is it? ELECTRA Better than playing with yourself. He smiles. RATH I had an opponent. She understands that he is trying to tell her something. ELECTRA Had? RATH He was Russian. Nicholai Tachlinkov. A legend in the business when I was just starting. I admired him. When I heard he loved chess I became obsessed with the game. Electra studies the board. ELECTRA He was white? Rath nods. ELECTRA It looks like white's game. RATH We played with a code using The New York Times obituaries. Over three years we played twelve matches. I never won. ELECTRA Why didn't you finish this game? She reaches over and lifts a White Knight and takes a Bishop. Rath counters, taking her Knight. RATH He was... taken. ELECTRA He was killed. Rath nods. Throughout the entire conversation they continue to play out the chess game. ELECTRA By who? A long beat. RATH I killed him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because that's how it works. That's what it's about. He was the best. He was on top. ELECTRA Where you wanted to be? RATH Yes. As soon as you get into this business, all you can think about is getting to the top. That's all there is. Until then, there is nothing. You are nothing. ELECTRA How did you get into the business? RATH The same way everyone does; the government, the Agency. ELECTRA The C.I.A.? RATH More or less. ELECTRA How old were you? RATH They recruited me when I was in high school. ELECTRA Jesus -- why? RATH Languages. I was already fluent in nine languages. ELECTRA You were like a boy genius? RATH Some people said that. I never thought so. ELECTRA Why not? RATH I was just different. ELECTRA You went from high school to the Agency? RATH No. I graduated from George Washington University. Then I entered the Agency training program. ELECTRA They didn't give you a choice, did they? RATH No, they didn't. ELECTRA But you knew what they were training you for? RATH Of course. I was going to be James Bond. ELECTRA Ahhhh... RATH They are very good at what they do. It's very seductive. The training, the weapons, the travel -- ELECTRA The exotic women. RATH Women? No... not really. ELECTRA Why not? RATH Women... I don't... I don't want to talk about women. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because you are a women. ELECTRA Why did you leave the Agency? RATH The same reason everyone does. You hear your name on C-SPAN and you realize you're a skeleton in someone's closet and they're coming to bury you. ELECTRA They tried to kill you? RATH Yes. It didn't matter much to them as long as I disappeared. ELECTRA Then you went freelance? RATH The only thing different about the private sector is that a General Contractor takes less of a percentage than the government, so you make more money. Then once you make the transition, you realize you were never working for the government; it was always the private sector, the vested interests and it's the same vested interests that continue to buy your plane tickets. ELECTRA Tell me about the first time. RATH My first take? ELECTRA Yes. RATH Why? ELECTRA Because I want to know. RATH It was... mechanical. Very precise. It was exactly like the training drill except for the adrenaline. ELECTRA Are they usually like that? RATH No. Just the first one. ELECTRA After that? RATH They become complicated... messy. ELECTRA Did it ever bother you? RATH Did it ever bother James Bond? ELECTRA That's fiction. RATH This is fiction! Don't you see that? This is another reality. And the people that come into the world to play this game -- nobody forces them! They're here, they know the rules, the stakes, the risks! Do you understand what I am saying? No one is innocent -- including you! ELECTRA Does that mean it didn't bother you? Rath leans back and stares at her. She waits. RATH You get a job swinging a hammer, the first day you get a blister, it tears open, it bleeds and it stays sore a long time. You keep swinging the hammer, you get a good hard callous that covers that spot and it never bothers you again. Electra says nothing. He leans forward and slides a rook into her back row. RATH Check. He leans back. RATH Is that what you wanted to hear? Something cold blooded... something remorseless... ELECTRA No. Something honest. A beat. Rath likes this woman. She moves her Queen. ELECTRA Mate. He smiles. ELECTRA I hope your plan is better than your game. INT. CHEAP HOTEL - NIGHT The room is ugly. Shag carpeting, wood paneling and polyester patterned curtains. We hear a COMPUTER KEYBOARD CLICKING away as we MOVE ACROSS a table. The hotel phone is in a modem, which is held together with duct tape. Between the modem and the computer is a scrambler constructed out of a series of naked circuit boards. It is a very similar set up to Rath's, only it has been put together with a fraction of the resources. Bain sits, typing at the computer, his shirt off. Beside the desk-top is a six pack of Old Style beer, a bag of Doritos and his Gameboy. On the floor, disassembled neatly on a small white towel is his cleaned gun. Bain finishes punching in a code, sits back and sucks down his beer. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Where have you been, Michael? He belches. He is communicating with his General Contractor. On the table is a collection of personal objects, much of it stuffed in pillow cases, taken from Electra's house. BAIN/SCREEN Tracking the mark. Bain fingers a pair of satin panties. He smiles as he smells them. BAIN I'm on the scent. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN You're too late. Bain slams his beer down. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN I've learned from MicroCell, Rath fulfilled the contract. BAIN/SCREEN How? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN He took out the mark and sold the disks back to MicroCell. Bain falls back in his chair, thinking. He runs his hands through his sweaty hair. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Michael? BAIN No. No. No. I don't believe it. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN They money will be standard bank transfer. We believe we will know where and when. BAIN What? BAIN/SCREEN How? There is no response. BAIN/SCREEN How in the fuck do you know that? A long beat. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Such language in front of a lady. BAIN I don't give a fuck what you are. I asked you -- He hits the repeat key. BAIN (types) How in the fuck do you know that? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Do you want Rath or not? Bain stares at the screen, thinking. Thinking hard. INT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL ROOM - NIGHT Another computer screen, but we don't know that it is different. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN It will take three days to arrange the transfer. ELECTRA Three days? We are in Electra and Rath's hotel room. She is standing behind him, reading as he types. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA Are you going to tell him? RATH It. Tell it. For all I know it could be a machine. ELECTRA You said you didn't trust it. RATH I don't. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA What kind of bank is going to allow us to withdraw ten million dollars the day it is transferred? RATH The kind preferred by drug smugglers, arms dealers and politicians. Rath types in an account number. RATH Do you have a passport? ELECTRA Several. RATH Good. ELECTRA Where is it? RATH Mexico. INT. AIRPLANE - DAY Rath and Electra are sitting in the first class section, which she is obviously enjoying, smiling and sipping champagne. ELECTRA God, I love first class. I remember when I was a little girl, I would wonder what it was like up here. I would always try to peek through the curtains. Rath says nothing, staring out the window. Electra shakes her head. ELECTRA I hope Nikita's all right. He still does not respond. ELECTRA Hey, where are you? RATH Thinking. ELECTRA About? RATH Nothing. Electra sips the last of her champagne. ELECTRA I've never been to the Gulf of Mexico. Is it as nice as they say? RATH I don't know. ELECTRA You were there? A long beat. RATH Yes. EXT. SMALL MEXICAN AIRPORT - DAY The plane lands. EXT. TERMINAL CAB STAND Rath and Electra hand their bags to a CABBY who puts them in his trunk. INT. CAB Rath speaks perfect Spanish. RATH (in Spanish) Good afternoon. We have reservations at the Hotel Paraiso in Costa Blanca. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes, sir. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - DAY The cab pulls up in front of a large, brand new glass hotel, which shimmers in the blue green reflection of the gulf water. Rath is upset. RATH (in Spanish) No, no. I said the Hotel Paraiso. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes. This is the Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) No, the other Hotel Paraiso, in the city. Near the Plaza del Sol. CABBY (in Spanish) I'm sorry, sir. A year ago there was a fire in the old Hotel Paraiso. This is the new Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) Take us there. EXT. COSTA BLANCA - DAY American tourist dollars have built up the coasts, but much of the out-lying city is very poor. The old Hotel Paraiso is a five story blackened husk. The face of the building is burnt black and it seems to hang in space as something non-corporeal, like the shadow of the building rather than the building itself. Rath stares at it, remembering. Electra is behind him, standing in the midst of the Plaza del Sol. He looks up to the fifth story window, then turns directly opposite of that. The International Banco de Mexico, an enormous, beautiful old building; its exterior walls are white-washed concrete, blindingly bright white. Electra looks at the bank and smiles. ELECTRA So, that's where all that S & L money is? Rath is not listening to her. He is somewhere else. He turns back to the fourth story window. RATH That's where he'll be. ELECTRA What? RATH I wasn't expecting this. I need to think. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - NIGHT Beyond the lights of the hotel the gulf darkens to midnight oil. INT. HOTEL PARAISO ELEVATOR On one side of the elevator is a young couple who look like newlyweds. They are cuddling, kissing and giggling as though they are alone. Electra and Rath are on the other side of the elevator. It is a strange contrast. Electra is staring at them. Rath, behind his sunglasses, is in his own world. The ELEVATOR CHIMES and opens. Nobody moves. The DOORS CHIME again and start to close, as everyone realizes that this is their floor. Rath and the other man grab the doors, which spring back open. It is a funny, awkward moment, as everyone apologizes and smiles politely, on the way out. INT. HALL The couple move down the hall, the newlyweds finding their door first. Rath reaches the door to their room, opens it and enters. Electra lingers, watching the other couple, watching as he fumbles for his keys, her hand running up between his legs and over his ass. He finally manages to open the door and she pushes him inside. Electra softly closes her door. INT. HOTEL PARAISO - HOTEL ROOM Rath is sitting in a desk chair staring out of the sliding balcony doors at the dark gulf water. ELECTRA Did you see them? Electra moves about the large suite. ELECTRA They looked like they were in love. Rath says nothing. ELECTRA Well, I think I'll take a bath. Come on, Nikita! The two of them walk into the bathroom, leaving Rath to himself. INT. BATHROOM Electra sits on the edge of the over-sized tub, water running through her fingers as she adjusts the temperature. After a beat she hears a SMALL CRASH, a GLASS BREAKING. It is followed by other MUFFLED NOISES, a WOMAN GIGGLING and a THUMPING.

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why I'm here. Electra wants to scream. The speedometer is climbing over 100. RATH I really think you should slow down. INT. HOTEL SUITE - NIGHT The room is immaculate; near the door, several over-sized suitcases line the wall. Bain is sitting at the desk. His WALKMAN is on, MUSIC BLASTING, as he flips casually through the telephone directory. His finger eases down a column stopping at "Morgan Jennifer." There is a KNOCK at the door. He smiles and tears out the page. There is another, LOUDER KNOCK which Bain hears this time. He TURN OFF the WALKMAN and opens the door; a BELLBOY is waiting with a luggage cart. BELLBOY Hello, sir. Have you some luggage you need carried. Bain gives him a wink and a smile. BAIN Indeed I do. INT. ELECTRA'S CAR - NIGHT The red "low fuel" light is on. ELECTRA Now what? RATH Turn off the engine. Electra twists the ignition and the CAR DIES. Rath glances around and we see the car is parked in a gas station. ELECTRA You want me to pump? RATH No, stay in the car. I want you to understand something. If I intended to kill you, you would already be dead. Electra says nothing. He reaches over and takes the car keys. When he is out of the car, Electra slowly releases the strangle-hold she had on the steering wheel. ELECTRA Okay, Nikita, stay calm, think, breathe, think... Electra checks the rear view mirror, listening as Rath pumps the gas. Her eyes flash down to her bag. Outside, Rath watches Electra through the windows. She appears motionless. The electric gas counter races like a stop watch. In the car, Electra eases her hand into her bag. The tank full, Rath re-hangs the pump. He walks around the car and heads for the station. Electra waits until his back is turned. She pulls her tool pouch from her bag, throws it open and finds her wire stripper. Reaching under the dash, she yanks out a tangled handful of wire. She looks up; Rath is inside paying. ELECTRA Come on, come on, it's a cake walk. Her fingers fly with surgical precision, snipping, stripping, twisting. Rath steps out of the station as her head pops up, looking for him. It takes only a second for him to realize what she is doing. RATH Oh shit. He runs at the car as she strips the last set of wires and strikes them; the BATTERY GRINDS. ELECTRA Please, please. He is almost there when the ENGINE FIRES. She stomps on the gas, ramming the shift into drive. TIRES SQUEALING, the car swerves forward as Rath slams into it. He bounces backward, falling to the ground. The car fishtails away, accelerating as Rath rolls to one knee, his gun automatically in his hand. He draws a bead, but, he does not shoot. With a concerted effort, he puts the gun away. RATH Dammit. EXT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT BUILDING - NIGHT Electra's car is parked out front. She unlocks the lobby door and drags herself inside. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT LOBBY Standing at the mailboxes flipping through her mail is Jennifer Morgan. What she was hoping for is not there. She looks up and sees Electra. JENNIFER Excuse me -- Electra stops. JENNIFER You live here, don't you? Electra nods. JENNIFER I'm sorry, this may sound really weird, but my friend told me he slipped a letter under the door here and I was wondering if you happened to see it? Electra is in a daze, her hand moving into her pocket. ELECTRA Letter? JENNIFER Yeah. He said he saw a woman with dark hair going into the building when he dropped it off. ELECTRA No. I don't have it. Electra's mouth opens and she backs away. Jennifer is bothered by her reaction and she doesn't push it. JENNIFER I'm sorry. I didn't mean to -- I'm sorry. She shrugs and unlocks the interior door, leaving Electra in the lobby. Electra watches her, as her hand moves from pocket to pocket. A worried expression tightens her face; the letter is gone. She opens the interior door, following Jennifer up the stairs. INT. STAIRCASE Electra climbs the stairs, her mind pouring through the possibilities, filled with fear. By the time Electra reaches the top floor, Jennifer is entering her apartment. Electra hurries past Jennifer's door to her own. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT - NIGHT Electra flies across the living room to the monitors. She clicks them on, putting on Jennifer's channel. On the screen we see Jennifer in her living room checking her phone messages. One from her mother. Electra throws a few switches so that Jennifer's entire apartment is in front of her. On one of the monitors we see a shadow slide across the oak floor as something moves along the edge of the room. Jennifer has moved to the bathroom and is drawing a bath. Electra clamps her hand over her mouth when he steps out. Bain moves into the dining room where Jennifer had just been. Wearing rubber surgeon's gloves, he picks up the mail that she had dropped on the table and sorts through it. Bain moves about the apartment with complete indifference to Jennifer's presence; as if he were invisible, as though he knew she couldn't see him. He moves into a room, just as she moves out. Electra watches, dizzy, sick with terror, but she is unable to turn away. Bain searches through a desk drawer, while Jennifer starts undressing for her bath. He walks down the hall and stands outside of the bathroom. If Jennifer would turn around she would see him. Electra is about to run, to call out when -- Something catches Bain's eye. He moves into the bedroom, and is turned so that he is looking straight up into the camera. He inches towards it, not sure what it is. The fiber optic cable is hidden in the light fixture hanging over the bed. Staring at it, he is looking right at Electra. Bain steps up onto the bed, his face distorting as he moves close to the fish-eye lens. Poking it with his finger, he realizes what it is. A warped smile stretches across his face as he whispers -- BAIN (V.O.) Oh, you sick little bitch -- Electra tears away from the screen, panic seizing hold of her. She rips entire drawers out of her dresser, dumping them into a suitcase, stuffing in anything that looks important. She grabs Nikita in the "travel kitty." EXT. BACK PORCH The door opens and Electra jumps out, slamming it behind her as -- Bain turns from the back stairs. She leaps back inside as he whips out his GUN, PUMPING TWO HOLES in the door. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT She scrambles from the kitchen, throwing her suitcase, still clutching the "travel kitty," as -- The back DOOR EXPLODES from its hinges, Bain charging, FIRING his GUN. BULLETS HISSING past her, Electra crashes through the front door into the hall. INT. HALL The stairs are at the far end. She is only halfway, when -- Rath rises up the stairs, his gun cocked. Electra drops to the floor as -- Behind her, Bain barrels from the apartment. Rath FIRES. The wood DOOR SPLINTERS, BULLET HOLES surrounding Bain. Off balance, he lunges back into the apartment. Rath continues FIRING, grabbing hold of Electra. They run down the stairs. EXT. REAR STAIRCASE Bain leaps down the flights. EXT. ALLEY Bain rushes into the street, looking in every direction. They are gone. BAIN Fuck me! EXT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL - NIGHT Somewhere in the city. INT. HOTEL ROOM Electra and Rath enter the room together but they are both immediately alone. She walks across the room to a chair in the corner, curling into it even as Nikita jumps up and curls into her lap. He sets his briefcase on the table at the opposite end of the room and sits. They watch each other. Silence. Between then is the liquor cabinet. Rath knows a good idea when he sees one. RATH Want a drink? Her face is as expressionless as Nikita's. He pours himself a very large bourbon and slugs it down. Takes a deep breath, then pours himself another one. RATH Okay... He returns to his table with his drink. RATH I'm not good at this sort of thing, but we don't have a lot of time, so I'll just go ahead and get started. First: you. I ask myself, 'What is she thinking?' Her body tightens, coils. RATH Simple. She's scared. She's almost been killed twice and now she is alone in a room with a man that she believes is an... assassin. Another deep pull on the bourbon. RATH Furthermore she was brought here not entirely on her own accord which only increases her fear and suspicion. Thus, as long as she is afraid, her first, maybe her only thought will be escape. Does that leave me any other option? He slugs down the rest of his drink and stands, whipping out his gun. RATH No. Crossing the room, he turns the gun around and offers it to her. She looks at it. Back at him. He puts it on the bed beside her, turns his back and walks to the bar. She picks up the gun. RATH The gun is silenced. She could shoot me right now. She stands, Nikita jumping from her lap. RATH She could take the car and be far from here before the maid comes in the morning, but -- She starts squeezing OFF ROUNDS; the LAMP EXPLODES, the CHAIRS around him ERUPT, tufts of white stuffing leaping into the air. ELECTRA Shut up! He freezes, bottle in one hand, glass in the other. ELECTRA Stop trying to tell me what I'm thinking! She moves closer to him, the gun squeezed in her fist. ELECTRA I'll tell you what you're thinking -- you think I'm not going to shoot you but right now you're not so sure, are you? A slight shake of the head, no. ELECTRA You're thinking that maybe it was a mistake to give me this gun, that maybe I'm not going to think about things logically because I'm a woman and I'm freaked out and I'm going to do something impulsive and irrational -- right? She FIRES the GUN to both sides of his head. He's surprised to be alive. ELECTRA You don't know shit about me! Now sit down! He returns to his chair and sits with the same expression she had worn sitting a moment ago. She opens the cabinet and grabs one of the sample bottles of liquor. She sucks it all down and throws the bottle across the room. Grabbing another, she sits on the edge of the bed. ELECTRA Okay. How did you find me? RATH You're the computer hacker, you tell me. ELECTRA You didn't know anything about me. Nikita rubs up against her leg. ELECTRA Nikita? RATH Yellow Pages. V for veterinarian. There aren't that many. She nods, slurping at her bottle. ELECTRA You're one of them, aren't you? RATH 'Them'? ELECTRA An assassin? RATH Until a minute ago. ELECTRA What does that mean? RATH If I still was what I used to be, you would not be pointing that at me. Electra eyes him, considers shooting him right now. ELECTRA Who is that other guy? RATH Another contractor. ELECTRA Someone hired both of you? RATH No. They hired Bain. The contract would have been mine, but Bain took it from me as he took the previous one. ELECTRA So this is something between you and him? RATH He stole the contract knowing that I would come after him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he is trying to retire me. ELECTRA He wants to kill you? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Why? RATH The nature of the business. You remove your competition. ELECTRA And you want to use me to get him? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Forget it! RATH We don't have a choice. She FIRES the GUN, pocking the wall behind him. ELECTRA Don't tell me I don't have a choice! RATH Right. ELECTRA I'm two seconds away from making my choice which means you've got two seconds to tell me why I shouldn't shoot you. RATH It's simple. You need me. I need you. And we will both need money. ELECTRA I don't need you to get the money -- my money! RATH If it hadn't been for me, you would be dead. She's up pacing, knowing there is some truth in that. ELECTRA I don't need the money. RATH This is something that is never going to end. You can never work in the business again with this contract, because he will find you. To survive, you have to go into deep hiding. And that's going to take money, a lot of money. ELECTRA Then you can have the disks and I'll just walk out that door -- RATH If you walk out that door, Bain will still come after you. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he took a contract on you. He'll come for you and he'll find you. ELECTRA You don't know that -- you're trying to scare me. RATH No. It's the truth. I know what you are. Like me, like Bain, you're a ghost, you're not part of the real world. You don't have a social security number. You don't pay taxes. You've probably used ten different names over the last ten years. A long time ago something probably happened, something illegal and you ran, you disappeared and it was easy. You think you can do it again. But I'm telling you, fading from the law is nothing. No matter what you do, where you go, I swear to you that Bain will find you. ELECTRA How? RATH Right now, as we sit here, he is tearing through your apartment. He is digging through your drawers, emptying your closets. He will take your telephone and address books, your appointment books. If you keep a diary, he is reading it. He'll go into the kitchen and find out what kind of food you eat, liquor you drink, cigarettes you smoke. In the bathroom he will find any prescription drugs you take and where you get them filled. If you have video tape or recordings he will watch and listen to all of them. She is coming unglued. Imagining him watching her tapes, going through her possessions. She is moving, pacing, ready to explode. ELECTRA Oh Jesus Jesus... RATH He will know everything about you. Everything. I know, because I've done it. Once you've been inside a mark's home, you're in their head. If you're any good, you'll find the mark in a week, and Bain is good because I was the best and I couldn't take him. She whirls and starts FIRING the GUN, firing it everywhere, fear and anger rocketing out of her in WHISTLING hot wads of LEAD. When she stops, he starts to say something but she levels the gun at him. ELECTRA Shut up! All right! You've said enough! She forces herself back, grabbing handfuls of the sample bottles. ELECTRA I need to think... To be alone. With the gun and an armful of booze and Nikita following at her feet, she goes into the bathroom and slams the door. INT. BATHROOM She locks the door and then collapses. Her body seems to fold up onto itself as she slides down the wall; the GUN and the BOTTLES falling from her arms, CLATTERING SOFTLY on the bath rug as she buries her face in her hands. INT. BEDROOM Very mechanically, Rath begins setting up his chess board, putting the pieces into the same positions. It is a ritual, and with it he enters a kind of trance. From the bathroom, almost inaudible, he hears Electra CRYING. INT. BATHROOM With her head now buried in her arms and knees, she is sobbing, her body rocking. The crying seems very similar to Jennifer's; a complete emotional release. INT. BEDROOM Rath stares at the board. The CRYING grows LOUDER. He stands and walks to the door. He starts to knock but stops himself. Like Electra with Jennifer, Rath would like to help, he just has no idea how to. He turns back to the desk, to his chess game. INT. BATHROOM Her eyes are now burning red. She stops crying long enough to suck down an entire sample of Scotch. Nikita rubs against her and she strokes her. ELECTRA Oh shit, Nikita. INT. BEDROOM Rath is setting up his computer system. He hears the TUB FILLING UP. INT. BATHROOM Nikita jumps up onto the toilet seat and starts drinking. ELECTRA Cheers. Electra finishes another sample and drops it to the floor where we see that many of the bottles are now empty. In the tub, steam rising off the surface, she wrings out a wash cloth and covers her face, sinking deeper into the water. INT. BEDROOM When Electra comes out of the bathroom, Rath is again at his chess game. She sits down across from him and sets the gun on the table between them. Rath looks up at her. ELECTRA Listen -- I don't even know your name. RATH Rath. Robert Rath. ELECTRA Electra. RATH Just Electra? ELECTRA Yeah. RATH As in daughter of Agamemnon? ELECTRA No. Just Electra. The conversation dies. ELECTRA What I'm trying to say is that -- I'm not sure I can do this, help you, unless I know more about you. RATH What do you want to know? ELECTRA If Bain hadn't taken the contract on me, would you have? He stares at her. RATH No. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because I'm done. ELECTRA This is crazy. I can't trust you. You can't trust me. How can we possibly help each other? They sit in silence, the gun and the chess game lying between them. RATH Do you play? She looks at the chess board. ELECTRA With computers. RATH It's not the same, is it? ELECTRA Better than playing with yourself. He smiles. RATH I had an opponent. She understands that he is trying to tell her something. ELECTRA Had? RATH He was Russian. Nicholai Tachlinkov. A legend in the business when I was just starting. I admired him. When I heard he loved chess I became obsessed with the game. Electra studies the board. ELECTRA He was white? Rath nods. ELECTRA It looks like white's game. RATH We played with a code using The New York Times obituaries. Over three years we played twelve matches. I never won. ELECTRA Why didn't you finish this game? She reaches over and lifts a White Knight and takes a Bishop. Rath counters, taking her Knight. RATH He was... taken. ELECTRA He was killed. Rath nods. Throughout the entire conversation they continue to play out the chess game. ELECTRA By who? A long beat. RATH I killed him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because that's how it works. That's what it's about. He was the best. He was on top. ELECTRA Where you wanted to be? RATH Yes. As soon as you get into this business, all you can think about is getting to the top. That's all there is. Until then, there is nothing. You are nothing. ELECTRA How did you get into the business? RATH The same way everyone does; the government, the Agency. ELECTRA The C.I.A.? RATH More or less. ELECTRA How old were you? RATH They recruited me when I was in high school. ELECTRA Jesus -- why? RATH Languages. I was already fluent in nine languages. ELECTRA You were like a boy genius? RATH Some people said that. I never thought so. ELECTRA Why not? RATH I was just different. ELECTRA You went from high school to the Agency? RATH No. I graduated from George Washington University. Then I entered the Agency training program. ELECTRA They didn't give you a choice, did they? RATH No, they didn't. ELECTRA But you knew what they were training you for? RATH Of course. I was going to be James Bond. ELECTRA Ahhhh... RATH They are very good at what they do. It's very seductive. The training, the weapons, the travel -- ELECTRA The exotic women. RATH Women? No... not really. ELECTRA Why not? RATH Women... I don't... I don't want to talk about women. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because you are a women. ELECTRA Why did you leave the Agency? RATH The same reason everyone does. You hear your name on C-SPAN and you realize you're a skeleton in someone's closet and they're coming to bury you. ELECTRA They tried to kill you? RATH Yes. It didn't matter much to them as long as I disappeared. ELECTRA Then you went freelance? RATH The only thing different about the private sector is that a General Contractor takes less of a percentage than the government, so you make more money. Then once you make the transition, you realize you were never working for the government; it was always the private sector, the vested interests and it's the same vested interests that continue to buy your plane tickets. ELECTRA Tell me about the first time. RATH My first take? ELECTRA Yes. RATH Why? ELECTRA Because I want to know. RATH It was... mechanical. Very precise. It was exactly like the training drill except for the adrenaline. ELECTRA Are they usually like that? RATH No. Just the first one. ELECTRA After that? RATH They become complicated... messy. ELECTRA Did it ever bother you? RATH Did it ever bother James Bond? ELECTRA That's fiction. RATH This is fiction! Don't you see that? This is another reality. And the people that come into the world to play this game -- nobody forces them! They're here, they know the rules, the stakes, the risks! Do you understand what I am saying? No one is innocent -- including you! ELECTRA Does that mean it didn't bother you? Rath leans back and stares at her. She waits. RATH You get a job swinging a hammer, the first day you get a blister, it tears open, it bleeds and it stays sore a long time. You keep swinging the hammer, you get a good hard callous that covers that spot and it never bothers you again. Electra says nothing. He leans forward and slides a rook into her back row. RATH Check. He leans back. RATH Is that what you wanted to hear? Something cold blooded... something remorseless... ELECTRA No. Something honest. A beat. Rath likes this woman. She moves her Queen. ELECTRA Mate. He smiles. ELECTRA I hope your plan is better than your game. INT. CHEAP HOTEL - NIGHT The room is ugly. Shag carpeting, wood paneling and polyester patterned curtains. We hear a COMPUTER KEYBOARD CLICKING away as we MOVE ACROSS a table. The hotel phone is in a modem, which is held together with duct tape. Between the modem and the computer is a scrambler constructed out of a series of naked circuit boards. It is a very similar set up to Rath's, only it has been put together with a fraction of the resources. Bain sits, typing at the computer, his shirt off. Beside the desk-top is a six pack of Old Style beer, a bag of Doritos and his Gameboy. On the floor, disassembled neatly on a small white towel is his cleaned gun. Bain finishes punching in a code, sits back and sucks down his beer. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Where have you been, Michael? He belches. He is communicating with his General Contractor. On the table is a collection of personal objects, much of it stuffed in pillow cases, taken from Electra's house. BAIN/SCREEN Tracking the mark. Bain fingers a pair of satin panties. He smiles as he smells them. BAIN I'm on the scent. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN You're too late. Bain slams his beer down. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN I've learned from MicroCell, Rath fulfilled the contract. BAIN/SCREEN How? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN He took out the mark and sold the disks back to MicroCell. Bain falls back in his chair, thinking. He runs his hands through his sweaty hair. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Michael? BAIN No. No. No. I don't believe it. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN They money will be standard bank transfer. We believe we will know where and when. BAIN What? BAIN/SCREEN How? There is no response. BAIN/SCREEN How in the fuck do you know that? A long beat. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Such language in front of a lady. BAIN I don't give a fuck what you are. I asked you -- He hits the repeat key. BAIN (types) How in the fuck do you know that? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Do you want Rath or not? Bain stares at the screen, thinking. Thinking hard. INT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL ROOM - NIGHT Another computer screen, but we don't know that it is different. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN It will take three days to arrange the transfer. ELECTRA Three days? We are in Electra and Rath's hotel room. She is standing behind him, reading as he types. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA Are you going to tell him? RATH It. Tell it. For all I know it could be a machine. ELECTRA You said you didn't trust it. RATH I don't. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA What kind of bank is going to allow us to withdraw ten million dollars the day it is transferred? RATH The kind preferred by drug smugglers, arms dealers and politicians. Rath types in an account number. RATH Do you have a passport? ELECTRA Several. RATH Good. ELECTRA Where is it? RATH Mexico. INT. AIRPLANE - DAY Rath and Electra are sitting in the first class section, which she is obviously enjoying, smiling and sipping champagne. ELECTRA God, I love first class. I remember when I was a little girl, I would wonder what it was like up here. I would always try to peek through the curtains. Rath says nothing, staring out the window. Electra shakes her head. ELECTRA I hope Nikita's all right. He still does not respond. ELECTRA Hey, where are you? RATH Thinking. ELECTRA About? RATH Nothing. Electra sips the last of her champagne. ELECTRA I've never been to the Gulf of Mexico. Is it as nice as they say? RATH I don't know. ELECTRA You were there? A long beat. RATH Yes. EXT. SMALL MEXICAN AIRPORT - DAY The plane lands. EXT. TERMINAL CAB STAND Rath and Electra hand their bags to a CABBY who puts them in his trunk. INT. CAB Rath speaks perfect Spanish. RATH (in Spanish) Good afternoon. We have reservations at the Hotel Paraiso in Costa Blanca. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes, sir. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - DAY The cab pulls up in front of a large, brand new glass hotel, which shimmers in the blue green reflection of the gulf water. Rath is upset. RATH (in Spanish) No, no. I said the Hotel Paraiso. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes. This is the Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) No, the other Hotel Paraiso, in the city. Near the Plaza del Sol. CABBY (in Spanish) I'm sorry, sir. A year ago there was a fire in the old Hotel Paraiso. This is the new Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) Take us there. EXT. COSTA BLANCA - DAY American tourist dollars have built up the coasts, but much of the out-lying city is very poor. The old Hotel Paraiso is a five story blackened husk. The face of the building is burnt black and it seems to hang in space as something non-corporeal, like the shadow of the building rather than the building itself. Rath stares at it, remembering. Electra is behind him, standing in the midst of the Plaza del Sol. He looks up to the fifth story window, then turns directly opposite of that. The International Banco de Mexico, an enormous, beautiful old building; its exterior walls are white-washed concrete, blindingly bright white. Electra looks at the bank and smiles. ELECTRA So, that's where all that S & L money is? Rath is not listening to her. He is somewhere else. He turns back to the fourth story window. RATH That's where he'll be. ELECTRA What? RATH I wasn't expecting this. I need to think. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - NIGHT Beyond the lights of the hotel the gulf darkens to midnight oil. INT. HOTEL PARAISO ELEVATOR On one side of the elevator is a young couple who look like newlyweds. They are cuddling, kissing and giggling as though they are alone. Electra and Rath are on the other side of the elevator. It is a strange contrast. Electra is staring at them. Rath, behind his sunglasses, is in his own world. The ELEVATOR CHIMES and opens. Nobody moves. The DOORS CHIME again and start to close, as everyone realizes that this is their floor. Rath and the other man grab the doors, which spring back open. It is a funny, awkward moment, as everyone apologizes and smiles politely, on the way out. INT. HALL The couple move down the hall, the newlyweds finding their door first. Rath reaches the door to their room, opens it and enters. Electra lingers, watching the other couple, watching as he fumbles for his keys, her hand running up between his legs and over his ass. He finally manages to open the door and she pushes him inside. Electra softly closes her door. INT. HOTEL PARAISO - HOTEL ROOM Rath is sitting in a desk chair staring out of the sliding balcony doors at the dark gulf water. ELECTRA Did you see them? Electra moves about the large suite. ELECTRA They looked like they were in love. Rath says nothing. ELECTRA Well, I think I'll take a bath. Come on, Nikita! The two of them walk into the bathroom, leaving Rath to himself. INT. BATHROOM Electra sits on the edge of the over-sized tub, water running through her fingers as she adjusts the temperature. After a beat she hears a SMALL CRASH, a GLASS BREAKING. It is followed by other MUFFLED NOISES, a WOMAN GIGGLING and a THUMPING.

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why I'm here. Electra wants to scream. The speedometer is climbing over 100. RATH I really think you should slow down. INT. HOTEL SUITE - NIGHT The room is immaculate; near the door, several over-sized suitcases line the wall. Bain is sitting at the desk. His WALKMAN is on, MUSIC BLASTING, as he flips casually through the telephone directory. His finger eases down a column stopping at "Morgan Jennifer." There is a KNOCK at the door. He smiles and tears out the page. There is another, LOUDER KNOCK which Bain hears this time. He TURN OFF the WALKMAN and opens the door; a BELLBOY is waiting with a luggage cart. BELLBOY Hello, sir. Have you some luggage you need carried. Bain gives him a wink and a smile. BAIN Indeed I do. INT. ELECTRA'S CAR - NIGHT The red "low fuel" light is on. ELECTRA Now what? RATH Turn off the engine. Electra twists the ignition and the CAR DIES. Rath glances around and we see the car is parked in a gas station. ELECTRA You want me to pump? RATH No, stay in the car. I want you to understand something. If I intended to kill you, you would already be dead. Electra says nothing. He reaches over and takes the car keys. When he is out of the car, Electra slowly releases the strangle-hold she had on the steering wheel. ELECTRA Okay, Nikita, stay calm, think, breathe, think... Electra checks the rear view mirror, listening as Rath pumps the gas. Her eyes flash down to her bag. Outside, Rath watches Electra through the windows. She appears motionless. The electric gas counter races like a stop watch. In the car, Electra eases her hand into her bag. The tank full, Rath re-hangs the pump. He walks around the car and heads for the station. Electra waits until his back is turned. She pulls her tool pouch from her bag, throws it open and finds her wire stripper. Reaching under the dash, she yanks out a tangled handful of wire. She looks up; Rath is inside paying. ELECTRA Come on, come on, it's a cake walk. Her fingers fly with surgical precision, snipping, stripping, twisting. Rath steps out of the station as her head pops up, looking for him. It takes only a second for him to realize what she is doing. RATH Oh shit. He runs at the car as she strips the last set of wires and strikes them; the BATTERY GRINDS. ELECTRA Please, please. He is almost there when the ENGINE FIRES. She stomps on the gas, ramming the shift into drive. TIRES SQUEALING, the car swerves forward as Rath slams into it. He bounces backward, falling to the ground. The car fishtails away, accelerating as Rath rolls to one knee, his gun automatically in his hand. He draws a bead, but, he does not shoot. With a concerted effort, he puts the gun away. RATH Dammit. EXT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT BUILDING - NIGHT Electra's car is parked out front. She unlocks the lobby door and drags herself inside. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT LOBBY Standing at the mailboxes flipping through her mail is Jennifer Morgan. What she was hoping for is not there. She looks up and sees Electra. JENNIFER Excuse me -- Electra stops. JENNIFER You live here, don't you? Electra nods. JENNIFER I'm sorry, this may sound really weird, but my friend told me he slipped a letter under the door here and I was wondering if you happened to see it? Electra is in a daze, her hand moving into her pocket. ELECTRA Letter? JENNIFER Yeah. He said he saw a woman with dark hair going into the building when he dropped it off. ELECTRA No. I don't have it. Electra's mouth opens and she backs away. Jennifer is bothered by her reaction and she doesn't push it. JENNIFER I'm sorry. I didn't mean to -- I'm sorry. She shrugs and unlocks the interior door, leaving Electra in the lobby. Electra watches her, as her hand moves from pocket to pocket. A worried expression tightens her face; the letter is gone. She opens the interior door, following Jennifer up the stairs. INT. STAIRCASE Electra climbs the stairs, her mind pouring through the possibilities, filled with fear. By the time Electra reaches the top floor, Jennifer is entering her apartment. Electra hurries past Jennifer's door to her own. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT - NIGHT Electra flies across the living room to the monitors. She clicks them on, putting on Jennifer's channel. On the screen we see Jennifer in her living room checking her phone messages. One from her mother. Electra throws a few switches so that Jennifer's entire apartment is in front of her. On one of the monitors we see a shadow slide across the oak floor as something moves along the edge of the room. Jennifer has moved to the bathroom and is drawing a bath. Electra clamps her hand over her mouth when he steps out. Bain moves into the dining room where Jennifer had just been. Wearing rubber surgeon's gloves, he picks up the mail that she had dropped on the table and sorts through it. Bain moves about the apartment with complete indifference to Jennifer's presence; as if he were invisible, as though he knew she couldn't see him. He moves into a room, just as she moves out. Electra watches, dizzy, sick with terror, but she is unable to turn away. Bain searches through a desk drawer, while Jennifer starts undressing for her bath. He walks down the hall and stands outside of the bathroom. If Jennifer would turn around she would see him. Electra is about to run, to call out when -- Something catches Bain's eye. He moves into the bedroom, and is turned so that he is looking straight up into the camera. He inches towards it, not sure what it is. The fiber optic cable is hidden in the light fixture hanging over the bed. Staring at it, he is looking right at Electra. Bain steps up onto the bed, his face distorting as he moves close to the fish-eye lens. Poking it with his finger, he realizes what it is. A warped smile stretches across his face as he whispers -- BAIN (V.O.) Oh, you sick little bitch -- Electra tears away from the screen, panic seizing hold of her. She rips entire drawers out of her dresser, dumping them into a suitcase, stuffing in anything that looks important. She grabs Nikita in the "travel kitty." EXT. BACK PORCH The door opens and Electra jumps out, slamming it behind her as -- Bain turns from the back stairs. She leaps back inside as he whips out his GUN, PUMPING TWO HOLES in the door. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT She scrambles from the kitchen, throwing her suitcase, still clutching the "travel kitty," as -- The back DOOR EXPLODES from its hinges, Bain charging, FIRING his GUN. BULLETS HISSING past her, Electra crashes through the front door into the hall. INT. HALL The stairs are at the far end. She is only halfway, when -- Rath rises up the stairs, his gun cocked. Electra drops to the floor as -- Behind her, Bain barrels from the apartment. Rath FIRES. The wood DOOR SPLINTERS, BULLET HOLES surrounding Bain. Off balance, he lunges back into the apartment. Rath continues FIRING, grabbing hold of Electra. They run down the stairs. EXT. REAR STAIRCASE Bain leaps down the flights. EXT. ALLEY Bain rushes into the street, looking in every direction. They are gone. BAIN Fuck me! EXT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL - NIGHT Somewhere in the city. INT. HOTEL ROOM Electra and Rath enter the room together but they are both immediately alone. She walks across the room to a chair in the corner, curling into it even as Nikita jumps up and curls into her lap. He sets his briefcase on the table at the opposite end of the room and sits. They watch each other. Silence. Between then is the liquor cabinet. Rath knows a good idea when he sees one. RATH Want a drink? Her face is as expressionless as Nikita's. He pours himself a very large bourbon and slugs it down. Takes a deep breath, then pours himself another one. RATH Okay... He returns to his table with his drink. RATH I'm not good at this sort of thing, but we don't have a lot of time, so I'll just go ahead and get started. First: you. I ask myself, 'What is she thinking?' Her body tightens, coils. RATH Simple. She's scared. She's almost been killed twice and now she is alone in a room with a man that she believes is an... assassin. Another deep pull on the bourbon. RATH Furthermore she was brought here not entirely on her own accord which only increases her fear and suspicion. Thus, as long as she is afraid, her first, maybe her only thought will be escape. Does that leave me any other option? He slugs down the rest of his drink and stands, whipping out his gun. RATH No. Crossing the room, he turns the gun around and offers it to her. She looks at it. Back at him. He puts it on the bed beside her, turns his back and walks to the bar. She picks up the gun. RATH The gun is silenced. She could shoot me right now. She stands, Nikita jumping from her lap. RATH She could take the car and be far from here before the maid comes in the morning, but -- She starts squeezing OFF ROUNDS; the LAMP EXPLODES, the CHAIRS around him ERUPT, tufts of white stuffing leaping into the air. ELECTRA Shut up! He freezes, bottle in one hand, glass in the other. ELECTRA Stop trying to tell me what I'm thinking! She moves closer to him, the gun squeezed in her fist. ELECTRA I'll tell you what you're thinking -- you think I'm not going to shoot you but right now you're not so sure, are you? A slight shake of the head, no. ELECTRA You're thinking that maybe it was a mistake to give me this gun, that maybe I'm not going to think about things logically because I'm a woman and I'm freaked out and I'm going to do something impulsive and irrational -- right? She FIRES the GUN to both sides of his head. He's surprised to be alive. ELECTRA You don't know shit about me! Now sit down! He returns to his chair and sits with the same expression she had worn sitting a moment ago. She opens the cabinet and grabs one of the sample bottles of liquor. She sucks it all down and throws the bottle across the room. Grabbing another, she sits on the edge of the bed. ELECTRA Okay. How did you find me? RATH You're the computer hacker, you tell me. ELECTRA You didn't know anything about me. Nikita rubs up against her leg. ELECTRA Nikita? RATH Yellow Pages. V for veterinarian. There aren't that many. She nods, slurping at her bottle. ELECTRA You're one of them, aren't you? RATH 'Them'? ELECTRA An assassin? RATH Until a minute ago. ELECTRA What does that mean? RATH If I still was what I used to be, you would not be pointing that at me. Electra eyes him, considers shooting him right now. ELECTRA Who is that other guy? RATH Another contractor. ELECTRA Someone hired both of you? RATH No. They hired Bain. The contract would have been mine, but Bain took it from me as he took the previous one. ELECTRA So this is something between you and him? RATH He stole the contract knowing that I would come after him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he is trying to retire me. ELECTRA He wants to kill you? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Why? RATH The nature of the business. You remove your competition. ELECTRA And you want to use me to get him? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Forget it! RATH We don't have a choice. She FIRES the GUN, pocking the wall behind him. ELECTRA Don't tell me I don't have a choice! RATH Right. ELECTRA I'm two seconds away from making my choice which means you've got two seconds to tell me why I shouldn't shoot you. RATH It's simple. You need me. I need you. And we will both need money. ELECTRA I don't need you to get the money -- my money! RATH If it hadn't been for me, you would be dead. She's up pacing, knowing there is some truth in that. ELECTRA I don't need the money. RATH This is something that is never going to end. You can never work in the business again with this contract, because he will find you. To survive, you have to go into deep hiding. And that's going to take money, a lot of money. ELECTRA Then you can have the disks and I'll just walk out that door -- RATH If you walk out that door, Bain will still come after you. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he took a contract on you. He'll come for you and he'll find you. ELECTRA You don't know that -- you're trying to scare me. RATH No. It's the truth. I know what you are. Like me, like Bain, you're a ghost, you're not part of the real world. You don't have a social security number. You don't pay taxes. You've probably used ten different names over the last ten years. A long time ago something probably happened, something illegal and you ran, you disappeared and it was easy. You think you can do it again. But I'm telling you, fading from the law is nothing. No matter what you do, where you go, I swear to you that Bain will find you. ELECTRA How? RATH Right now, as we sit here, he is tearing through your apartment. He is digging through your drawers, emptying your closets. He will take your telephone and address books, your appointment books. If you keep a diary, he is reading it. He'll go into the kitchen and find out what kind of food you eat, liquor you drink, cigarettes you smoke. In the bathroom he will find any prescription drugs you take and where you get them filled. If you have video tape or recordings he will watch and listen to all of them. She is coming unglued. Imagining him watching her tapes, going through her possessions. She is moving, pacing, ready to explode. ELECTRA Oh Jesus Jesus... RATH He will know everything about you. Everything. I know, because I've done it. Once you've been inside a mark's home, you're in their head. If you're any good, you'll find the mark in a week, and Bain is good because I was the best and I couldn't take him. She whirls and starts FIRING the GUN, firing it everywhere, fear and anger rocketing out of her in WHISTLING hot wads of LEAD. When she stops, he starts to say something but she levels the gun at him. ELECTRA Shut up! All right! You've said enough! She forces herself back, grabbing handfuls of the sample bottles. ELECTRA I need to think... To be alone. With the gun and an armful of booze and Nikita following at her feet, she goes into the bathroom and slams the door. INT. BATHROOM She locks the door and then collapses. Her body seems to fold up onto itself as she slides down the wall; the GUN and the BOTTLES falling from her arms, CLATTERING SOFTLY on the bath rug as she buries her face in her hands. INT. BEDROOM Very mechanically, Rath begins setting up his chess board, putting the pieces into the same positions. It is a ritual, and with it he enters a kind of trance. From the bathroom, almost inaudible, he hears Electra CRYING. INT. BATHROOM With her head now buried in her arms and knees, she is sobbing, her body rocking. The crying seems very similar to Jennifer's; a complete emotional release. INT. BEDROOM Rath stares at the board. The CRYING grows LOUDER. He stands and walks to the door. He starts to knock but stops himself. Like Electra with Jennifer, Rath would like to help, he just has no idea how to. He turns back to the desk, to his chess game. INT. BATHROOM Her eyes are now burning red. She stops crying long enough to suck down an entire sample of Scotch. Nikita rubs against her and she strokes her. ELECTRA Oh shit, Nikita. INT. BEDROOM Rath is setting up his computer system. He hears the TUB FILLING UP. INT. BATHROOM Nikita jumps up onto the toilet seat and starts drinking. ELECTRA Cheers. Electra finishes another sample and drops it to the floor where we see that many of the bottles are now empty. In the tub, steam rising off the surface, she wrings out a wash cloth and covers her face, sinking deeper into the water. INT. BEDROOM When Electra comes out of the bathroom, Rath is again at his chess game. She sits down across from him and sets the gun on the table between them. Rath looks up at her. ELECTRA Listen -- I don't even know your name. RATH Rath. Robert Rath. ELECTRA Electra. RATH Just Electra? ELECTRA Yeah. RATH As in daughter of Agamemnon? ELECTRA No. Just Electra. The conversation dies. ELECTRA What I'm trying to say is that -- I'm not sure I can do this, help you, unless I know more about you. RATH What do you want to know? ELECTRA If Bain hadn't taken the contract on me, would you have? He stares at her. RATH No. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because I'm done. ELECTRA This is crazy. I can't trust you. You can't trust me. How can we possibly help each other? They sit in silence, the gun and the chess game lying between them. RATH Do you play? She looks at the chess board. ELECTRA With computers. RATH It's not the same, is it? ELECTRA Better than playing with yourself. He smiles. RATH I had an opponent. She understands that he is trying to tell her something. ELECTRA Had? RATH He was Russian. Nicholai Tachlinkov. A legend in the business when I was just starting. I admired him. When I heard he loved chess I became obsessed with the game. Electra studies the board. ELECTRA He was white? Rath nods. ELECTRA It looks like white's game. RATH We played with a code using The New York Times obituaries. Over three years we played twelve matches. I never won. ELECTRA Why didn't you finish this game? She reaches over and lifts a White Knight and takes a Bishop. Rath counters, taking her Knight. RATH He was... taken. ELECTRA He was killed. Rath nods. Throughout the entire conversation they continue to play out the chess game. ELECTRA By who? A long beat. RATH I killed him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because that's how it works. That's what it's about. He was the best. He was on top. ELECTRA Where you wanted to be? RATH Yes. As soon as you get into this business, all you can think about is getting to the top. That's all there is. Until then, there is nothing. You are nothing. ELECTRA How did you get into the business? RATH The same way everyone does; the government, the Agency. ELECTRA The C.I.A.? RATH More or less. ELECTRA How old were you? RATH They recruited me when I was in high school. ELECTRA Jesus -- why? RATH Languages. I was already fluent in nine languages. ELECTRA You were like a boy genius? RATH Some people said that. I never thought so. ELECTRA Why not? RATH I was just different. ELECTRA You went from high school to the Agency? RATH No. I graduated from George Washington University. Then I entered the Agency training program. ELECTRA They didn't give you a choice, did they? RATH No, they didn't. ELECTRA But you knew what they were training you for? RATH Of course. I was going to be James Bond. ELECTRA Ahhhh... RATH They are very good at what they do. It's very seductive. The training, the weapons, the travel -- ELECTRA The exotic women. RATH Women? No... not really. ELECTRA Why not? RATH Women... I don't... I don't want to talk about women. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because you are a women. ELECTRA Why did you leave the Agency? RATH The same reason everyone does. You hear your name on C-SPAN and you realize you're a skeleton in someone's closet and they're coming to bury you. ELECTRA They tried to kill you? RATH Yes. It didn't matter much to them as long as I disappeared. ELECTRA Then you went freelance? RATH The only thing different about the private sector is that a General Contractor takes less of a percentage than the government, so you make more money. Then once you make the transition, you realize you were never working for the government; it was always the private sector, the vested interests and it's the same vested interests that continue to buy your plane tickets. ELECTRA Tell me about the first time. RATH My first take? ELECTRA Yes. RATH Why? ELECTRA Because I want to know. RATH It was... mechanical. Very precise. It was exactly like the training drill except for the adrenaline. ELECTRA Are they usually like that? RATH No. Just the first one. ELECTRA After that? RATH They become complicated... messy. ELECTRA Did it ever bother you? RATH Did it ever bother James Bond? ELECTRA That's fiction. RATH This is fiction! Don't you see that? This is another reality. And the people that come into the world to play this game -- nobody forces them! They're here, they know the rules, the stakes, the risks! Do you understand what I am saying? No one is innocent -- including you! ELECTRA Does that mean it didn't bother you? Rath leans back and stares at her. She waits. RATH You get a job swinging a hammer, the first day you get a blister, it tears open, it bleeds and it stays sore a long time. You keep swinging the hammer, you get a good hard callous that covers that spot and it never bothers you again. Electra says nothing. He leans forward and slides a rook into her back row. RATH Check. He leans back. RATH Is that what you wanted to hear? Something cold blooded... something remorseless... ELECTRA No. Something honest. A beat. Rath likes this woman. She moves her Queen. ELECTRA Mate. He smiles. ELECTRA I hope your plan is better than your game. INT. CHEAP HOTEL - NIGHT The room is ugly. Shag carpeting, wood paneling and polyester patterned curtains. We hear a COMPUTER KEYBOARD CLICKING away as we MOVE ACROSS a table. The hotel phone is in a modem, which is held together with duct tape. Between the modem and the computer is a scrambler constructed out of a series of naked circuit boards. It is a very similar set up to Rath's, only it has been put together with a fraction of the resources. Bain sits, typing at the computer, his shirt off. Beside the desk-top is a six pack of Old Style beer, a bag of Doritos and his Gameboy. On the floor, disassembled neatly on a small white towel is his cleaned gun. Bain finishes punching in a code, sits back and sucks down his beer. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Where have you been, Michael? He belches. He is communicating with his General Contractor. On the table is a collection of personal objects, much of it stuffed in pillow cases, taken from Electra's house. BAIN/SCREEN Tracking the mark. Bain fingers a pair of satin panties. He smiles as he smells them. BAIN I'm on the scent. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN You're too late. Bain slams his beer down. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN I've learned from MicroCell, Rath fulfilled the contract. BAIN/SCREEN How? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN He took out the mark and sold the disks back to MicroCell. Bain falls back in his chair, thinking. He runs his hands through his sweaty hair. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Michael? BAIN No. No. No. I don't believe it. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN They money will be standard bank transfer. We believe we will know where and when. BAIN What? BAIN/SCREEN How? There is no response. BAIN/SCREEN How in the fuck do you know that? A long beat. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Such language in front of a lady. BAIN I don't give a fuck what you are. I asked you -- He hits the repeat key. BAIN (types) How in the fuck do you know that? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Do you want Rath or not? Bain stares at the screen, thinking. Thinking hard. INT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL ROOM - NIGHT Another computer screen, but we don't know that it is different. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN It will take three days to arrange the transfer. ELECTRA Three days? We are in Electra and Rath's hotel room. She is standing behind him, reading as he types. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA Are you going to tell him? RATH It. Tell it. For all I know it could be a machine. ELECTRA You said you didn't trust it. RATH I don't. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA What kind of bank is going to allow us to withdraw ten million dollars the day it is transferred? RATH The kind preferred by drug smugglers, arms dealers and politicians. Rath types in an account number. RATH Do you have a passport? ELECTRA Several. RATH Good. ELECTRA Where is it? RATH Mexico. INT. AIRPLANE - DAY Rath and Electra are sitting in the first class section, which she is obviously enjoying, smiling and sipping champagne. ELECTRA God, I love first class. I remember when I was a little girl, I would wonder what it was like up here. I would always try to peek through the curtains. Rath says nothing, staring out the window. Electra shakes her head. ELECTRA I hope Nikita's all right. He still does not respond. ELECTRA Hey, where are you? RATH Thinking. ELECTRA About? RATH Nothing. Electra sips the last of her champagne. ELECTRA I've never been to the Gulf of Mexico. Is it as nice as they say? RATH I don't know. ELECTRA You were there? A long beat. RATH Yes. EXT. SMALL MEXICAN AIRPORT - DAY The plane lands. EXT. TERMINAL CAB STAND Rath and Electra hand their bags to a CABBY who puts them in his trunk. INT. CAB Rath speaks perfect Spanish. RATH (in Spanish) Good afternoon. We have reservations at the Hotel Paraiso in Costa Blanca. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes, sir. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - DAY The cab pulls up in front of a large, brand new glass hotel, which shimmers in the blue green reflection of the gulf water. Rath is upset. RATH (in Spanish) No, no. I said the Hotel Paraiso. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes. This is the Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) No, the other Hotel Paraiso, in the city. Near the Plaza del Sol. CABBY (in Spanish) I'm sorry, sir. A year ago there was a fire in the old Hotel Paraiso. This is the new Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) Take us there. EXT. COSTA BLANCA - DAY American tourist dollars have built up the coasts, but much of the out-lying city is very poor. The old Hotel Paraiso is a five story blackened husk. The face of the building is burnt black and it seems to hang in space as something non-corporeal, like the shadow of the building rather than the building itself. Rath stares at it, remembering. Electra is behind him, standing in the midst of the Plaza del Sol. He looks up to the fifth story window, then turns directly opposite of that. The International Banco de Mexico, an enormous, beautiful old building; its exterior walls are white-washed concrete, blindingly bright white. Electra looks at the bank and smiles. ELECTRA So, that's where all that S & L money is? Rath is not listening to her. He is somewhere else. He turns back to the fourth story window. RATH That's where he'll be. ELECTRA What? RATH I wasn't expecting this. I need to think. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - NIGHT Beyond the lights of the hotel the gulf darkens to midnight oil. INT. HOTEL PARAISO ELEVATOR On one side of the elevator is a young couple who look like newlyweds. They are cuddling, kissing and giggling as though they are alone. Electra and Rath are on the other side of the elevator. It is a strange contrast. Electra is staring at them. Rath, behind his sunglasses, is in his own world. The ELEVATOR CHIMES and opens. Nobody moves. The DOORS CHIME again and start to close, as everyone realizes that this is their floor. Rath and the other man grab the doors, which spring back open. It is a funny, awkward moment, as everyone apologizes and smiles politely, on the way out. INT. HALL The couple move down the hall, the newlyweds finding their door first. Rath reaches the door to their room, opens it and enters. Electra lingers, watching the other couple, watching as he fumbles for his keys, her hand running up between his legs and over his ass. He finally manages to open the door and she pushes him inside. Electra softly closes her door. INT. HOTEL PARAISO - HOTEL ROOM Rath is sitting in a desk chair staring out of the sliding balcony doors at the dark gulf water. ELECTRA Did you see them? Electra moves about the large suite. ELECTRA They looked like they were in love. Rath says nothing. ELECTRA Well, I think I'll take a bath. Come on, Nikita! The two of them walk into the bathroom, leaving Rath to himself. INT. BATHROOM Electra sits on the edge of the over-sized tub, water running through her fingers as she adjusts the temperature. After a beat she hears a SMALL CRASH, a GLASS BREAKING. It is followed by other MUFFLED NOISES, a WOMAN GIGGLING and a THUMPING.

insides

How many times the word 'insides' appears in the text?

why I'm here. Electra wants to scream. The speedometer is climbing over 100. RATH I really think you should slow down. INT. HOTEL SUITE - NIGHT The room is immaculate; near the door, several over-sized suitcases line the wall. Bain is sitting at the desk. His WALKMAN is on, MUSIC BLASTING, as he flips casually through the telephone directory. His finger eases down a column stopping at "Morgan Jennifer." There is a KNOCK at the door. He smiles and tears out the page. There is another, LOUDER KNOCK which Bain hears this time. He TURN OFF the WALKMAN and opens the door; a BELLBOY is waiting with a luggage cart. BELLBOY Hello, sir. Have you some luggage you need carried. Bain gives him a wink and a smile. BAIN Indeed I do. INT. ELECTRA'S CAR - NIGHT The red "low fuel" light is on. ELECTRA Now what? RATH Turn off the engine. Electra twists the ignition and the CAR DIES. Rath glances around and we see the car is parked in a gas station. ELECTRA You want me to pump? RATH No, stay in the car. I want you to understand something. If I intended to kill you, you would already be dead. Electra says nothing. He reaches over and takes the car keys. When he is out of the car, Electra slowly releases the strangle-hold she had on the steering wheel. ELECTRA Okay, Nikita, stay calm, think, breathe, think... Electra checks the rear view mirror, listening as Rath pumps the gas. Her eyes flash down to her bag. Outside, Rath watches Electra through the windows. She appears motionless. The electric gas counter races like a stop watch. In the car, Electra eases her hand into her bag. The tank full, Rath re-hangs the pump. He walks around the car and heads for the station. Electra waits until his back is turned. She pulls her tool pouch from her bag, throws it open and finds her wire stripper. Reaching under the dash, she yanks out a tangled handful of wire. She looks up; Rath is inside paying. ELECTRA Come on, come on, it's a cake walk. Her fingers fly with surgical precision, snipping, stripping, twisting. Rath steps out of the station as her head pops up, looking for him. It takes only a second for him to realize what she is doing. RATH Oh shit. He runs at the car as she strips the last set of wires and strikes them; the BATTERY GRINDS. ELECTRA Please, please. He is almost there when the ENGINE FIRES. She stomps on the gas, ramming the shift into drive. TIRES SQUEALING, the car swerves forward as Rath slams into it. He bounces backward, falling to the ground. The car fishtails away, accelerating as Rath rolls to one knee, his gun automatically in his hand. He draws a bead, but, he does not shoot. With a concerted effort, he puts the gun away. RATH Dammit. EXT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT BUILDING - NIGHT Electra's car is parked out front. She unlocks the lobby door and drags herself inside. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT LOBBY Standing at the mailboxes flipping through her mail is Jennifer Morgan. What she was hoping for is not there. She looks up and sees Electra. JENNIFER Excuse me -- Electra stops. JENNIFER You live here, don't you? Electra nods. JENNIFER I'm sorry, this may sound really weird, but my friend told me he slipped a letter under the door here and I was wondering if you happened to see it? Electra is in a daze, her hand moving into her pocket. ELECTRA Letter? JENNIFER Yeah. He said he saw a woman with dark hair going into the building when he dropped it off. ELECTRA No. I don't have it. Electra's mouth opens and she backs away. Jennifer is bothered by her reaction and she doesn't push it. JENNIFER I'm sorry. I didn't mean to -- I'm sorry. She shrugs and unlocks the interior door, leaving Electra in the lobby. Electra watches her, as her hand moves from pocket to pocket. A worried expression tightens her face; the letter is gone. She opens the interior door, following Jennifer up the stairs. INT. STAIRCASE Electra climbs the stairs, her mind pouring through the possibilities, filled with fear. By the time Electra reaches the top floor, Jennifer is entering her apartment. Electra hurries past Jennifer's door to her own. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT - NIGHT Electra flies across the living room to the monitors. She clicks them on, putting on Jennifer's channel. On the screen we see Jennifer in her living room checking her phone messages. One from her mother. Electra throws a few switches so that Jennifer's entire apartment is in front of her. On one of the monitors we see a shadow slide across the oak floor as something moves along the edge of the room. Jennifer has moved to the bathroom and is drawing a bath. Electra clamps her hand over her mouth when he steps out. Bain moves into the dining room where Jennifer had just been. Wearing rubber surgeon's gloves, he picks up the mail that she had dropped on the table and sorts through it. Bain moves about the apartment with complete indifference to Jennifer's presence; as if he were invisible, as though he knew she couldn't see him. He moves into a room, just as she moves out. Electra watches, dizzy, sick with terror, but she is unable to turn away. Bain searches through a desk drawer, while Jennifer starts undressing for her bath. He walks down the hall and stands outside of the bathroom. If Jennifer would turn around she would see him. Electra is about to run, to call out when -- Something catches Bain's eye. He moves into the bedroom, and is turned so that he is looking straight up into the camera. He inches towards it, not sure what it is. The fiber optic cable is hidden in the light fixture hanging over the bed. Staring at it, he is looking right at Electra. Bain steps up onto the bed, his face distorting as he moves close to the fish-eye lens. Poking it with his finger, he realizes what it is. A warped smile stretches across his face as he whispers -- BAIN (V.O.) Oh, you sick little bitch -- Electra tears away from the screen, panic seizing hold of her. She rips entire drawers out of her dresser, dumping them into a suitcase, stuffing in anything that looks important. She grabs Nikita in the "travel kitty." EXT. BACK PORCH The door opens and Electra jumps out, slamming it behind her as -- Bain turns from the back stairs. She leaps back inside as he whips out his GUN, PUMPING TWO HOLES in the door. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT She scrambles from the kitchen, throwing her suitcase, still clutching the "travel kitty," as -- The back DOOR EXPLODES from its hinges, Bain charging, FIRING his GUN. BULLETS HISSING past her, Electra crashes through the front door into the hall. INT. HALL The stairs are at the far end. She is only halfway, when -- Rath rises up the stairs, his gun cocked. Electra drops to the floor as -- Behind her, Bain barrels from the apartment. Rath FIRES. The wood DOOR SPLINTERS, BULLET HOLES surrounding Bain. Off balance, he lunges back into the apartment. Rath continues FIRING, grabbing hold of Electra. They run down the stairs. EXT. REAR STAIRCASE Bain leaps down the flights. EXT. ALLEY Bain rushes into the street, looking in every direction. They are gone. BAIN Fuck me! EXT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL - NIGHT Somewhere in the city. INT. HOTEL ROOM Electra and Rath enter the room together but they are both immediately alone. She walks across the room to a chair in the corner, curling into it even as Nikita jumps up and curls into her lap. He sets his briefcase on the table at the opposite end of the room and sits. They watch each other. Silence. Between then is the liquor cabinet. Rath knows a good idea when he sees one. RATH Want a drink? Her face is as expressionless as Nikita's. He pours himself a very large bourbon and slugs it down. Takes a deep breath, then pours himself another one. RATH Okay... He returns to his table with his drink. RATH I'm not good at this sort of thing, but we don't have a lot of time, so I'll just go ahead and get started. First: you. I ask myself, 'What is she thinking?' Her body tightens, coils. RATH Simple. She's scared. She's almost been killed twice and now she is alone in a room with a man that she believes is an... assassin. Another deep pull on the bourbon. RATH Furthermore she was brought here not entirely on her own accord which only increases her fear and suspicion. Thus, as long as she is afraid, her first, maybe her only thought will be escape. Does that leave me any other option? He slugs down the rest of his drink and stands, whipping out his gun. RATH No. Crossing the room, he turns the gun around and offers it to her. She looks at it. Back at him. He puts it on the bed beside her, turns his back and walks to the bar. She picks up the gun. RATH The gun is silenced. She could shoot me right now. She stands, Nikita jumping from her lap. RATH She could take the car and be far from here before the maid comes in the morning, but -- She starts squeezing OFF ROUNDS; the LAMP EXPLODES, the CHAIRS around him ERUPT, tufts of white stuffing leaping into the air. ELECTRA Shut up! He freezes, bottle in one hand, glass in the other. ELECTRA Stop trying to tell me what I'm thinking! She moves closer to him, the gun squeezed in her fist. ELECTRA I'll tell you what you're thinking -- you think I'm not going to shoot you but right now you're not so sure, are you? A slight shake of the head, no. ELECTRA You're thinking that maybe it was a mistake to give me this gun, that maybe I'm not going to think about things logically because I'm a woman and I'm freaked out and I'm going to do something impulsive and irrational -- right? She FIRES the GUN to both sides of his head. He's surprised to be alive. ELECTRA You don't know shit about me! Now sit down! He returns to his chair and sits with the same expression she had worn sitting a moment ago. She opens the cabinet and grabs one of the sample bottles of liquor. She sucks it all down and throws the bottle across the room. Grabbing another, she sits on the edge of the bed. ELECTRA Okay. How did you find me? RATH You're the computer hacker, you tell me. ELECTRA You didn't know anything about me. Nikita rubs up against her leg. ELECTRA Nikita? RATH Yellow Pages. V for veterinarian. There aren't that many. She nods, slurping at her bottle. ELECTRA You're one of them, aren't you? RATH 'Them'? ELECTRA An assassin? RATH Until a minute ago. ELECTRA What does that mean? RATH If I still was what I used to be, you would not be pointing that at me. Electra eyes him, considers shooting him right now. ELECTRA Who is that other guy? RATH Another contractor. ELECTRA Someone hired both of you? RATH No. They hired Bain. The contract would have been mine, but Bain took it from me as he took the previous one. ELECTRA So this is something between you and him? RATH He stole the contract knowing that I would come after him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he is trying to retire me. ELECTRA He wants to kill you? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Why? RATH The nature of the business. You remove your competition. ELECTRA And you want to use me to get him? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Forget it! RATH We don't have a choice. She FIRES the GUN, pocking the wall behind him. ELECTRA Don't tell me I don't have a choice! RATH Right. ELECTRA I'm two seconds away from making my choice which means you've got two seconds to tell me why I shouldn't shoot you. RATH It's simple. You need me. I need you. And we will both need money. ELECTRA I don't need you to get the money -- my money! RATH If it hadn't been for me, you would be dead. She's up pacing, knowing there is some truth in that. ELECTRA I don't need the money. RATH This is something that is never going to end. You can never work in the business again with this contract, because he will find you. To survive, you have to go into deep hiding. And that's going to take money, a lot of money. ELECTRA Then you can have the disks and I'll just walk out that door -- RATH If you walk out that door, Bain will still come after you. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he took a contract on you. He'll come for you and he'll find you. ELECTRA You don't know that -- you're trying to scare me. RATH No. It's the truth. I know what you are. Like me, like Bain, you're a ghost, you're not part of the real world. You don't have a social security number. You don't pay taxes. You've probably used ten different names over the last ten years. A long time ago something probably happened, something illegal and you ran, you disappeared and it was easy. You think you can do it again. But I'm telling you, fading from the law is nothing. No matter what you do, where you go, I swear to you that Bain will find you. ELECTRA How? RATH Right now, as we sit here, he is tearing through your apartment. He is digging through your drawers, emptying your closets. He will take your telephone and address books, your appointment books. If you keep a diary, he is reading it. He'll go into the kitchen and find out what kind of food you eat, liquor you drink, cigarettes you smoke. In the bathroom he will find any prescription drugs you take and where you get them filled. If you have video tape or recordings he will watch and listen to all of them. She is coming unglued. Imagining him watching her tapes, going through her possessions. She is moving, pacing, ready to explode. ELECTRA Oh Jesus Jesus... RATH He will know everything about you. Everything. I know, because I've done it. Once you've been inside a mark's home, you're in their head. If you're any good, you'll find the mark in a week, and Bain is good because I was the best and I couldn't take him. She whirls and starts FIRING the GUN, firing it everywhere, fear and anger rocketing out of her in WHISTLING hot wads of LEAD. When she stops, he starts to say something but she levels the gun at him. ELECTRA Shut up! All right! You've said enough! She forces herself back, grabbing handfuls of the sample bottles. ELECTRA I need to think... To be alone. With the gun and an armful of booze and Nikita following at her feet, she goes into the bathroom and slams the door. INT. BATHROOM She locks the door and then collapses. Her body seems to fold up onto itself as she slides down the wall; the GUN and the BOTTLES falling from her arms, CLATTERING SOFTLY on the bath rug as she buries her face in her hands. INT. BEDROOM Very mechanically, Rath begins setting up his chess board, putting the pieces into the same positions. It is a ritual, and with it he enters a kind of trance. From the bathroom, almost inaudible, he hears Electra CRYING. INT. BATHROOM With her head now buried in her arms and knees, she is sobbing, her body rocking. The crying seems very similar to Jennifer's; a complete emotional release. INT. BEDROOM Rath stares at the board. The CRYING grows LOUDER. He stands and walks to the door. He starts to knock but stops himself. Like Electra with Jennifer, Rath would like to help, he just has no idea how to. He turns back to the desk, to his chess game. INT. BATHROOM Her eyes are now burning red. She stops crying long enough to suck down an entire sample of Scotch. Nikita rubs against her and she strokes her. ELECTRA Oh shit, Nikita. INT. BEDROOM Rath is setting up his computer system. He hears the TUB FILLING UP. INT. BATHROOM Nikita jumps up onto the toilet seat and starts drinking. ELECTRA Cheers. Electra finishes another sample and drops it to the floor where we see that many of the bottles are now empty. In the tub, steam rising off the surface, she wrings out a wash cloth and covers her face, sinking deeper into the water. INT. BEDROOM When Electra comes out of the bathroom, Rath is again at his chess game. She sits down across from him and sets the gun on the table between them. Rath looks up at her. ELECTRA Listen -- I don't even know your name. RATH Rath. Robert Rath. ELECTRA Electra. RATH Just Electra? ELECTRA Yeah. RATH As in daughter of Agamemnon? ELECTRA No. Just Electra. The conversation dies. ELECTRA What I'm trying to say is that -- I'm not sure I can do this, help you, unless I know more about you. RATH What do you want to know? ELECTRA If Bain hadn't taken the contract on me, would you have? He stares at her. RATH No. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because I'm done. ELECTRA This is crazy. I can't trust you. You can't trust me. How can we possibly help each other? They sit in silence, the gun and the chess game lying between them. RATH Do you play? She looks at the chess board. ELECTRA With computers. RATH It's not the same, is it? ELECTRA Better than playing with yourself. He smiles. RATH I had an opponent. She understands that he is trying to tell her something. ELECTRA Had? RATH He was Russian. Nicholai Tachlinkov. A legend in the business when I was just starting. I admired him. When I heard he loved chess I became obsessed with the game. Electra studies the board. ELECTRA He was white? Rath nods. ELECTRA It looks like white's game. RATH We played with a code using The New York Times obituaries. Over three years we played twelve matches. I never won. ELECTRA Why didn't you finish this game? She reaches over and lifts a White Knight and takes a Bishop. Rath counters, taking her Knight. RATH He was... taken. ELECTRA He was killed. Rath nods. Throughout the entire conversation they continue to play out the chess game. ELECTRA By who? A long beat. RATH I killed him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because that's how it works. That's what it's about. He was the best. He was on top. ELECTRA Where you wanted to be? RATH Yes. As soon as you get into this business, all you can think about is getting to the top. That's all there is. Until then, there is nothing. You are nothing. ELECTRA How did you get into the business? RATH The same way everyone does; the government, the Agency. ELECTRA The C.I.A.? RATH More or less. ELECTRA How old were you? RATH They recruited me when I was in high school. ELECTRA Jesus -- why? RATH Languages. I was already fluent in nine languages. ELECTRA You were like a boy genius? RATH Some people said that. I never thought so. ELECTRA Why not? RATH I was just different. ELECTRA You went from high school to the Agency? RATH No. I graduated from George Washington University. Then I entered the Agency training program. ELECTRA They didn't give you a choice, did they? RATH No, they didn't. ELECTRA But you knew what they were training you for? RATH Of course. I was going to be James Bond. ELECTRA Ahhhh... RATH They are very good at what they do. It's very seductive. The training, the weapons, the travel -- ELECTRA The exotic women. RATH Women? No... not really. ELECTRA Why not? RATH Women... I don't... I don't want to talk about women. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because you are a women. ELECTRA Why did you leave the Agency? RATH The same reason everyone does. You hear your name on C-SPAN and you realize you're a skeleton in someone's closet and they're coming to bury you. ELECTRA They tried to kill you? RATH Yes. It didn't matter much to them as long as I disappeared. ELECTRA Then you went freelance? RATH The only thing different about the private sector is that a General Contractor takes less of a percentage than the government, so you make more money. Then once you make the transition, you realize you were never working for the government; it was always the private sector, the vested interests and it's the same vested interests that continue to buy your plane tickets. ELECTRA Tell me about the first time. RATH My first take? ELECTRA Yes. RATH Why? ELECTRA Because I want to know. RATH It was... mechanical. Very precise. It was exactly like the training drill except for the adrenaline. ELECTRA Are they usually like that? RATH No. Just the first one. ELECTRA After that? RATH They become complicated... messy. ELECTRA Did it ever bother you? RATH Did it ever bother James Bond? ELECTRA That's fiction. RATH This is fiction! Don't you see that? This is another reality. And the people that come into the world to play this game -- nobody forces them! They're here, they know the rules, the stakes, the risks! Do you understand what I am saying? No one is innocent -- including you! ELECTRA Does that mean it didn't bother you? Rath leans back and stares at her. She waits. RATH You get a job swinging a hammer, the first day you get a blister, it tears open, it bleeds and it stays sore a long time. You keep swinging the hammer, you get a good hard callous that covers that spot and it never bothers you again. Electra says nothing. He leans forward and slides a rook into her back row. RATH Check. He leans back. RATH Is that what you wanted to hear? Something cold blooded... something remorseless... ELECTRA No. Something honest. A beat. Rath likes this woman. She moves her Queen. ELECTRA Mate. He smiles. ELECTRA I hope your plan is better than your game. INT. CHEAP HOTEL - NIGHT The room is ugly. Shag carpeting, wood paneling and polyester patterned curtains. We hear a COMPUTER KEYBOARD CLICKING away as we MOVE ACROSS a table. The hotel phone is in a modem, which is held together with duct tape. Between the modem and the computer is a scrambler constructed out of a series of naked circuit boards. It is a very similar set up to Rath's, only it has been put together with a fraction of the resources. Bain sits, typing at the computer, his shirt off. Beside the desk-top is a six pack of Old Style beer, a bag of Doritos and his Gameboy. On the floor, disassembled neatly on a small white towel is his cleaned gun. Bain finishes punching in a code, sits back and sucks down his beer. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Where have you been, Michael? He belches. He is communicating with his General Contractor. On the table is a collection of personal objects, much of it stuffed in pillow cases, taken from Electra's house. BAIN/SCREEN Tracking the mark. Bain fingers a pair of satin panties. He smiles as he smells them. BAIN I'm on the scent. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN You're too late. Bain slams his beer down. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN I've learned from MicroCell, Rath fulfilled the contract. BAIN/SCREEN How? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN He took out the mark and sold the disks back to MicroCell. Bain falls back in his chair, thinking. He runs his hands through his sweaty hair. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Michael? BAIN No. No. No. I don't believe it. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN They money will be standard bank transfer. We believe we will know where and when. BAIN What? BAIN/SCREEN How? There is no response. BAIN/SCREEN How in the fuck do you know that? A long beat. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Such language in front of a lady. BAIN I don't give a fuck what you are. I asked you -- He hits the repeat key. BAIN (types) How in the fuck do you know that? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Do you want Rath or not? Bain stares at the screen, thinking. Thinking hard. INT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL ROOM - NIGHT Another computer screen, but we don't know that it is different. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN It will take three days to arrange the transfer. ELECTRA Three days? We are in Electra and Rath's hotel room. She is standing behind him, reading as he types. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA Are you going to tell him? RATH It. Tell it. For all I know it could be a machine. ELECTRA You said you didn't trust it. RATH I don't. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA What kind of bank is going to allow us to withdraw ten million dollars the day it is transferred? RATH The kind preferred by drug smugglers, arms dealers and politicians. Rath types in an account number. RATH Do you have a passport? ELECTRA Several. RATH Good. ELECTRA Where is it? RATH Mexico. INT. AIRPLANE - DAY Rath and Electra are sitting in the first class section, which she is obviously enjoying, smiling and sipping champagne. ELECTRA God, I love first class. I remember when I was a little girl, I would wonder what it was like up here. I would always try to peek through the curtains. Rath says nothing, staring out the window. Electra shakes her head. ELECTRA I hope Nikita's all right. He still does not respond. ELECTRA Hey, where are you? RATH Thinking. ELECTRA About? RATH Nothing. Electra sips the last of her champagne. ELECTRA I've never been to the Gulf of Mexico. Is it as nice as they say? RATH I don't know. ELECTRA You were there? A long beat. RATH Yes. EXT. SMALL MEXICAN AIRPORT - DAY The plane lands. EXT. TERMINAL CAB STAND Rath and Electra hand their bags to a CABBY who puts them in his trunk. INT. CAB Rath speaks perfect Spanish. RATH (in Spanish) Good afternoon. We have reservations at the Hotel Paraiso in Costa Blanca. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes, sir. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - DAY The cab pulls up in front of a large, brand new glass hotel, which shimmers in the blue green reflection of the gulf water. Rath is upset. RATH (in Spanish) No, no. I said the Hotel Paraiso. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes. This is the Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) No, the other Hotel Paraiso, in the city. Near the Plaza del Sol. CABBY (in Spanish) I'm sorry, sir. A year ago there was a fire in the old Hotel Paraiso. This is the new Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) Take us there. EXT. COSTA BLANCA - DAY American tourist dollars have built up the coasts, but much of the out-lying city is very poor. The old Hotel Paraiso is a five story blackened husk. The face of the building is burnt black and it seems to hang in space as something non-corporeal, like the shadow of the building rather than the building itself. Rath stares at it, remembering. Electra is behind him, standing in the midst of the Plaza del Sol. He looks up to the fifth story window, then turns directly opposite of that. The International Banco de Mexico, an enormous, beautiful old building; its exterior walls are white-washed concrete, blindingly bright white. Electra looks at the bank and smiles. ELECTRA So, that's where all that S & L money is? Rath is not listening to her. He is somewhere else. He turns back to the fourth story window. RATH That's where he'll be. ELECTRA What? RATH I wasn't expecting this. I need to think. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - NIGHT Beyond the lights of the hotel the gulf darkens to midnight oil. INT. HOTEL PARAISO ELEVATOR On one side of the elevator is a young couple who look like newlyweds. They are cuddling, kissing and giggling as though they are alone. Electra and Rath are on the other side of the elevator. It is a strange contrast. Electra is staring at them. Rath, behind his sunglasses, is in his own world. The ELEVATOR CHIMES and opens. Nobody moves. The DOORS CHIME again and start to close, as everyone realizes that this is their floor. Rath and the other man grab the doors, which spring back open. It is a funny, awkward moment, as everyone apologizes and smiles politely, on the way out. INT. HALL The couple move down the hall, the newlyweds finding their door first. Rath reaches the door to their room, opens it and enters. Electra lingers, watching the other couple, watching as he fumbles for his keys, her hand running up between his legs and over his ass. He finally manages to open the door and she pushes him inside. Electra softly closes her door. INT. HOTEL PARAISO - HOTEL ROOM Rath is sitting in a desk chair staring out of the sliding balcony doors at the dark gulf water. ELECTRA Did you see them? Electra moves about the large suite. ELECTRA They looked like they were in love. Rath says nothing. ELECTRA Well, I think I'll take a bath. Come on, Nikita! The two of them walk into the bathroom, leaving Rath to himself. INT. BATHROOM Electra sits on the edge of the over-sized tub, water running through her fingers as she adjusts the temperature. After a beat she hears a SMALL CRASH, a GLASS BREAKING. It is followed by other MUFFLED NOISES, a WOMAN GIGGLING and a THUMPING.

switches

How many times the word 'switches' appears in the text?

why I'm here. Electra wants to scream. The speedometer is climbing over 100. RATH I really think you should slow down. INT. HOTEL SUITE - NIGHT The room is immaculate; near the door, several over-sized suitcases line the wall. Bain is sitting at the desk. His WALKMAN is on, MUSIC BLASTING, as he flips casually through the telephone directory. His finger eases down a column stopping at "Morgan Jennifer." There is a KNOCK at the door. He smiles and tears out the page. There is another, LOUDER KNOCK which Bain hears this time. He TURN OFF the WALKMAN and opens the door; a BELLBOY is waiting with a luggage cart. BELLBOY Hello, sir. Have you some luggage you need carried. Bain gives him a wink and a smile. BAIN Indeed I do. INT. ELECTRA'S CAR - NIGHT The red "low fuel" light is on. ELECTRA Now what? RATH Turn off the engine. Electra twists the ignition and the CAR DIES. Rath glances around and we see the car is parked in a gas station. ELECTRA You want me to pump? RATH No, stay in the car. I want you to understand something. If I intended to kill you, you would already be dead. Electra says nothing. He reaches over and takes the car keys. When he is out of the car, Electra slowly releases the strangle-hold she had on the steering wheel. ELECTRA Okay, Nikita, stay calm, think, breathe, think... Electra checks the rear view mirror, listening as Rath pumps the gas. Her eyes flash down to her bag. Outside, Rath watches Electra through the windows. She appears motionless. The electric gas counter races like a stop watch. In the car, Electra eases her hand into her bag. The tank full, Rath re-hangs the pump. He walks around the car and heads for the station. Electra waits until his back is turned. She pulls her tool pouch from her bag, throws it open and finds her wire stripper. Reaching under the dash, she yanks out a tangled handful of wire. She looks up; Rath is inside paying. ELECTRA Come on, come on, it's a cake walk. Her fingers fly with surgical precision, snipping, stripping, twisting. Rath steps out of the station as her head pops up, looking for him. It takes only a second for him to realize what she is doing. RATH Oh shit. He runs at the car as she strips the last set of wires and strikes them; the BATTERY GRINDS. ELECTRA Please, please. He is almost there when the ENGINE FIRES. She stomps on the gas, ramming the shift into drive. TIRES SQUEALING, the car swerves forward as Rath slams into it. He bounces backward, falling to the ground. The car fishtails away, accelerating as Rath rolls to one knee, his gun automatically in his hand. He draws a bead, but, he does not shoot. With a concerted effort, he puts the gun away. RATH Dammit. EXT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT BUILDING - NIGHT Electra's car is parked out front. She unlocks the lobby door and drags herself inside. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT LOBBY Standing at the mailboxes flipping through her mail is Jennifer Morgan. What she was hoping for is not there. She looks up and sees Electra. JENNIFER Excuse me -- Electra stops. JENNIFER You live here, don't you? Electra nods. JENNIFER I'm sorry, this may sound really weird, but my friend told me he slipped a letter under the door here and I was wondering if you happened to see it? Electra is in a daze, her hand moving into her pocket. ELECTRA Letter? JENNIFER Yeah. He said he saw a woman with dark hair going into the building when he dropped it off. ELECTRA No. I don't have it. Electra's mouth opens and she backs away. Jennifer is bothered by her reaction and she doesn't push it. JENNIFER I'm sorry. I didn't mean to -- I'm sorry. She shrugs and unlocks the interior door, leaving Electra in the lobby. Electra watches her, as her hand moves from pocket to pocket. A worried expression tightens her face; the letter is gone. She opens the interior door, following Jennifer up the stairs. INT. STAIRCASE Electra climbs the stairs, her mind pouring through the possibilities, filled with fear. By the time Electra reaches the top floor, Jennifer is entering her apartment. Electra hurries past Jennifer's door to her own. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT - NIGHT Electra flies across the living room to the monitors. She clicks them on, putting on Jennifer's channel. On the screen we see Jennifer in her living room checking her phone messages. One from her mother. Electra throws a few switches so that Jennifer's entire apartment is in front of her. On one of the monitors we see a shadow slide across the oak floor as something moves along the edge of the room. Jennifer has moved to the bathroom and is drawing a bath. Electra clamps her hand over her mouth when he steps out. Bain moves into the dining room where Jennifer had just been. Wearing rubber surgeon's gloves, he picks up the mail that she had dropped on the table and sorts through it. Bain moves about the apartment with complete indifference to Jennifer's presence; as if he were invisible, as though he knew she couldn't see him. He moves into a room, just as she moves out. Electra watches, dizzy, sick with terror, but she is unable to turn away. Bain searches through a desk drawer, while Jennifer starts undressing for her bath. He walks down the hall and stands outside of the bathroom. If Jennifer would turn around she would see him. Electra is about to run, to call out when -- Something catches Bain's eye. He moves into the bedroom, and is turned so that he is looking straight up into the camera. He inches towards it, not sure what it is. The fiber optic cable is hidden in the light fixture hanging over the bed. Staring at it, he is looking right at Electra. Bain steps up onto the bed, his face distorting as he moves close to the fish-eye lens. Poking it with his finger, he realizes what it is. A warped smile stretches across his face as he whispers -- BAIN (V.O.) Oh, you sick little bitch -- Electra tears away from the screen, panic seizing hold of her. She rips entire drawers out of her dresser, dumping them into a suitcase, stuffing in anything that looks important. She grabs Nikita in the "travel kitty." EXT. BACK PORCH The door opens and Electra jumps out, slamming it behind her as -- Bain turns from the back stairs. She leaps back inside as he whips out his GUN, PUMPING TWO HOLES in the door. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT She scrambles from the kitchen, throwing her suitcase, still clutching the "travel kitty," as -- The back DOOR EXPLODES from its hinges, Bain charging, FIRING his GUN. BULLETS HISSING past her, Electra crashes through the front door into the hall. INT. HALL The stairs are at the far end. She is only halfway, when -- Rath rises up the stairs, his gun cocked. Electra drops to the floor as -- Behind her, Bain barrels from the apartment. Rath FIRES. The wood DOOR SPLINTERS, BULLET HOLES surrounding Bain. Off balance, he lunges back into the apartment. Rath continues FIRING, grabbing hold of Electra. They run down the stairs. EXT. REAR STAIRCASE Bain leaps down the flights. EXT. ALLEY Bain rushes into the street, looking in every direction. They are gone. BAIN Fuck me! EXT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL - NIGHT Somewhere in the city. INT. HOTEL ROOM Electra and Rath enter the room together but they are both immediately alone. She walks across the room to a chair in the corner, curling into it even as Nikita jumps up and curls into her lap. He sets his briefcase on the table at the opposite end of the room and sits. They watch each other. Silence. Between then is the liquor cabinet. Rath knows a good idea when he sees one. RATH Want a drink? Her face is as expressionless as Nikita's. He pours himself a very large bourbon and slugs it down. Takes a deep breath, then pours himself another one. RATH Okay... He returns to his table with his drink. RATH I'm not good at this sort of thing, but we don't have a lot of time, so I'll just go ahead and get started. First: you. I ask myself, 'What is she thinking?' Her body tightens, coils. RATH Simple. She's scared. She's almost been killed twice and now she is alone in a room with a man that she believes is an... assassin. Another deep pull on the bourbon. RATH Furthermore she was brought here not entirely on her own accord which only increases her fear and suspicion. Thus, as long as she is afraid, her first, maybe her only thought will be escape. Does that leave me any other option? He slugs down the rest of his drink and stands, whipping out his gun. RATH No. Crossing the room, he turns the gun around and offers it to her. She looks at it. Back at him. He puts it on the bed beside her, turns his back and walks to the bar. She picks up the gun. RATH The gun is silenced. She could shoot me right now. She stands, Nikita jumping from her lap. RATH She could take the car and be far from here before the maid comes in the morning, but -- She starts squeezing OFF ROUNDS; the LAMP EXPLODES, the CHAIRS around him ERUPT, tufts of white stuffing leaping into the air. ELECTRA Shut up! He freezes, bottle in one hand, glass in the other. ELECTRA Stop trying to tell me what I'm thinking! She moves closer to him, the gun squeezed in her fist. ELECTRA I'll tell you what you're thinking -- you think I'm not going to shoot you but right now you're not so sure, are you? A slight shake of the head, no. ELECTRA You're thinking that maybe it was a mistake to give me this gun, that maybe I'm not going to think about things logically because I'm a woman and I'm freaked out and I'm going to do something impulsive and irrational -- right? She FIRES the GUN to both sides of his head. He's surprised to be alive. ELECTRA You don't know shit about me! Now sit down! He returns to his chair and sits with the same expression she had worn sitting a moment ago. She opens the cabinet and grabs one of the sample bottles of liquor. She sucks it all down and throws the bottle across the room. Grabbing another, she sits on the edge of the bed. ELECTRA Okay. How did you find me? RATH You're the computer hacker, you tell me. ELECTRA You didn't know anything about me. Nikita rubs up against her leg. ELECTRA Nikita? RATH Yellow Pages. V for veterinarian. There aren't that many. She nods, slurping at her bottle. ELECTRA You're one of them, aren't you? RATH 'Them'? ELECTRA An assassin? RATH Until a minute ago. ELECTRA What does that mean? RATH If I still was what I used to be, you would not be pointing that at me. Electra eyes him, considers shooting him right now. ELECTRA Who is that other guy? RATH Another contractor. ELECTRA Someone hired both of you? RATH No. They hired Bain. The contract would have been mine, but Bain took it from me as he took the previous one. ELECTRA So this is something between you and him? RATH He stole the contract knowing that I would come after him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he is trying to retire me. ELECTRA He wants to kill you? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Why? RATH The nature of the business. You remove your competition. ELECTRA And you want to use me to get him? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Forget it! RATH We don't have a choice. She FIRES the GUN, pocking the wall behind him. ELECTRA Don't tell me I don't have a choice! RATH Right. ELECTRA I'm two seconds away from making my choice which means you've got two seconds to tell me why I shouldn't shoot you. RATH It's simple. You need me. I need you. And we will both need money. ELECTRA I don't need you to get the money -- my money! RATH If it hadn't been for me, you would be dead. She's up pacing, knowing there is some truth in that. ELECTRA I don't need the money. RATH This is something that is never going to end. You can never work in the business again with this contract, because he will find you. To survive, you have to go into deep hiding. And that's going to take money, a lot of money. ELECTRA Then you can have the disks and I'll just walk out that door -- RATH If you walk out that door, Bain will still come after you. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he took a contract on you. He'll come for you and he'll find you. ELECTRA You don't know that -- you're trying to scare me. RATH No. It's the truth. I know what you are. Like me, like Bain, you're a ghost, you're not part of the real world. You don't have a social security number. You don't pay taxes. You've probably used ten different names over the last ten years. A long time ago something probably happened, something illegal and you ran, you disappeared and it was easy. You think you can do it again. But I'm telling you, fading from the law is nothing. No matter what you do, where you go, I swear to you that Bain will find you. ELECTRA How? RATH Right now, as we sit here, he is tearing through your apartment. He is digging through your drawers, emptying your closets. He will take your telephone and address books, your appointment books. If you keep a diary, he is reading it. He'll go into the kitchen and find out what kind of food you eat, liquor you drink, cigarettes you smoke. In the bathroom he will find any prescription drugs you take and where you get them filled. If you have video tape or recordings he will watch and listen to all of them. She is coming unglued. Imagining him watching her tapes, going through her possessions. She is moving, pacing, ready to explode. ELECTRA Oh Jesus Jesus... RATH He will know everything about you. Everything. I know, because I've done it. Once you've been inside a mark's home, you're in their head. If you're any good, you'll find the mark in a week, and Bain is good because I was the best and I couldn't take him. She whirls and starts FIRING the GUN, firing it everywhere, fear and anger rocketing out of her in WHISTLING hot wads of LEAD. When she stops, he starts to say something but she levels the gun at him. ELECTRA Shut up! All right! You've said enough! She forces herself back, grabbing handfuls of the sample bottles. ELECTRA I need to think... To be alone. With the gun and an armful of booze and Nikita following at her feet, she goes into the bathroom and slams the door. INT. BATHROOM She locks the door and then collapses. Her body seems to fold up onto itself as she slides down the wall; the GUN and the BOTTLES falling from her arms, CLATTERING SOFTLY on the bath rug as she buries her face in her hands. INT. BEDROOM Very mechanically, Rath begins setting up his chess board, putting the pieces into the same positions. It is a ritual, and with it he enters a kind of trance. From the bathroom, almost inaudible, he hears Electra CRYING. INT. BATHROOM With her head now buried in her arms and knees, she is sobbing, her body rocking. The crying seems very similar to Jennifer's; a complete emotional release. INT. BEDROOM Rath stares at the board. The CRYING grows LOUDER. He stands and walks to the door. He starts to knock but stops himself. Like Electra with Jennifer, Rath would like to help, he just has no idea how to. He turns back to the desk, to his chess game. INT. BATHROOM Her eyes are now burning red. She stops crying long enough to suck down an entire sample of Scotch. Nikita rubs against her and she strokes her. ELECTRA Oh shit, Nikita. INT. BEDROOM Rath is setting up his computer system. He hears the TUB FILLING UP. INT. BATHROOM Nikita jumps up onto the toilet seat and starts drinking. ELECTRA Cheers. Electra finishes another sample and drops it to the floor where we see that many of the bottles are now empty. In the tub, steam rising off the surface, she wrings out a wash cloth and covers her face, sinking deeper into the water. INT. BEDROOM When Electra comes out of the bathroom, Rath is again at his chess game. She sits down across from him and sets the gun on the table between them. Rath looks up at her. ELECTRA Listen -- I don't even know your name. RATH Rath. Robert Rath. ELECTRA Electra. RATH Just Electra? ELECTRA Yeah. RATH As in daughter of Agamemnon? ELECTRA No. Just Electra. The conversation dies. ELECTRA What I'm trying to say is that -- I'm not sure I can do this, help you, unless I know more about you. RATH What do you want to know? ELECTRA If Bain hadn't taken the contract on me, would you have? He stares at her. RATH No. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because I'm done. ELECTRA This is crazy. I can't trust you. You can't trust me. How can we possibly help each other? They sit in silence, the gun and the chess game lying between them. RATH Do you play? She looks at the chess board. ELECTRA With computers. RATH It's not the same, is it? ELECTRA Better than playing with yourself. He smiles. RATH I had an opponent. She understands that he is trying to tell her something. ELECTRA Had? RATH He was Russian. Nicholai Tachlinkov. A legend in the business when I was just starting. I admired him. When I heard he loved chess I became obsessed with the game. Electra studies the board. ELECTRA He was white? Rath nods. ELECTRA It looks like white's game. RATH We played with a code using The New York Times obituaries. Over three years we played twelve matches. I never won. ELECTRA Why didn't you finish this game? She reaches over and lifts a White Knight and takes a Bishop. Rath counters, taking her Knight. RATH He was... taken. ELECTRA He was killed. Rath nods. Throughout the entire conversation they continue to play out the chess game. ELECTRA By who? A long beat. RATH I killed him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because that's how it works. That's what it's about. He was the best. He was on top. ELECTRA Where you wanted to be? RATH Yes. As soon as you get into this business, all you can think about is getting to the top. That's all there is. Until then, there is nothing. You are nothing. ELECTRA How did you get into the business? RATH The same way everyone does; the government, the Agency. ELECTRA The C.I.A.? RATH More or less. ELECTRA How old were you? RATH They recruited me when I was in high school. ELECTRA Jesus -- why? RATH Languages. I was already fluent in nine languages. ELECTRA You were like a boy genius? RATH Some people said that. I never thought so. ELECTRA Why not? RATH I was just different. ELECTRA You went from high school to the Agency? RATH No. I graduated from George Washington University. Then I entered the Agency training program. ELECTRA They didn't give you a choice, did they? RATH No, they didn't. ELECTRA But you knew what they were training you for? RATH Of course. I was going to be James Bond. ELECTRA Ahhhh... RATH They are very good at what they do. It's very seductive. The training, the weapons, the travel -- ELECTRA The exotic women. RATH Women? No... not really. ELECTRA Why not? RATH Women... I don't... I don't want to talk about women. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because you are a women. ELECTRA Why did you leave the Agency? RATH The same reason everyone does. You hear your name on C-SPAN and you realize you're a skeleton in someone's closet and they're coming to bury you. ELECTRA They tried to kill you? RATH Yes. It didn't matter much to them as long as I disappeared. ELECTRA Then you went freelance? RATH The only thing different about the private sector is that a General Contractor takes less of a percentage than the government, so you make more money. Then once you make the transition, you realize you were never working for the government; it was always the private sector, the vested interests and it's the same vested interests that continue to buy your plane tickets. ELECTRA Tell me about the first time. RATH My first take? ELECTRA Yes. RATH Why? ELECTRA Because I want to know. RATH It was... mechanical. Very precise. It was exactly like the training drill except for the adrenaline. ELECTRA Are they usually like that? RATH No. Just the first one. ELECTRA After that? RATH They become complicated... messy. ELECTRA Did it ever bother you? RATH Did it ever bother James Bond? ELECTRA That's fiction. RATH This is fiction! Don't you see that? This is another reality. And the people that come into the world to play this game -- nobody forces them! They're here, they know the rules, the stakes, the risks! Do you understand what I am saying? No one is innocent -- including you! ELECTRA Does that mean it didn't bother you? Rath leans back and stares at her. She waits. RATH You get a job swinging a hammer, the first day you get a blister, it tears open, it bleeds and it stays sore a long time. You keep swinging the hammer, you get a good hard callous that covers that spot and it never bothers you again. Electra says nothing. He leans forward and slides a rook into her back row. RATH Check. He leans back. RATH Is that what you wanted to hear? Something cold blooded... something remorseless... ELECTRA No. Something honest. A beat. Rath likes this woman. She moves her Queen. ELECTRA Mate. He smiles. ELECTRA I hope your plan is better than your game. INT. CHEAP HOTEL - NIGHT The room is ugly. Shag carpeting, wood paneling and polyester patterned curtains. We hear a COMPUTER KEYBOARD CLICKING away as we MOVE ACROSS a table. The hotel phone is in a modem, which is held together with duct tape. Between the modem and the computer is a scrambler constructed out of a series of naked circuit boards. It is a very similar set up to Rath's, only it has been put together with a fraction of the resources. Bain sits, typing at the computer, his shirt off. Beside the desk-top is a six pack of Old Style beer, a bag of Doritos and his Gameboy. On the floor, disassembled neatly on a small white towel is his cleaned gun. Bain finishes punching in a code, sits back and sucks down his beer. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Where have you been, Michael? He belches. He is communicating with his General Contractor. On the table is a collection of personal objects, much of it stuffed in pillow cases, taken from Electra's house. BAIN/SCREEN Tracking the mark. Bain fingers a pair of satin panties. He smiles as he smells them. BAIN I'm on the scent. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN You're too late. Bain slams his beer down. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN I've learned from MicroCell, Rath fulfilled the contract. BAIN/SCREEN How? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN He took out the mark and sold the disks back to MicroCell. Bain falls back in his chair, thinking. He runs his hands through his sweaty hair. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Michael? BAIN No. No. No. I don't believe it. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN They money will be standard bank transfer. We believe we will know where and when. BAIN What? BAIN/SCREEN How? There is no response. BAIN/SCREEN How in the fuck do you know that? A long beat. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Such language in front of a lady. BAIN I don't give a fuck what you are. I asked you -- He hits the repeat key. BAIN (types) How in the fuck do you know that? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Do you want Rath or not? Bain stares at the screen, thinking. Thinking hard. INT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL ROOM - NIGHT Another computer screen, but we don't know that it is different. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN It will take three days to arrange the transfer. ELECTRA Three days? We are in Electra and Rath's hotel room. She is standing behind him, reading as he types. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA Are you going to tell him? RATH It. Tell it. For all I know it could be a machine. ELECTRA You said you didn't trust it. RATH I don't. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA What kind of bank is going to allow us to withdraw ten million dollars the day it is transferred? RATH The kind preferred by drug smugglers, arms dealers and politicians. Rath types in an account number. RATH Do you have a passport? ELECTRA Several. RATH Good. ELECTRA Where is it? RATH Mexico. INT. AIRPLANE - DAY Rath and Electra are sitting in the first class section, which she is obviously enjoying, smiling and sipping champagne. ELECTRA God, I love first class. I remember when I was a little girl, I would wonder what it was like up here. I would always try to peek through the curtains. Rath says nothing, staring out the window. Electra shakes her head. ELECTRA I hope Nikita's all right. He still does not respond. ELECTRA Hey, where are you? RATH Thinking. ELECTRA About? RATH Nothing. Electra sips the last of her champagne. ELECTRA I've never been to the Gulf of Mexico. Is it as nice as they say? RATH I don't know. ELECTRA You were there? A long beat. RATH Yes. EXT. SMALL MEXICAN AIRPORT - DAY The plane lands. EXT. TERMINAL CAB STAND Rath and Electra hand their bags to a CABBY who puts them in his trunk. INT. CAB Rath speaks perfect Spanish. RATH (in Spanish) Good afternoon. We have reservations at the Hotel Paraiso in Costa Blanca. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes, sir. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - DAY The cab pulls up in front of a large, brand new glass hotel, which shimmers in the blue green reflection of the gulf water. Rath is upset. RATH (in Spanish) No, no. I said the Hotel Paraiso. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes. This is the Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) No, the other Hotel Paraiso, in the city. Near the Plaza del Sol. CABBY (in Spanish) I'm sorry, sir. A year ago there was a fire in the old Hotel Paraiso. This is the new Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) Take us there. EXT. COSTA BLANCA - DAY American tourist dollars have built up the coasts, but much of the out-lying city is very poor. The old Hotel Paraiso is a five story blackened husk. The face of the building is burnt black and it seems to hang in space as something non-corporeal, like the shadow of the building rather than the building itself. Rath stares at it, remembering. Electra is behind him, standing in the midst of the Plaza del Sol. He looks up to the fifth story window, then turns directly opposite of that. The International Banco de Mexico, an enormous, beautiful old building; its exterior walls are white-washed concrete, blindingly bright white. Electra looks at the bank and smiles. ELECTRA So, that's where all that S & L money is? Rath is not listening to her. He is somewhere else. He turns back to the fourth story window. RATH That's where he'll be. ELECTRA What? RATH I wasn't expecting this. I need to think. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - NIGHT Beyond the lights of the hotel the gulf darkens to midnight oil. INT. HOTEL PARAISO ELEVATOR On one side of the elevator is a young couple who look like newlyweds. They are cuddling, kissing and giggling as though they are alone. Electra and Rath are on the other side of the elevator. It is a strange contrast. Electra is staring at them. Rath, behind his sunglasses, is in his own world. The ELEVATOR CHIMES and opens. Nobody moves. The DOORS CHIME again and start to close, as everyone realizes that this is their floor. Rath and the other man grab the doors, which spring back open. It is a funny, awkward moment, as everyone apologizes and smiles politely, on the way out. INT. HALL The couple move down the hall, the newlyweds finding their door first. Rath reaches the door to their room, opens it and enters. Electra lingers, watching the other couple, watching as he fumbles for his keys, her hand running up between his legs and over his ass. He finally manages to open the door and she pushes him inside. Electra softly closes her door. INT. HOTEL PARAISO - HOTEL ROOM Rath is sitting in a desk chair staring out of the sliding balcony doors at the dark gulf water. ELECTRA Did you see them? Electra moves about the large suite. ELECTRA They looked like they were in love. Rath says nothing. ELECTRA Well, I think I'll take a bath. Come on, Nikita! The two of them walk into the bathroom, leaving Rath to himself. INT. BATHROOM Electra sits on the edge of the over-sized tub, water running through her fingers as she adjusts the temperature. After a beat she hears a SMALL CRASH, a GLASS BREAKING. It is followed by other MUFFLED NOISES, a WOMAN GIGGLING and a THUMPING.

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why I'm here. Electra wants to scream. The speedometer is climbing over 100. RATH I really think you should slow down. INT. HOTEL SUITE - NIGHT The room is immaculate; near the door, several over-sized suitcases line the wall. Bain is sitting at the desk. His WALKMAN is on, MUSIC BLASTING, as he flips casually through the telephone directory. His finger eases down a column stopping at "Morgan Jennifer." There is a KNOCK at the door. He smiles and tears out the page. There is another, LOUDER KNOCK which Bain hears this time. He TURN OFF the WALKMAN and opens the door; a BELLBOY is waiting with a luggage cart. BELLBOY Hello, sir. Have you some luggage you need carried. Bain gives him a wink and a smile. BAIN Indeed I do. INT. ELECTRA'S CAR - NIGHT The red "low fuel" light is on. ELECTRA Now what? RATH Turn off the engine. Electra twists the ignition and the CAR DIES. Rath glances around and we see the car is parked in a gas station. ELECTRA You want me to pump? RATH No, stay in the car. I want you to understand something. If I intended to kill you, you would already be dead. Electra says nothing. He reaches over and takes the car keys. When he is out of the car, Electra slowly releases the strangle-hold she had on the steering wheel. ELECTRA Okay, Nikita, stay calm, think, breathe, think... Electra checks the rear view mirror, listening as Rath pumps the gas. Her eyes flash down to her bag. Outside, Rath watches Electra through the windows. She appears motionless. The electric gas counter races like a stop watch. In the car, Electra eases her hand into her bag. The tank full, Rath re-hangs the pump. He walks around the car and heads for the station. Electra waits until his back is turned. She pulls her tool pouch from her bag, throws it open and finds her wire stripper. Reaching under the dash, she yanks out a tangled handful of wire. She looks up; Rath is inside paying. ELECTRA Come on, come on, it's a cake walk. Her fingers fly with surgical precision, snipping, stripping, twisting. Rath steps out of the station as her head pops up, looking for him. It takes only a second for him to realize what she is doing. RATH Oh shit. He runs at the car as she strips the last set of wires and strikes them; the BATTERY GRINDS. ELECTRA Please, please. He is almost there when the ENGINE FIRES. She stomps on the gas, ramming the shift into drive. TIRES SQUEALING, the car swerves forward as Rath slams into it. He bounces backward, falling to the ground. The car fishtails away, accelerating as Rath rolls to one knee, his gun automatically in his hand. He draws a bead, but, he does not shoot. With a concerted effort, he puts the gun away. RATH Dammit. EXT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT BUILDING - NIGHT Electra's car is parked out front. She unlocks the lobby door and drags herself inside. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT LOBBY Standing at the mailboxes flipping through her mail is Jennifer Morgan. What she was hoping for is not there. She looks up and sees Electra. JENNIFER Excuse me -- Electra stops. JENNIFER You live here, don't you? Electra nods. JENNIFER I'm sorry, this may sound really weird, but my friend told me he slipped a letter under the door here and I was wondering if you happened to see it? Electra is in a daze, her hand moving into her pocket. ELECTRA Letter? JENNIFER Yeah. He said he saw a woman with dark hair going into the building when he dropped it off. ELECTRA No. I don't have it. Electra's mouth opens and she backs away. Jennifer is bothered by her reaction and she doesn't push it. JENNIFER I'm sorry. I didn't mean to -- I'm sorry. She shrugs and unlocks the interior door, leaving Electra in the lobby. Electra watches her, as her hand moves from pocket to pocket. A worried expression tightens her face; the letter is gone. She opens the interior door, following Jennifer up the stairs. INT. STAIRCASE Electra climbs the stairs, her mind pouring through the possibilities, filled with fear. By the time Electra reaches the top floor, Jennifer is entering her apartment. Electra hurries past Jennifer's door to her own. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT - NIGHT Electra flies across the living room to the monitors. She clicks them on, putting on Jennifer's channel. On the screen we see Jennifer in her living room checking her phone messages. One from her mother. Electra throws a few switches so that Jennifer's entire apartment is in front of her. On one of the monitors we see a shadow slide across the oak floor as something moves along the edge of the room. Jennifer has moved to the bathroom and is drawing a bath. Electra clamps her hand over her mouth when he steps out. Bain moves into the dining room where Jennifer had just been. Wearing rubber surgeon's gloves, he picks up the mail that she had dropped on the table and sorts through it. Bain moves about the apartment with complete indifference to Jennifer's presence; as if he were invisible, as though he knew she couldn't see him. He moves into a room, just as she moves out. Electra watches, dizzy, sick with terror, but she is unable to turn away. Bain searches through a desk drawer, while Jennifer starts undressing for her bath. He walks down the hall and stands outside of the bathroom. If Jennifer would turn around she would see him. Electra is about to run, to call out when -- Something catches Bain's eye. He moves into the bedroom, and is turned so that he is looking straight up into the camera. He inches towards it, not sure what it is. The fiber optic cable is hidden in the light fixture hanging over the bed. Staring at it, he is looking right at Electra. Bain steps up onto the bed, his face distorting as he moves close to the fish-eye lens. Poking it with his finger, he realizes what it is. A warped smile stretches across his face as he whispers -- BAIN (V.O.) Oh, you sick little bitch -- Electra tears away from the screen, panic seizing hold of her. She rips entire drawers out of her dresser, dumping them into a suitcase, stuffing in anything that looks important. She grabs Nikita in the "travel kitty." EXT. BACK PORCH The door opens and Electra jumps out, slamming it behind her as -- Bain turns from the back stairs. She leaps back inside as he whips out his GUN, PUMPING TWO HOLES in the door. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT She scrambles from the kitchen, throwing her suitcase, still clutching the "travel kitty," as -- The back DOOR EXPLODES from its hinges, Bain charging, FIRING his GUN. BULLETS HISSING past her, Electra crashes through the front door into the hall. INT. HALL The stairs are at the far end. She is only halfway, when -- Rath rises up the stairs, his gun cocked. Electra drops to the floor as -- Behind her, Bain barrels from the apartment. Rath FIRES. The wood DOOR SPLINTERS, BULLET HOLES surrounding Bain. Off balance, he lunges back into the apartment. Rath continues FIRING, grabbing hold of Electra. They run down the stairs. EXT. REAR STAIRCASE Bain leaps down the flights. EXT. ALLEY Bain rushes into the street, looking in every direction. They are gone. BAIN Fuck me! EXT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL - NIGHT Somewhere in the city. INT. HOTEL ROOM Electra and Rath enter the room together but they are both immediately alone. She walks across the room to a chair in the corner, curling into it even as Nikita jumps up and curls into her lap. He sets his briefcase on the table at the opposite end of the room and sits. They watch each other. Silence. Between then is the liquor cabinet. Rath knows a good idea when he sees one. RATH Want a drink? Her face is as expressionless as Nikita's. He pours himself a very large bourbon and slugs it down. Takes a deep breath, then pours himself another one. RATH Okay... He returns to his table with his drink. RATH I'm not good at this sort of thing, but we don't have a lot of time, so I'll just go ahead and get started. First: you. I ask myself, 'What is she thinking?' Her body tightens, coils. RATH Simple. She's scared. She's almost been killed twice and now she is alone in a room with a man that she believes is an... assassin. Another deep pull on the bourbon. RATH Furthermore she was brought here not entirely on her own accord which only increases her fear and suspicion. Thus, as long as she is afraid, her first, maybe her only thought will be escape. Does that leave me any other option? He slugs down the rest of his drink and stands, whipping out his gun. RATH No. Crossing the room, he turns the gun around and offers it to her. She looks at it. Back at him. He puts it on the bed beside her, turns his back and walks to the bar. She picks up the gun. RATH The gun is silenced. She could shoot me right now. She stands, Nikita jumping from her lap. RATH She could take the car and be far from here before the maid comes in the morning, but -- She starts squeezing OFF ROUNDS; the LAMP EXPLODES, the CHAIRS around him ERUPT, tufts of white stuffing leaping into the air. ELECTRA Shut up! He freezes, bottle in one hand, glass in the other. ELECTRA Stop trying to tell me what I'm thinking! She moves closer to him, the gun squeezed in her fist. ELECTRA I'll tell you what you're thinking -- you think I'm not going to shoot you but right now you're not so sure, are you? A slight shake of the head, no. ELECTRA You're thinking that maybe it was a mistake to give me this gun, that maybe I'm not going to think about things logically because I'm a woman and I'm freaked out and I'm going to do something impulsive and irrational -- right? She FIRES the GUN to both sides of his head. He's surprised to be alive. ELECTRA You don't know shit about me! Now sit down! He returns to his chair and sits with the same expression she had worn sitting a moment ago. She opens the cabinet and grabs one of the sample bottles of liquor. She sucks it all down and throws the bottle across the room. Grabbing another, she sits on the edge of the bed. ELECTRA Okay. How did you find me? RATH You're the computer hacker, you tell me. ELECTRA You didn't know anything about me. Nikita rubs up against her leg. ELECTRA Nikita? RATH Yellow Pages. V for veterinarian. There aren't that many. She nods, slurping at her bottle. ELECTRA You're one of them, aren't you? RATH 'Them'? ELECTRA An assassin? RATH Until a minute ago. ELECTRA What does that mean? RATH If I still was what I used to be, you would not be pointing that at me. Electra eyes him, considers shooting him right now. ELECTRA Who is that other guy? RATH Another contractor. ELECTRA Someone hired both of you? RATH No. They hired Bain. The contract would have been mine, but Bain took it from me as he took the previous one. ELECTRA So this is something between you and him? RATH He stole the contract knowing that I would come after him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he is trying to retire me. ELECTRA He wants to kill you? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Why? RATH The nature of the business. You remove your competition. ELECTRA And you want to use me to get him? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Forget it! RATH We don't have a choice. She FIRES the GUN, pocking the wall behind him. ELECTRA Don't tell me I don't have a choice! RATH Right. ELECTRA I'm two seconds away from making my choice which means you've got two seconds to tell me why I shouldn't shoot you. RATH It's simple. You need me. I need you. And we will both need money. ELECTRA I don't need you to get the money -- my money! RATH If it hadn't been for me, you would be dead. She's up pacing, knowing there is some truth in that. ELECTRA I don't need the money. RATH This is something that is never going to end. You can never work in the business again with this contract, because he will find you. To survive, you have to go into deep hiding. And that's going to take money, a lot of money. ELECTRA Then you can have the disks and I'll just walk out that door -- RATH If you walk out that door, Bain will still come after you. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he took a contract on you. He'll come for you and he'll find you. ELECTRA You don't know that -- you're trying to scare me. RATH No. It's the truth. I know what you are. Like me, like Bain, you're a ghost, you're not part of the real world. You don't have a social security number. You don't pay taxes. You've probably used ten different names over the last ten years. A long time ago something probably happened, something illegal and you ran, you disappeared and it was easy. You think you can do it again. But I'm telling you, fading from the law is nothing. No matter what you do, where you go, I swear to you that Bain will find you. ELECTRA How? RATH Right now, as we sit here, he is tearing through your apartment. He is digging through your drawers, emptying your closets. He will take your telephone and address books, your appointment books. If you keep a diary, he is reading it. He'll go into the kitchen and find out what kind of food you eat, liquor you drink, cigarettes you smoke. In the bathroom he will find any prescription drugs you take and where you get them filled. If you have video tape or recordings he will watch and listen to all of them. She is coming unglued. Imagining him watching her tapes, going through her possessions. She is moving, pacing, ready to explode. ELECTRA Oh Jesus Jesus... RATH He will know everything about you. Everything. I know, because I've done it. Once you've been inside a mark's home, you're in their head. If you're any good, you'll find the mark in a week, and Bain is good because I was the best and I couldn't take him. She whirls and starts FIRING the GUN, firing it everywhere, fear and anger rocketing out of her in WHISTLING hot wads of LEAD. When she stops, he starts to say something but she levels the gun at him. ELECTRA Shut up! All right! You've said enough! She forces herself back, grabbing handfuls of the sample bottles. ELECTRA I need to think... To be alone. With the gun and an armful of booze and Nikita following at her feet, she goes into the bathroom and slams the door. INT. BATHROOM She locks the door and then collapses. Her body seems to fold up onto itself as she slides down the wall; the GUN and the BOTTLES falling from her arms, CLATTERING SOFTLY on the bath rug as she buries her face in her hands. INT. BEDROOM Very mechanically, Rath begins setting up his chess board, putting the pieces into the same positions. It is a ritual, and with it he enters a kind of trance. From the bathroom, almost inaudible, he hears Electra CRYING. INT. BATHROOM With her head now buried in her arms and knees, she is sobbing, her body rocking. The crying seems very similar to Jennifer's; a complete emotional release. INT. BEDROOM Rath stares at the board. The CRYING grows LOUDER. He stands and walks to the door. He starts to knock but stops himself. Like Electra with Jennifer, Rath would like to help, he just has no idea how to. He turns back to the desk, to his chess game. INT. BATHROOM Her eyes are now burning red. She stops crying long enough to suck down an entire sample of Scotch. Nikita rubs against her and she strokes her. ELECTRA Oh shit, Nikita. INT. BEDROOM Rath is setting up his computer system. He hears the TUB FILLING UP. INT. BATHROOM Nikita jumps up onto the toilet seat and starts drinking. ELECTRA Cheers. Electra finishes another sample and drops it to the floor where we see that many of the bottles are now empty. In the tub, steam rising off the surface, she wrings out a wash cloth and covers her face, sinking deeper into the water. INT. BEDROOM When Electra comes out of the bathroom, Rath is again at his chess game. She sits down across from him and sets the gun on the table between them. Rath looks up at her. ELECTRA Listen -- I don't even know your name. RATH Rath. Robert Rath. ELECTRA Electra. RATH Just Electra? ELECTRA Yeah. RATH As in daughter of Agamemnon? ELECTRA No. Just Electra. The conversation dies. ELECTRA What I'm trying to say is that -- I'm not sure I can do this, help you, unless I know more about you. RATH What do you want to know? ELECTRA If Bain hadn't taken the contract on me, would you have? He stares at her. RATH No. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because I'm done. ELECTRA This is crazy. I can't trust you. You can't trust me. How can we possibly help each other? They sit in silence, the gun and the chess game lying between them. RATH Do you play? She looks at the chess board. ELECTRA With computers. RATH It's not the same, is it? ELECTRA Better than playing with yourself. He smiles. RATH I had an opponent. She understands that he is trying to tell her something. ELECTRA Had? RATH He was Russian. Nicholai Tachlinkov. A legend in the business when I was just starting. I admired him. When I heard he loved chess I became obsessed with the game. Electra studies the board. ELECTRA He was white? Rath nods. ELECTRA It looks like white's game. RATH We played with a code using The New York Times obituaries. Over three years we played twelve matches. I never won. ELECTRA Why didn't you finish this game? She reaches over and lifts a White Knight and takes a Bishop. Rath counters, taking her Knight. RATH He was... taken. ELECTRA He was killed. Rath nods. Throughout the entire conversation they continue to play out the chess game. ELECTRA By who? A long beat. RATH I killed him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because that's how it works. That's what it's about. He was the best. He was on top. ELECTRA Where you wanted to be? RATH Yes. As soon as you get into this business, all you can think about is getting to the top. That's all there is. Until then, there is nothing. You are nothing. ELECTRA How did you get into the business? RATH The same way everyone does; the government, the Agency. ELECTRA The C.I.A.? RATH More or less. ELECTRA How old were you? RATH They recruited me when I was in high school. ELECTRA Jesus -- why? RATH Languages. I was already fluent in nine languages. ELECTRA You were like a boy genius? RATH Some people said that. I never thought so. ELECTRA Why not? RATH I was just different. ELECTRA You went from high school to the Agency? RATH No. I graduated from George Washington University. Then I entered the Agency training program. ELECTRA They didn't give you a choice, did they? RATH No, they didn't. ELECTRA But you knew what they were training you for? RATH Of course. I was going to be James Bond. ELECTRA Ahhhh... RATH They are very good at what they do. It's very seductive. The training, the weapons, the travel -- ELECTRA The exotic women. RATH Women? No... not really. ELECTRA Why not? RATH Women... I don't... I don't want to talk about women. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because you are a women. ELECTRA Why did you leave the Agency? RATH The same reason everyone does. You hear your name on C-SPAN and you realize you're a skeleton in someone's closet and they're coming to bury you. ELECTRA They tried to kill you? RATH Yes. It didn't matter much to them as long as I disappeared. ELECTRA Then you went freelance? RATH The only thing different about the private sector is that a General Contractor takes less of a percentage than the government, so you make more money. Then once you make the transition, you realize you were never working for the government; it was always the private sector, the vested interests and it's the same vested interests that continue to buy your plane tickets. ELECTRA Tell me about the first time. RATH My first take? ELECTRA Yes. RATH Why? ELECTRA Because I want to know. RATH It was... mechanical. Very precise. It was exactly like the training drill except for the adrenaline. ELECTRA Are they usually like that? RATH No. Just the first one. ELECTRA After that? RATH They become complicated... messy. ELECTRA Did it ever bother you? RATH Did it ever bother James Bond? ELECTRA That's fiction. RATH This is fiction! Don't you see that? This is another reality. And the people that come into the world to play this game -- nobody forces them! They're here, they know the rules, the stakes, the risks! Do you understand what I am saying? No one is innocent -- including you! ELECTRA Does that mean it didn't bother you? Rath leans back and stares at her. She waits. RATH You get a job swinging a hammer, the first day you get a blister, it tears open, it bleeds and it stays sore a long time. You keep swinging the hammer, you get a good hard callous that covers that spot and it never bothers you again. Electra says nothing. He leans forward and slides a rook into her back row. RATH Check. He leans back. RATH Is that what you wanted to hear? Something cold blooded... something remorseless... ELECTRA No. Something honest. A beat. Rath likes this woman. She moves her Queen. ELECTRA Mate. He smiles. ELECTRA I hope your plan is better than your game. INT. CHEAP HOTEL - NIGHT The room is ugly. Shag carpeting, wood paneling and polyester patterned curtains. We hear a COMPUTER KEYBOARD CLICKING away as we MOVE ACROSS a table. The hotel phone is in a modem, which is held together with duct tape. Between the modem and the computer is a scrambler constructed out of a series of naked circuit boards. It is a very similar set up to Rath's, only it has been put together with a fraction of the resources. Bain sits, typing at the computer, his shirt off. Beside the desk-top is a six pack of Old Style beer, a bag of Doritos and his Gameboy. On the floor, disassembled neatly on a small white towel is his cleaned gun. Bain finishes punching in a code, sits back and sucks down his beer. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Where have you been, Michael? He belches. He is communicating with his General Contractor. On the table is a collection of personal objects, much of it stuffed in pillow cases, taken from Electra's house. BAIN/SCREEN Tracking the mark. Bain fingers a pair of satin panties. He smiles as he smells them. BAIN I'm on the scent. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN You're too late. Bain slams his beer down. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN I've learned from MicroCell, Rath fulfilled the contract. BAIN/SCREEN How? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN He took out the mark and sold the disks back to MicroCell. Bain falls back in his chair, thinking. He runs his hands through his sweaty hair. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Michael? BAIN No. No. No. I don't believe it. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN They money will be standard bank transfer. We believe we will know where and when. BAIN What? BAIN/SCREEN How? There is no response. BAIN/SCREEN How in the fuck do you know that? A long beat. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Such language in front of a lady. BAIN I don't give a fuck what you are. I asked you -- He hits the repeat key. BAIN (types) How in the fuck do you know that? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Do you want Rath or not? Bain stares at the screen, thinking. Thinking hard. INT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL ROOM - NIGHT Another computer screen, but we don't know that it is different. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN It will take three days to arrange the transfer. ELECTRA Three days? We are in Electra and Rath's hotel room. She is standing behind him, reading as he types. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA Are you going to tell him? RATH It. Tell it. For all I know it could be a machine. ELECTRA You said you didn't trust it. RATH I don't. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA What kind of bank is going to allow us to withdraw ten million dollars the day it is transferred? RATH The kind preferred by drug smugglers, arms dealers and politicians. Rath types in an account number. RATH Do you have a passport? ELECTRA Several. RATH Good. ELECTRA Where is it? RATH Mexico. INT. AIRPLANE - DAY Rath and Electra are sitting in the first class section, which she is obviously enjoying, smiling and sipping champagne. ELECTRA God, I love first class. I remember when I was a little girl, I would wonder what it was like up here. I would always try to peek through the curtains. Rath says nothing, staring out the window. Electra shakes her head. ELECTRA I hope Nikita's all right. He still does not respond. ELECTRA Hey, where are you? RATH Thinking. ELECTRA About? RATH Nothing. Electra sips the last of her champagne. ELECTRA I've never been to the Gulf of Mexico. Is it as nice as they say? RATH I don't know. ELECTRA You were there? A long beat. RATH Yes. EXT. SMALL MEXICAN AIRPORT - DAY The plane lands. EXT. TERMINAL CAB STAND Rath and Electra hand their bags to a CABBY who puts them in his trunk. INT. CAB Rath speaks perfect Spanish. RATH (in Spanish) Good afternoon. We have reservations at the Hotel Paraiso in Costa Blanca. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes, sir. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - DAY The cab pulls up in front of a large, brand new glass hotel, which shimmers in the blue green reflection of the gulf water. Rath is upset. RATH (in Spanish) No, no. I said the Hotel Paraiso. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes. This is the Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) No, the other Hotel Paraiso, in the city. Near the Plaza del Sol. CABBY (in Spanish) I'm sorry, sir. A year ago there was a fire in the old Hotel Paraiso. This is the new Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) Take us there. EXT. COSTA BLANCA - DAY American tourist dollars have built up the coasts, but much of the out-lying city is very poor. The old Hotel Paraiso is a five story blackened husk. The face of the building is burnt black and it seems to hang in space as something non-corporeal, like the shadow of the building rather than the building itself. Rath stares at it, remembering. Electra is behind him, standing in the midst of the Plaza del Sol. He looks up to the fifth story window, then turns directly opposite of that. The International Banco de Mexico, an enormous, beautiful old building; its exterior walls are white-washed concrete, blindingly bright white. Electra looks at the bank and smiles. ELECTRA So, that's where all that S & L money is? Rath is not listening to her. He is somewhere else. He turns back to the fourth story window. RATH That's where he'll be. ELECTRA What? RATH I wasn't expecting this. I need to think. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - NIGHT Beyond the lights of the hotel the gulf darkens to midnight oil. INT. HOTEL PARAISO ELEVATOR On one side of the elevator is a young couple who look like newlyweds. They are cuddling, kissing and giggling as though they are alone. Electra and Rath are on the other side of the elevator. It is a strange contrast. Electra is staring at them. Rath, behind his sunglasses, is in his own world. The ELEVATOR CHIMES and opens. Nobody moves. The DOORS CHIME again and start to close, as everyone realizes that this is their floor. Rath and the other man grab the doors, which spring back open. It is a funny, awkward moment, as everyone apologizes and smiles politely, on the way out. INT. HALL The couple move down the hall, the newlyweds finding their door first. Rath reaches the door to their room, opens it and enters. Electra lingers, watching the other couple, watching as he fumbles for his keys, her hand running up between his legs and over his ass. He finally manages to open the door and she pushes him inside. Electra softly closes her door. INT. HOTEL PARAISO - HOTEL ROOM Rath is sitting in a desk chair staring out of the sliding balcony doors at the dark gulf water. ELECTRA Did you see them? Electra moves about the large suite. ELECTRA They looked like they were in love. Rath says nothing. ELECTRA Well, I think I'll take a bath. Come on, Nikita! The two of them walk into the bathroom, leaving Rath to himself. INT. BATHROOM Electra sits on the edge of the over-sized tub, water running through her fingers as she adjusts the temperature. After a beat she hears a SMALL CRASH, a GLASS BREAKING. It is followed by other MUFFLED NOISES, a WOMAN GIGGLING and a THUMPING.

so

How many times the word 'so' appears in the text?

why I'm here. Electra wants to scream. The speedometer is climbing over 100. RATH I really think you should slow down. INT. HOTEL SUITE - NIGHT The room is immaculate; near the door, several over-sized suitcases line the wall. Bain is sitting at the desk. His WALKMAN is on, MUSIC BLASTING, as he flips casually through the telephone directory. His finger eases down a column stopping at "Morgan Jennifer." There is a KNOCK at the door. He smiles and tears out the page. There is another, LOUDER KNOCK which Bain hears this time. He TURN OFF the WALKMAN and opens the door; a BELLBOY is waiting with a luggage cart. BELLBOY Hello, sir. Have you some luggage you need carried. Bain gives him a wink and a smile. BAIN Indeed I do. INT. ELECTRA'S CAR - NIGHT The red "low fuel" light is on. ELECTRA Now what? RATH Turn off the engine. Electra twists the ignition and the CAR DIES. Rath glances around and we see the car is parked in a gas station. ELECTRA You want me to pump? RATH No, stay in the car. I want you to understand something. If I intended to kill you, you would already be dead. Electra says nothing. He reaches over and takes the car keys. When he is out of the car, Electra slowly releases the strangle-hold she had on the steering wheel. ELECTRA Okay, Nikita, stay calm, think, breathe, think... Electra checks the rear view mirror, listening as Rath pumps the gas. Her eyes flash down to her bag. Outside, Rath watches Electra through the windows. She appears motionless. The electric gas counter races like a stop watch. In the car, Electra eases her hand into her bag. The tank full, Rath re-hangs the pump. He walks around the car and heads for the station. Electra waits until his back is turned. She pulls her tool pouch from her bag, throws it open and finds her wire stripper. Reaching under the dash, she yanks out a tangled handful of wire. She looks up; Rath is inside paying. ELECTRA Come on, come on, it's a cake walk. Her fingers fly with surgical precision, snipping, stripping, twisting. Rath steps out of the station as her head pops up, looking for him. It takes only a second for him to realize what she is doing. RATH Oh shit. He runs at the car as she strips the last set of wires and strikes them; the BATTERY GRINDS. ELECTRA Please, please. He is almost there when the ENGINE FIRES. She stomps on the gas, ramming the shift into drive. TIRES SQUEALING, the car swerves forward as Rath slams into it. He bounces backward, falling to the ground. The car fishtails away, accelerating as Rath rolls to one knee, his gun automatically in his hand. He draws a bead, but, he does not shoot. With a concerted effort, he puts the gun away. RATH Dammit. EXT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT BUILDING - NIGHT Electra's car is parked out front. She unlocks the lobby door and drags herself inside. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT LOBBY Standing at the mailboxes flipping through her mail is Jennifer Morgan. What she was hoping for is not there. She looks up and sees Electra. JENNIFER Excuse me -- Electra stops. JENNIFER You live here, don't you? Electra nods. JENNIFER I'm sorry, this may sound really weird, but my friend told me he slipped a letter under the door here and I was wondering if you happened to see it? Electra is in a daze, her hand moving into her pocket. ELECTRA Letter? JENNIFER Yeah. He said he saw a woman with dark hair going into the building when he dropped it off. ELECTRA No. I don't have it. Electra's mouth opens and she backs away. Jennifer is bothered by her reaction and she doesn't push it. JENNIFER I'm sorry. I didn't mean to -- I'm sorry. She shrugs and unlocks the interior door, leaving Electra in the lobby. Electra watches her, as her hand moves from pocket to pocket. A worried expression tightens her face; the letter is gone. She opens the interior door, following Jennifer up the stairs. INT. STAIRCASE Electra climbs the stairs, her mind pouring through the possibilities, filled with fear. By the time Electra reaches the top floor, Jennifer is entering her apartment. Electra hurries past Jennifer's door to her own. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT - NIGHT Electra flies across the living room to the monitors. She clicks them on, putting on Jennifer's channel. On the screen we see Jennifer in her living room checking her phone messages. One from her mother. Electra throws a few switches so that Jennifer's entire apartment is in front of her. On one of the monitors we see a shadow slide across the oak floor as something moves along the edge of the room. Jennifer has moved to the bathroom and is drawing a bath. Electra clamps her hand over her mouth when he steps out. Bain moves into the dining room where Jennifer had just been. Wearing rubber surgeon's gloves, he picks up the mail that she had dropped on the table and sorts through it. Bain moves about the apartment with complete indifference to Jennifer's presence; as if he were invisible, as though he knew she couldn't see him. He moves into a room, just as she moves out. Electra watches, dizzy, sick with terror, but she is unable to turn away. Bain searches through a desk drawer, while Jennifer starts undressing for her bath. He walks down the hall and stands outside of the bathroom. If Jennifer would turn around she would see him. Electra is about to run, to call out when -- Something catches Bain's eye. He moves into the bedroom, and is turned so that he is looking straight up into the camera. He inches towards it, not sure what it is. The fiber optic cable is hidden in the light fixture hanging over the bed. Staring at it, he is looking right at Electra. Bain steps up onto the bed, his face distorting as he moves close to the fish-eye lens. Poking it with his finger, he realizes what it is. A warped smile stretches across his face as he whispers -- BAIN (V.O.) Oh, you sick little bitch -- Electra tears away from the screen, panic seizing hold of her. She rips entire drawers out of her dresser, dumping them into a suitcase, stuffing in anything that looks important. She grabs Nikita in the "travel kitty." EXT. BACK PORCH The door opens and Electra jumps out, slamming it behind her as -- Bain turns from the back stairs. She leaps back inside as he whips out his GUN, PUMPING TWO HOLES in the door. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT She scrambles from the kitchen, throwing her suitcase, still clutching the "travel kitty," as -- The back DOOR EXPLODES from its hinges, Bain charging, FIRING his GUN. BULLETS HISSING past her, Electra crashes through the front door into the hall. INT. HALL The stairs are at the far end. She is only halfway, when -- Rath rises up the stairs, his gun cocked. Electra drops to the floor as -- Behind her, Bain barrels from the apartment. Rath FIRES. The wood DOOR SPLINTERS, BULLET HOLES surrounding Bain. Off balance, he lunges back into the apartment. Rath continues FIRING, grabbing hold of Electra. They run down the stairs. EXT. REAR STAIRCASE Bain leaps down the flights. EXT. ALLEY Bain rushes into the street, looking in every direction. They are gone. BAIN Fuck me! EXT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL - NIGHT Somewhere in the city. INT. HOTEL ROOM Electra and Rath enter the room together but they are both immediately alone. She walks across the room to a chair in the corner, curling into it even as Nikita jumps up and curls into her lap. He sets his briefcase on the table at the opposite end of the room and sits. They watch each other. Silence. Between then is the liquor cabinet. Rath knows a good idea when he sees one. RATH Want a drink? Her face is as expressionless as Nikita's. He pours himself a very large bourbon and slugs it down. Takes a deep breath, then pours himself another one. RATH Okay... He returns to his table with his drink. RATH I'm not good at this sort of thing, but we don't have a lot of time, so I'll just go ahead and get started. First: you. I ask myself, 'What is she thinking?' Her body tightens, coils. RATH Simple. She's scared. She's almost been killed twice and now she is alone in a room with a man that she believes is an... assassin. Another deep pull on the bourbon. RATH Furthermore she was brought here not entirely on her own accord which only increases her fear and suspicion. Thus, as long as she is afraid, her first, maybe her only thought will be escape. Does that leave me any other option? He slugs down the rest of his drink and stands, whipping out his gun. RATH No. Crossing the room, he turns the gun around and offers it to her. She looks at it. Back at him. He puts it on the bed beside her, turns his back and walks to the bar. She picks up the gun. RATH The gun is silenced. She could shoot me right now. She stands, Nikita jumping from her lap. RATH She could take the car and be far from here before the maid comes in the morning, but -- She starts squeezing OFF ROUNDS; the LAMP EXPLODES, the CHAIRS around him ERUPT, tufts of white stuffing leaping into the air. ELECTRA Shut up! He freezes, bottle in one hand, glass in the other. ELECTRA Stop trying to tell me what I'm thinking! She moves closer to him, the gun squeezed in her fist. ELECTRA I'll tell you what you're thinking -- you think I'm not going to shoot you but right now you're not so sure, are you? A slight shake of the head, no. ELECTRA You're thinking that maybe it was a mistake to give me this gun, that maybe I'm not going to think about things logically because I'm a woman and I'm freaked out and I'm going to do something impulsive and irrational -- right? She FIRES the GUN to both sides of his head. He's surprised to be alive. ELECTRA You don't know shit about me! Now sit down! He returns to his chair and sits with the same expression she had worn sitting a moment ago. She opens the cabinet and grabs one of the sample bottles of liquor. She sucks it all down and throws the bottle across the room. Grabbing another, she sits on the edge of the bed. ELECTRA Okay. How did you find me? RATH You're the computer hacker, you tell me. ELECTRA You didn't know anything about me. Nikita rubs up against her leg. ELECTRA Nikita? RATH Yellow Pages. V for veterinarian. There aren't that many. She nods, slurping at her bottle. ELECTRA You're one of them, aren't you? RATH 'Them'? ELECTRA An assassin? RATH Until a minute ago. ELECTRA What does that mean? RATH If I still was what I used to be, you would not be pointing that at me. Electra eyes him, considers shooting him right now. ELECTRA Who is that other guy? RATH Another contractor. ELECTRA Someone hired both of you? RATH No. They hired Bain. The contract would have been mine, but Bain took it from me as he took the previous one. ELECTRA So this is something between you and him? RATH He stole the contract knowing that I would come after him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he is trying to retire me. ELECTRA He wants to kill you? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Why? RATH The nature of the business. You remove your competition. ELECTRA And you want to use me to get him? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Forget it! RATH We don't have a choice. She FIRES the GUN, pocking the wall behind him. ELECTRA Don't tell me I don't have a choice! RATH Right. ELECTRA I'm two seconds away from making my choice which means you've got two seconds to tell me why I shouldn't shoot you. RATH It's simple. You need me. I need you. And we will both need money. ELECTRA I don't need you to get the money -- my money! RATH If it hadn't been for me, you would be dead. She's up pacing, knowing there is some truth in that. ELECTRA I don't need the money. RATH This is something that is never going to end. You can never work in the business again with this contract, because he will find you. To survive, you have to go into deep hiding. And that's going to take money, a lot of money. ELECTRA Then you can have the disks and I'll just walk out that door -- RATH If you walk out that door, Bain will still come after you. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he took a contract on you. He'll come for you and he'll find you. ELECTRA You don't know that -- you're trying to scare me. RATH No. It's the truth. I know what you are. Like me, like Bain, you're a ghost, you're not part of the real world. You don't have a social security number. You don't pay taxes. You've probably used ten different names over the last ten years. A long time ago something probably happened, something illegal and you ran, you disappeared and it was easy. You think you can do it again. But I'm telling you, fading from the law is nothing. No matter what you do, where you go, I swear to you that Bain will find you. ELECTRA How? RATH Right now, as we sit here, he is tearing through your apartment. He is digging through your drawers, emptying your closets. He will take your telephone and address books, your appointment books. If you keep a diary, he is reading it. He'll go into the kitchen and find out what kind of food you eat, liquor you drink, cigarettes you smoke. In the bathroom he will find any prescription drugs you take and where you get them filled. If you have video tape or recordings he will watch and listen to all of them. She is coming unglued. Imagining him watching her tapes, going through her possessions. She is moving, pacing, ready to explode. ELECTRA Oh Jesus Jesus... RATH He will know everything about you. Everything. I know, because I've done it. Once you've been inside a mark's home, you're in their head. If you're any good, you'll find the mark in a week, and Bain is good because I was the best and I couldn't take him. She whirls and starts FIRING the GUN, firing it everywhere, fear and anger rocketing out of her in WHISTLING hot wads of LEAD. When she stops, he starts to say something but she levels the gun at him. ELECTRA Shut up! All right! You've said enough! She forces herself back, grabbing handfuls of the sample bottles. ELECTRA I need to think... To be alone. With the gun and an armful of booze and Nikita following at her feet, she goes into the bathroom and slams the door. INT. BATHROOM She locks the door and then collapses. Her body seems to fold up onto itself as she slides down the wall; the GUN and the BOTTLES falling from her arms, CLATTERING SOFTLY on the bath rug as she buries her face in her hands. INT. BEDROOM Very mechanically, Rath begins setting up his chess board, putting the pieces into the same positions. It is a ritual, and with it he enters a kind of trance. From the bathroom, almost inaudible, he hears Electra CRYING. INT. BATHROOM With her head now buried in her arms and knees, she is sobbing, her body rocking. The crying seems very similar to Jennifer's; a complete emotional release. INT. BEDROOM Rath stares at the board. The CRYING grows LOUDER. He stands and walks to the door. He starts to knock but stops himself. Like Electra with Jennifer, Rath would like to help, he just has no idea how to. He turns back to the desk, to his chess game. INT. BATHROOM Her eyes are now burning red. She stops crying long enough to suck down an entire sample of Scotch. Nikita rubs against her and she strokes her. ELECTRA Oh shit, Nikita. INT. BEDROOM Rath is setting up his computer system. He hears the TUB FILLING UP. INT. BATHROOM Nikita jumps up onto the toilet seat and starts drinking. ELECTRA Cheers. Electra finishes another sample and drops it to the floor where we see that many of the bottles are now empty. In the tub, steam rising off the surface, she wrings out a wash cloth and covers her face, sinking deeper into the water. INT. BEDROOM When Electra comes out of the bathroom, Rath is again at his chess game. She sits down across from him and sets the gun on the table between them. Rath looks up at her. ELECTRA Listen -- I don't even know your name. RATH Rath. Robert Rath. ELECTRA Electra. RATH Just Electra? ELECTRA Yeah. RATH As in daughter of Agamemnon? ELECTRA No. Just Electra. The conversation dies. ELECTRA What I'm trying to say is that -- I'm not sure I can do this, help you, unless I know more about you. RATH What do you want to know? ELECTRA If Bain hadn't taken the contract on me, would you have? He stares at her. RATH No. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because I'm done. ELECTRA This is crazy. I can't trust you. You can't trust me. How can we possibly help each other? They sit in silence, the gun and the chess game lying between them. RATH Do you play? She looks at the chess board. ELECTRA With computers. RATH It's not the same, is it? ELECTRA Better than playing with yourself. He smiles. RATH I had an opponent. She understands that he is trying to tell her something. ELECTRA Had? RATH He was Russian. Nicholai Tachlinkov. A legend in the business when I was just starting. I admired him. When I heard he loved chess I became obsessed with the game. Electra studies the board. ELECTRA He was white? Rath nods. ELECTRA It looks like white's game. RATH We played with a code using The New York Times obituaries. Over three years we played twelve matches. I never won. ELECTRA Why didn't you finish this game? She reaches over and lifts a White Knight and takes a Bishop. Rath counters, taking her Knight. RATH He was... taken. ELECTRA He was killed. Rath nods. Throughout the entire conversation they continue to play out the chess game. ELECTRA By who? A long beat. RATH I killed him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because that's how it works. That's what it's about. He was the best. He was on top. ELECTRA Where you wanted to be? RATH Yes. As soon as you get into this business, all you can think about is getting to the top. That's all there is. Until then, there is nothing. You are nothing. ELECTRA How did you get into the business? RATH The same way everyone does; the government, the Agency. ELECTRA The C.I.A.? RATH More or less. ELECTRA How old were you? RATH They recruited me when I was in high school. ELECTRA Jesus -- why? RATH Languages. I was already fluent in nine languages. ELECTRA You were like a boy genius? RATH Some people said that. I never thought so. ELECTRA Why not? RATH I was just different. ELECTRA You went from high school to the Agency? RATH No. I graduated from George Washington University. Then I entered the Agency training program. ELECTRA They didn't give you a choice, did they? RATH No, they didn't. ELECTRA But you knew what they were training you for? RATH Of course. I was going to be James Bond. ELECTRA Ahhhh... RATH They are very good at what they do. It's very seductive. The training, the weapons, the travel -- ELECTRA The exotic women. RATH Women? No... not really. ELECTRA Why not? RATH Women... I don't... I don't want to talk about women. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because you are a women. ELECTRA Why did you leave the Agency? RATH The same reason everyone does. You hear your name on C-SPAN and you realize you're a skeleton in someone's closet and they're coming to bury you. ELECTRA They tried to kill you? RATH Yes. It didn't matter much to them as long as I disappeared. ELECTRA Then you went freelance? RATH The only thing different about the private sector is that a General Contractor takes less of a percentage than the government, so you make more money. Then once you make the transition, you realize you were never working for the government; it was always the private sector, the vested interests and it's the same vested interests that continue to buy your plane tickets. ELECTRA Tell me about the first time. RATH My first take? ELECTRA Yes. RATH Why? ELECTRA Because I want to know. RATH It was... mechanical. Very precise. It was exactly like the training drill except for the adrenaline. ELECTRA Are they usually like that? RATH No. Just the first one. ELECTRA After that? RATH They become complicated... messy. ELECTRA Did it ever bother you? RATH Did it ever bother James Bond? ELECTRA That's fiction. RATH This is fiction! Don't you see that? This is another reality. And the people that come into the world to play this game -- nobody forces them! They're here, they know the rules, the stakes, the risks! Do you understand what I am saying? No one is innocent -- including you! ELECTRA Does that mean it didn't bother you? Rath leans back and stares at her. She waits. RATH You get a job swinging a hammer, the first day you get a blister, it tears open, it bleeds and it stays sore a long time. You keep swinging the hammer, you get a good hard callous that covers that spot and it never bothers you again. Electra says nothing. He leans forward and slides a rook into her back row. RATH Check. He leans back. RATH Is that what you wanted to hear? Something cold blooded... something remorseless... ELECTRA No. Something honest. A beat. Rath likes this woman. She moves her Queen. ELECTRA Mate. He smiles. ELECTRA I hope your plan is better than your game. INT. CHEAP HOTEL - NIGHT The room is ugly. Shag carpeting, wood paneling and polyester patterned curtains. We hear a COMPUTER KEYBOARD CLICKING away as we MOVE ACROSS a table. The hotel phone is in a modem, which is held together with duct tape. Between the modem and the computer is a scrambler constructed out of a series of naked circuit boards. It is a very similar set up to Rath's, only it has been put together with a fraction of the resources. Bain sits, typing at the computer, his shirt off. Beside the desk-top is a six pack of Old Style beer, a bag of Doritos and his Gameboy. On the floor, disassembled neatly on a small white towel is his cleaned gun. Bain finishes punching in a code, sits back and sucks down his beer. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Where have you been, Michael? He belches. He is communicating with his General Contractor. On the table is a collection of personal objects, much of it stuffed in pillow cases, taken from Electra's house. BAIN/SCREEN Tracking the mark. Bain fingers a pair of satin panties. He smiles as he smells them. BAIN I'm on the scent. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN You're too late. Bain slams his beer down. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN I've learned from MicroCell, Rath fulfilled the contract. BAIN/SCREEN How? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN He took out the mark and sold the disks back to MicroCell. Bain falls back in his chair, thinking. He runs his hands through his sweaty hair. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Michael? BAIN No. No. No. I don't believe it. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN They money will be standard bank transfer. We believe we will know where and when. BAIN What? BAIN/SCREEN How? There is no response. BAIN/SCREEN How in the fuck do you know that? A long beat. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Such language in front of a lady. BAIN I don't give a fuck what you are. I asked you -- He hits the repeat key. BAIN (types) How in the fuck do you know that? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Do you want Rath or not? Bain stares at the screen, thinking. Thinking hard. INT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL ROOM - NIGHT Another computer screen, but we don't know that it is different. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN It will take three days to arrange the transfer. ELECTRA Three days? We are in Electra and Rath's hotel room. She is standing behind him, reading as he types. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA Are you going to tell him? RATH It. Tell it. For all I know it could be a machine. ELECTRA You said you didn't trust it. RATH I don't. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA What kind of bank is going to allow us to withdraw ten million dollars the day it is transferred? RATH The kind preferred by drug smugglers, arms dealers and politicians. Rath types in an account number. RATH Do you have a passport? ELECTRA Several. RATH Good. ELECTRA Where is it? RATH Mexico. INT. AIRPLANE - DAY Rath and Electra are sitting in the first class section, which she is obviously enjoying, smiling and sipping champagne. ELECTRA God, I love first class. I remember when I was a little girl, I would wonder what it was like up here. I would always try to peek through the curtains. Rath says nothing, staring out the window. Electra shakes her head. ELECTRA I hope Nikita's all right. He still does not respond. ELECTRA Hey, where are you? RATH Thinking. ELECTRA About? RATH Nothing. Electra sips the last of her champagne. ELECTRA I've never been to the Gulf of Mexico. Is it as nice as they say? RATH I don't know. ELECTRA You were there? A long beat. RATH Yes. EXT. SMALL MEXICAN AIRPORT - DAY The plane lands. EXT. TERMINAL CAB STAND Rath and Electra hand their bags to a CABBY who puts them in his trunk. INT. CAB Rath speaks perfect Spanish. RATH (in Spanish) Good afternoon. We have reservations at the Hotel Paraiso in Costa Blanca. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes, sir. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - DAY The cab pulls up in front of a large, brand new glass hotel, which shimmers in the blue green reflection of the gulf water. Rath is upset. RATH (in Spanish) No, no. I said the Hotel Paraiso. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes. This is the Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) No, the other Hotel Paraiso, in the city. Near the Plaza del Sol. CABBY (in Spanish) I'm sorry, sir. A year ago there was a fire in the old Hotel Paraiso. This is the new Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) Take us there. EXT. COSTA BLANCA - DAY American tourist dollars have built up the coasts, but much of the out-lying city is very poor. The old Hotel Paraiso is a five story blackened husk. The face of the building is burnt black and it seems to hang in space as something non-corporeal, like the shadow of the building rather than the building itself. Rath stares at it, remembering. Electra is behind him, standing in the midst of the Plaza del Sol. He looks up to the fifth story window, then turns directly opposite of that. The International Banco de Mexico, an enormous, beautiful old building; its exterior walls are white-washed concrete, blindingly bright white. Electra looks at the bank and smiles. ELECTRA So, that's where all that S & L money is? Rath is not listening to her. He is somewhere else. He turns back to the fourth story window. RATH That's where he'll be. ELECTRA What? RATH I wasn't expecting this. I need to think. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - NIGHT Beyond the lights of the hotel the gulf darkens to midnight oil. INT. HOTEL PARAISO ELEVATOR On one side of the elevator is a young couple who look like newlyweds. They are cuddling, kissing and giggling as though they are alone. Electra and Rath are on the other side of the elevator. It is a strange contrast. Electra is staring at them. Rath, behind his sunglasses, is in his own world. The ELEVATOR CHIMES and opens. Nobody moves. The DOORS CHIME again and start to close, as everyone realizes that this is their floor. Rath and the other man grab the doors, which spring back open. It is a funny, awkward moment, as everyone apologizes and smiles politely, on the way out. INT. HALL The couple move down the hall, the newlyweds finding their door first. Rath reaches the door to their room, opens it and enters. Electra lingers, watching the other couple, watching as he fumbles for his keys, her hand running up between his legs and over his ass. He finally manages to open the door and she pushes him inside. Electra softly closes her door. INT. HOTEL PARAISO - HOTEL ROOM Rath is sitting in a desk chair staring out of the sliding balcony doors at the dark gulf water. ELECTRA Did you see them? Electra moves about the large suite. ELECTRA They looked like they were in love. Rath says nothing. ELECTRA Well, I think I'll take a bath. Come on, Nikita! The two of them walk into the bathroom, leaving Rath to himself. INT. BATHROOM Electra sits on the edge of the over-sized tub, water running through her fingers as she adjusts the temperature. After a beat she hears a SMALL CRASH, a GLASS BREAKING. It is followed by other MUFFLED NOISES, a WOMAN GIGGLING and a THUMPING.

important

How many times the word 'important' appears in the text?

why I'm here. Electra wants to scream. The speedometer is climbing over 100. RATH I really think you should slow down. INT. HOTEL SUITE - NIGHT The room is immaculate; near the door, several over-sized suitcases line the wall. Bain is sitting at the desk. His WALKMAN is on, MUSIC BLASTING, as he flips casually through the telephone directory. His finger eases down a column stopping at "Morgan Jennifer." There is a KNOCK at the door. He smiles and tears out the page. There is another, LOUDER KNOCK which Bain hears this time. He TURN OFF the WALKMAN and opens the door; a BELLBOY is waiting with a luggage cart. BELLBOY Hello, sir. Have you some luggage you need carried. Bain gives him a wink and a smile. BAIN Indeed I do. INT. ELECTRA'S CAR - NIGHT The red "low fuel" light is on. ELECTRA Now what? RATH Turn off the engine. Electra twists the ignition and the CAR DIES. Rath glances around and we see the car is parked in a gas station. ELECTRA You want me to pump? RATH No, stay in the car. I want you to understand something. If I intended to kill you, you would already be dead. Electra says nothing. He reaches over and takes the car keys. When he is out of the car, Electra slowly releases the strangle-hold she had on the steering wheel. ELECTRA Okay, Nikita, stay calm, think, breathe, think... Electra checks the rear view mirror, listening as Rath pumps the gas. Her eyes flash down to her bag. Outside, Rath watches Electra through the windows. She appears motionless. The electric gas counter races like a stop watch. In the car, Electra eases her hand into her bag. The tank full, Rath re-hangs the pump. He walks around the car and heads for the station. Electra waits until his back is turned. She pulls her tool pouch from her bag, throws it open and finds her wire stripper. Reaching under the dash, she yanks out a tangled handful of wire. She looks up; Rath is inside paying. ELECTRA Come on, come on, it's a cake walk. Her fingers fly with surgical precision, snipping, stripping, twisting. Rath steps out of the station as her head pops up, looking for him. It takes only a second for him to realize what she is doing. RATH Oh shit. He runs at the car as she strips the last set of wires and strikes them; the BATTERY GRINDS. ELECTRA Please, please. He is almost there when the ENGINE FIRES. She stomps on the gas, ramming the shift into drive. TIRES SQUEALING, the car swerves forward as Rath slams into it. He bounces backward, falling to the ground. The car fishtails away, accelerating as Rath rolls to one knee, his gun automatically in his hand. He draws a bead, but, he does not shoot. With a concerted effort, he puts the gun away. RATH Dammit. EXT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT BUILDING - NIGHT Electra's car is parked out front. She unlocks the lobby door and drags herself inside. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT LOBBY Standing at the mailboxes flipping through her mail is Jennifer Morgan. What she was hoping for is not there. She looks up and sees Electra. JENNIFER Excuse me -- Electra stops. JENNIFER You live here, don't you? Electra nods. JENNIFER I'm sorry, this may sound really weird, but my friend told me he slipped a letter under the door here and I was wondering if you happened to see it? Electra is in a daze, her hand moving into her pocket. ELECTRA Letter? JENNIFER Yeah. He said he saw a woman with dark hair going into the building when he dropped it off. ELECTRA No. I don't have it. Electra's mouth opens and she backs away. Jennifer is bothered by her reaction and she doesn't push it. JENNIFER I'm sorry. I didn't mean to -- I'm sorry. She shrugs and unlocks the interior door, leaving Electra in the lobby. Electra watches her, as her hand moves from pocket to pocket. A worried expression tightens her face; the letter is gone. She opens the interior door, following Jennifer up the stairs. INT. STAIRCASE Electra climbs the stairs, her mind pouring through the possibilities, filled with fear. By the time Electra reaches the top floor, Jennifer is entering her apartment. Electra hurries past Jennifer's door to her own. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT - NIGHT Electra flies across the living room to the monitors. She clicks them on, putting on Jennifer's channel. On the screen we see Jennifer in her living room checking her phone messages. One from her mother. Electra throws a few switches so that Jennifer's entire apartment is in front of her. On one of the monitors we see a shadow slide across the oak floor as something moves along the edge of the room. Jennifer has moved to the bathroom and is drawing a bath. Electra clamps her hand over her mouth when he steps out. Bain moves into the dining room where Jennifer had just been. Wearing rubber surgeon's gloves, he picks up the mail that she had dropped on the table and sorts through it. Bain moves about the apartment with complete indifference to Jennifer's presence; as if he were invisible, as though he knew she couldn't see him. He moves into a room, just as she moves out. Electra watches, dizzy, sick with terror, but she is unable to turn away. Bain searches through a desk drawer, while Jennifer starts undressing for her bath. He walks down the hall and stands outside of the bathroom. If Jennifer would turn around she would see him. Electra is about to run, to call out when -- Something catches Bain's eye. He moves into the bedroom, and is turned so that he is looking straight up into the camera. He inches towards it, not sure what it is. The fiber optic cable is hidden in the light fixture hanging over the bed. Staring at it, he is looking right at Electra. Bain steps up onto the bed, his face distorting as he moves close to the fish-eye lens. Poking it with his finger, he realizes what it is. A warped smile stretches across his face as he whispers -- BAIN (V.O.) Oh, you sick little bitch -- Electra tears away from the screen, panic seizing hold of her. She rips entire drawers out of her dresser, dumping them into a suitcase, stuffing in anything that looks important. She grabs Nikita in the "travel kitty." EXT. BACK PORCH The door opens and Electra jumps out, slamming it behind her as -- Bain turns from the back stairs. She leaps back inside as he whips out his GUN, PUMPING TWO HOLES in the door. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT She scrambles from the kitchen, throwing her suitcase, still clutching the "travel kitty," as -- The back DOOR EXPLODES from its hinges, Bain charging, FIRING his GUN. BULLETS HISSING past her, Electra crashes through the front door into the hall. INT. HALL The stairs are at the far end. She is only halfway, when -- Rath rises up the stairs, his gun cocked. Electra drops to the floor as -- Behind her, Bain barrels from the apartment. Rath FIRES. The wood DOOR SPLINTERS, BULLET HOLES surrounding Bain. Off balance, he lunges back into the apartment. Rath continues FIRING, grabbing hold of Electra. They run down the stairs. EXT. REAR STAIRCASE Bain leaps down the flights. EXT. ALLEY Bain rushes into the street, looking in every direction. They are gone. BAIN Fuck me! EXT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL - NIGHT Somewhere in the city. INT. HOTEL ROOM Electra and Rath enter the room together but they are both immediately alone. She walks across the room to a chair in the corner, curling into it even as Nikita jumps up and curls into her lap. He sets his briefcase on the table at the opposite end of the room and sits. They watch each other. Silence. Between then is the liquor cabinet. Rath knows a good idea when he sees one. RATH Want a drink? Her face is as expressionless as Nikita's. He pours himself a very large bourbon and slugs it down. Takes a deep breath, then pours himself another one. RATH Okay... He returns to his table with his drink. RATH I'm not good at this sort of thing, but we don't have a lot of time, so I'll just go ahead and get started. First: you. I ask myself, 'What is she thinking?' Her body tightens, coils. RATH Simple. She's scared. She's almost been killed twice and now she is alone in a room with a man that she believes is an... assassin. Another deep pull on the bourbon. RATH Furthermore she was brought here not entirely on her own accord which only increases her fear and suspicion. Thus, as long as she is afraid, her first, maybe her only thought will be escape. Does that leave me any other option? He slugs down the rest of his drink and stands, whipping out his gun. RATH No. Crossing the room, he turns the gun around and offers it to her. She looks at it. Back at him. He puts it on the bed beside her, turns his back and walks to the bar. She picks up the gun. RATH The gun is silenced. She could shoot me right now. She stands, Nikita jumping from her lap. RATH She could take the car and be far from here before the maid comes in the morning, but -- She starts squeezing OFF ROUNDS; the LAMP EXPLODES, the CHAIRS around him ERUPT, tufts of white stuffing leaping into the air. ELECTRA Shut up! He freezes, bottle in one hand, glass in the other. ELECTRA Stop trying to tell me what I'm thinking! She moves closer to him, the gun squeezed in her fist. ELECTRA I'll tell you what you're thinking -- you think I'm not going to shoot you but right now you're not so sure, are you? A slight shake of the head, no. ELECTRA You're thinking that maybe it was a mistake to give me this gun, that maybe I'm not going to think about things logically because I'm a woman and I'm freaked out and I'm going to do something impulsive and irrational -- right? She FIRES the GUN to both sides of his head. He's surprised to be alive. ELECTRA You don't know shit about me! Now sit down! He returns to his chair and sits with the same expression she had worn sitting a moment ago. She opens the cabinet and grabs one of the sample bottles of liquor. She sucks it all down and throws the bottle across the room. Grabbing another, she sits on the edge of the bed. ELECTRA Okay. How did you find me? RATH You're the computer hacker, you tell me. ELECTRA You didn't know anything about me. Nikita rubs up against her leg. ELECTRA Nikita? RATH Yellow Pages. V for veterinarian. There aren't that many. She nods, slurping at her bottle. ELECTRA You're one of them, aren't you? RATH 'Them'? ELECTRA An assassin? RATH Until a minute ago. ELECTRA What does that mean? RATH If I still was what I used to be, you would not be pointing that at me. Electra eyes him, considers shooting him right now. ELECTRA Who is that other guy? RATH Another contractor. ELECTRA Someone hired both of you? RATH No. They hired Bain. The contract would have been mine, but Bain took it from me as he took the previous one. ELECTRA So this is something between you and him? RATH He stole the contract knowing that I would come after him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he is trying to retire me. ELECTRA He wants to kill you? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Why? RATH The nature of the business. You remove your competition. ELECTRA And you want to use me to get him? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Forget it! RATH We don't have a choice. She FIRES the GUN, pocking the wall behind him. ELECTRA Don't tell me I don't have a choice! RATH Right. ELECTRA I'm two seconds away from making my choice which means you've got two seconds to tell me why I shouldn't shoot you. RATH It's simple. You need me. I need you. And we will both need money. ELECTRA I don't need you to get the money -- my money! RATH If it hadn't been for me, you would be dead. She's up pacing, knowing there is some truth in that. ELECTRA I don't need the money. RATH This is something that is never going to end. You can never work in the business again with this contract, because he will find you. To survive, you have to go into deep hiding. And that's going to take money, a lot of money. ELECTRA Then you can have the disks and I'll just walk out that door -- RATH If you walk out that door, Bain will still come after you. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he took a contract on you. He'll come for you and he'll find you. ELECTRA You don't know that -- you're trying to scare me. RATH No. It's the truth. I know what you are. Like me, like Bain, you're a ghost, you're not part of the real world. You don't have a social security number. You don't pay taxes. You've probably used ten different names over the last ten years. A long time ago something probably happened, something illegal and you ran, you disappeared and it was easy. You think you can do it again. But I'm telling you, fading from the law is nothing. No matter what you do, where you go, I swear to you that Bain will find you. ELECTRA How? RATH Right now, as we sit here, he is tearing through your apartment. He is digging through your drawers, emptying your closets. He will take your telephone and address books, your appointment books. If you keep a diary, he is reading it. He'll go into the kitchen and find out what kind of food you eat, liquor you drink, cigarettes you smoke. In the bathroom he will find any prescription drugs you take and where you get them filled. If you have video tape or recordings he will watch and listen to all of them. She is coming unglued. Imagining him watching her tapes, going through her possessions. She is moving, pacing, ready to explode. ELECTRA Oh Jesus Jesus... RATH He will know everything about you. Everything. I know, because I've done it. Once you've been inside a mark's home, you're in their head. If you're any good, you'll find the mark in a week, and Bain is good because I was the best and I couldn't take him. She whirls and starts FIRING the GUN, firing it everywhere, fear and anger rocketing out of her in WHISTLING hot wads of LEAD. When she stops, he starts to say something but she levels the gun at him. ELECTRA Shut up! All right! You've said enough! She forces herself back, grabbing handfuls of the sample bottles. ELECTRA I need to think... To be alone. With the gun and an armful of booze and Nikita following at her feet, she goes into the bathroom and slams the door. INT. BATHROOM She locks the door and then collapses. Her body seems to fold up onto itself as she slides down the wall; the GUN and the BOTTLES falling from her arms, CLATTERING SOFTLY on the bath rug as she buries her face in her hands. INT. BEDROOM Very mechanically, Rath begins setting up his chess board, putting the pieces into the same positions. It is a ritual, and with it he enters a kind of trance. From the bathroom, almost inaudible, he hears Electra CRYING. INT. BATHROOM With her head now buried in her arms and knees, she is sobbing, her body rocking. The crying seems very similar to Jennifer's; a complete emotional release. INT. BEDROOM Rath stares at the board. The CRYING grows LOUDER. He stands and walks to the door. He starts to knock but stops himself. Like Electra with Jennifer, Rath would like to help, he just has no idea how to. He turns back to the desk, to his chess game. INT. BATHROOM Her eyes are now burning red. She stops crying long enough to suck down an entire sample of Scotch. Nikita rubs against her and she strokes her. ELECTRA Oh shit, Nikita. INT. BEDROOM Rath is setting up his computer system. He hears the TUB FILLING UP. INT. BATHROOM Nikita jumps up onto the toilet seat and starts drinking. ELECTRA Cheers. Electra finishes another sample and drops it to the floor where we see that many of the bottles are now empty. In the tub, steam rising off the surface, she wrings out a wash cloth and covers her face, sinking deeper into the water. INT. BEDROOM When Electra comes out of the bathroom, Rath is again at his chess game. She sits down across from him and sets the gun on the table between them. Rath looks up at her. ELECTRA Listen -- I don't even know your name. RATH Rath. Robert Rath. ELECTRA Electra. RATH Just Electra? ELECTRA Yeah. RATH As in daughter of Agamemnon? ELECTRA No. Just Electra. The conversation dies. ELECTRA What I'm trying to say is that -- I'm not sure I can do this, help you, unless I know more about you. RATH What do you want to know? ELECTRA If Bain hadn't taken the contract on me, would you have? He stares at her. RATH No. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because I'm done. ELECTRA This is crazy. I can't trust you. You can't trust me. How can we possibly help each other? They sit in silence, the gun and the chess game lying between them. RATH Do you play? She looks at the chess board. ELECTRA With computers. RATH It's not the same, is it? ELECTRA Better than playing with yourself. He smiles. RATH I had an opponent. She understands that he is trying to tell her something. ELECTRA Had? RATH He was Russian. Nicholai Tachlinkov. A legend in the business when I was just starting. I admired him. When I heard he loved chess I became obsessed with the game. Electra studies the board. ELECTRA He was white? Rath nods. ELECTRA It looks like white's game. RATH We played with a code using The New York Times obituaries. Over three years we played twelve matches. I never won. ELECTRA Why didn't you finish this game? She reaches over and lifts a White Knight and takes a Bishop. Rath counters, taking her Knight. RATH He was... taken. ELECTRA He was killed. Rath nods. Throughout the entire conversation they continue to play out the chess game. ELECTRA By who? A long beat. RATH I killed him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because that's how it works. That's what it's about. He was the best. He was on top. ELECTRA Where you wanted to be? RATH Yes. As soon as you get into this business, all you can think about is getting to the top. That's all there is. Until then, there is nothing. You are nothing. ELECTRA How did you get into the business? RATH The same way everyone does; the government, the Agency. ELECTRA The C.I.A.? RATH More or less. ELECTRA How old were you? RATH They recruited me when I was in high school. ELECTRA Jesus -- why? RATH Languages. I was already fluent in nine languages. ELECTRA You were like a boy genius? RATH Some people said that. I never thought so. ELECTRA Why not? RATH I was just different. ELECTRA You went from high school to the Agency? RATH No. I graduated from George Washington University. Then I entered the Agency training program. ELECTRA They didn't give you a choice, did they? RATH No, they didn't. ELECTRA But you knew what they were training you for? RATH Of course. I was going to be James Bond. ELECTRA Ahhhh... RATH They are very good at what they do. It's very seductive. The training, the weapons, the travel -- ELECTRA The exotic women. RATH Women? No... not really. ELECTRA Why not? RATH Women... I don't... I don't want to talk about women. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because you are a women. ELECTRA Why did you leave the Agency? RATH The same reason everyone does. You hear your name on C-SPAN and you realize you're a skeleton in someone's closet and they're coming to bury you. ELECTRA They tried to kill you? RATH Yes. It didn't matter much to them as long as I disappeared. ELECTRA Then you went freelance? RATH The only thing different about the private sector is that a General Contractor takes less of a percentage than the government, so you make more money. Then once you make the transition, you realize you were never working for the government; it was always the private sector, the vested interests and it's the same vested interests that continue to buy your plane tickets. ELECTRA Tell me about the first time. RATH My first take? ELECTRA Yes. RATH Why? ELECTRA Because I want to know. RATH It was... mechanical. Very precise. It was exactly like the training drill except for the adrenaline. ELECTRA Are they usually like that? RATH No. Just the first one. ELECTRA After that? RATH They become complicated... messy. ELECTRA Did it ever bother you? RATH Did it ever bother James Bond? ELECTRA That's fiction. RATH This is fiction! Don't you see that? This is another reality. And the people that come into the world to play this game -- nobody forces them! They're here, they know the rules, the stakes, the risks! Do you understand what I am saying? No one is innocent -- including you! ELECTRA Does that mean it didn't bother you? Rath leans back and stares at her. She waits. RATH You get a job swinging a hammer, the first day you get a blister, it tears open, it bleeds and it stays sore a long time. You keep swinging the hammer, you get a good hard callous that covers that spot and it never bothers you again. Electra says nothing. He leans forward and slides a rook into her back row. RATH Check. He leans back. RATH Is that what you wanted to hear? Something cold blooded... something remorseless... ELECTRA No. Something honest. A beat. Rath likes this woman. She moves her Queen. ELECTRA Mate. He smiles. ELECTRA I hope your plan is better than your game. INT. CHEAP HOTEL - NIGHT The room is ugly. Shag carpeting, wood paneling and polyester patterned curtains. We hear a COMPUTER KEYBOARD CLICKING away as we MOVE ACROSS a table. The hotel phone is in a modem, which is held together with duct tape. Between the modem and the computer is a scrambler constructed out of a series of naked circuit boards. It is a very similar set up to Rath's, only it has been put together with a fraction of the resources. Bain sits, typing at the computer, his shirt off. Beside the desk-top is a six pack of Old Style beer, a bag of Doritos and his Gameboy. On the floor, disassembled neatly on a small white towel is his cleaned gun. Bain finishes punching in a code, sits back and sucks down his beer. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Where have you been, Michael? He belches. He is communicating with his General Contractor. On the table is a collection of personal objects, much of it stuffed in pillow cases, taken from Electra's house. BAIN/SCREEN Tracking the mark. Bain fingers a pair of satin panties. He smiles as he smells them. BAIN I'm on the scent. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN You're too late. Bain slams his beer down. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN I've learned from MicroCell, Rath fulfilled the contract. BAIN/SCREEN How? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN He took out the mark and sold the disks back to MicroCell. Bain falls back in his chair, thinking. He runs his hands through his sweaty hair. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Michael? BAIN No. No. No. I don't believe it. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN They money will be standard bank transfer. We believe we will know where and when. BAIN What? BAIN/SCREEN How? There is no response. BAIN/SCREEN How in the fuck do you know that? A long beat. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Such language in front of a lady. BAIN I don't give a fuck what you are. I asked you -- He hits the repeat key. BAIN (types) How in the fuck do you know that? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Do you want Rath or not? Bain stares at the screen, thinking. Thinking hard. INT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL ROOM - NIGHT Another computer screen, but we don't know that it is different. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN It will take three days to arrange the transfer. ELECTRA Three days? We are in Electra and Rath's hotel room. She is standing behind him, reading as he types. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA Are you going to tell him? RATH It. Tell it. For all I know it could be a machine. ELECTRA You said you didn't trust it. RATH I don't. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA What kind of bank is going to allow us to withdraw ten million dollars the day it is transferred? RATH The kind preferred by drug smugglers, arms dealers and politicians. Rath types in an account number. RATH Do you have a passport? ELECTRA Several. RATH Good. ELECTRA Where is it? RATH Mexico. INT. AIRPLANE - DAY Rath and Electra are sitting in the first class section, which she is obviously enjoying, smiling and sipping champagne. ELECTRA God, I love first class. I remember when I was a little girl, I would wonder what it was like up here. I would always try to peek through the curtains. Rath says nothing, staring out the window. Electra shakes her head. ELECTRA I hope Nikita's all right. He still does not respond. ELECTRA Hey, where are you? RATH Thinking. ELECTRA About? RATH Nothing. Electra sips the last of her champagne. ELECTRA I've never been to the Gulf of Mexico. Is it as nice as they say? RATH I don't know. ELECTRA You were there? A long beat. RATH Yes. EXT. SMALL MEXICAN AIRPORT - DAY The plane lands. EXT. TERMINAL CAB STAND Rath and Electra hand their bags to a CABBY who puts them in his trunk. INT. CAB Rath speaks perfect Spanish. RATH (in Spanish) Good afternoon. We have reservations at the Hotel Paraiso in Costa Blanca. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes, sir. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - DAY The cab pulls up in front of a large, brand new glass hotel, which shimmers in the blue green reflection of the gulf water. Rath is upset. RATH (in Spanish) No, no. I said the Hotel Paraiso. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes. This is the Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) No, the other Hotel Paraiso, in the city. Near the Plaza del Sol. CABBY (in Spanish) I'm sorry, sir. A year ago there was a fire in the old Hotel Paraiso. This is the new Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) Take us there. EXT. COSTA BLANCA - DAY American tourist dollars have built up the coasts, but much of the out-lying city is very poor. The old Hotel Paraiso is a five story blackened husk. The face of the building is burnt black and it seems to hang in space as something non-corporeal, like the shadow of the building rather than the building itself. Rath stares at it, remembering. Electra is behind him, standing in the midst of the Plaza del Sol. He looks up to the fifth story window, then turns directly opposite of that. The International Banco de Mexico, an enormous, beautiful old building; its exterior walls are white-washed concrete, blindingly bright white. Electra looks at the bank and smiles. ELECTRA So, that's where all that S & L money is? Rath is not listening to her. He is somewhere else. He turns back to the fourth story window. RATH That's where he'll be. ELECTRA What? RATH I wasn't expecting this. I need to think. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - NIGHT Beyond the lights of the hotel the gulf darkens to midnight oil. INT. HOTEL PARAISO ELEVATOR On one side of the elevator is a young couple who look like newlyweds. They are cuddling, kissing and giggling as though they are alone. Electra and Rath are on the other side of the elevator. It is a strange contrast. Electra is staring at them. Rath, behind his sunglasses, is in his own world. The ELEVATOR CHIMES and opens. Nobody moves. The DOORS CHIME again and start to close, as everyone realizes that this is their floor. Rath and the other man grab the doors, which spring back open. It is a funny, awkward moment, as everyone apologizes and smiles politely, on the way out. INT. HALL The couple move down the hall, the newlyweds finding their door first. Rath reaches the door to their room, opens it and enters. Electra lingers, watching the other couple, watching as he fumbles for his keys, her hand running up between his legs and over his ass. He finally manages to open the door and she pushes him inside. Electra softly closes her door. INT. HOTEL PARAISO - HOTEL ROOM Rath is sitting in a desk chair staring out of the sliding balcony doors at the dark gulf water. ELECTRA Did you see them? Electra moves about the large suite. ELECTRA They looked like they were in love. Rath says nothing. ELECTRA Well, I think I'll take a bath. Come on, Nikita! The two of them walk into the bathroom, leaving Rath to himself. INT. BATHROOM Electra sits on the edge of the over-sized tub, water running through her fingers as she adjusts the temperature. After a beat she hears a SMALL CRASH, a GLASS BREAKING. It is followed by other MUFFLED NOISES, a WOMAN GIGGLING and a THUMPING.

walks

How many times the word 'walks' appears in the text?

why I'm here. Electra wants to scream. The speedometer is climbing over 100. RATH I really think you should slow down. INT. HOTEL SUITE - NIGHT The room is immaculate; near the door, several over-sized suitcases line the wall. Bain is sitting at the desk. His WALKMAN is on, MUSIC BLASTING, as he flips casually through the telephone directory. His finger eases down a column stopping at "Morgan Jennifer." There is a KNOCK at the door. He smiles and tears out the page. There is another, LOUDER KNOCK which Bain hears this time. He TURN OFF the WALKMAN and opens the door; a BELLBOY is waiting with a luggage cart. BELLBOY Hello, sir. Have you some luggage you need carried. Bain gives him a wink and a smile. BAIN Indeed I do. INT. ELECTRA'S CAR - NIGHT The red "low fuel" light is on. ELECTRA Now what? RATH Turn off the engine. Electra twists the ignition and the CAR DIES. Rath glances around and we see the car is parked in a gas station. ELECTRA You want me to pump? RATH No, stay in the car. I want you to understand something. If I intended to kill you, you would already be dead. Electra says nothing. He reaches over and takes the car keys. When he is out of the car, Electra slowly releases the strangle-hold she had on the steering wheel. ELECTRA Okay, Nikita, stay calm, think, breathe, think... Electra checks the rear view mirror, listening as Rath pumps the gas. Her eyes flash down to her bag. Outside, Rath watches Electra through the windows. She appears motionless. The electric gas counter races like a stop watch. In the car, Electra eases her hand into her bag. The tank full, Rath re-hangs the pump. He walks around the car and heads for the station. Electra waits until his back is turned. She pulls her tool pouch from her bag, throws it open and finds her wire stripper. Reaching under the dash, she yanks out a tangled handful of wire. She looks up; Rath is inside paying. ELECTRA Come on, come on, it's a cake walk. Her fingers fly with surgical precision, snipping, stripping, twisting. Rath steps out of the station as her head pops up, looking for him. It takes only a second for him to realize what she is doing. RATH Oh shit. He runs at the car as she strips the last set of wires and strikes them; the BATTERY GRINDS. ELECTRA Please, please. He is almost there when the ENGINE FIRES. She stomps on the gas, ramming the shift into drive. TIRES SQUEALING, the car swerves forward as Rath slams into it. He bounces backward, falling to the ground. The car fishtails away, accelerating as Rath rolls to one knee, his gun automatically in his hand. He draws a bead, but, he does not shoot. With a concerted effort, he puts the gun away. RATH Dammit. EXT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT BUILDING - NIGHT Electra's car is parked out front. She unlocks the lobby door and drags herself inside. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT LOBBY Standing at the mailboxes flipping through her mail is Jennifer Morgan. What she was hoping for is not there. She looks up and sees Electra. JENNIFER Excuse me -- Electra stops. JENNIFER You live here, don't you? Electra nods. JENNIFER I'm sorry, this may sound really weird, but my friend told me he slipped a letter under the door here and I was wondering if you happened to see it? Electra is in a daze, her hand moving into her pocket. ELECTRA Letter? JENNIFER Yeah. He said he saw a woman with dark hair going into the building when he dropped it off. ELECTRA No. I don't have it. Electra's mouth opens and she backs away. Jennifer is bothered by her reaction and she doesn't push it. JENNIFER I'm sorry. I didn't mean to -- I'm sorry. She shrugs and unlocks the interior door, leaving Electra in the lobby. Electra watches her, as her hand moves from pocket to pocket. A worried expression tightens her face; the letter is gone. She opens the interior door, following Jennifer up the stairs. INT. STAIRCASE Electra climbs the stairs, her mind pouring through the possibilities, filled with fear. By the time Electra reaches the top floor, Jennifer is entering her apartment. Electra hurries past Jennifer's door to her own. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT - NIGHT Electra flies across the living room to the monitors. She clicks them on, putting on Jennifer's channel. On the screen we see Jennifer in her living room checking her phone messages. One from her mother. Electra throws a few switches so that Jennifer's entire apartment is in front of her. On one of the monitors we see a shadow slide across the oak floor as something moves along the edge of the room. Jennifer has moved to the bathroom and is drawing a bath. Electra clamps her hand over her mouth when he steps out. Bain moves into the dining room where Jennifer had just been. Wearing rubber surgeon's gloves, he picks up the mail that she had dropped on the table and sorts through it. Bain moves about the apartment with complete indifference to Jennifer's presence; as if he were invisible, as though he knew she couldn't see him. He moves into a room, just as she moves out. Electra watches, dizzy, sick with terror, but she is unable to turn away. Bain searches through a desk drawer, while Jennifer starts undressing for her bath. He walks down the hall and stands outside of the bathroom. If Jennifer would turn around she would see him. Electra is about to run, to call out when -- Something catches Bain's eye. He moves into the bedroom, and is turned so that he is looking straight up into the camera. He inches towards it, not sure what it is. The fiber optic cable is hidden in the light fixture hanging over the bed. Staring at it, he is looking right at Electra. Bain steps up onto the bed, his face distorting as he moves close to the fish-eye lens. Poking it with his finger, he realizes what it is. A warped smile stretches across his face as he whispers -- BAIN (V.O.) Oh, you sick little bitch -- Electra tears away from the screen, panic seizing hold of her. She rips entire drawers out of her dresser, dumping them into a suitcase, stuffing in anything that looks important. She grabs Nikita in the "travel kitty." EXT. BACK PORCH The door opens and Electra jumps out, slamming it behind her as -- Bain turns from the back stairs. She leaps back inside as he whips out his GUN, PUMPING TWO HOLES in the door. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT She scrambles from the kitchen, throwing her suitcase, still clutching the "travel kitty," as -- The back DOOR EXPLODES from its hinges, Bain charging, FIRING his GUN. BULLETS HISSING past her, Electra crashes through the front door into the hall. INT. HALL The stairs are at the far end. She is only halfway, when -- Rath rises up the stairs, his gun cocked. Electra drops to the floor as -- Behind her, Bain barrels from the apartment. Rath FIRES. The wood DOOR SPLINTERS, BULLET HOLES surrounding Bain. Off balance, he lunges back into the apartment. Rath continues FIRING, grabbing hold of Electra. They run down the stairs. EXT. REAR STAIRCASE Bain leaps down the flights. EXT. ALLEY Bain rushes into the street, looking in every direction. They are gone. BAIN Fuck me! EXT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL - NIGHT Somewhere in the city. INT. HOTEL ROOM Electra and Rath enter the room together but they are both immediately alone. She walks across the room to a chair in the corner, curling into it even as Nikita jumps up and curls into her lap. He sets his briefcase on the table at the opposite end of the room and sits. They watch each other. Silence. Between then is the liquor cabinet. Rath knows a good idea when he sees one. RATH Want a drink? Her face is as expressionless as Nikita's. He pours himself a very large bourbon and slugs it down. Takes a deep breath, then pours himself another one. RATH Okay... He returns to his table with his drink. RATH I'm not good at this sort of thing, but we don't have a lot of time, so I'll just go ahead and get started. First: you. I ask myself, 'What is she thinking?' Her body tightens, coils. RATH Simple. She's scared. She's almost been killed twice and now she is alone in a room with a man that she believes is an... assassin. Another deep pull on the bourbon. RATH Furthermore she was brought here not entirely on her own accord which only increases her fear and suspicion. Thus, as long as she is afraid, her first, maybe her only thought will be escape. Does that leave me any other option? He slugs down the rest of his drink and stands, whipping out his gun. RATH No. Crossing the room, he turns the gun around and offers it to her. She looks at it. Back at him. He puts it on the bed beside her, turns his back and walks to the bar. She picks up the gun. RATH The gun is silenced. She could shoot me right now. She stands, Nikita jumping from her lap. RATH She could take the car and be far from here before the maid comes in the morning, but -- She starts squeezing OFF ROUNDS; the LAMP EXPLODES, the CHAIRS around him ERUPT, tufts of white stuffing leaping into the air. ELECTRA Shut up! He freezes, bottle in one hand, glass in the other. ELECTRA Stop trying to tell me what I'm thinking! She moves closer to him, the gun squeezed in her fist. ELECTRA I'll tell you what you're thinking -- you think I'm not going to shoot you but right now you're not so sure, are you? A slight shake of the head, no. ELECTRA You're thinking that maybe it was a mistake to give me this gun, that maybe I'm not going to think about things logically because I'm a woman and I'm freaked out and I'm going to do something impulsive and irrational -- right? She FIRES the GUN to both sides of his head. He's surprised to be alive. ELECTRA You don't know shit about me! Now sit down! He returns to his chair and sits with the same expression she had worn sitting a moment ago. She opens the cabinet and grabs one of the sample bottles of liquor. She sucks it all down and throws the bottle across the room. Grabbing another, she sits on the edge of the bed. ELECTRA Okay. How did you find me? RATH You're the computer hacker, you tell me. ELECTRA You didn't know anything about me. Nikita rubs up against her leg. ELECTRA Nikita? RATH Yellow Pages. V for veterinarian. There aren't that many. She nods, slurping at her bottle. ELECTRA You're one of them, aren't you? RATH 'Them'? ELECTRA An assassin? RATH Until a minute ago. ELECTRA What does that mean? RATH If I still was what I used to be, you would not be pointing that at me. Electra eyes him, considers shooting him right now. ELECTRA Who is that other guy? RATH Another contractor. ELECTRA Someone hired both of you? RATH No. They hired Bain. The contract would have been mine, but Bain took it from me as he took the previous one. ELECTRA So this is something between you and him? RATH He stole the contract knowing that I would come after him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he is trying to retire me. ELECTRA He wants to kill you? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Why? RATH The nature of the business. You remove your competition. ELECTRA And you want to use me to get him? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Forget it! RATH We don't have a choice. She FIRES the GUN, pocking the wall behind him. ELECTRA Don't tell me I don't have a choice! RATH Right. ELECTRA I'm two seconds away from making my choice which means you've got two seconds to tell me why I shouldn't shoot you. RATH It's simple. You need me. I need you. And we will both need money. ELECTRA I don't need you to get the money -- my money! RATH If it hadn't been for me, you would be dead. She's up pacing, knowing there is some truth in that. ELECTRA I don't need the money. RATH This is something that is never going to end. You can never work in the business again with this contract, because he will find you. To survive, you have to go into deep hiding. And that's going to take money, a lot of money. ELECTRA Then you can have the disks and I'll just walk out that door -- RATH If you walk out that door, Bain will still come after you. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he took a contract on you. He'll come for you and he'll find you. ELECTRA You don't know that -- you're trying to scare me. RATH No. It's the truth. I know what you are. Like me, like Bain, you're a ghost, you're not part of the real world. You don't have a social security number. You don't pay taxes. You've probably used ten different names over the last ten years. A long time ago something probably happened, something illegal and you ran, you disappeared and it was easy. You think you can do it again. But I'm telling you, fading from the law is nothing. No matter what you do, where you go, I swear to you that Bain will find you. ELECTRA How? RATH Right now, as we sit here, he is tearing through your apartment. He is digging through your drawers, emptying your closets. He will take your telephone and address books, your appointment books. If you keep a diary, he is reading it. He'll go into the kitchen and find out what kind of food you eat, liquor you drink, cigarettes you smoke. In the bathroom he will find any prescription drugs you take and where you get them filled. If you have video tape or recordings he will watch and listen to all of them. She is coming unglued. Imagining him watching her tapes, going through her possessions. She is moving, pacing, ready to explode. ELECTRA Oh Jesus Jesus... RATH He will know everything about you. Everything. I know, because I've done it. Once you've been inside a mark's home, you're in their head. If you're any good, you'll find the mark in a week, and Bain is good because I was the best and I couldn't take him. She whirls and starts FIRING the GUN, firing it everywhere, fear and anger rocketing out of her in WHISTLING hot wads of LEAD. When she stops, he starts to say something but she levels the gun at him. ELECTRA Shut up! All right! You've said enough! She forces herself back, grabbing handfuls of the sample bottles. ELECTRA I need to think... To be alone. With the gun and an armful of booze and Nikita following at her feet, she goes into the bathroom and slams the door. INT. BATHROOM She locks the door and then collapses. Her body seems to fold up onto itself as she slides down the wall; the GUN and the BOTTLES falling from her arms, CLATTERING SOFTLY on the bath rug as she buries her face in her hands. INT. BEDROOM Very mechanically, Rath begins setting up his chess board, putting the pieces into the same positions. It is a ritual, and with it he enters a kind of trance. From the bathroom, almost inaudible, he hears Electra CRYING. INT. BATHROOM With her head now buried in her arms and knees, she is sobbing, her body rocking. The crying seems very similar to Jennifer's; a complete emotional release. INT. BEDROOM Rath stares at the board. The CRYING grows LOUDER. He stands and walks to the door. He starts to knock but stops himself. Like Electra with Jennifer, Rath would like to help, he just has no idea how to. He turns back to the desk, to his chess game. INT. BATHROOM Her eyes are now burning red. She stops crying long enough to suck down an entire sample of Scotch. Nikita rubs against her and she strokes her. ELECTRA Oh shit, Nikita. INT. BEDROOM Rath is setting up his computer system. He hears the TUB FILLING UP. INT. BATHROOM Nikita jumps up onto the toilet seat and starts drinking. ELECTRA Cheers. Electra finishes another sample and drops it to the floor where we see that many of the bottles are now empty. In the tub, steam rising off the surface, she wrings out a wash cloth and covers her face, sinking deeper into the water. INT. BEDROOM When Electra comes out of the bathroom, Rath is again at his chess game. She sits down across from him and sets the gun on the table between them. Rath looks up at her. ELECTRA Listen -- I don't even know your name. RATH Rath. Robert Rath. ELECTRA Electra. RATH Just Electra? ELECTRA Yeah. RATH As in daughter of Agamemnon? ELECTRA No. Just Electra. The conversation dies. ELECTRA What I'm trying to say is that -- I'm not sure I can do this, help you, unless I know more about you. RATH What do you want to know? ELECTRA If Bain hadn't taken the contract on me, would you have? He stares at her. RATH No. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because I'm done. ELECTRA This is crazy. I can't trust you. You can't trust me. How can we possibly help each other? They sit in silence, the gun and the chess game lying between them. RATH Do you play? She looks at the chess board. ELECTRA With computers. RATH It's not the same, is it? ELECTRA Better than playing with yourself. He smiles. RATH I had an opponent. She understands that he is trying to tell her something. ELECTRA Had? RATH He was Russian. Nicholai Tachlinkov. A legend in the business when I was just starting. I admired him. When I heard he loved chess I became obsessed with the game. Electra studies the board. ELECTRA He was white? Rath nods. ELECTRA It looks like white's game. RATH We played with a code using The New York Times obituaries. Over three years we played twelve matches. I never won. ELECTRA Why didn't you finish this game? She reaches over and lifts a White Knight and takes a Bishop. Rath counters, taking her Knight. RATH He was... taken. ELECTRA He was killed. Rath nods. Throughout the entire conversation they continue to play out the chess game. ELECTRA By who? A long beat. RATH I killed him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because that's how it works. That's what it's about. He was the best. He was on top. ELECTRA Where you wanted to be? RATH Yes. As soon as you get into this business, all you can think about is getting to the top. That's all there is. Until then, there is nothing. You are nothing. ELECTRA How did you get into the business? RATH The same way everyone does; the government, the Agency. ELECTRA The C.I.A.? RATH More or less. ELECTRA How old were you? RATH They recruited me when I was in high school. ELECTRA Jesus -- why? RATH Languages. I was already fluent in nine languages. ELECTRA You were like a boy genius? RATH Some people said that. I never thought so. ELECTRA Why not? RATH I was just different. ELECTRA You went from high school to the Agency? RATH No. I graduated from George Washington University. Then I entered the Agency training program. ELECTRA They didn't give you a choice, did they? RATH No, they didn't. ELECTRA But you knew what they were training you for? RATH Of course. I was going to be James Bond. ELECTRA Ahhhh... RATH They are very good at what they do. It's very seductive. The training, the weapons, the travel -- ELECTRA The exotic women. RATH Women? No... not really. ELECTRA Why not? RATH Women... I don't... I don't want to talk about women. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because you are a women. ELECTRA Why did you leave the Agency? RATH The same reason everyone does. You hear your name on C-SPAN and you realize you're a skeleton in someone's closet and they're coming to bury you. ELECTRA They tried to kill you? RATH Yes. It didn't matter much to them as long as I disappeared. ELECTRA Then you went freelance? RATH The only thing different about the private sector is that a General Contractor takes less of a percentage than the government, so you make more money. Then once you make the transition, you realize you were never working for the government; it was always the private sector, the vested interests and it's the same vested interests that continue to buy your plane tickets. ELECTRA Tell me about the first time. RATH My first take? ELECTRA Yes. RATH Why? ELECTRA Because I want to know. RATH It was... mechanical. Very precise. It was exactly like the training drill except for the adrenaline. ELECTRA Are they usually like that? RATH No. Just the first one. ELECTRA After that? RATH They become complicated... messy. ELECTRA Did it ever bother you? RATH Did it ever bother James Bond? ELECTRA That's fiction. RATH This is fiction! Don't you see that? This is another reality. And the people that come into the world to play this game -- nobody forces them! They're here, they know the rules, the stakes, the risks! Do you understand what I am saying? No one is innocent -- including you! ELECTRA Does that mean it didn't bother you? Rath leans back and stares at her. She waits. RATH You get a job swinging a hammer, the first day you get a blister, it tears open, it bleeds and it stays sore a long time. You keep swinging the hammer, you get a good hard callous that covers that spot and it never bothers you again. Electra says nothing. He leans forward and slides a rook into her back row. RATH Check. He leans back. RATH Is that what you wanted to hear? Something cold blooded... something remorseless... ELECTRA No. Something honest. A beat. Rath likes this woman. She moves her Queen. ELECTRA Mate. He smiles. ELECTRA I hope your plan is better than your game. INT. CHEAP HOTEL - NIGHT The room is ugly. Shag carpeting, wood paneling and polyester patterned curtains. We hear a COMPUTER KEYBOARD CLICKING away as we MOVE ACROSS a table. The hotel phone is in a modem, which is held together with duct tape. Between the modem and the computer is a scrambler constructed out of a series of naked circuit boards. It is a very similar set up to Rath's, only it has been put together with a fraction of the resources. Bain sits, typing at the computer, his shirt off. Beside the desk-top is a six pack of Old Style beer, a bag of Doritos and his Gameboy. On the floor, disassembled neatly on a small white towel is his cleaned gun. Bain finishes punching in a code, sits back and sucks down his beer. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Where have you been, Michael? He belches. He is communicating with his General Contractor. On the table is a collection of personal objects, much of it stuffed in pillow cases, taken from Electra's house. BAIN/SCREEN Tracking the mark. Bain fingers a pair of satin panties. He smiles as he smells them. BAIN I'm on the scent. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN You're too late. Bain slams his beer down. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN I've learned from MicroCell, Rath fulfilled the contract. BAIN/SCREEN How? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN He took out the mark and sold the disks back to MicroCell. Bain falls back in his chair, thinking. He runs his hands through his sweaty hair. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Michael? BAIN No. No. No. I don't believe it. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN They money will be standard bank transfer. We believe we will know where and when. BAIN What? BAIN/SCREEN How? There is no response. BAIN/SCREEN How in the fuck do you know that? A long beat. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Such language in front of a lady. BAIN I don't give a fuck what you are. I asked you -- He hits the repeat key. BAIN (types) How in the fuck do you know that? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Do you want Rath or not? Bain stares at the screen, thinking. Thinking hard. INT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL ROOM - NIGHT Another computer screen, but we don't know that it is different. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN It will take three days to arrange the transfer. ELECTRA Three days? We are in Electra and Rath's hotel room. She is standing behind him, reading as he types. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA Are you going to tell him? RATH It. Tell it. For all I know it could be a machine. ELECTRA You said you didn't trust it. RATH I don't. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA What kind of bank is going to allow us to withdraw ten million dollars the day it is transferred? RATH The kind preferred by drug smugglers, arms dealers and politicians. Rath types in an account number. RATH Do you have a passport? ELECTRA Several. RATH Good. ELECTRA Where is it? RATH Mexico. INT. AIRPLANE - DAY Rath and Electra are sitting in the first class section, which she is obviously enjoying, smiling and sipping champagne. ELECTRA God, I love first class. I remember when I was a little girl, I would wonder what it was like up here. I would always try to peek through the curtains. Rath says nothing, staring out the window. Electra shakes her head. ELECTRA I hope Nikita's all right. He still does not respond. ELECTRA Hey, where are you? RATH Thinking. ELECTRA About? RATH Nothing. Electra sips the last of her champagne. ELECTRA I've never been to the Gulf of Mexico. Is it as nice as they say? RATH I don't know. ELECTRA You were there? A long beat. RATH Yes. EXT. SMALL MEXICAN AIRPORT - DAY The plane lands. EXT. TERMINAL CAB STAND Rath and Electra hand their bags to a CABBY who puts them in his trunk. INT. CAB Rath speaks perfect Spanish. RATH (in Spanish) Good afternoon. We have reservations at the Hotel Paraiso in Costa Blanca. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes, sir. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - DAY The cab pulls up in front of a large, brand new glass hotel, which shimmers in the blue green reflection of the gulf water. Rath is upset. RATH (in Spanish) No, no. I said the Hotel Paraiso. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes. This is the Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) No, the other Hotel Paraiso, in the city. Near the Plaza del Sol. CABBY (in Spanish) I'm sorry, sir. A year ago there was a fire in the old Hotel Paraiso. This is the new Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) Take us there. EXT. COSTA BLANCA - DAY American tourist dollars have built up the coasts, but much of the out-lying city is very poor. The old Hotel Paraiso is a five story blackened husk. The face of the building is burnt black and it seems to hang in space as something non-corporeal, like the shadow of the building rather than the building itself. Rath stares at it, remembering. Electra is behind him, standing in the midst of the Plaza del Sol. He looks up to the fifth story window, then turns directly opposite of that. The International Banco de Mexico, an enormous, beautiful old building; its exterior walls are white-washed concrete, blindingly bright white. Electra looks at the bank and smiles. ELECTRA So, that's where all that S & L money is? Rath is not listening to her. He is somewhere else. He turns back to the fourth story window. RATH That's where he'll be. ELECTRA What? RATH I wasn't expecting this. I need to think. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - NIGHT Beyond the lights of the hotel the gulf darkens to midnight oil. INT. HOTEL PARAISO ELEVATOR On one side of the elevator is a young couple who look like newlyweds. They are cuddling, kissing and giggling as though they are alone. Electra and Rath are on the other side of the elevator. It is a strange contrast. Electra is staring at them. Rath, behind his sunglasses, is in his own world. The ELEVATOR CHIMES and opens. Nobody moves. The DOORS CHIME again and start to close, as everyone realizes that this is their floor. Rath and the other man grab the doors, which spring back open. It is a funny, awkward moment, as everyone apologizes and smiles politely, on the way out. INT. HALL The couple move down the hall, the newlyweds finding their door first. Rath reaches the door to their room, opens it and enters. Electra lingers, watching the other couple, watching as he fumbles for his keys, her hand running up between his legs and over his ass. He finally manages to open the door and she pushes him inside. Electra softly closes her door. INT. HOTEL PARAISO - HOTEL ROOM Rath is sitting in a desk chair staring out of the sliding balcony doors at the dark gulf water. ELECTRA Did you see them? Electra moves about the large suite. ELECTRA They looked like they were in love. Rath says nothing. ELECTRA Well, I think I'll take a bath. Come on, Nikita! The two of them walk into the bathroom, leaving Rath to himself. INT. BATHROOM Electra sits on the edge of the over-sized tub, water running through her fingers as she adjusts the temperature. After a beat she hears a SMALL CRASH, a GLASS BREAKING. It is followed by other MUFFLED NOISES, a WOMAN GIGGLING and a THUMPING.

hiding

How many times the word 'hiding' appears in the text?

why I'm here. Electra wants to scream. The speedometer is climbing over 100. RATH I really think you should slow down. INT. HOTEL SUITE - NIGHT The room is immaculate; near the door, several over-sized suitcases line the wall. Bain is sitting at the desk. His WALKMAN is on, MUSIC BLASTING, as he flips casually through the telephone directory. His finger eases down a column stopping at "Morgan Jennifer." There is a KNOCK at the door. He smiles and tears out the page. There is another, LOUDER KNOCK which Bain hears this time. He TURN OFF the WALKMAN and opens the door; a BELLBOY is waiting with a luggage cart. BELLBOY Hello, sir. Have you some luggage you need carried. Bain gives him a wink and a smile. BAIN Indeed I do. INT. ELECTRA'S CAR - NIGHT The red "low fuel" light is on. ELECTRA Now what? RATH Turn off the engine. Electra twists the ignition and the CAR DIES. Rath glances around and we see the car is parked in a gas station. ELECTRA You want me to pump? RATH No, stay in the car. I want you to understand something. If I intended to kill you, you would already be dead. Electra says nothing. He reaches over and takes the car keys. When he is out of the car, Electra slowly releases the strangle-hold she had on the steering wheel. ELECTRA Okay, Nikita, stay calm, think, breathe, think... Electra checks the rear view mirror, listening as Rath pumps the gas. Her eyes flash down to her bag. Outside, Rath watches Electra through the windows. She appears motionless. The electric gas counter races like a stop watch. In the car, Electra eases her hand into her bag. The tank full, Rath re-hangs the pump. He walks around the car and heads for the station. Electra waits until his back is turned. She pulls her tool pouch from her bag, throws it open and finds her wire stripper. Reaching under the dash, she yanks out a tangled handful of wire. She looks up; Rath is inside paying. ELECTRA Come on, come on, it's a cake walk. Her fingers fly with surgical precision, snipping, stripping, twisting. Rath steps out of the station as her head pops up, looking for him. It takes only a second for him to realize what she is doing. RATH Oh shit. He runs at the car as she strips the last set of wires and strikes them; the BATTERY GRINDS. ELECTRA Please, please. He is almost there when the ENGINE FIRES. She stomps on the gas, ramming the shift into drive. TIRES SQUEALING, the car swerves forward as Rath slams into it. He bounces backward, falling to the ground. The car fishtails away, accelerating as Rath rolls to one knee, his gun automatically in his hand. He draws a bead, but, he does not shoot. With a concerted effort, he puts the gun away. RATH Dammit. EXT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT BUILDING - NIGHT Electra's car is parked out front. She unlocks the lobby door and drags herself inside. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT LOBBY Standing at the mailboxes flipping through her mail is Jennifer Morgan. What she was hoping for is not there. She looks up and sees Electra. JENNIFER Excuse me -- Electra stops. JENNIFER You live here, don't you? Electra nods. JENNIFER I'm sorry, this may sound really weird, but my friend told me he slipped a letter under the door here and I was wondering if you happened to see it? Electra is in a daze, her hand moving into her pocket. ELECTRA Letter? JENNIFER Yeah. He said he saw a woman with dark hair going into the building when he dropped it off. ELECTRA No. I don't have it. Electra's mouth opens and she backs away. Jennifer is bothered by her reaction and she doesn't push it. JENNIFER I'm sorry. I didn't mean to -- I'm sorry. She shrugs and unlocks the interior door, leaving Electra in the lobby. Electra watches her, as her hand moves from pocket to pocket. A worried expression tightens her face; the letter is gone. She opens the interior door, following Jennifer up the stairs. INT. STAIRCASE Electra climbs the stairs, her mind pouring through the possibilities, filled with fear. By the time Electra reaches the top floor, Jennifer is entering her apartment. Electra hurries past Jennifer's door to her own. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT - NIGHT Electra flies across the living room to the monitors. She clicks them on, putting on Jennifer's channel. On the screen we see Jennifer in her living room checking her phone messages. One from her mother. Electra throws a few switches so that Jennifer's entire apartment is in front of her. On one of the monitors we see a shadow slide across the oak floor as something moves along the edge of the room. Jennifer has moved to the bathroom and is drawing a bath. Electra clamps her hand over her mouth when he steps out. Bain moves into the dining room where Jennifer had just been. Wearing rubber surgeon's gloves, he picks up the mail that she had dropped on the table and sorts through it. Bain moves about the apartment with complete indifference to Jennifer's presence; as if he were invisible, as though he knew she couldn't see him. He moves into a room, just as she moves out. Electra watches, dizzy, sick with terror, but she is unable to turn away. Bain searches through a desk drawer, while Jennifer starts undressing for her bath. He walks down the hall and stands outside of the bathroom. If Jennifer would turn around she would see him. Electra is about to run, to call out when -- Something catches Bain's eye. He moves into the bedroom, and is turned so that he is looking straight up into the camera. He inches towards it, not sure what it is. The fiber optic cable is hidden in the light fixture hanging over the bed. Staring at it, he is looking right at Electra. Bain steps up onto the bed, his face distorting as he moves close to the fish-eye lens. Poking it with his finger, he realizes what it is. A warped smile stretches across his face as he whispers -- BAIN (V.O.) Oh, you sick little bitch -- Electra tears away from the screen, panic seizing hold of her. She rips entire drawers out of her dresser, dumping them into a suitcase, stuffing in anything that looks important. She grabs Nikita in the "travel kitty." EXT. BACK PORCH The door opens and Electra jumps out, slamming it behind her as -- Bain turns from the back stairs. She leaps back inside as he whips out his GUN, PUMPING TWO HOLES in the door. INT. ELECTRA'S APARTMENT She scrambles from the kitchen, throwing her suitcase, still clutching the "travel kitty," as -- The back DOOR EXPLODES from its hinges, Bain charging, FIRING his GUN. BULLETS HISSING past her, Electra crashes through the front door into the hall. INT. HALL The stairs are at the far end. She is only halfway, when -- Rath rises up the stairs, his gun cocked. Electra drops to the floor as -- Behind her, Bain barrels from the apartment. Rath FIRES. The wood DOOR SPLINTERS, BULLET HOLES surrounding Bain. Off balance, he lunges back into the apartment. Rath continues FIRING, grabbing hold of Electra. They run down the stairs. EXT. REAR STAIRCASE Bain leaps down the flights. EXT. ALLEY Bain rushes into the street, looking in every direction. They are gone. BAIN Fuck me! EXT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL - NIGHT Somewhere in the city. INT. HOTEL ROOM Electra and Rath enter the room together but they are both immediately alone. She walks across the room to a chair in the corner, curling into it even as Nikita jumps up and curls into her lap. He sets his briefcase on the table at the opposite end of the room and sits. They watch each other. Silence. Between then is the liquor cabinet. Rath knows a good idea when he sees one. RATH Want a drink? Her face is as expressionless as Nikita's. He pours himself a very large bourbon and slugs it down. Takes a deep breath, then pours himself another one. RATH Okay... He returns to his table with his drink. RATH I'm not good at this sort of thing, but we don't have a lot of time, so I'll just go ahead and get started. First: you. I ask myself, 'What is she thinking?' Her body tightens, coils. RATH Simple. She's scared. She's almost been killed twice and now she is alone in a room with a man that she believes is an... assassin. Another deep pull on the bourbon. RATH Furthermore she was brought here not entirely on her own accord which only increases her fear and suspicion. Thus, as long as she is afraid, her first, maybe her only thought will be escape. Does that leave me any other option? He slugs down the rest of his drink and stands, whipping out his gun. RATH No. Crossing the room, he turns the gun around and offers it to her. She looks at it. Back at him. He puts it on the bed beside her, turns his back and walks to the bar. She picks up the gun. RATH The gun is silenced. She could shoot me right now. She stands, Nikita jumping from her lap. RATH She could take the car and be far from here before the maid comes in the morning, but -- She starts squeezing OFF ROUNDS; the LAMP EXPLODES, the CHAIRS around him ERUPT, tufts of white stuffing leaping into the air. ELECTRA Shut up! He freezes, bottle in one hand, glass in the other. ELECTRA Stop trying to tell me what I'm thinking! She moves closer to him, the gun squeezed in her fist. ELECTRA I'll tell you what you're thinking -- you think I'm not going to shoot you but right now you're not so sure, are you? A slight shake of the head, no. ELECTRA You're thinking that maybe it was a mistake to give me this gun, that maybe I'm not going to think about things logically because I'm a woman and I'm freaked out and I'm going to do something impulsive and irrational -- right? She FIRES the GUN to both sides of his head. He's surprised to be alive. ELECTRA You don't know shit about me! Now sit down! He returns to his chair and sits with the same expression she had worn sitting a moment ago. She opens the cabinet and grabs one of the sample bottles of liquor. She sucks it all down and throws the bottle across the room. Grabbing another, she sits on the edge of the bed. ELECTRA Okay. How did you find me? RATH You're the computer hacker, you tell me. ELECTRA You didn't know anything about me. Nikita rubs up against her leg. ELECTRA Nikita? RATH Yellow Pages. V for veterinarian. There aren't that many. She nods, slurping at her bottle. ELECTRA You're one of them, aren't you? RATH 'Them'? ELECTRA An assassin? RATH Until a minute ago. ELECTRA What does that mean? RATH If I still was what I used to be, you would not be pointing that at me. Electra eyes him, considers shooting him right now. ELECTRA Who is that other guy? RATH Another contractor. ELECTRA Someone hired both of you? RATH No. They hired Bain. The contract would have been mine, but Bain took it from me as he took the previous one. ELECTRA So this is something between you and him? RATH He stole the contract knowing that I would come after him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he is trying to retire me. ELECTRA He wants to kill you? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Why? RATH The nature of the business. You remove your competition. ELECTRA And you want to use me to get him? RATH Yes. ELECTRA Forget it! RATH We don't have a choice. She FIRES the GUN, pocking the wall behind him. ELECTRA Don't tell me I don't have a choice! RATH Right. ELECTRA I'm two seconds away from making my choice which means you've got two seconds to tell me why I shouldn't shoot you. RATH It's simple. You need me. I need you. And we will both need money. ELECTRA I don't need you to get the money -- my money! RATH If it hadn't been for me, you would be dead. She's up pacing, knowing there is some truth in that. ELECTRA I don't need the money. RATH This is something that is never going to end. You can never work in the business again with this contract, because he will find you. To survive, you have to go into deep hiding. And that's going to take money, a lot of money. ELECTRA Then you can have the disks and I'll just walk out that door -- RATH If you walk out that door, Bain will still come after you. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because he took a contract on you. He'll come for you and he'll find you. ELECTRA You don't know that -- you're trying to scare me. RATH No. It's the truth. I know what you are. Like me, like Bain, you're a ghost, you're not part of the real world. You don't have a social security number. You don't pay taxes. You've probably used ten different names over the last ten years. A long time ago something probably happened, something illegal and you ran, you disappeared and it was easy. You think you can do it again. But I'm telling you, fading from the law is nothing. No matter what you do, where you go, I swear to you that Bain will find you. ELECTRA How? RATH Right now, as we sit here, he is tearing through your apartment. He is digging through your drawers, emptying your closets. He will take your telephone and address books, your appointment books. If you keep a diary, he is reading it. He'll go into the kitchen and find out what kind of food you eat, liquor you drink, cigarettes you smoke. In the bathroom he will find any prescription drugs you take and where you get them filled. If you have video tape or recordings he will watch and listen to all of them. She is coming unglued. Imagining him watching her tapes, going through her possessions. She is moving, pacing, ready to explode. ELECTRA Oh Jesus Jesus... RATH He will know everything about you. Everything. I know, because I've done it. Once you've been inside a mark's home, you're in their head. If you're any good, you'll find the mark in a week, and Bain is good because I was the best and I couldn't take him. She whirls and starts FIRING the GUN, firing it everywhere, fear and anger rocketing out of her in WHISTLING hot wads of LEAD. When she stops, he starts to say something but she levels the gun at him. ELECTRA Shut up! All right! You've said enough! She forces herself back, grabbing handfuls of the sample bottles. ELECTRA I need to think... To be alone. With the gun and an armful of booze and Nikita following at her feet, she goes into the bathroom and slams the door. INT. BATHROOM She locks the door and then collapses. Her body seems to fold up onto itself as she slides down the wall; the GUN and the BOTTLES falling from her arms, CLATTERING SOFTLY on the bath rug as she buries her face in her hands. INT. BEDROOM Very mechanically, Rath begins setting up his chess board, putting the pieces into the same positions. It is a ritual, and with it he enters a kind of trance. From the bathroom, almost inaudible, he hears Electra CRYING. INT. BATHROOM With her head now buried in her arms and knees, she is sobbing, her body rocking. The crying seems very similar to Jennifer's; a complete emotional release. INT. BEDROOM Rath stares at the board. The CRYING grows LOUDER. He stands and walks to the door. He starts to knock but stops himself. Like Electra with Jennifer, Rath would like to help, he just has no idea how to. He turns back to the desk, to his chess game. INT. BATHROOM Her eyes are now burning red. She stops crying long enough to suck down an entire sample of Scotch. Nikita rubs against her and she strokes her. ELECTRA Oh shit, Nikita. INT. BEDROOM Rath is setting up his computer system. He hears the TUB FILLING UP. INT. BATHROOM Nikita jumps up onto the toilet seat and starts drinking. ELECTRA Cheers. Electra finishes another sample and drops it to the floor where we see that many of the bottles are now empty. In the tub, steam rising off the surface, she wrings out a wash cloth and covers her face, sinking deeper into the water. INT. BEDROOM When Electra comes out of the bathroom, Rath is again at his chess game. She sits down across from him and sets the gun on the table between them. Rath looks up at her. ELECTRA Listen -- I don't even know your name. RATH Rath. Robert Rath. ELECTRA Electra. RATH Just Electra? ELECTRA Yeah. RATH As in daughter of Agamemnon? ELECTRA No. Just Electra. The conversation dies. ELECTRA What I'm trying to say is that -- I'm not sure I can do this, help you, unless I know more about you. RATH What do you want to know? ELECTRA If Bain hadn't taken the contract on me, would you have? He stares at her. RATH No. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because I'm done. ELECTRA This is crazy. I can't trust you. You can't trust me. How can we possibly help each other? They sit in silence, the gun and the chess game lying between them. RATH Do you play? She looks at the chess board. ELECTRA With computers. RATH It's not the same, is it? ELECTRA Better than playing with yourself. He smiles. RATH I had an opponent. She understands that he is trying to tell her something. ELECTRA Had? RATH He was Russian. Nicholai Tachlinkov. A legend in the business when I was just starting. I admired him. When I heard he loved chess I became obsessed with the game. Electra studies the board. ELECTRA He was white? Rath nods. ELECTRA It looks like white's game. RATH We played with a code using The New York Times obituaries. Over three years we played twelve matches. I never won. ELECTRA Why didn't you finish this game? She reaches over and lifts a White Knight and takes a Bishop. Rath counters, taking her Knight. RATH He was... taken. ELECTRA He was killed. Rath nods. Throughout the entire conversation they continue to play out the chess game. ELECTRA By who? A long beat. RATH I killed him. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because that's how it works. That's what it's about. He was the best. He was on top. ELECTRA Where you wanted to be? RATH Yes. As soon as you get into this business, all you can think about is getting to the top. That's all there is. Until then, there is nothing. You are nothing. ELECTRA How did you get into the business? RATH The same way everyone does; the government, the Agency. ELECTRA The C.I.A.? RATH More or less. ELECTRA How old were you? RATH They recruited me when I was in high school. ELECTRA Jesus -- why? RATH Languages. I was already fluent in nine languages. ELECTRA You were like a boy genius? RATH Some people said that. I never thought so. ELECTRA Why not? RATH I was just different. ELECTRA You went from high school to the Agency? RATH No. I graduated from George Washington University. Then I entered the Agency training program. ELECTRA They didn't give you a choice, did they? RATH No, they didn't. ELECTRA But you knew what they were training you for? RATH Of course. I was going to be James Bond. ELECTRA Ahhhh... RATH They are very good at what they do. It's very seductive. The training, the weapons, the travel -- ELECTRA The exotic women. RATH Women? No... not really. ELECTRA Why not? RATH Women... I don't... I don't want to talk about women. ELECTRA Why? RATH Because you are a women. ELECTRA Why did you leave the Agency? RATH The same reason everyone does. You hear your name on C-SPAN and you realize you're a skeleton in someone's closet and they're coming to bury you. ELECTRA They tried to kill you? RATH Yes. It didn't matter much to them as long as I disappeared. ELECTRA Then you went freelance? RATH The only thing different about the private sector is that a General Contractor takes less of a percentage than the government, so you make more money. Then once you make the transition, you realize you were never working for the government; it was always the private sector, the vested interests and it's the same vested interests that continue to buy your plane tickets. ELECTRA Tell me about the first time. RATH My first take? ELECTRA Yes. RATH Why? ELECTRA Because I want to know. RATH It was... mechanical. Very precise. It was exactly like the training drill except for the adrenaline. ELECTRA Are they usually like that? RATH No. Just the first one. ELECTRA After that? RATH They become complicated... messy. ELECTRA Did it ever bother you? RATH Did it ever bother James Bond? ELECTRA That's fiction. RATH This is fiction! Don't you see that? This is another reality. And the people that come into the world to play this game -- nobody forces them! They're here, they know the rules, the stakes, the risks! Do you understand what I am saying? No one is innocent -- including you! ELECTRA Does that mean it didn't bother you? Rath leans back and stares at her. She waits. RATH You get a job swinging a hammer, the first day you get a blister, it tears open, it bleeds and it stays sore a long time. You keep swinging the hammer, you get a good hard callous that covers that spot and it never bothers you again. Electra says nothing. He leans forward and slides a rook into her back row. RATH Check. He leans back. RATH Is that what you wanted to hear? Something cold blooded... something remorseless... ELECTRA No. Something honest. A beat. Rath likes this woman. She moves her Queen. ELECTRA Mate. He smiles. ELECTRA I hope your plan is better than your game. INT. CHEAP HOTEL - NIGHT The room is ugly. Shag carpeting, wood paneling and polyester patterned curtains. We hear a COMPUTER KEYBOARD CLICKING away as we MOVE ACROSS a table. The hotel phone is in a modem, which is held together with duct tape. Between the modem and the computer is a scrambler constructed out of a series of naked circuit boards. It is a very similar set up to Rath's, only it has been put together with a fraction of the resources. Bain sits, typing at the computer, his shirt off. Beside the desk-top is a six pack of Old Style beer, a bag of Doritos and his Gameboy. On the floor, disassembled neatly on a small white towel is his cleaned gun. Bain finishes punching in a code, sits back and sucks down his beer. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Where have you been, Michael? He belches. He is communicating with his General Contractor. On the table is a collection of personal objects, much of it stuffed in pillow cases, taken from Electra's house. BAIN/SCREEN Tracking the mark. Bain fingers a pair of satin panties. He smiles as he smells them. BAIN I'm on the scent. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN You're too late. Bain slams his beer down. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN I've learned from MicroCell, Rath fulfilled the contract. BAIN/SCREEN How? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN He took out the mark and sold the disks back to MicroCell. Bain falls back in his chair, thinking. He runs his hands through his sweaty hair. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Michael? BAIN No. No. No. I don't believe it. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN They money will be standard bank transfer. We believe we will know where and when. BAIN What? BAIN/SCREEN How? There is no response. BAIN/SCREEN How in the fuck do you know that? A long beat. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Such language in front of a lady. BAIN I don't give a fuck what you are. I asked you -- He hits the repeat key. BAIN (types) How in the fuck do you know that? CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Do you want Rath or not? Bain stares at the screen, thinking. Thinking hard. INT. LARGE CHAIN HOTEL ROOM - NIGHT Another computer screen, but we don't know that it is different. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN It will take three days to arrange the transfer. ELECTRA Three days? We are in Electra and Rath's hotel room. She is standing behind him, reading as he types. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA Are you going to tell him? RATH It. Tell it. For all I know it could be a machine. ELECTRA You said you didn't trust it. RATH I don't. CONTRACTOR/SCREEN Which account? ELECTRA What kind of bank is going to allow us to withdraw ten million dollars the day it is transferred? RATH The kind preferred by drug smugglers, arms dealers and politicians. Rath types in an account number. RATH Do you have a passport? ELECTRA Several. RATH Good. ELECTRA Where is it? RATH Mexico. INT. AIRPLANE - DAY Rath and Electra are sitting in the first class section, which she is obviously enjoying, smiling and sipping champagne. ELECTRA God, I love first class. I remember when I was a little girl, I would wonder what it was like up here. I would always try to peek through the curtains. Rath says nothing, staring out the window. Electra shakes her head. ELECTRA I hope Nikita's all right. He still does not respond. ELECTRA Hey, where are you? RATH Thinking. ELECTRA About? RATH Nothing. Electra sips the last of her champagne. ELECTRA I've never been to the Gulf of Mexico. Is it as nice as they say? RATH I don't know. ELECTRA You were there? A long beat. RATH Yes. EXT. SMALL MEXICAN AIRPORT - DAY The plane lands. EXT. TERMINAL CAB STAND Rath and Electra hand their bags to a CABBY who puts them in his trunk. INT. CAB Rath speaks perfect Spanish. RATH (in Spanish) Good afternoon. We have reservations at the Hotel Paraiso in Costa Blanca. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes, sir. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - DAY The cab pulls up in front of a large, brand new glass hotel, which shimmers in the blue green reflection of the gulf water. Rath is upset. RATH (in Spanish) No, no. I said the Hotel Paraiso. CABBY (in Spanish) Yes. This is the Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) No, the other Hotel Paraiso, in the city. Near the Plaza del Sol. CABBY (in Spanish) I'm sorry, sir. A year ago there was a fire in the old Hotel Paraiso. This is the new Hotel Paraiso. RATH (in Spanish) Take us there. EXT. COSTA BLANCA - DAY American tourist dollars have built up the coasts, but much of the out-lying city is very poor. The old Hotel Paraiso is a five story blackened husk. The face of the building is burnt black and it seems to hang in space as something non-corporeal, like the shadow of the building rather than the building itself. Rath stares at it, remembering. Electra is behind him, standing in the midst of the Plaza del Sol. He looks up to the fifth story window, then turns directly opposite of that. The International Banco de Mexico, an enormous, beautiful old building; its exterior walls are white-washed concrete, blindingly bright white. Electra looks at the bank and smiles. ELECTRA So, that's where all that S & L money is? Rath is not listening to her. He is somewhere else. He turns back to the fourth story window. RATH That's where he'll be. ELECTRA What? RATH I wasn't expecting this. I need to think. EXT. HOTEL PARAISO - NIGHT Beyond the lights of the hotel the gulf darkens to midnight oil. INT. HOTEL PARAISO ELEVATOR On one side of the elevator is a young couple who look like newlyweds. They are cuddling, kissing and giggling as though they are alone. Electra and Rath are on the other side of the elevator. It is a strange contrast. Electra is staring at them. Rath, behind his sunglasses, is in his own world. The ELEVATOR CHIMES and opens. Nobody moves. The DOORS CHIME again and start to close, as everyone realizes that this is their floor. Rath and the other man grab the doors, which spring back open. It is a funny, awkward moment, as everyone apologizes and smiles politely, on the way out. INT. HALL The couple move down the hall, the newlyweds finding their door first. Rath reaches the door to their room, opens it and enters. Electra lingers, watching the other couple, watching as he fumbles for his keys, her hand running up between his legs and over his ass. He finally manages to open the door and she pushes him inside. Electra softly closes her door. INT. HOTEL PARAISO - HOTEL ROOM Rath is sitting in a desk chair staring out of the sliding balcony doors at the dark gulf water. ELECTRA Did you see them? Electra moves about the large suite. ELECTRA They looked like they were in love. Rath says nothing. ELECTRA Well, I think I'll take a bath. Come on, Nikita! The two of them walk into the bathroom, leaving Rath to himself. INT. BATHROOM Electra sits on the edge of the over-sized tub, water running through her fingers as she adjusts the temperature. After a beat she hears a SMALL CRASH, a GLASS BREAKING. It is followed by other MUFFLED NOISES, a WOMAN GIGGLING and a THUMPING.

manned

How many times the word 'manned' appears in the text?

will be no wiser at the end of my letter than you were at the beginning. Attend, then, and I will compel myself to give you the details. I mentioned to you the other day that I had become acquainted with S--, the district judge, and that he had invited me to go and visit him in his retirement, or rather in his little kingdom. But I neglected going, and perhaps should never have gone, if chance had not discovered to me the treasure which lay concealed in that retired spot. Some of our young people had proposed giving a ball in the country, at which I consented to be present. I offered my hand for the evening to a pretty and agreeable, but rather commonplace, sort of girl from the immediate neighbourhood; and it was agreed that I should engage a carriage, and call upon Charlotte, with my partner and her aunt, to convey them to the ball. My companion informed me, as we drove along through the park to the hunting-lodge, that I should make the acquaintance of a very charming young lady. "Take care," added the aunt, "that you do not lose your heart." "Why?" said I. "Because she is already engaged to a very worthy man," she replied, "who is gone to settle his affairs upon the death of his father, and will succeed to a very considerable inheritance." This information possessed no interest for me. When we arrived at the gate, the sun was setting behind the tops of the mountains. The atmosphere was heavy; and the ladies expressed their fears of an approaching storm, as masses of low black clouds were gathering in the horizon. I relieved their anxieties by pretending to be weather-wise, although I myself had some apprehensions lest our pleasure should be interrupted. I alighted; and a maid came to the door, and requested us to wait a moment for her mistress. I walked across the court to a well-built house, and, ascending the flight of steps in front, opened the door, and saw before me the most charming spectacle I had ever witnessed. Six children, from eleven to two years old, were running about the hall, and surrounding a lady of middle height, with a lovely figure, dressed in a robe of simple white, trimmed with pink ribbons. She was holding a rye loaf in her hand, and was cutting slices for the little ones all around, in proportion to their age and appetite. She performed her task in a graceful and affectionate manner; each claimant awaiting his turn with outstretched hands, and boisterously shouting his thanks. Some of them ran away at once, to enjoy their evening meal; whilst others, of a gentler disposition, retired to the courtyard to see the strangers, and to survey the carriage in which their Charlotte was to drive away. "Pray forgive me for giving you the trouble to come for me, and for keeping the ladies waiting: but dressing, and arranging some household duties before I leave, had made me forget my children's supper; and they do not like to take it from any one but me." I uttered some indifferent compliment: but my whole soul was absorbed by her air, her voice, her manner; and I had scarcely recovered myself when she ran into her room to fetch her gloves and fan. The young ones threw inquiring glances at me from a distance; whilst I approached the youngest, a most delicious little creature. He drew back; and Charlotte, entering at the very moment, said, "Louis, shake hands with your cousin." The little fellow obeyed willingly; and I could not resist giving him a hearty kiss, notwithstanding his rather dirty face. "Cousin," said I to Charlotte, as I handed her down, "do you think I deserve the happiness of being related to you?" She replied, with a ready smile, "Oh! I have such a number of cousins, that I should be sorry if you were the most undeserving of them." In taking leave, she desired her next sister, Sophy, a girl about eleven years old, to take great care of the children, and to say good-bye to papa for her when he came home from his ride. She enjoined to the little ones to obey their sister Sophy as they would herself, upon which some promised that they would; but a little fair-haired girl, about six years old, looked discontented, and said, "But Sophy is not you, Charlotte; and we like you best." The two eldest boys had clambered up the carriage; and, at my request, she permitted them to accompany us a little way through the forest, upon their promising to sit very still, and hold fast. We were hardly seated, and the ladies had scarcely exchanged compliments, making the usual remarks upon each other's dress, and upon the company they expected to meet, when Charlotte stopped the carriage, and made her brothers get down. They insisted upon kissing her hands once more; which the eldest did with all the tenderness of a youth of fifteen, but the other in a lighter and more careless manner. She desired them again to give her love to the children, and we drove off. The aunt inquired of Charlotte whether she had finished the book she had last sent her. "No," said Charlotte; "I did not like it: you can have it again. And the one before was not much better." I was surprised, upon asking the title, to hear that it was ____. (We feel obliged to suppress the passage in the letter, to prevent any one from feeling aggrieved; although no author need pay much attention to the opinion of a mere girl, or that of an unsteady young man.) I found penetration and character in everything she said: every expression seemed to brighten her features with new charms,--with new rays of genius,--which unfolded by degrees, as she felt herself understood. "When I was younger," she observed, "I loved nothing so much as romances. Nothing could equal my delight when, on some holiday, I could settle down quietly in a corner, and enter with my whole heart and soul into the joys or sorrows of some fictitious Leonora. I do not deny that they even possess some charms for me yet. But I read so seldom, that I prefer books suited exactly to my taste. And I like those authors best whose scenes describe my own situation in life,--and the friends who are about me, whose stories touch me with interest, from resembling my own homely existence,--which, without being absolutely paradise, is, on the whole, a source of indescribable happiness." I endeavoured to conceal the emotion which these words occasioned, but it was of slight avail; for, when she had expressed so truly her opinion of "The Vicar of Wakefield," and of other works, the names of which I omit (Though the names are omitted, yet the authors mentioned deserve Charlotte's approbation, and will feel it in their hearts when they read this passage. It concerns no other person.), I could no longer contain myself, but gave full utterance to what I thought of it: and it was not until Charlotte had addressed herself to the two other ladies, that I remembered their presence, and observed them sitting mute with astonishment. The aunt looked at me several times with an air of raillery, which, however, I did not at all mind. We talked of the pleasures of dancing. "If it is a fault to love it," said Charlotte, "I am ready to confess that I prize it above all other amusements. If anything disturbs me, I go to the piano, play an air to which I have danced, and all goes right again directly." You, who know me, can fancy how steadfastly I gazed upon her rich dark eyes during these remarks, how my very soul gloated over her warm lips and fresh, glowing cheeks, how I became quite lost in the delightful meaning of her words, so much so, that I scarcely heard the actual expressions. In short, I alighted from the carriage like a person in a dream, and was so lost to the dim world around me, that I scarcely heard the music which resounded from the illuminated ballroom. The two Messrs. Andran and a certain N. N. (I cannot trouble myself with the names), who were the aunt's and Charlotte's partners, received us at the carriage-door, and took possession of their ladies, whilst I followed with mine. We commenced with a minuet. I led out one lady after another, and precisely those who were the most disagreeable could not bring themselves to leave off. Charlotte and her partner began an English country dance, and you must imagine my delight when it was their turn to dance the figure with us. You should see Charlotte dance. She dances with her whole heart and soul: her figure is all harmony, elegance, and grace, as if she were conscious of nothing else, and had no other thought or feeling; and, doubtless, for the moment, every other sensation is extinct. She was engaged for the second country dance, but promised me the third, and assured me, with the most agreeable freedom, that she was very fond of waltzing. "It is the custom here," she said, "for the previous partners to waltz together; but my partner is an indifferent waltzer, and will feel delighted if I save him the trouble. Your partner is not allowed to waltz, and, indeed, is equally incapable: but I observed during the country dance that you waltz well; so, if you will waltz with me, I beg you would propose it to my partner, and I will propose it to yours." We agreed, and it was arranged that our partners should mutually entertain each other. We set off, and, at first, delighted ourselves with the usual graceful motions of the arms. With what grace, with what ease, she moved! When the waltz commenced, and the dancers whirled around each other in the giddy maze, there was some confusion, owing to the incapacity of some of the dancers. We judiciously remained still, allowing the others to weary themselves; and, when the awkward dancers had withdrawn, we joined in, and kept it up famously together with one other couple,--Andran and his partner. Never did I dance more lightly. I felt myself more than mortal, holding this loveliest of creatures in my arms, flying, with her as rapidly as the wind, till I lost sight of every other object; and O Wilhelm, I vowed at that moment, that a maiden whom I loved, or for whom I felt the slightest attachment, never, never should waltz with any one else but with me, if I went to perdition for it!--you will understand this. We took a few turns in the room to recover our breath. Charlotte sat down, and felt refreshed by partaking of some oranges which I had had secured,--the only ones that had been left; but at every slice which, from politeness, she offered to her neighbours, I felt as though a dagger went through my heart. We were the second couple in the third country dance. As we were going down (and Heaven knows with what ecstasy I gazed at her arms and eyes, beaming with the sweetest feeling of pure and genuine enjoyment), we passed a lady whom I had noticed for her charming expression of countenance; although she was no longer young. She looked at Charlotte with a smile, then, holding up her finger in a threatening attitude, repeated twice in a very significant tone of voice the name of "Albert." "Who is Albert," said I to Charlotte, "if it is not impertinent to ask?" She was about to answer, when we were obliged to separate, in order to execute a figure in the dance; and, as we crossed over again in front of each other, I perceived she looked somewhat pensive. "Why need I conceal it from you?" she said, as she gave me her hand for the promenade. "Albert is a worthy man, to whom I am engaged." Now, there was nothing new to me in this (for the girls had told me of it on the way); but it was so far new that I had not thought of it in connection with her whom, in so short a time, I had learned to prize so highly. Enough, I became confused, got out in the figure, and occasioned general confusion; so that it required all Charlotte's presence of mind to set me right by pulling and pushing me into my proper place. The dance was not yet finished when the lightning which had for some time been seen in the horizon, and which I had asserted to proceed entirely from heat, grew more violent; and the thunder was heard above the music. When any distress or terror surprises us in the midst of our amusements, it naturally makes a deeper impression than at other times, either because the contrast makes us more keenly susceptible, or rather perhaps because our senses are then more open to impressions, and the shock is consequently stronger. To this cause I must ascribe the fright and shrieks of the ladies. One sagaciously sat down in a corner with her back to the window, and held her fingers to her ears; a second knelt down before her, and hid her face in her lap; a third threw herself between them, and embraced her sister with a thousand tears; some insisted on going home; others, unconscious of their actions, wanted sufficient presence of mind to repress the impertinence of their young partners, who sought to direct to themselves those sighs which the lips of our agitated beauties intended for heaven. Some of the gentlemen had gone down-stairs to smoke a quiet cigar, and the rest of the company gladly embraced a happy suggestion of the hostess to retire into another room which was provided with shutters and curtains. We had hardly got there, when Charlotte placed the chairs in a circle; and, when the company had sat down in compliance with her request, she forthwith proposed a round game. I noticed some of the company prepare their mouths and draw themselves up at the prospect of some agreeable forfeit. "Let us play at counting," said Charlotte. "Now, pay attention: I shall go round the circle from right to left; and each person is to count, one after the other, the number that comes to him, and must count fast; whoever stops or mistakes is to have a box on the ear, and so on, till we have counted a thousand." It was delightful to see the fun. She went round the circle with upraised arm. "One," said the first; "two," the second; "three," the third; and so on, till Charlotte went faster and faster. One made a mistake, instantly a box on the ear; and, amid the laughter that ensued, came another box; and so on, faster and faster. I myself came in for two. I fancied they were harder than the rest, and felt quite delighted. A general laughter and confusion put an end to the game long before we had counted as far as a thousand. The party broke up into little separate knots: the storm had ceased, and I followed Charlotte into the ballroom. On the way she said, "The game banished their fears of the storm." I could make no reply. "I myself," she continued, "was as much frightened as any of them; but by affecting courage, to keep up the spirits of the others, I forgot my apprehensions." We went to the window. It was still thundering at a distance: a soft rain was pouring down over the country, and filled the air around us with delicious odours. Charlotte leaned forward on her arm; her eyes wandered over the scene; she raised them to the sky, and then turned them upon me; they were moistened with tears; she placed her hand on mine and said, "Klopstock!" at once I remembered the magnificent ode which was in her thoughts: I felt oppressed with the weight of my sensations, and sank under them. It was more than I could bear. I bent over her hand, kissed it in a stream of delicious tears, and again looked up to her eyes. Divine Klopstock! why didst thou not see thy apotheosis in those eyes? And thy name so often profaned, would that I never heard it repeated! JUNE 19. I no longer remember where I stopped in my narrative: I only know it was two in the morning when I went to bed; and if you had been with me, that I might have talked instead of writing to you, I should, in all probability, have kept you up till daylight. I think I have not yet related what happened as we rode home from the ball, nor have I time to tell you now. It was a most magnificent sunrise: the whole country was refreshed, and the rain fell drop by drop from the trees in the forest. Our companions were asleep. Charlotte asked me if I did not wish to sleep also, and begged of me not to make any ceremony on her account. Looking steadfastly at her, I answered, "As long as I see those eyes open, there is no fear of my falling asleep." We both continued awake till we reached her door. The maid opened it softly, and assured her, in answer to her inquiries, that her father and the children were well, and still sleeping. I left her asking permission to visit her in the course of the day. She consented, and I went, and, since that time, sun, moon, and stars may pursue their course: I know not whether it is day or night; the whole world is nothing to me. JUNE 21. My days are as happy as those reserved by God for his elect; and, whatever be my fate hereafter, I can never say that I have not tasted joy,--the purest joy of life. You know Walheim. I am now completely settled there. In that spot I am only half a league from Charlotte; and there I enjoy myself, and taste all the pleasure which can fall to the lot of man. Little did I imagine, when I selected Walheim for my pedestrian excursions, that all heaven lay so near it. How often in my wanderings from the hillside or from the meadows across the river, have I beheld this hunting-lodge, which now contains within it all the joy of my heart! I have often, my dear Wilhelm, reflected on the eagerness men feel to wander and make new discoveries, and upon that secret impulse which afterward inclines them to return to their narrow circle, conform to the laws of custom, and embarrass themselves no longer with what passes around them. It is so strange how, when I came here first, and gazed upon that lovely valley from the hillside, I felt charmed with the entire scene surrounding me. The little wood opposite--how delightful to sit under its shade! How fine the view from that point of rock! Then, that delightful chain of hills, and the exquisite valleys at their feet! Could I but wander and lose myself amongst them! I went, and returned without finding what I wished. Distance, my friend, is like futurity. A dim vastness is spread before our souls: the perceptions of our mind are as obscure as those of our vision; and we desire earnestly to surrender up our whole being, that it may be filled with the complete and perfect bliss of one glorious emotion. But alas! when we have attained our object, when the distant there becomes the present here, all is changed: we are as poor and circumscribed as ever, and our souls still languish for unattainable happiness. So does the restless traveller pant for his native soil, and find in his own cottage, in the arms of his wife, in the affections of his children, and in the labour necessary for their support, that happiness which he had sought in vain through the wide world. When, in the morning at sunrise, I go out to Walheim, and with my own hands gather in the garden the pease which are to serve for my dinner, when I sit down to shell them, and read my Homer during the intervals, and then, selecting a saucepan from the kitchen, fetch my own butter, put my mess on the fire, cover it up, and sit down to stir it as occasion requires, I figure to myself the illustrious suitors of Penelope, killing, dressing, and preparing their own oxen and swine. Nothing fills me with a more pure and genuine sense of happiness than those traits of patriarchal life which, thank Heaven! I can imitate without affectation. Happy is it, indeed, for me that my heart is capable of feeling the same simple and innocent pleasure as the peasant whose table is covered with food of his own rearing, and who not only enjoys his meal, but remembers with delight the happy days and sunny mornings when he planted it, the soft evenings when he watered it, and the pleasure he experienced in watching its daily growth. JUNE 29. The day before yesterday, the physician came from the town to pay a visit to the judge. He found me on the floor playing with Charlotte's children. Some of them were scrambling over me, and others romped with me; and, as I caught and tickled them, they made a great noise. The doctor is a formal sort of personage: he adjusts the plaits of his ruffles, and continually settles his frill whilst he is talking to you; and he thought my conduct beneath the dignity of a sensible man. I could perceive this by his countenance. But I did not suffer myself to be disturbed. I allowed him to continue his wise conversation, whilst I rebuilt the children's card houses for them as fast as they threw them down. He went about the town afterward, complaining that the judge's children were spoiled enough before, but that now Werther was completely ruining them. Yes, my dear Wilhelm, nothing on this earth affects my heart so much as children. When I look on at their doings; when I mark in the little creatures the seeds of all those virtues and qualities which they will one day find so indispensable; when I behold in the obstinate all the future firmness and constancy of a noble character; in the capricious, that levity and gaiety of temper which will carry them lightly over the dangers and troubles of life, their whole nature simple and unpolluted,--then I call to mind the golden words of the Great Teacher of mankind, "Unless ye become like one of these!" And now, my friend, these children, who are our equals, whom we ought to consider as our models, we treat them as though they were our subjects. They are allowed no will of their own. And have we, then, none ourselves? Whence comes our exclusive right? Is it because we are older and more experienced? Great God! from the height of thy heaven thou beholdest great children and little children, and no others; and thy Son has long since declared which afford thee greatest pleasure. But they believe in him, and hear him not,--that, too, is an old story; and they train their children after their own image, etc. Adieu, Wilhelm: I will not further bewilder myself with this subject. JULY 1. The consolation Charlotte can bring to an invalid I experience from my own heart, which suffers more from her absence than many a poor creature lingering on a bed of sickness. She is gone to spend a few days in the town with a very worthy woman, who is given over by the physicians, and wishes to have Charlotte near her in her last moments. I accompanied her last week on a visit to the Vicar of S--, a small village in the mountains, about a league hence. We arrived about four o'clock: Charlotte had taken her little sister with her. When we entered the vicarage court, we found the good old man sitting on a bench before the door, under the shade of two large walnut-trees. At the sight of Charlotte he seemed to gain new life, rose, forgot his stick, and ventured to walk toward her. She ran to him, and made him sit down again; then, placing herself by his side, she gave him a number of messages from her father, and then caught up his youngest child, a dirty, ugly little thing, the joy of his old age, and kissed it. I wish you could have witnessed her attention to this old man,--how she raised her voice on account of his deafness; how she told him of healthy young people, who had been carried off when it was least expected; praised the virtues of Carlsbad, and commended his determination to spend the ensuing summer there; and assured him that he looked better and stronger than he did when she saw him last. I, in the meantime, paid attention to his good lady. The old man seemed quite in spirits; and as I could not help admiring the beauty of the walnut-trees, which formed such an agreeable shade over our heads, he began, though with some little difficulty, to tell us their history. "As to the oldest," said he, "we do not know who planted it,--some say one clergyman, and some another: but the younger one, there behind us, is exactly the age of my wife, fifty years old next October; her father planted it in the morning, and in the evening she came into the world. My wife's father was my predecessor here, and I cannot tell you how fond he was of that tree; and it is fully as dear to me. Under the shade of that very tree, upon a log of wood, my wife was seated knitting, when I, a poor student, came into this court for the first time, just seven and twenty years ago." Charlotte inquired for his daughter. He said she was gone with Herr Schmidt to the meadows, and was with the haymakers. The old man then resumed his story, and told us how his predecessor had taken a fancy to him, as had his daughter likewise; and how he had become first his curate, and subsequently his successor. He had scarcely finished his story when his daughter returned through the garden, accompanied by the above-mentioned Herr Schmidt. She welcomed Charlotte affectionately, and I confess I was much taken with her appearance. She was a lively-looking, good-humoured brunette, quite competent to amuse one for a short time in the country. Her lover (for such Herr Schmidt evidently appeared to be) was a polite, reserved personage, and would not join our conversation, notwithstanding all Charlotte's endeavours to draw him out. I was much annoyed at observing, by his countenance, that his silence did not arise from want of talent, but from caprice and ill-humour. This subsequently became very evident, when we set out to take a walk, and Frederica joining Charlotte, with whom I was talking, the worthy gentleman's face, which was naturally rather sombre, became so dark and angry that Charlotte was obliged to touch my arm, and remind me that I was talking too much to Frederica. Nothing distresses me more than to see men torment each other; particularly when in the flower of their age, in the very season of pleasure, they waste their few short days of sunshine in quarrels and disputes, and only perceive their error when it is too late to repair it. This thought dwelt upon my mind; and in the evening, when we returned to the vicar's, and were sitting round the table with our bread end milk, the conversation turned on the joys and sorrows of the world, I could not resist the temptation to inveigh bitterly against ill-humour. "We are apt," said I, "to complain, but--with very little cause, that our happy days are few, and our evil days many. If our hearts were always disposed to receive the benefits Heaven sends us, we should acquire strength to support evil when it comes." "But," observed the vicar's wife, "we cannot always command our tempers, so much depends upon the constitution: when the body suffers, the mind is ill at ease." "I acknowledge that," I continued; "but we must consider such a disposition in the light of a disease, and inquire whether there is no remedy for it." "I should be glad to hear one," said Charlotte: "at least, I think very much depends upon ourselves; I know it is so with me. When anything annoys me, and disturbs my temper, I hasten into the garden, hum a couple of country dances, and it is all right with me directly." "That is what I meant," I replied; "ill-humour resembles indolence: it is natural to us; but if once we have courage to exert ourselves, we find our work run fresh from our hands, and we experience in the activity from which we shrank a real enjoyment." Frederica listened very attentively: and the young man objected, that we were not masters of ourselves, and still less so of our feelings. "The question is about a disagreeable feeling," I added, "from which every one would willingly escape, but none know their own power without trial. Invalids are glad to consult physicians, and submit to the most scrupulous regimen, the most nauseous medicines, in order to recover their health." I observed that the good old man inclined his head, and exerted himself to hear our discourse; so I raised my voice, and addressed myself directly to him. "We preach against a great many crimes," I observed, "but I never remember a

together

How many times the word 'together' appears in the text?

will be no wiser at the end of my letter than you were at the beginning. Attend, then, and I will compel myself to give you the details. I mentioned to you the other day that I had become acquainted with S--, the district judge, and that he had invited me to go and visit him in his retirement, or rather in his little kingdom. But I neglected going, and perhaps should never have gone, if chance had not discovered to me the treasure which lay concealed in that retired spot. Some of our young people had proposed giving a ball in the country, at which I consented to be present. I offered my hand for the evening to a pretty and agreeable, but rather commonplace, sort of girl from the immediate neighbourhood; and it was agreed that I should engage a carriage, and call upon Charlotte, with my partner and her aunt, to convey them to the ball. My companion informed me, as we drove along through the park to the hunting-lodge, that I should make the acquaintance of a very charming young lady. "Take care," added the aunt, "that you do not lose your heart." "Why?" said I. "Because she is already engaged to a very worthy man," she replied, "who is gone to settle his affairs upon the death of his father, and will succeed to a very considerable inheritance." This information possessed no interest for me. When we arrived at the gate, the sun was setting behind the tops of the mountains. The atmosphere was heavy; and the ladies expressed their fears of an approaching storm, as masses of low black clouds were gathering in the horizon. I relieved their anxieties by pretending to be weather-wise, although I myself had some apprehensions lest our pleasure should be interrupted. I alighted; and a maid came to the door, and requested us to wait a moment for her mistress. I walked across the court to a well-built house, and, ascending the flight of steps in front, opened the door, and saw before me the most charming spectacle I had ever witnessed. Six children, from eleven to two years old, were running about the hall, and surrounding a lady of middle height, with a lovely figure, dressed in a robe of simple white, trimmed with pink ribbons. She was holding a rye loaf in her hand, and was cutting slices for the little ones all around, in proportion to their age and appetite. She performed her task in a graceful and affectionate manner; each claimant awaiting his turn with outstretched hands, and boisterously shouting his thanks. Some of them ran away at once, to enjoy their evening meal; whilst others, of a gentler disposition, retired to the courtyard to see the strangers, and to survey the carriage in which their Charlotte was to drive away. "Pray forgive me for giving you the trouble to come for me, and for keeping the ladies waiting: but dressing, and arranging some household duties before I leave, had made me forget my children's supper; and they do not like to take it from any one but me." I uttered some indifferent compliment: but my whole soul was absorbed by her air, her voice, her manner; and I had scarcely recovered myself when she ran into her room to fetch her gloves and fan. The young ones threw inquiring glances at me from a distance; whilst I approached the youngest, a most delicious little creature. He drew back; and Charlotte, entering at the very moment, said, "Louis, shake hands with your cousin." The little fellow obeyed willingly; and I could not resist giving him a hearty kiss, notwithstanding his rather dirty face. "Cousin," said I to Charlotte, as I handed her down, "do you think I deserve the happiness of being related to you?" She replied, with a ready smile, "Oh! I have such a number of cousins, that I should be sorry if you were the most undeserving of them." In taking leave, she desired her next sister, Sophy, a girl about eleven years old, to take great care of the children, and to say good-bye to papa for her when he came home from his ride. She enjoined to the little ones to obey their sister Sophy as they would herself, upon which some promised that they would; but a little fair-haired girl, about six years old, looked discontented, and said, "But Sophy is not you, Charlotte; and we like you best." The two eldest boys had clambered up the carriage; and, at my request, she permitted them to accompany us a little way through the forest, upon their promising to sit very still, and hold fast. We were hardly seated, and the ladies had scarcely exchanged compliments, making the usual remarks upon each other's dress, and upon the company they expected to meet, when Charlotte stopped the carriage, and made her brothers get down. They insisted upon kissing her hands once more; which the eldest did with all the tenderness of a youth of fifteen, but the other in a lighter and more careless manner. She desired them again to give her love to the children, and we drove off. The aunt inquired of Charlotte whether she had finished the book she had last sent her. "No," said Charlotte; "I did not like it: you can have it again. And the one before was not much better." I was surprised, upon asking the title, to hear that it was ____. (We feel obliged to suppress the passage in the letter, to prevent any one from feeling aggrieved; although no author need pay much attention to the opinion of a mere girl, or that of an unsteady young man.) I found penetration and character in everything she said: every expression seemed to brighten her features with new charms,--with new rays of genius,--which unfolded by degrees, as she felt herself understood. "When I was younger," she observed, "I loved nothing so much as romances. Nothing could equal my delight when, on some holiday, I could settle down quietly in a corner, and enter with my whole heart and soul into the joys or sorrows of some fictitious Leonora. I do not deny that they even possess some charms for me yet. But I read so seldom, that I prefer books suited exactly to my taste. And I like those authors best whose scenes describe my own situation in life,--and the friends who are about me, whose stories touch me with interest, from resembling my own homely existence,--which, without being absolutely paradise, is, on the whole, a source of indescribable happiness." I endeavoured to conceal the emotion which these words occasioned, but it was of slight avail; for, when she had expressed so truly her opinion of "The Vicar of Wakefield," and of other works, the names of which I omit (Though the names are omitted, yet the authors mentioned deserve Charlotte's approbation, and will feel it in their hearts when they read this passage. It concerns no other person.), I could no longer contain myself, but gave full utterance to what I thought of it: and it was not until Charlotte had addressed herself to the two other ladies, that I remembered their presence, and observed them sitting mute with astonishment. The aunt looked at me several times with an air of raillery, which, however, I did not at all mind. We talked of the pleasures of dancing. "If it is a fault to love it," said Charlotte, "I am ready to confess that I prize it above all other amusements. If anything disturbs me, I go to the piano, play an air to which I have danced, and all goes right again directly." You, who know me, can fancy how steadfastly I gazed upon her rich dark eyes during these remarks, how my very soul gloated over her warm lips and fresh, glowing cheeks, how I became quite lost in the delightful meaning of her words, so much so, that I scarcely heard the actual expressions. In short, I alighted from the carriage like a person in a dream, and was so lost to the dim world around me, that I scarcely heard the music which resounded from the illuminated ballroom. The two Messrs. Andran and a certain N. N. (I cannot trouble myself with the names), who were the aunt's and Charlotte's partners, received us at the carriage-door, and took possession of their ladies, whilst I followed with mine. We commenced with a minuet. I led out one lady after another, and precisely those who were the most disagreeable could not bring themselves to leave off. Charlotte and her partner began an English country dance, and you must imagine my delight when it was their turn to dance the figure with us. You should see Charlotte dance. She dances with her whole heart and soul: her figure is all harmony, elegance, and grace, as if she were conscious of nothing else, and had no other thought or feeling; and, doubtless, for the moment, every other sensation is extinct. She was engaged for the second country dance, but promised me the third, and assured me, with the most agreeable freedom, that she was very fond of waltzing. "It is the custom here," she said, "for the previous partners to waltz together; but my partner is an indifferent waltzer, and will feel delighted if I save him the trouble. Your partner is not allowed to waltz, and, indeed, is equally incapable: but I observed during the country dance that you waltz well; so, if you will waltz with me, I beg you would propose it to my partner, and I will propose it to yours." We agreed, and it was arranged that our partners should mutually entertain each other. We set off, and, at first, delighted ourselves with the usual graceful motions of the arms. With what grace, with what ease, she moved! When the waltz commenced, and the dancers whirled around each other in the giddy maze, there was some confusion, owing to the incapacity of some of the dancers. We judiciously remained still, allowing the others to weary themselves; and, when the awkward dancers had withdrawn, we joined in, and kept it up famously together with one other couple,--Andran and his partner. Never did I dance more lightly. I felt myself more than mortal, holding this loveliest of creatures in my arms, flying, with her as rapidly as the wind, till I lost sight of every other object; and O Wilhelm, I vowed at that moment, that a maiden whom I loved, or for whom I felt the slightest attachment, never, never should waltz with any one else but with me, if I went to perdition for it!--you will understand this. We took a few turns in the room to recover our breath. Charlotte sat down, and felt refreshed by partaking of some oranges which I had had secured,--the only ones that had been left; but at every slice which, from politeness, she offered to her neighbours, I felt as though a dagger went through my heart. We were the second couple in the third country dance. As we were going down (and Heaven knows with what ecstasy I gazed at her arms and eyes, beaming with the sweetest feeling of pure and genuine enjoyment), we passed a lady whom I had noticed for her charming expression of countenance; although she was no longer young. She looked at Charlotte with a smile, then, holding up her finger in a threatening attitude, repeated twice in a very significant tone of voice the name of "Albert." "Who is Albert," said I to Charlotte, "if it is not impertinent to ask?" She was about to answer, when we were obliged to separate, in order to execute a figure in the dance; and, as we crossed over again in front of each other, I perceived she looked somewhat pensive. "Why need I conceal it from you?" she said, as she gave me her hand for the promenade. "Albert is a worthy man, to whom I am engaged." Now, there was nothing new to me in this (for the girls had told me of it on the way); but it was so far new that I had not thought of it in connection with her whom, in so short a time, I had learned to prize so highly. Enough, I became confused, got out in the figure, and occasioned general confusion; so that it required all Charlotte's presence of mind to set me right by pulling and pushing me into my proper place. The dance was not yet finished when the lightning which had for some time been seen in the horizon, and which I had asserted to proceed entirely from heat, grew more violent; and the thunder was heard above the music. When any distress or terror surprises us in the midst of our amusements, it naturally makes a deeper impression than at other times, either because the contrast makes us more keenly susceptible, or rather perhaps because our senses are then more open to impressions, and the shock is consequently stronger. To this cause I must ascribe the fright and shrieks of the ladies. One sagaciously sat down in a corner with her back to the window, and held her fingers to her ears; a second knelt down before her, and hid her face in her lap; a third threw herself between them, and embraced her sister with a thousand tears; some insisted on going home; others, unconscious of their actions, wanted sufficient presence of mind to repress the impertinence of their young partners, who sought to direct to themselves those sighs which the lips of our agitated beauties intended for heaven. Some of the gentlemen had gone down-stairs to smoke a quiet cigar, and the rest of the company gladly embraced a happy suggestion of the hostess to retire into another room which was provided with shutters and curtains. We had hardly got there, when Charlotte placed the chairs in a circle; and, when the company had sat down in compliance with her request, she forthwith proposed a round game. I noticed some of the company prepare their mouths and draw themselves up at the prospect of some agreeable forfeit. "Let us play at counting," said Charlotte. "Now, pay attention: I shall go round the circle from right to left; and each person is to count, one after the other, the number that comes to him, and must count fast; whoever stops or mistakes is to have a box on the ear, and so on, till we have counted a thousand." It was delightful to see the fun. She went round the circle with upraised arm. "One," said the first; "two," the second; "three," the third; and so on, till Charlotte went faster and faster. One made a mistake, instantly a box on the ear; and, amid the laughter that ensued, came another box; and so on, faster and faster. I myself came in for two. I fancied they were harder than the rest, and felt quite delighted. A general laughter and confusion put an end to the game long before we had counted as far as a thousand. The party broke up into little separate knots: the storm had ceased, and I followed Charlotte into the ballroom. On the way she said, "The game banished their fears of the storm." I could make no reply. "I myself," she continued, "was as much frightened as any of them; but by affecting courage, to keep up the spirits of the others, I forgot my apprehensions." We went to the window. It was still thundering at a distance: a soft rain was pouring down over the country, and filled the air around us with delicious odours. Charlotte leaned forward on her arm; her eyes wandered over the scene; she raised them to the sky, and then turned them upon me; they were moistened with tears; she placed her hand on mine and said, "Klopstock!" at once I remembered the magnificent ode which was in her thoughts: I felt oppressed with the weight of my sensations, and sank under them. It was more than I could bear. I bent over her hand, kissed it in a stream of delicious tears, and again looked up to her eyes. Divine Klopstock! why didst thou not see thy apotheosis in those eyes? And thy name so often profaned, would that I never heard it repeated! JUNE 19. I no longer remember where I stopped in my narrative: I only know it was two in the morning when I went to bed; and if you had been with me, that I might have talked instead of writing to you, I should, in all probability, have kept you up till daylight. I think I have not yet related what happened as we rode home from the ball, nor have I time to tell you now. It was a most magnificent sunrise: the whole country was refreshed, and the rain fell drop by drop from the trees in the forest. Our companions were asleep. Charlotte asked me if I did not wish to sleep also, and begged of me not to make any ceremony on her account. Looking steadfastly at her, I answered, "As long as I see those eyes open, there is no fear of my falling asleep." We both continued awake till we reached her door. The maid opened it softly, and assured her, in answer to her inquiries, that her father and the children were well, and still sleeping. I left her asking permission to visit her in the course of the day. She consented, and I went, and, since that time, sun, moon, and stars may pursue their course: I know not whether it is day or night; the whole world is nothing to me. JUNE 21. My days are as happy as those reserved by God for his elect; and, whatever be my fate hereafter, I can never say that I have not tasted joy,--the purest joy of life. You know Walheim. I am now completely settled there. In that spot I am only half a league from Charlotte; and there I enjoy myself, and taste all the pleasure which can fall to the lot of man. Little did I imagine, when I selected Walheim for my pedestrian excursions, that all heaven lay so near it. How often in my wanderings from the hillside or from the meadows across the river, have I beheld this hunting-lodge, which now contains within it all the joy of my heart! I have often, my dear Wilhelm, reflected on the eagerness men feel to wander and make new discoveries, and upon that secret impulse which afterward inclines them to return to their narrow circle, conform to the laws of custom, and embarrass themselves no longer with what passes around them. It is so strange how, when I came here first, and gazed upon that lovely valley from the hillside, I felt charmed with the entire scene surrounding me. The little wood opposite--how delightful to sit under its shade! How fine the view from that point of rock! Then, that delightful chain of hills, and the exquisite valleys at their feet! Could I but wander and lose myself amongst them! I went, and returned without finding what I wished. Distance, my friend, is like futurity. A dim vastness is spread before our souls: the perceptions of our mind are as obscure as those of our vision; and we desire earnestly to surrender up our whole being, that it may be filled with the complete and perfect bliss of one glorious emotion. But alas! when we have attained our object, when the distant there becomes the present here, all is changed: we are as poor and circumscribed as ever, and our souls still languish for unattainable happiness. So does the restless traveller pant for his native soil, and find in his own cottage, in the arms of his wife, in the affections of his children, and in the labour necessary for their support, that happiness which he had sought in vain through the wide world. When, in the morning at sunrise, I go out to Walheim, and with my own hands gather in the garden the pease which are to serve for my dinner, when I sit down to shell them, and read my Homer during the intervals, and then, selecting a saucepan from the kitchen, fetch my own butter, put my mess on the fire, cover it up, and sit down to stir it as occasion requires, I figure to myself the illustrious suitors of Penelope, killing, dressing, and preparing their own oxen and swine. Nothing fills me with a more pure and genuine sense of happiness than those traits of patriarchal life which, thank Heaven! I can imitate without affectation. Happy is it, indeed, for me that my heart is capable of feeling the same simple and innocent pleasure as the peasant whose table is covered with food of his own rearing, and who not only enjoys his meal, but remembers with delight the happy days and sunny mornings when he planted it, the soft evenings when he watered it, and the pleasure he experienced in watching its daily growth. JUNE 29. The day before yesterday, the physician came from the town to pay a visit to the judge. He found me on the floor playing with Charlotte's children. Some of them were scrambling over me, and others romped with me; and, as I caught and tickled them, they made a great noise. The doctor is a formal sort of personage: he adjusts the plaits of his ruffles, and continually settles his frill whilst he is talking to you; and he thought my conduct beneath the dignity of a sensible man. I could perceive this by his countenance. But I did not suffer myself to be disturbed. I allowed him to continue his wise conversation, whilst I rebuilt the children's card houses for them as fast as they threw them down. He went about the town afterward, complaining that the judge's children were spoiled enough before, but that now Werther was completely ruining them. Yes, my dear Wilhelm, nothing on this earth affects my heart so much as children. When I look on at their doings; when I mark in the little creatures the seeds of all those virtues and qualities which they will one day find so indispensable; when I behold in the obstinate all the future firmness and constancy of a noble character; in the capricious, that levity and gaiety of temper which will carry them lightly over the dangers and troubles of life, their whole nature simple and unpolluted,--then I call to mind the golden words of the Great Teacher of mankind, "Unless ye become like one of these!" And now, my friend, these children, who are our equals, whom we ought to consider as our models, we treat them as though they were our subjects. They are allowed no will of their own. And have we, then, none ourselves? Whence comes our exclusive right? Is it because we are older and more experienced? Great God! from the height of thy heaven thou beholdest great children and little children, and no others; and thy Son has long since declared which afford thee greatest pleasure. But they believe in him, and hear him not,--that, too, is an old story; and they train their children after their own image, etc. Adieu, Wilhelm: I will not further bewilder myself with this subject. JULY 1. The consolation Charlotte can bring to an invalid I experience from my own heart, which suffers more from her absence than many a poor creature lingering on a bed of sickness. She is gone to spend a few days in the town with a very worthy woman, who is given over by the physicians, and wishes to have Charlotte near her in her last moments. I accompanied her last week on a visit to the Vicar of S--, a small village in the mountains, about a league hence. We arrived about four o'clock: Charlotte had taken her little sister with her. When we entered the vicarage court, we found the good old man sitting on a bench before the door, under the shade of two large walnut-trees. At the sight of Charlotte he seemed to gain new life, rose, forgot his stick, and ventured to walk toward her. She ran to him, and made him sit down again; then, placing herself by his side, she gave him a number of messages from her father, and then caught up his youngest child, a dirty, ugly little thing, the joy of his old age, and kissed it. I wish you could have witnessed her attention to this old man,--how she raised her voice on account of his deafness; how she told him of healthy young people, who had been carried off when it was least expected; praised the virtues of Carlsbad, and commended his determination to spend the ensuing summer there; and assured him that he looked better and stronger than he did when she saw him last. I, in the meantime, paid attention to his good lady. The old man seemed quite in spirits; and as I could not help admiring the beauty of the walnut-trees, which formed such an agreeable shade over our heads, he began, though with some little difficulty, to tell us their history. "As to the oldest," said he, "we do not know who planted it,--some say one clergyman, and some another: but the younger one, there behind us, is exactly the age of my wife, fifty years old next October; her father planted it in the morning, and in the evening she came into the world. My wife's father was my predecessor here, and I cannot tell you how fond he was of that tree; and it is fully as dear to me. Under the shade of that very tree, upon a log of wood, my wife was seated knitting, when I, a poor student, came into this court for the first time, just seven and twenty years ago." Charlotte inquired for his daughter. He said she was gone with Herr Schmidt to the meadows, and was with the haymakers. The old man then resumed his story, and told us how his predecessor had taken a fancy to him, as had his daughter likewise; and how he had become first his curate, and subsequently his successor. He had scarcely finished his story when his daughter returned through the garden, accompanied by the above-mentioned Herr Schmidt. She welcomed Charlotte affectionately, and I confess I was much taken with her appearance. She was a lively-looking, good-humoured brunette, quite competent to amuse one for a short time in the country. Her lover (for such Herr Schmidt evidently appeared to be) was a polite, reserved personage, and would not join our conversation, notwithstanding all Charlotte's endeavours to draw him out. I was much annoyed at observing, by his countenance, that his silence did not arise from want of talent, but from caprice and ill-humour. This subsequently became very evident, when we set out to take a walk, and Frederica joining Charlotte, with whom I was talking, the worthy gentleman's face, which was naturally rather sombre, became so dark and angry that Charlotte was obliged to touch my arm, and remind me that I was talking too much to Frederica. Nothing distresses me more than to see men torment each other; particularly when in the flower of their age, in the very season of pleasure, they waste their few short days of sunshine in quarrels and disputes, and only perceive their error when it is too late to repair it. This thought dwelt upon my mind; and in the evening, when we returned to the vicar's, and were sitting round the table with our bread end milk, the conversation turned on the joys and sorrows of the world, I could not resist the temptation to inveigh bitterly against ill-humour. "We are apt," said I, "to complain, but--with very little cause, that our happy days are few, and our evil days many. If our hearts were always disposed to receive the benefits Heaven sends us, we should acquire strength to support evil when it comes." "But," observed the vicar's wife, "we cannot always command our tempers, so much depends upon the constitution: when the body suffers, the mind is ill at ease." "I acknowledge that," I continued; "but we must consider such a disposition in the light of a disease, and inquire whether there is no remedy for it." "I should be glad to hear one," said Charlotte: "at least, I think very much depends upon ourselves; I know it is so with me. When anything annoys me, and disturbs my temper, I hasten into the garden, hum a couple of country dances, and it is all right with me directly." "That is what I meant," I replied; "ill-humour resembles indolence: it is natural to us; but if once we have courage to exert ourselves, we find our work run fresh from our hands, and we experience in the activity from which we shrank a real enjoyment." Frederica listened very attentively: and the young man objected, that we were not masters of ourselves, and still less so of our feelings. "The question is about a disagreeable feeling," I added, "from which every one would willingly escape, but none know their own power without trial. Invalids are glad to consult physicians, and submit to the most scrupulous regimen, the most nauseous medicines, in order to recover their health." I observed that the good old man inclined his head, and exerted himself to hear our discourse; so I raised my voice, and addressed myself directly to him. "We preach against a great many crimes," I observed, "but I never remember a

corner

How many times the word 'corner' appears in the text?

will be no wiser at the end of my letter than you were at the beginning. Attend, then, and I will compel myself to give you the details. I mentioned to you the other day that I had become acquainted with S--, the district judge, and that he had invited me to go and visit him in his retirement, or rather in his little kingdom. But I neglected going, and perhaps should never have gone, if chance had not discovered to me the treasure which lay concealed in that retired spot. Some of our young people had proposed giving a ball in the country, at which I consented to be present. I offered my hand for the evening to a pretty and agreeable, but rather commonplace, sort of girl from the immediate neighbourhood; and it was agreed that I should engage a carriage, and call upon Charlotte, with my partner and her aunt, to convey them to the ball. My companion informed me, as we drove along through the park to the hunting-lodge, that I should make the acquaintance of a very charming young lady. "Take care," added the aunt, "that you do not lose your heart." "Why?" said I. "Because she is already engaged to a very worthy man," she replied, "who is gone to settle his affairs upon the death of his father, and will succeed to a very considerable inheritance." This information possessed no interest for me. When we arrived at the gate, the sun was setting behind the tops of the mountains. The atmosphere was heavy; and the ladies expressed their fears of an approaching storm, as masses of low black clouds were gathering in the horizon. I relieved their anxieties by pretending to be weather-wise, although I myself had some apprehensions lest our pleasure should be interrupted. I alighted; and a maid came to the door, and requested us to wait a moment for her mistress. I walked across the court to a well-built house, and, ascending the flight of steps in front, opened the door, and saw before me the most charming spectacle I had ever witnessed. Six children, from eleven to two years old, were running about the hall, and surrounding a lady of middle height, with a lovely figure, dressed in a robe of simple white, trimmed with pink ribbons. She was holding a rye loaf in her hand, and was cutting slices for the little ones all around, in proportion to their age and appetite. She performed her task in a graceful and affectionate manner; each claimant awaiting his turn with outstretched hands, and boisterously shouting his thanks. Some of them ran away at once, to enjoy their evening meal; whilst others, of a gentler disposition, retired to the courtyard to see the strangers, and to survey the carriage in which their Charlotte was to drive away. "Pray forgive me for giving you the trouble to come for me, and for keeping the ladies waiting: but dressing, and arranging some household duties before I leave, had made me forget my children's supper; and they do not like to take it from any one but me." I uttered some indifferent compliment: but my whole soul was absorbed by her air, her voice, her manner; and I had scarcely recovered myself when she ran into her room to fetch her gloves and fan. The young ones threw inquiring glances at me from a distance; whilst I approached the youngest, a most delicious little creature. He drew back; and Charlotte, entering at the very moment, said, "Louis, shake hands with your cousin." The little fellow obeyed willingly; and I could not resist giving him a hearty kiss, notwithstanding his rather dirty face. "Cousin," said I to Charlotte, as I handed her down, "do you think I deserve the happiness of being related to you?" She replied, with a ready smile, "Oh! I have such a number of cousins, that I should be sorry if you were the most undeserving of them." In taking leave, she desired her next sister, Sophy, a girl about eleven years old, to take great care of the children, and to say good-bye to papa for her when he came home from his ride. She enjoined to the little ones to obey their sister Sophy as they would herself, upon which some promised that they would; but a little fair-haired girl, about six years old, looked discontented, and said, "But Sophy is not you, Charlotte; and we like you best." The two eldest boys had clambered up the carriage; and, at my request, she permitted them to accompany us a little way through the forest, upon their promising to sit very still, and hold fast. We were hardly seated, and the ladies had scarcely exchanged compliments, making the usual remarks upon each other's dress, and upon the company they expected to meet, when Charlotte stopped the carriage, and made her brothers get down. They insisted upon kissing her hands once more; which the eldest did with all the tenderness of a youth of fifteen, but the other in a lighter and more careless manner. She desired them again to give her love to the children, and we drove off. The aunt inquired of Charlotte whether she had finished the book she had last sent her. "No," said Charlotte; "I did not like it: you can have it again. And the one before was not much better." I was surprised, upon asking the title, to hear that it was ____. (We feel obliged to suppress the passage in the letter, to prevent any one from feeling aggrieved; although no author need pay much attention to the opinion of a mere girl, or that of an unsteady young man.) I found penetration and character in everything she said: every expression seemed to brighten her features with new charms,--with new rays of genius,--which unfolded by degrees, as she felt herself understood. "When I was younger," she observed, "I loved nothing so much as romances. Nothing could equal my delight when, on some holiday, I could settle down quietly in a corner, and enter with my whole heart and soul into the joys or sorrows of some fictitious Leonora. I do not deny that they even possess some charms for me yet. But I read so seldom, that I prefer books suited exactly to my taste. And I like those authors best whose scenes describe my own situation in life,--and the friends who are about me, whose stories touch me with interest, from resembling my own homely existence,--which, without being absolutely paradise, is, on the whole, a source of indescribable happiness." I endeavoured to conceal the emotion which these words occasioned, but it was of slight avail; for, when she had expressed so truly her opinion of "The Vicar of Wakefield," and of other works, the names of which I omit (Though the names are omitted, yet the authors mentioned deserve Charlotte's approbation, and will feel it in their hearts when they read this passage. It concerns no other person.), I could no longer contain myself, but gave full utterance to what I thought of it: and it was not until Charlotte had addressed herself to the two other ladies, that I remembered their presence, and observed them sitting mute with astonishment. The aunt looked at me several times with an air of raillery, which, however, I did not at all mind. We talked of the pleasures of dancing. "If it is a fault to love it," said Charlotte, "I am ready to confess that I prize it above all other amusements. If anything disturbs me, I go to the piano, play an air to which I have danced, and all goes right again directly." You, who know me, can fancy how steadfastly I gazed upon her rich dark eyes during these remarks, how my very soul gloated over her warm lips and fresh, glowing cheeks, how I became quite lost in the delightful meaning of her words, so much so, that I scarcely heard the actual expressions. In short, I alighted from the carriage like a person in a dream, and was so lost to the dim world around me, that I scarcely heard the music which resounded from the illuminated ballroom. The two Messrs. Andran and a certain N. N. (I cannot trouble myself with the names), who were the aunt's and Charlotte's partners, received us at the carriage-door, and took possession of their ladies, whilst I followed with mine. We commenced with a minuet. I led out one lady after another, and precisely those who were the most disagreeable could not bring themselves to leave off. Charlotte and her partner began an English country dance, and you must imagine my delight when it was their turn to dance the figure with us. You should see Charlotte dance. She dances with her whole heart and soul: her figure is all harmony, elegance, and grace, as if she were conscious of nothing else, and had no other thought or feeling; and, doubtless, for the moment, every other sensation is extinct. She was engaged for the second country dance, but promised me the third, and assured me, with the most agreeable freedom, that she was very fond of waltzing. "It is the custom here," she said, "for the previous partners to waltz together; but my partner is an indifferent waltzer, and will feel delighted if I save him the trouble. Your partner is not allowed to waltz, and, indeed, is equally incapable: but I observed during the country dance that you waltz well; so, if you will waltz with me, I beg you would propose it to my partner, and I will propose it to yours." We agreed, and it was arranged that our partners should mutually entertain each other. We set off, and, at first, delighted ourselves with the usual graceful motions of the arms. With what grace, with what ease, she moved! When the waltz commenced, and the dancers whirled around each other in the giddy maze, there was some confusion, owing to the incapacity of some of the dancers. We judiciously remained still, allowing the others to weary themselves; and, when the awkward dancers had withdrawn, we joined in, and kept it up famously together with one other couple,--Andran and his partner. Never did I dance more lightly. I felt myself more than mortal, holding this loveliest of creatures in my arms, flying, with her as rapidly as the wind, till I lost sight of every other object; and O Wilhelm, I vowed at that moment, that a maiden whom I loved, or for whom I felt the slightest attachment, never, never should waltz with any one else but with me, if I went to perdition for it!--you will understand this. We took a few turns in the room to recover our breath. Charlotte sat down, and felt refreshed by partaking of some oranges which I had had secured,--the only ones that had been left; but at every slice which, from politeness, she offered to her neighbours, I felt as though a dagger went through my heart. We were the second couple in the third country dance. As we were going down (and Heaven knows with what ecstasy I gazed at her arms and eyes, beaming with the sweetest feeling of pure and genuine enjoyment), we passed a lady whom I had noticed for her charming expression of countenance; although she was no longer young. She looked at Charlotte with a smile, then, holding up her finger in a threatening attitude, repeated twice in a very significant tone of voice the name of "Albert." "Who is Albert," said I to Charlotte, "if it is not impertinent to ask?" She was about to answer, when we were obliged to separate, in order to execute a figure in the dance; and, as we crossed over again in front of each other, I perceived she looked somewhat pensive. "Why need I conceal it from you?" she said, as she gave me her hand for the promenade. "Albert is a worthy man, to whom I am engaged." Now, there was nothing new to me in this (for the girls had told me of it on the way); but it was so far new that I had not thought of it in connection with her whom, in so short a time, I had learned to prize so highly. Enough, I became confused, got out in the figure, and occasioned general confusion; so that it required all Charlotte's presence of mind to set me right by pulling and pushing me into my proper place. The dance was not yet finished when the lightning which had for some time been seen in the horizon, and which I had asserted to proceed entirely from heat, grew more violent; and the thunder was heard above the music. When any distress or terror surprises us in the midst of our amusements, it naturally makes a deeper impression than at other times, either because the contrast makes us more keenly susceptible, or rather perhaps because our senses are then more open to impressions, and the shock is consequently stronger. To this cause I must ascribe the fright and shrieks of the ladies. One sagaciously sat down in a corner with her back to the window, and held her fingers to her ears; a second knelt down before her, and hid her face in her lap; a third threw herself between them, and embraced her sister with a thousand tears; some insisted on going home; others, unconscious of their actions, wanted sufficient presence of mind to repress the impertinence of their young partners, who sought to direct to themselves those sighs which the lips of our agitated beauties intended for heaven. Some of the gentlemen had gone down-stairs to smoke a quiet cigar, and the rest of the company gladly embraced a happy suggestion of the hostess to retire into another room which was provided with shutters and curtains. We had hardly got there, when Charlotte placed the chairs in a circle; and, when the company had sat down in compliance with her request, she forthwith proposed a round game. I noticed some of the company prepare their mouths and draw themselves up at the prospect of some agreeable forfeit. "Let us play at counting," said Charlotte. "Now, pay attention: I shall go round the circle from right to left; and each person is to count, one after the other, the number that comes to him, and must count fast; whoever stops or mistakes is to have a box on the ear, and so on, till we have counted a thousand." It was delightful to see the fun. She went round the circle with upraised arm. "One," said the first; "two," the second; "three," the third; and so on, till Charlotte went faster and faster. One made a mistake, instantly a box on the ear; and, amid the laughter that ensued, came another box; and so on, faster and faster. I myself came in for two. I fancied they were harder than the rest, and felt quite delighted. A general laughter and confusion put an end to the game long before we had counted as far as a thousand. The party broke up into little separate knots: the storm had ceased, and I followed Charlotte into the ballroom. On the way she said, "The game banished their fears of the storm." I could make no reply. "I myself," she continued, "was as much frightened as any of them; but by affecting courage, to keep up the spirits of the others, I forgot my apprehensions." We went to the window. It was still thundering at a distance: a soft rain was pouring down over the country, and filled the air around us with delicious odours. Charlotte leaned forward on her arm; her eyes wandered over the scene; she raised them to the sky, and then turned them upon me; they were moistened with tears; she placed her hand on mine and said, "Klopstock!" at once I remembered the magnificent ode which was in her thoughts: I felt oppressed with the weight of my sensations, and sank under them. It was more than I could bear. I bent over her hand, kissed it in a stream of delicious tears, and again looked up to her eyes. Divine Klopstock! why didst thou not see thy apotheosis in those eyes? And thy name so often profaned, would that I never heard it repeated! JUNE 19. I no longer remember where I stopped in my narrative: I only know it was two in the morning when I went to bed; and if you had been with me, that I might have talked instead of writing to you, I should, in all probability, have kept you up till daylight. I think I have not yet related what happened as we rode home from the ball, nor have I time to tell you now. It was a most magnificent sunrise: the whole country was refreshed, and the rain fell drop by drop from the trees in the forest. Our companions were asleep. Charlotte asked me if I did not wish to sleep also, and begged of me not to make any ceremony on her account. Looking steadfastly at her, I answered, "As long as I see those eyes open, there is no fear of my falling asleep." We both continued awake till we reached her door. The maid opened it softly, and assured her, in answer to her inquiries, that her father and the children were well, and still sleeping. I left her asking permission to visit her in the course of the day. She consented, and I went, and, since that time, sun, moon, and stars may pursue their course: I know not whether it is day or night; the whole world is nothing to me. JUNE 21. My days are as happy as those reserved by God for his elect; and, whatever be my fate hereafter, I can never say that I have not tasted joy,--the purest joy of life. You know Walheim. I am now completely settled there. In that spot I am only half a league from Charlotte; and there I enjoy myself, and taste all the pleasure which can fall to the lot of man. Little did I imagine, when I selected Walheim for my pedestrian excursions, that all heaven lay so near it. How often in my wanderings from the hillside or from the meadows across the river, have I beheld this hunting-lodge, which now contains within it all the joy of my heart! I have often, my dear Wilhelm, reflected on the eagerness men feel to wander and make new discoveries, and upon that secret impulse which afterward inclines them to return to their narrow circle, conform to the laws of custom, and embarrass themselves no longer with what passes around them. It is so strange how, when I came here first, and gazed upon that lovely valley from the hillside, I felt charmed with the entire scene surrounding me. The little wood opposite--how delightful to sit under its shade! How fine the view from that point of rock! Then, that delightful chain of hills, and the exquisite valleys at their feet! Could I but wander and lose myself amongst them! I went, and returned without finding what I wished. Distance, my friend, is like futurity. A dim vastness is spread before our souls: the perceptions of our mind are as obscure as those of our vision; and we desire earnestly to surrender up our whole being, that it may be filled with the complete and perfect bliss of one glorious emotion. But alas! when we have attained our object, when the distant there becomes the present here, all is changed: we are as poor and circumscribed as ever, and our souls still languish for unattainable happiness. So does the restless traveller pant for his native soil, and find in his own cottage, in the arms of his wife, in the affections of his children, and in the labour necessary for their support, that happiness which he had sought in vain through the wide world. When, in the morning at sunrise, I go out to Walheim, and with my own hands gather in the garden the pease which are to serve for my dinner, when I sit down to shell them, and read my Homer during the intervals, and then, selecting a saucepan from the kitchen, fetch my own butter, put my mess on the fire, cover it up, and sit down to stir it as occasion requires, I figure to myself the illustrious suitors of Penelope, killing, dressing, and preparing their own oxen and swine. Nothing fills me with a more pure and genuine sense of happiness than those traits of patriarchal life which, thank Heaven! I can imitate without affectation. Happy is it, indeed, for me that my heart is capable of feeling the same simple and innocent pleasure as the peasant whose table is covered with food of his own rearing, and who not only enjoys his meal, but remembers with delight the happy days and sunny mornings when he planted it, the soft evenings when he watered it, and the pleasure he experienced in watching its daily growth. JUNE 29. The day before yesterday, the physician came from the town to pay a visit to the judge. He found me on the floor playing with Charlotte's children. Some of them were scrambling over me, and others romped with me; and, as I caught and tickled them, they made a great noise. The doctor is a formal sort of personage: he adjusts the plaits of his ruffles, and continually settles his frill whilst he is talking to you; and he thought my conduct beneath the dignity of a sensible man. I could perceive this by his countenance. But I did not suffer myself to be disturbed. I allowed him to continue his wise conversation, whilst I rebuilt the children's card houses for them as fast as they threw them down. He went about the town afterward, complaining that the judge's children were spoiled enough before, but that now Werther was completely ruining them. Yes, my dear Wilhelm, nothing on this earth affects my heart so much as children. When I look on at their doings; when I mark in the little creatures the seeds of all those virtues and qualities which they will one day find so indispensable; when I behold in the obstinate all the future firmness and constancy of a noble character; in the capricious, that levity and gaiety of temper which will carry them lightly over the dangers and troubles of life, their whole nature simple and unpolluted,--then I call to mind the golden words of the Great Teacher of mankind, "Unless ye become like one of these!" And now, my friend, these children, who are our equals, whom we ought to consider as our models, we treat them as though they were our subjects. They are allowed no will of their own. And have we, then, none ourselves? Whence comes our exclusive right? Is it because we are older and more experienced? Great God! from the height of thy heaven thou beholdest great children and little children, and no others; and thy Son has long since declared which afford thee greatest pleasure. But they believe in him, and hear him not,--that, too, is an old story; and they train their children after their own image, etc. Adieu, Wilhelm: I will not further bewilder myself with this subject. JULY 1. The consolation Charlotte can bring to an invalid I experience from my own heart, which suffers more from her absence than many a poor creature lingering on a bed of sickness. She is gone to spend a few days in the town with a very worthy woman, who is given over by the physicians, and wishes to have Charlotte near her in her last moments. I accompanied her last week on a visit to the Vicar of S--, a small village in the mountains, about a league hence. We arrived about four o'clock: Charlotte had taken her little sister with her. When we entered the vicarage court, we found the good old man sitting on a bench before the door, under the shade of two large walnut-trees. At the sight of Charlotte he seemed to gain new life, rose, forgot his stick, and ventured to walk toward her. She ran to him, and made him sit down again; then, placing herself by his side, she gave him a number of messages from her father, and then caught up his youngest child, a dirty, ugly little thing, the joy of his old age, and kissed it. I wish you could have witnessed her attention to this old man,--how she raised her voice on account of his deafness; how she told him of healthy young people, who had been carried off when it was least expected; praised the virtues of Carlsbad, and commended his determination to spend the ensuing summer there; and assured him that he looked better and stronger than he did when she saw him last. I, in the meantime, paid attention to his good lady. The old man seemed quite in spirits; and as I could not help admiring the beauty of the walnut-trees, which formed such an agreeable shade over our heads, he began, though with some little difficulty, to tell us their history. "As to the oldest," said he, "we do not know who planted it,--some say one clergyman, and some another: but the younger one, there behind us, is exactly the age of my wife, fifty years old next October; her father planted it in the morning, and in the evening she came into the world. My wife's father was my predecessor here, and I cannot tell you how fond he was of that tree; and it is fully as dear to me. Under the shade of that very tree, upon a log of wood, my wife was seated knitting, when I, a poor student, came into this court for the first time, just seven and twenty years ago." Charlotte inquired for his daughter. He said she was gone with Herr Schmidt to the meadows, and was with the haymakers. The old man then resumed his story, and told us how his predecessor had taken a fancy to him, as had his daughter likewise; and how he had become first his curate, and subsequently his successor. He had scarcely finished his story when his daughter returned through the garden, accompanied by the above-mentioned Herr Schmidt. She welcomed Charlotte affectionately, and I confess I was much taken with her appearance. She was a lively-looking, good-humoured brunette, quite competent to amuse one for a short time in the country. Her lover (for such Herr Schmidt evidently appeared to be) was a polite, reserved personage, and would not join our conversation, notwithstanding all Charlotte's endeavours to draw him out. I was much annoyed at observing, by his countenance, that his silence did not arise from want of talent, but from caprice and ill-humour. This subsequently became very evident, when we set out to take a walk, and Frederica joining Charlotte, with whom I was talking, the worthy gentleman's face, which was naturally rather sombre, became so dark and angry that Charlotte was obliged to touch my arm, and remind me that I was talking too much to Frederica. Nothing distresses me more than to see men torment each other; particularly when in the flower of their age, in the very season of pleasure, they waste their few short days of sunshine in quarrels and disputes, and only perceive their error when it is too late to repair it. This thought dwelt upon my mind; and in the evening, when we returned to the vicar's, and were sitting round the table with our bread end milk, the conversation turned on the joys and sorrows of the world, I could not resist the temptation to inveigh bitterly against ill-humour. "We are apt," said I, "to complain, but--with very little cause, that our happy days are few, and our evil days many. If our hearts were always disposed to receive the benefits Heaven sends us, we should acquire strength to support evil when it comes." "But," observed the vicar's wife, "we cannot always command our tempers, so much depends upon the constitution: when the body suffers, the mind is ill at ease." "I acknowledge that," I continued; "but we must consider such a disposition in the light of a disease, and inquire whether there is no remedy for it." "I should be glad to hear one," said Charlotte: "at least, I think very much depends upon ourselves; I know it is so with me. When anything annoys me, and disturbs my temper, I hasten into the garden, hum a couple of country dances, and it is all right with me directly." "That is what I meant," I replied; "ill-humour resembles indolence: it is natural to us; but if once we have courage to exert ourselves, we find our work run fresh from our hands, and we experience in the activity from which we shrank a real enjoyment." Frederica listened very attentively: and the young man objected, that we were not masters of ourselves, and still less so of our feelings. "The question is about a disagreeable feeling," I added, "from which every one would willingly escape, but none know their own power without trial. Invalids are glad to consult physicians, and submit to the most scrupulous regimen, the most nauseous medicines, in order to recover their health." I observed that the good old man inclined his head, and exerted himself to hear our discourse; so I raised my voice, and addressed myself directly to him. "We preach against a great many crimes," I observed, "but I never remember a

thousand

How many times the word 'thousand' appears in the text?

will be no wiser at the end of my letter than you were at the beginning. Attend, then, and I will compel myself to give you the details. I mentioned to you the other day that I had become acquainted with S--, the district judge, and that he had invited me to go and visit him in his retirement, or rather in his little kingdom. But I neglected going, and perhaps should never have gone, if chance had not discovered to me the treasure which lay concealed in that retired spot. Some of our young people had proposed giving a ball in the country, at which I consented to be present. I offered my hand for the evening to a pretty and agreeable, but rather commonplace, sort of girl from the immediate neighbourhood; and it was agreed that I should engage a carriage, and call upon Charlotte, with my partner and her aunt, to convey them to the ball. My companion informed me, as we drove along through the park to the hunting-lodge, that I should make the acquaintance of a very charming young lady. "Take care," added the aunt, "that you do not lose your heart." "Why?" said I. "Because she is already engaged to a very worthy man," she replied, "who is gone to settle his affairs upon the death of his father, and will succeed to a very considerable inheritance." This information possessed no interest for me. When we arrived at the gate, the sun was setting behind the tops of the mountains. The atmosphere was heavy; and the ladies expressed their fears of an approaching storm, as masses of low black clouds were gathering in the horizon. I relieved their anxieties by pretending to be weather-wise, although I myself had some apprehensions lest our pleasure should be interrupted. I alighted; and a maid came to the door, and requested us to wait a moment for her mistress. I walked across the court to a well-built house, and, ascending the flight of steps in front, opened the door, and saw before me the most charming spectacle I had ever witnessed. Six children, from eleven to two years old, were running about the hall, and surrounding a lady of middle height, with a lovely figure, dressed in a robe of simple white, trimmed with pink ribbons. She was holding a rye loaf in her hand, and was cutting slices for the little ones all around, in proportion to their age and appetite. She performed her task in a graceful and affectionate manner; each claimant awaiting his turn with outstretched hands, and boisterously shouting his thanks. Some of them ran away at once, to enjoy their evening meal; whilst others, of a gentler disposition, retired to the courtyard to see the strangers, and to survey the carriage in which their Charlotte was to drive away. "Pray forgive me for giving you the trouble to come for me, and for keeping the ladies waiting: but dressing, and arranging some household duties before I leave, had made me forget my children's supper; and they do not like to take it from any one but me." I uttered some indifferent compliment: but my whole soul was absorbed by her air, her voice, her manner; and I had scarcely recovered myself when she ran into her room to fetch her gloves and fan. The young ones threw inquiring glances at me from a distance; whilst I approached the youngest, a most delicious little creature. He drew back; and Charlotte, entering at the very moment, said, "Louis, shake hands with your cousin." The little fellow obeyed willingly; and I could not resist giving him a hearty kiss, notwithstanding his rather dirty face. "Cousin," said I to Charlotte, as I handed her down, "do you think I deserve the happiness of being related to you?" She replied, with a ready smile, "Oh! I have such a number of cousins, that I should be sorry if you were the most undeserving of them." In taking leave, she desired her next sister, Sophy, a girl about eleven years old, to take great care of the children, and to say good-bye to papa for her when he came home from his ride. She enjoined to the little ones to obey their sister Sophy as they would herself, upon which some promised that they would; but a little fair-haired girl, about six years old, looked discontented, and said, "But Sophy is not you, Charlotte; and we like you best." The two eldest boys had clambered up the carriage; and, at my request, she permitted them to accompany us a little way through the forest, upon their promising to sit very still, and hold fast. We were hardly seated, and the ladies had scarcely exchanged compliments, making the usual remarks upon each other's dress, and upon the company they expected to meet, when Charlotte stopped the carriage, and made her brothers get down. They insisted upon kissing her hands once more; which the eldest did with all the tenderness of a youth of fifteen, but the other in a lighter and more careless manner. She desired them again to give her love to the children, and we drove off. The aunt inquired of Charlotte whether she had finished the book she had last sent her. "No," said Charlotte; "I did not like it: you can have it again. And the one before was not much better." I was surprised, upon asking the title, to hear that it was ____. (We feel obliged to suppress the passage in the letter, to prevent any one from feeling aggrieved; although no author need pay much attention to the opinion of a mere girl, or that of an unsteady young man.) I found penetration and character in everything she said: every expression seemed to brighten her features with new charms,--with new rays of genius,--which unfolded by degrees, as she felt herself understood. "When I was younger," she observed, "I loved nothing so much as romances. Nothing could equal my delight when, on some holiday, I could settle down quietly in a corner, and enter with my whole heart and soul into the joys or sorrows of some fictitious Leonora. I do not deny that they even possess some charms for me yet. But I read so seldom, that I prefer books suited exactly to my taste. And I like those authors best whose scenes describe my own situation in life,--and the friends who are about me, whose stories touch me with interest, from resembling my own homely existence,--which, without being absolutely paradise, is, on the whole, a source of indescribable happiness." I endeavoured to conceal the emotion which these words occasioned, but it was of slight avail; for, when she had expressed so truly her opinion of "The Vicar of Wakefield," and of other works, the names of which I omit (Though the names are omitted, yet the authors mentioned deserve Charlotte's approbation, and will feel it in their hearts when they read this passage. It concerns no other person.), I could no longer contain myself, but gave full utterance to what I thought of it: and it was not until Charlotte had addressed herself to the two other ladies, that I remembered their presence, and observed them sitting mute with astonishment. The aunt looked at me several times with an air of raillery, which, however, I did not at all mind. We talked of the pleasures of dancing. "If it is a fault to love it," said Charlotte, "I am ready to confess that I prize it above all other amusements. If anything disturbs me, I go to the piano, play an air to which I have danced, and all goes right again directly." You, who know me, can fancy how steadfastly I gazed upon her rich dark eyes during these remarks, how my very soul gloated over her warm lips and fresh, glowing cheeks, how I became quite lost in the delightful meaning of her words, so much so, that I scarcely heard the actual expressions. In short, I alighted from the carriage like a person in a dream, and was so lost to the dim world around me, that I scarcely heard the music which resounded from the illuminated ballroom. The two Messrs. Andran and a certain N. N. (I cannot trouble myself with the names), who were the aunt's and Charlotte's partners, received us at the carriage-door, and took possession of their ladies, whilst I followed with mine. We commenced with a minuet. I led out one lady after another, and precisely those who were the most disagreeable could not bring themselves to leave off. Charlotte and her partner began an English country dance, and you must imagine my delight when it was their turn to dance the figure with us. You should see Charlotte dance. She dances with her whole heart and soul: her figure is all harmony, elegance, and grace, as if she were conscious of nothing else, and had no other thought or feeling; and, doubtless, for the moment, every other sensation is extinct. She was engaged for the second country dance, but promised me the third, and assured me, with the most agreeable freedom, that she was very fond of waltzing. "It is the custom here," she said, "for the previous partners to waltz together; but my partner is an indifferent waltzer, and will feel delighted if I save him the trouble. Your partner is not allowed to waltz, and, indeed, is equally incapable: but I observed during the country dance that you waltz well; so, if you will waltz with me, I beg you would propose it to my partner, and I will propose it to yours." We agreed, and it was arranged that our partners should mutually entertain each other. We set off, and, at first, delighted ourselves with the usual graceful motions of the arms. With what grace, with what ease, she moved! When the waltz commenced, and the dancers whirled around each other in the giddy maze, there was some confusion, owing to the incapacity of some of the dancers. We judiciously remained still, allowing the others to weary themselves; and, when the awkward dancers had withdrawn, we joined in, and kept it up famously together with one other couple,--Andran and his partner. Never did I dance more lightly. I felt myself more than mortal, holding this loveliest of creatures in my arms, flying, with her as rapidly as the wind, till I lost sight of every other object; and O Wilhelm, I vowed at that moment, that a maiden whom I loved, or for whom I felt the slightest attachment, never, never should waltz with any one else but with me, if I went to perdition for it!--you will understand this. We took a few turns in the room to recover our breath. Charlotte sat down, and felt refreshed by partaking of some oranges which I had had secured,--the only ones that had been left; but at every slice which, from politeness, she offered to her neighbours, I felt as though a dagger went through my heart. We were the second couple in the third country dance. As we were going down (and Heaven knows with what ecstasy I gazed at her arms and eyes, beaming with the sweetest feeling of pure and genuine enjoyment), we passed a lady whom I had noticed for her charming expression of countenance; although she was no longer young. She looked at Charlotte with a smile, then, holding up her finger in a threatening attitude, repeated twice in a very significant tone of voice the name of "Albert." "Who is Albert," said I to Charlotte, "if it is not impertinent to ask?" She was about to answer, when we were obliged to separate, in order to execute a figure in the dance; and, as we crossed over again in front of each other, I perceived she looked somewhat pensive. "Why need I conceal it from you?" she said, as she gave me her hand for the promenade. "Albert is a worthy man, to whom I am engaged." Now, there was nothing new to me in this (for the girls had told me of it on the way); but it was so far new that I had not thought of it in connection with her whom, in so short a time, I had learned to prize so highly. Enough, I became confused, got out in the figure, and occasioned general confusion; so that it required all Charlotte's presence of mind to set me right by pulling and pushing me into my proper place. The dance was not yet finished when the lightning which had for some time been seen in the horizon, and which I had asserted to proceed entirely from heat, grew more violent; and the thunder was heard above the music. When any distress or terror surprises us in the midst of our amusements, it naturally makes a deeper impression than at other times, either because the contrast makes us more keenly susceptible, or rather perhaps because our senses are then more open to impressions, and the shock is consequently stronger. To this cause I must ascribe the fright and shrieks of the ladies. One sagaciously sat down in a corner with her back to the window, and held her fingers to her ears; a second knelt down before her, and hid her face in her lap; a third threw herself between them, and embraced her sister with a thousand tears; some insisted on going home; others, unconscious of their actions, wanted sufficient presence of mind to repress the impertinence of their young partners, who sought to direct to themselves those sighs which the lips of our agitated beauties intended for heaven. Some of the gentlemen had gone down-stairs to smoke a quiet cigar, and the rest of the company gladly embraced a happy suggestion of the hostess to retire into another room which was provided with shutters and curtains. We had hardly got there, when Charlotte placed the chairs in a circle; and, when the company had sat down in compliance with her request, she forthwith proposed a round game. I noticed some of the company prepare their mouths and draw themselves up at the prospect of some agreeable forfeit. "Let us play at counting," said Charlotte. "Now, pay attention: I shall go round the circle from right to left; and each person is to count, one after the other, the number that comes to him, and must count fast; whoever stops or mistakes is to have a box on the ear, and so on, till we have counted a thousand." It was delightful to see the fun. She went round the circle with upraised arm. "One," said the first; "two," the second; "three," the third; and so on, till Charlotte went faster and faster. One made a mistake, instantly a box on the ear; and, amid the laughter that ensued, came another box; and so on, faster and faster. I myself came in for two. I fancied they were harder than the rest, and felt quite delighted. A general laughter and confusion put an end to the game long before we had counted as far as a thousand. The party broke up into little separate knots: the storm had ceased, and I followed Charlotte into the ballroom. On the way she said, "The game banished their fears of the storm." I could make no reply. "I myself," she continued, "was as much frightened as any of them; but by affecting courage, to keep up the spirits of the others, I forgot my apprehensions." We went to the window. It was still thundering at a distance: a soft rain was pouring down over the country, and filled the air around us with delicious odours. Charlotte leaned forward on her arm; her eyes wandered over the scene; she raised them to the sky, and then turned them upon me; they were moistened with tears; she placed her hand on mine and said, "Klopstock!" at once I remembered the magnificent ode which was in her thoughts: I felt oppressed with the weight of my sensations, and sank under them. It was more than I could bear. I bent over her hand, kissed it in a stream of delicious tears, and again looked up to her eyes. Divine Klopstock! why didst thou not see thy apotheosis in those eyes? And thy name so often profaned, would that I never heard it repeated! JUNE 19. I no longer remember where I stopped in my narrative: I only know it was two in the morning when I went to bed; and if you had been with me, that I might have talked instead of writing to you, I should, in all probability, have kept you up till daylight. I think I have not yet related what happened as we rode home from the ball, nor have I time to tell you now. It was a most magnificent sunrise: the whole country was refreshed, and the rain fell drop by drop from the trees in the forest. Our companions were asleep. Charlotte asked me if I did not wish to sleep also, and begged of me not to make any ceremony on her account. Looking steadfastly at her, I answered, "As long as I see those eyes open, there is no fear of my falling asleep." We both continued awake till we reached her door. The maid opened it softly, and assured her, in answer to her inquiries, that her father and the children were well, and still sleeping. I left her asking permission to visit her in the course of the day. She consented, and I went, and, since that time, sun, moon, and stars may pursue their course: I know not whether it is day or night; the whole world is nothing to me. JUNE 21. My days are as happy as those reserved by God for his elect; and, whatever be my fate hereafter, I can never say that I have not tasted joy,--the purest joy of life. You know Walheim. I am now completely settled there. In that spot I am only half a league from Charlotte; and there I enjoy myself, and taste all the pleasure which can fall to the lot of man. Little did I imagine, when I selected Walheim for my pedestrian excursions, that all heaven lay so near it. How often in my wanderings from the hillside or from the meadows across the river, have I beheld this hunting-lodge, which now contains within it all the joy of my heart! I have often, my dear Wilhelm, reflected on the eagerness men feel to wander and make new discoveries, and upon that secret impulse which afterward inclines them to return to their narrow circle, conform to the laws of custom, and embarrass themselves no longer with what passes around them. It is so strange how, when I came here first, and gazed upon that lovely valley from the hillside, I felt charmed with the entire scene surrounding me. The little wood opposite--how delightful to sit under its shade! How fine the view from that point of rock! Then, that delightful chain of hills, and the exquisite valleys at their feet! Could I but wander and lose myself amongst them! I went, and returned without finding what I wished. Distance, my friend, is like futurity. A dim vastness is spread before our souls: the perceptions of our mind are as obscure as those of our vision; and we desire earnestly to surrender up our whole being, that it may be filled with the complete and perfect bliss of one glorious emotion. But alas! when we have attained our object, when the distant there becomes the present here, all is changed: we are as poor and circumscribed as ever, and our souls still languish for unattainable happiness. So does the restless traveller pant for his native soil, and find in his own cottage, in the arms of his wife, in the affections of his children, and in the labour necessary for their support, that happiness which he had sought in vain through the wide world. When, in the morning at sunrise, I go out to Walheim, and with my own hands gather in the garden the pease which are to serve for my dinner, when I sit down to shell them, and read my Homer during the intervals, and then, selecting a saucepan from the kitchen, fetch my own butter, put my mess on the fire, cover it up, and sit down to stir it as occasion requires, I figure to myself the illustrious suitors of Penelope, killing, dressing, and preparing their own oxen and swine. Nothing fills me with a more pure and genuine sense of happiness than those traits of patriarchal life which, thank Heaven! I can imitate without affectation. Happy is it, indeed, for me that my heart is capable of feeling the same simple and innocent pleasure as the peasant whose table is covered with food of his own rearing, and who not only enjoys his meal, but remembers with delight the happy days and sunny mornings when he planted it, the soft evenings when he watered it, and the pleasure he experienced in watching its daily growth. JUNE 29. The day before yesterday, the physician came from the town to pay a visit to the judge. He found me on the floor playing with Charlotte's children. Some of them were scrambling over me, and others romped with me; and, as I caught and tickled them, they made a great noise. The doctor is a formal sort of personage: he adjusts the plaits of his ruffles, and continually settles his frill whilst he is talking to you; and he thought my conduct beneath the dignity of a sensible man. I could perceive this by his countenance. But I did not suffer myself to be disturbed. I allowed him to continue his wise conversation, whilst I rebuilt the children's card houses for them as fast as they threw them down. He went about the town afterward, complaining that the judge's children were spoiled enough before, but that now Werther was completely ruining them. Yes, my dear Wilhelm, nothing on this earth affects my heart so much as children. When I look on at their doings; when I mark in the little creatures the seeds of all those virtues and qualities which they will one day find so indispensable; when I behold in the obstinate all the future firmness and constancy of a noble character; in the capricious, that levity and gaiety of temper which will carry them lightly over the dangers and troubles of life, their whole nature simple and unpolluted,--then I call to mind the golden words of the Great Teacher of mankind, "Unless ye become like one of these!" And now, my friend, these children, who are our equals, whom we ought to consider as our models, we treat them as though they were our subjects. They are allowed no will of their own. And have we, then, none ourselves? Whence comes our exclusive right? Is it because we are older and more experienced? Great God! from the height of thy heaven thou beholdest great children and little children, and no others; and thy Son has long since declared which afford thee greatest pleasure. But they believe in him, and hear him not,--that, too, is an old story; and they train their children after their own image, etc. Adieu, Wilhelm: I will not further bewilder myself with this subject. JULY 1. The consolation Charlotte can bring to an invalid I experience from my own heart, which suffers more from her absence than many a poor creature lingering on a bed of sickness. She is gone to spend a few days in the town with a very worthy woman, who is given over by the physicians, and wishes to have Charlotte near her in her last moments. I accompanied her last week on a visit to the Vicar of S--, a small village in the mountains, about a league hence. We arrived about four o'clock: Charlotte had taken her little sister with her. When we entered the vicarage court, we found the good old man sitting on a bench before the door, under the shade of two large walnut-trees. At the sight of Charlotte he seemed to gain new life, rose, forgot his stick, and ventured to walk toward her. She ran to him, and made him sit down again; then, placing herself by his side, she gave him a number of messages from her father, and then caught up his youngest child, a dirty, ugly little thing, the joy of his old age, and kissed it. I wish you could have witnessed her attention to this old man,--how she raised her voice on account of his deafness; how she told him of healthy young people, who had been carried off when it was least expected; praised the virtues of Carlsbad, and commended his determination to spend the ensuing summer there; and assured him that he looked better and stronger than he did when she saw him last. I, in the meantime, paid attention to his good lady. The old man seemed quite in spirits; and as I could not help admiring the beauty of the walnut-trees, which formed such an agreeable shade over our heads, he began, though with some little difficulty, to tell us their history. "As to the oldest," said he, "we do not know who planted it,--some say one clergyman, and some another: but the younger one, there behind us, is exactly the age of my wife, fifty years old next October; her father planted it in the morning, and in the evening she came into the world. My wife's father was my predecessor here, and I cannot tell you how fond he was of that tree; and it is fully as dear to me. Under the shade of that very tree, upon a log of wood, my wife was seated knitting, when I, a poor student, came into this court for the first time, just seven and twenty years ago." Charlotte inquired for his daughter. He said she was gone with Herr Schmidt to the meadows, and was with the haymakers. The old man then resumed his story, and told us how his predecessor had taken a fancy to him, as had his daughter likewise; and how he had become first his curate, and subsequently his successor. He had scarcely finished his story when his daughter returned through the garden, accompanied by the above-mentioned Herr Schmidt. She welcomed Charlotte affectionately, and I confess I was much taken with her appearance. She was a lively-looking, good-humoured brunette, quite competent to amuse one for a short time in the country. Her lover (for such Herr Schmidt evidently appeared to be) was a polite, reserved personage, and would not join our conversation, notwithstanding all Charlotte's endeavours to draw him out. I was much annoyed at observing, by his countenance, that his silence did not arise from want of talent, but from caprice and ill-humour. This subsequently became very evident, when we set out to take a walk, and Frederica joining Charlotte, with whom I was talking, the worthy gentleman's face, which was naturally rather sombre, became so dark and angry that Charlotte was obliged to touch my arm, and remind me that I was talking too much to Frederica. Nothing distresses me more than to see men torment each other; particularly when in the flower of their age, in the very season of pleasure, they waste their few short days of sunshine in quarrels and disputes, and only perceive their error when it is too late to repair it. This thought dwelt upon my mind; and in the evening, when we returned to the vicar's, and were sitting round the table with our bread end milk, the conversation turned on the joys and sorrows of the world, I could not resist the temptation to inveigh bitterly against ill-humour. "We are apt," said I, "to complain, but--with very little cause, that our happy days are few, and our evil days many. If our hearts were always disposed to receive the benefits Heaven sends us, we should acquire strength to support evil when it comes." "But," observed the vicar's wife, "we cannot always command our tempers, so much depends upon the constitution: when the body suffers, the mind is ill at ease." "I acknowledge that," I continued; "but we must consider such a disposition in the light of a disease, and inquire whether there is no remedy for it." "I should be glad to hear one," said Charlotte: "at least, I think very much depends upon ourselves; I know it is so with me. When anything annoys me, and disturbs my temper, I hasten into the garden, hum a couple of country dances, and it is all right with me directly." "That is what I meant," I replied; "ill-humour resembles indolence: it is natural to us; but if once we have courage to exert ourselves, we find our work run fresh from our hands, and we experience in the activity from which we shrank a real enjoyment." Frederica listened very attentively: and the young man objected, that we were not masters of ourselves, and still less so of our feelings. "The question is about a disagreeable feeling," I added, "from which every one would willingly escape, but none know their own power without trial. Invalids are glad to consult physicians, and submit to the most scrupulous regimen, the most nauseous medicines, in order to recover their health." I observed that the good old man inclined his head, and exerted himself to hear our discourse; so I raised my voice, and addressed myself directly to him. "We preach against a great many crimes," I observed, "but I never remember a

asleep

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will be no wiser at the end of my letter than you were at the beginning. Attend, then, and I will compel myself to give you the details. I mentioned to you the other day that I had become acquainted with S--, the district judge, and that he had invited me to go and visit him in his retirement, or rather in his little kingdom. But I neglected going, and perhaps should never have gone, if chance had not discovered to me the treasure which lay concealed in that retired spot. Some of our young people had proposed giving a ball in the country, at which I consented to be present. I offered my hand for the evening to a pretty and agreeable, but rather commonplace, sort of girl from the immediate neighbourhood; and it was agreed that I should engage a carriage, and call upon Charlotte, with my partner and her aunt, to convey them to the ball. My companion informed me, as we drove along through the park to the hunting-lodge, that I should make the acquaintance of a very charming young lady. "Take care," added the aunt, "that you do not lose your heart." "Why?" said I. "Because she is already engaged to a very worthy man," she replied, "who is gone to settle his affairs upon the death of his father, and will succeed to a very considerable inheritance." This information possessed no interest for me. When we arrived at the gate, the sun was setting behind the tops of the mountains. The atmosphere was heavy; and the ladies expressed their fears of an approaching storm, as masses of low black clouds were gathering in the horizon. I relieved their anxieties by pretending to be weather-wise, although I myself had some apprehensions lest our pleasure should be interrupted. I alighted; and a maid came to the door, and requested us to wait a moment for her mistress. I walked across the court to a well-built house, and, ascending the flight of steps in front, opened the door, and saw before me the most charming spectacle I had ever witnessed. Six children, from eleven to two years old, were running about the hall, and surrounding a lady of middle height, with a lovely figure, dressed in a robe of simple white, trimmed with pink ribbons. She was holding a rye loaf in her hand, and was cutting slices for the little ones all around, in proportion to their age and appetite. She performed her task in a graceful and affectionate manner; each claimant awaiting his turn with outstretched hands, and boisterously shouting his thanks. Some of them ran away at once, to enjoy their evening meal; whilst others, of a gentler disposition, retired to the courtyard to see the strangers, and to survey the carriage in which their Charlotte was to drive away. "Pray forgive me for giving you the trouble to come for me, and for keeping the ladies waiting: but dressing, and arranging some household duties before I leave, had made me forget my children's supper; and they do not like to take it from any one but me." I uttered some indifferent compliment: but my whole soul was absorbed by her air, her voice, her manner; and I had scarcely recovered myself when she ran into her room to fetch her gloves and fan. The young ones threw inquiring glances at me from a distance; whilst I approached the youngest, a most delicious little creature. He drew back; and Charlotte, entering at the very moment, said, "Louis, shake hands with your cousin." The little fellow obeyed willingly; and I could not resist giving him a hearty kiss, notwithstanding his rather dirty face. "Cousin," said I to Charlotte, as I handed her down, "do you think I deserve the happiness of being related to you?" She replied, with a ready smile, "Oh! I have such a number of cousins, that I should be sorry if you were the most undeserving of them." In taking leave, she desired her next sister, Sophy, a girl about eleven years old, to take great care of the children, and to say good-bye to papa for her when he came home from his ride. She enjoined to the little ones to obey their sister Sophy as they would herself, upon which some promised that they would; but a little fair-haired girl, about six years old, looked discontented, and said, "But Sophy is not you, Charlotte; and we like you best." The two eldest boys had clambered up the carriage; and, at my request, she permitted them to accompany us a little way through the forest, upon their promising to sit very still, and hold fast. We were hardly seated, and the ladies had scarcely exchanged compliments, making the usual remarks upon each other's dress, and upon the company they expected to meet, when Charlotte stopped the carriage, and made her brothers get down. They insisted upon kissing her hands once more; which the eldest did with all the tenderness of a youth of fifteen, but the other in a lighter and more careless manner. She desired them again to give her love to the children, and we drove off. The aunt inquired of Charlotte whether she had finished the book she had last sent her. "No," said Charlotte; "I did not like it: you can have it again. And the one before was not much better." I was surprised, upon asking the title, to hear that it was ____. (We feel obliged to suppress the passage in the letter, to prevent any one from feeling aggrieved; although no author need pay much attention to the opinion of a mere girl, or that of an unsteady young man.) I found penetration and character in everything she said: every expression seemed to brighten her features with new charms,--with new rays of genius,--which unfolded by degrees, as she felt herself understood. "When I was younger," she observed, "I loved nothing so much as romances. Nothing could equal my delight when, on some holiday, I could settle down quietly in a corner, and enter with my whole heart and soul into the joys or sorrows of some fictitious Leonora. I do not deny that they even possess some charms for me yet. But I read so seldom, that I prefer books suited exactly to my taste. And I like those authors best whose scenes describe my own situation in life,--and the friends who are about me, whose stories touch me with interest, from resembling my own homely existence,--which, without being absolutely paradise, is, on the whole, a source of indescribable happiness." I endeavoured to conceal the emotion which these words occasioned, but it was of slight avail; for, when she had expressed so truly her opinion of "The Vicar of Wakefield," and of other works, the names of which I omit (Though the names are omitted, yet the authors mentioned deserve Charlotte's approbation, and will feel it in their hearts when they read this passage. It concerns no other person.), I could no longer contain myself, but gave full utterance to what I thought of it: and it was not until Charlotte had addressed herself to the two other ladies, that I remembered their presence, and observed them sitting mute with astonishment. The aunt looked at me several times with an air of raillery, which, however, I did not at all mind. We talked of the pleasures of dancing. "If it is a fault to love it," said Charlotte, "I am ready to confess that I prize it above all other amusements. If anything disturbs me, I go to the piano, play an air to which I have danced, and all goes right again directly." You, who know me, can fancy how steadfastly I gazed upon her rich dark eyes during these remarks, how my very soul gloated over her warm lips and fresh, glowing cheeks, how I became quite lost in the delightful meaning of her words, so much so, that I scarcely heard the actual expressions. In short, I alighted from the carriage like a person in a dream, and was so lost to the dim world around me, that I scarcely heard the music which resounded from the illuminated ballroom. The two Messrs. Andran and a certain N. N. (I cannot trouble myself with the names), who were the aunt's and Charlotte's partners, received us at the carriage-door, and took possession of their ladies, whilst I followed with mine. We commenced with a minuet. I led out one lady after another, and precisely those who were the most disagreeable could not bring themselves to leave off. Charlotte and her partner began an English country dance, and you must imagine my delight when it was their turn to dance the figure with us. You should see Charlotte dance. She dances with her whole heart and soul: her figure is all harmony, elegance, and grace, as if she were conscious of nothing else, and had no other thought or feeling; and, doubtless, for the moment, every other sensation is extinct. She was engaged for the second country dance, but promised me the third, and assured me, with the most agreeable freedom, that she was very fond of waltzing. "It is the custom here," she said, "for the previous partners to waltz together; but my partner is an indifferent waltzer, and will feel delighted if I save him the trouble. Your partner is not allowed to waltz, and, indeed, is equally incapable: but I observed during the country dance that you waltz well; so, if you will waltz with me, I beg you would propose it to my partner, and I will propose it to yours." We agreed, and it was arranged that our partners should mutually entertain each other. We set off, and, at first, delighted ourselves with the usual graceful motions of the arms. With what grace, with what ease, she moved! When the waltz commenced, and the dancers whirled around each other in the giddy maze, there was some confusion, owing to the incapacity of some of the dancers. We judiciously remained still, allowing the others to weary themselves; and, when the awkward dancers had withdrawn, we joined in, and kept it up famously together with one other couple,--Andran and his partner. Never did I dance more lightly. I felt myself more than mortal, holding this loveliest of creatures in my arms, flying, with her as rapidly as the wind, till I lost sight of every other object; and O Wilhelm, I vowed at that moment, that a maiden whom I loved, or for whom I felt the slightest attachment, never, never should waltz with any one else but with me, if I went to perdition for it!--you will understand this. We took a few turns in the room to recover our breath. Charlotte sat down, and felt refreshed by partaking of some oranges which I had had secured,--the only ones that had been left; but at every slice which, from politeness, she offered to her neighbours, I felt as though a dagger went through my heart. We were the second couple in the third country dance. As we were going down (and Heaven knows with what ecstasy I gazed at her arms and eyes, beaming with the sweetest feeling of pure and genuine enjoyment), we passed a lady whom I had noticed for her charming expression of countenance; although she was no longer young. She looked at Charlotte with a smile, then, holding up her finger in a threatening attitude, repeated twice in a very significant tone of voice the name of "Albert." "Who is Albert," said I to Charlotte, "if it is not impertinent to ask?" She was about to answer, when we were obliged to separate, in order to execute a figure in the dance; and, as we crossed over again in front of each other, I perceived she looked somewhat pensive. "Why need I conceal it from you?" she said, as she gave me her hand for the promenade. "Albert is a worthy man, to whom I am engaged." Now, there was nothing new to me in this (for the girls had told me of it on the way); but it was so far new that I had not thought of it in connection with her whom, in so short a time, I had learned to prize so highly. Enough, I became confused, got out in the figure, and occasioned general confusion; so that it required all Charlotte's presence of mind to set me right by pulling and pushing me into my proper place. The dance was not yet finished when the lightning which had for some time been seen in the horizon, and which I had asserted to proceed entirely from heat, grew more violent; and the thunder was heard above the music. When any distress or terror surprises us in the midst of our amusements, it naturally makes a deeper impression than at other times, either because the contrast makes us more keenly susceptible, or rather perhaps because our senses are then more open to impressions, and the shock is consequently stronger. To this cause I must ascribe the fright and shrieks of the ladies. One sagaciously sat down in a corner with her back to the window, and held her fingers to her ears; a second knelt down before her, and hid her face in her lap; a third threw herself between them, and embraced her sister with a thousand tears; some insisted on going home; others, unconscious of their actions, wanted sufficient presence of mind to repress the impertinence of their young partners, who sought to direct to themselves those sighs which the lips of our agitated beauties intended for heaven. Some of the gentlemen had gone down-stairs to smoke a quiet cigar, and the rest of the company gladly embraced a happy suggestion of the hostess to retire into another room which was provided with shutters and curtains. We had hardly got there, when Charlotte placed the chairs in a circle; and, when the company had sat down in compliance with her request, she forthwith proposed a round game. I noticed some of the company prepare their mouths and draw themselves up at the prospect of some agreeable forfeit. "Let us play at counting," said Charlotte. "Now, pay attention: I shall go round the circle from right to left; and each person is to count, one after the other, the number that comes to him, and must count fast; whoever stops or mistakes is to have a box on the ear, and so on, till we have counted a thousand." It was delightful to see the fun. She went round the circle with upraised arm. "One," said the first; "two," the second; "three," the third; and so on, till Charlotte went faster and faster. One made a mistake, instantly a box on the ear; and, amid the laughter that ensued, came another box; and so on, faster and faster. I myself came in for two. I fancied they were harder than the rest, and felt quite delighted. A general laughter and confusion put an end to the game long before we had counted as far as a thousand. The party broke up into little separate knots: the storm had ceased, and I followed Charlotte into the ballroom. On the way she said, "The game banished their fears of the storm." I could make no reply. "I myself," she continued, "was as much frightened as any of them; but by affecting courage, to keep up the spirits of the others, I forgot my apprehensions." We went to the window. It was still thundering at a distance: a soft rain was pouring down over the country, and filled the air around us with delicious odours. Charlotte leaned forward on her arm; her eyes wandered over the scene; she raised them to the sky, and then turned them upon me; they were moistened with tears; she placed her hand on mine and said, "Klopstock!" at once I remembered the magnificent ode which was in her thoughts: I felt oppressed with the weight of my sensations, and sank under them. It was more than I could bear. I bent over her hand, kissed it in a stream of delicious tears, and again looked up to her eyes. Divine Klopstock! why didst thou not see thy apotheosis in those eyes? And thy name so often profaned, would that I never heard it repeated! JUNE 19. I no longer remember where I stopped in my narrative: I only know it was two in the morning when I went to bed; and if you had been with me, that I might have talked instead of writing to you, I should, in all probability, have kept you up till daylight. I think I have not yet related what happened as we rode home from the ball, nor have I time to tell you now. It was a most magnificent sunrise: the whole country was refreshed, and the rain fell drop by drop from the trees in the forest. Our companions were asleep. Charlotte asked me if I did not wish to sleep also, and begged of me not to make any ceremony on her account. Looking steadfastly at her, I answered, "As long as I see those eyes open, there is no fear of my falling asleep." We both continued awake till we reached her door. The maid opened it softly, and assured her, in answer to her inquiries, that her father and the children were well, and still sleeping. I left her asking permission to visit her in the course of the day. She consented, and I went, and, since that time, sun, moon, and stars may pursue their course: I know not whether it is day or night; the whole world is nothing to me. JUNE 21. My days are as happy as those reserved by God for his elect; and, whatever be my fate hereafter, I can never say that I have not tasted joy,--the purest joy of life. You know Walheim. I am now completely settled there. In that spot I am only half a league from Charlotte; and there I enjoy myself, and taste all the pleasure which can fall to the lot of man. Little did I imagine, when I selected Walheim for my pedestrian excursions, that all heaven lay so near it. How often in my wanderings from the hillside or from the meadows across the river, have I beheld this hunting-lodge, which now contains within it all the joy of my heart! I have often, my dear Wilhelm, reflected on the eagerness men feel to wander and make new discoveries, and upon that secret impulse which afterward inclines them to return to their narrow circle, conform to the laws of custom, and embarrass themselves no longer with what passes around them. It is so strange how, when I came here first, and gazed upon that lovely valley from the hillside, I felt charmed with the entire scene surrounding me. The little wood opposite--how delightful to sit under its shade! How fine the view from that point of rock! Then, that delightful chain of hills, and the exquisite valleys at their feet! Could I but wander and lose myself amongst them! I went, and returned without finding what I wished. Distance, my friend, is like futurity. A dim vastness is spread before our souls: the perceptions of our mind are as obscure as those of our vision; and we desire earnestly to surrender up our whole being, that it may be filled with the complete and perfect bliss of one glorious emotion. But alas! when we have attained our object, when the distant there becomes the present here, all is changed: we are as poor and circumscribed as ever, and our souls still languish for unattainable happiness. So does the restless traveller pant for his native soil, and find in his own cottage, in the arms of his wife, in the affections of his children, and in the labour necessary for their support, that happiness which he had sought in vain through the wide world. When, in the morning at sunrise, I go out to Walheim, and with my own hands gather in the garden the pease which are to serve for my dinner, when I sit down to shell them, and read my Homer during the intervals, and then, selecting a saucepan from the kitchen, fetch my own butter, put my mess on the fire, cover it up, and sit down to stir it as occasion requires, I figure to myself the illustrious suitors of Penelope, killing, dressing, and preparing their own oxen and swine. Nothing fills me with a more pure and genuine sense of happiness than those traits of patriarchal life which, thank Heaven! I can imitate without affectation. Happy is it, indeed, for me that my heart is capable of feeling the same simple and innocent pleasure as the peasant whose table is covered with food of his own rearing, and who not only enjoys his meal, but remembers with delight the happy days and sunny mornings when he planted it, the soft evenings when he watered it, and the pleasure he experienced in watching its daily growth. JUNE 29. The day before yesterday, the physician came from the town to pay a visit to the judge. He found me on the floor playing with Charlotte's children. Some of them were scrambling over me, and others romped with me; and, as I caught and tickled them, they made a great noise. The doctor is a formal sort of personage: he adjusts the plaits of his ruffles, and continually settles his frill whilst he is talking to you; and he thought my conduct beneath the dignity of a sensible man. I could perceive this by his countenance. But I did not suffer myself to be disturbed. I allowed him to continue his wise conversation, whilst I rebuilt the children's card houses for them as fast as they threw them down. He went about the town afterward, complaining that the judge's children were spoiled enough before, but that now Werther was completely ruining them. Yes, my dear Wilhelm, nothing on this earth affects my heart so much as children. When I look on at their doings; when I mark in the little creatures the seeds of all those virtues and qualities which they will one day find so indispensable; when I behold in the obstinate all the future firmness and constancy of a noble character; in the capricious, that levity and gaiety of temper which will carry them lightly over the dangers and troubles of life, their whole nature simple and unpolluted,--then I call to mind the golden words of the Great Teacher of mankind, "Unless ye become like one of these!" And now, my friend, these children, who are our equals, whom we ought to consider as our models, we treat them as though they were our subjects. They are allowed no will of their own. And have we, then, none ourselves? Whence comes our exclusive right? Is it because we are older and more experienced? Great God! from the height of thy heaven thou beholdest great children and little children, and no others; and thy Son has long since declared which afford thee greatest pleasure. But they believe in him, and hear him not,--that, too, is an old story; and they train their children after their own image, etc. Adieu, Wilhelm: I will not further bewilder myself with this subject. JULY 1. The consolation Charlotte can bring to an invalid I experience from my own heart, which suffers more from her absence than many a poor creature lingering on a bed of sickness. She is gone to spend a few days in the town with a very worthy woman, who is given over by the physicians, and wishes to have Charlotte near her in her last moments. I accompanied her last week on a visit to the Vicar of S--, a small village in the mountains, about a league hence. We arrived about four o'clock: Charlotte had taken her little sister with her. When we entered the vicarage court, we found the good old man sitting on a bench before the door, under the shade of two large walnut-trees. At the sight of Charlotte he seemed to gain new life, rose, forgot his stick, and ventured to walk toward her. She ran to him, and made him sit down again; then, placing herself by his side, she gave him a number of messages from her father, and then caught up his youngest child, a dirty, ugly little thing, the joy of his old age, and kissed it. I wish you could have witnessed her attention to this old man,--how she raised her voice on account of his deafness; how she told him of healthy young people, who had been carried off when it was least expected; praised the virtues of Carlsbad, and commended his determination to spend the ensuing summer there; and assured him that he looked better and stronger than he did when she saw him last. I, in the meantime, paid attention to his good lady. The old man seemed quite in spirits; and as I could not help admiring the beauty of the walnut-trees, which formed such an agreeable shade over our heads, he began, though with some little difficulty, to tell us their history. "As to the oldest," said he, "we do not know who planted it,--some say one clergyman, and some another: but the younger one, there behind us, is exactly the age of my wife, fifty years old next October; her father planted it in the morning, and in the evening she came into the world. My wife's father was my predecessor here, and I cannot tell you how fond he was of that tree; and it is fully as dear to me. Under the shade of that very tree, upon a log of wood, my wife was seated knitting, when I, a poor student, came into this court for the first time, just seven and twenty years ago." Charlotte inquired for his daughter. He said she was gone with Herr Schmidt to the meadows, and was with the haymakers. The old man then resumed his story, and told us how his predecessor had taken a fancy to him, as had his daughter likewise; and how he had become first his curate, and subsequently his successor. He had scarcely finished his story when his daughter returned through the garden, accompanied by the above-mentioned Herr Schmidt. She welcomed Charlotte affectionately, and I confess I was much taken with her appearance. She was a lively-looking, good-humoured brunette, quite competent to amuse one for a short time in the country. Her lover (for such Herr Schmidt evidently appeared to be) was a polite, reserved personage, and would not join our conversation, notwithstanding all Charlotte's endeavours to draw him out. I was much annoyed at observing, by his countenance, that his silence did not arise from want of talent, but from caprice and ill-humour. This subsequently became very evident, when we set out to take a walk, and Frederica joining Charlotte, with whom I was talking, the worthy gentleman's face, which was naturally rather sombre, became so dark and angry that Charlotte was obliged to touch my arm, and remind me that I was talking too much to Frederica. Nothing distresses me more than to see men torment each other; particularly when in the flower of their age, in the very season of pleasure, they waste their few short days of sunshine in quarrels and disputes, and only perceive their error when it is too late to repair it. This thought dwelt upon my mind; and in the evening, when we returned to the vicar's, and were sitting round the table with our bread end milk, the conversation turned on the joys and sorrows of the world, I could not resist the temptation to inveigh bitterly against ill-humour. "We are apt," said I, "to complain, but--with very little cause, that our happy days are few, and our evil days many. If our hearts were always disposed to receive the benefits Heaven sends us, we should acquire strength to support evil when it comes." "But," observed the vicar's wife, "we cannot always command our tempers, so much depends upon the constitution: when the body suffers, the mind is ill at ease." "I acknowledge that," I continued; "but we must consider such a disposition in the light of a disease, and inquire whether there is no remedy for it." "I should be glad to hear one," said Charlotte: "at least, I think very much depends upon ourselves; I know it is so with me. When anything annoys me, and disturbs my temper, I hasten into the garden, hum a couple of country dances, and it is all right with me directly." "That is what I meant," I replied; "ill-humour resembles indolence: it is natural to us; but if once we have courage to exert ourselves, we find our work run fresh from our hands, and we experience in the activity from which we shrank a real enjoyment." Frederica listened very attentively: and the young man objected, that we were not masters of ourselves, and still less so of our feelings. "The question is about a disagreeable feeling," I added, "from which every one would willingly escape, but none know their own power without trial. Invalids are glad to consult physicians, and submit to the most scrupulous regimen, the most nauseous medicines, in order to recover their health." I observed that the good old man inclined his head, and exerted himself to hear our discourse; so I raised my voice, and addressed myself directly to him. "We preach against a great many crimes," I observed, "but I never remember a

avail

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will be no wiser at the end of my letter than you were at the beginning. Attend, then, and I will compel myself to give you the details. I mentioned to you the other day that I had become acquainted with S--, the district judge, and that he had invited me to go and visit him in his retirement, or rather in his little kingdom. But I neglected going, and perhaps should never have gone, if chance had not discovered to me the treasure which lay concealed in that retired spot. Some of our young people had proposed giving a ball in the country, at which I consented to be present. I offered my hand for the evening to a pretty and agreeable, but rather commonplace, sort of girl from the immediate neighbourhood; and it was agreed that I should engage a carriage, and call upon Charlotte, with my partner and her aunt, to convey them to the ball. My companion informed me, as we drove along through the park to the hunting-lodge, that I should make the acquaintance of a very charming young lady. "Take care," added the aunt, "that you do not lose your heart." "Why?" said I. "Because she is already engaged to a very worthy man," she replied, "who is gone to settle his affairs upon the death of his father, and will succeed to a very considerable inheritance." This information possessed no interest for me. When we arrived at the gate, the sun was setting behind the tops of the mountains. The atmosphere was heavy; and the ladies expressed their fears of an approaching storm, as masses of low black clouds were gathering in the horizon. I relieved their anxieties by pretending to be weather-wise, although I myself had some apprehensions lest our pleasure should be interrupted. I alighted; and a maid came to the door, and requested us to wait a moment for her mistress. I walked across the court to a well-built house, and, ascending the flight of steps in front, opened the door, and saw before me the most charming spectacle I had ever witnessed. Six children, from eleven to two years old, were running about the hall, and surrounding a lady of middle height, with a lovely figure, dressed in a robe of simple white, trimmed with pink ribbons. She was holding a rye loaf in her hand, and was cutting slices for the little ones all around, in proportion to their age and appetite. She performed her task in a graceful and affectionate manner; each claimant awaiting his turn with outstretched hands, and boisterously shouting his thanks. Some of them ran away at once, to enjoy their evening meal; whilst others, of a gentler disposition, retired to the courtyard to see the strangers, and to survey the carriage in which their Charlotte was to drive away. "Pray forgive me for giving you the trouble to come for me, and for keeping the ladies waiting: but dressing, and arranging some household duties before I leave, had made me forget my children's supper; and they do not like to take it from any one but me." I uttered some indifferent compliment: but my whole soul was absorbed by her air, her voice, her manner; and I had scarcely recovered myself when she ran into her room to fetch her gloves and fan. The young ones threw inquiring glances at me from a distance; whilst I approached the youngest, a most delicious little creature. He drew back; and Charlotte, entering at the very moment, said, "Louis, shake hands with your cousin." The little fellow obeyed willingly; and I could not resist giving him a hearty kiss, notwithstanding his rather dirty face. "Cousin," said I to Charlotte, as I handed her down, "do you think I deserve the happiness of being related to you?" She replied, with a ready smile, "Oh! I have such a number of cousins, that I should be sorry if you were the most undeserving of them." In taking leave, she desired her next sister, Sophy, a girl about eleven years old, to take great care of the children, and to say good-bye to papa for her when he came home from his ride. She enjoined to the little ones to obey their sister Sophy as they would herself, upon which some promised that they would; but a little fair-haired girl, about six years old, looked discontented, and said, "But Sophy is not you, Charlotte; and we like you best." The two eldest boys had clambered up the carriage; and, at my request, she permitted them to accompany us a little way through the forest, upon their promising to sit very still, and hold fast. We were hardly seated, and the ladies had scarcely exchanged compliments, making the usual remarks upon each other's dress, and upon the company they expected to meet, when Charlotte stopped the carriage, and made her brothers get down. They insisted upon kissing her hands once more; which the eldest did with all the tenderness of a youth of fifteen, but the other in a lighter and more careless manner. She desired them again to give her love to the children, and we drove off. The aunt inquired of Charlotte whether she had finished the book she had last sent her. "No," said Charlotte; "I did not like it: you can have it again. And the one before was not much better." I was surprised, upon asking the title, to hear that it was ____. (We feel obliged to suppress the passage in the letter, to prevent any one from feeling aggrieved; although no author need pay much attention to the opinion of a mere girl, or that of an unsteady young man.) I found penetration and character in everything she said: every expression seemed to brighten her features with new charms,--with new rays of genius,--which unfolded by degrees, as she felt herself understood. "When I was younger," she observed, "I loved nothing so much as romances. Nothing could equal my delight when, on some holiday, I could settle down quietly in a corner, and enter with my whole heart and soul into the joys or sorrows of some fictitious Leonora. I do not deny that they even possess some charms for me yet. But I read so seldom, that I prefer books suited exactly to my taste. And I like those authors best whose scenes describe my own situation in life,--and the friends who are about me, whose stories touch me with interest, from resembling my own homely existence,--which, without being absolutely paradise, is, on the whole, a source of indescribable happiness." I endeavoured to conceal the emotion which these words occasioned, but it was of slight avail; for, when she had expressed so truly her opinion of "The Vicar of Wakefield," and of other works, the names of which I omit (Though the names are omitted, yet the authors mentioned deserve Charlotte's approbation, and will feel it in their hearts when they read this passage. It concerns no other person.), I could no longer contain myself, but gave full utterance to what I thought of it: and it was not until Charlotte had addressed herself to the two other ladies, that I remembered their presence, and observed them sitting mute with astonishment. The aunt looked at me several times with an air of raillery, which, however, I did not at all mind. We talked of the pleasures of dancing. "If it is a fault to love it," said Charlotte, "I am ready to confess that I prize it above all other amusements. If anything disturbs me, I go to the piano, play an air to which I have danced, and all goes right again directly." You, who know me, can fancy how steadfastly I gazed upon her rich dark eyes during these remarks, how my very soul gloated over her warm lips and fresh, glowing cheeks, how I became quite lost in the delightful meaning of her words, so much so, that I scarcely heard the actual expressions. In short, I alighted from the carriage like a person in a dream, and was so lost to the dim world around me, that I scarcely heard the music which resounded from the illuminated ballroom. The two Messrs. Andran and a certain N. N. (I cannot trouble myself with the names), who were the aunt's and Charlotte's partners, received us at the carriage-door, and took possession of their ladies, whilst I followed with mine. We commenced with a minuet. I led out one lady after another, and precisely those who were the most disagreeable could not bring themselves to leave off. Charlotte and her partner began an English country dance, and you must imagine my delight when it was their turn to dance the figure with us. You should see Charlotte dance. She dances with her whole heart and soul: her figure is all harmony, elegance, and grace, as if she were conscious of nothing else, and had no other thought or feeling; and, doubtless, for the moment, every other sensation is extinct. She was engaged for the second country dance, but promised me the third, and assured me, with the most agreeable freedom, that she was very fond of waltzing. "It is the custom here," she said, "for the previous partners to waltz together; but my partner is an indifferent waltzer, and will feel delighted if I save him the trouble. Your partner is not allowed to waltz, and, indeed, is equally incapable: but I observed during the country dance that you waltz well; so, if you will waltz with me, I beg you would propose it to my partner, and I will propose it to yours." We agreed, and it was arranged that our partners should mutually entertain each other. We set off, and, at first, delighted ourselves with the usual graceful motions of the arms. With what grace, with what ease, she moved! When the waltz commenced, and the dancers whirled around each other in the giddy maze, there was some confusion, owing to the incapacity of some of the dancers. We judiciously remained still, allowing the others to weary themselves; and, when the awkward dancers had withdrawn, we joined in, and kept it up famously together with one other couple,--Andran and his partner. Never did I dance more lightly. I felt myself more than mortal, holding this loveliest of creatures in my arms, flying, with her as rapidly as the wind, till I lost sight of every other object; and O Wilhelm, I vowed at that moment, that a maiden whom I loved, or for whom I felt the slightest attachment, never, never should waltz with any one else but with me, if I went to perdition for it!--you will understand this. We took a few turns in the room to recover our breath. Charlotte sat down, and felt refreshed by partaking of some oranges which I had had secured,--the only ones that had been left; but at every slice which, from politeness, she offered to her neighbours, I felt as though a dagger went through my heart. We were the second couple in the third country dance. As we were going down (and Heaven knows with what ecstasy I gazed at her arms and eyes, beaming with the sweetest feeling of pure and genuine enjoyment), we passed a lady whom I had noticed for her charming expression of countenance; although she was no longer young. She looked at Charlotte with a smile, then, holding up her finger in a threatening attitude, repeated twice in a very significant tone of voice the name of "Albert." "Who is Albert," said I to Charlotte, "if it is not impertinent to ask?" She was about to answer, when we were obliged to separate, in order to execute a figure in the dance; and, as we crossed over again in front of each other, I perceived she looked somewhat pensive. "Why need I conceal it from you?" she said, as she gave me her hand for the promenade. "Albert is a worthy man, to whom I am engaged." Now, there was nothing new to me in this (for the girls had told me of it on the way); but it was so far new that I had not thought of it in connection with her whom, in so short a time, I had learned to prize so highly. Enough, I became confused, got out in the figure, and occasioned general confusion; so that it required all Charlotte's presence of mind to set me right by pulling and pushing me into my proper place. The dance was not yet finished when the lightning which had for some time been seen in the horizon, and which I had asserted to proceed entirely from heat, grew more violent; and the thunder was heard above the music. When any distress or terror surprises us in the midst of our amusements, it naturally makes a deeper impression than at other times, either because the contrast makes us more keenly susceptible, or rather perhaps because our senses are then more open to impressions, and the shock is consequently stronger. To this cause I must ascribe the fright and shrieks of the ladies. One sagaciously sat down in a corner with her back to the window, and held her fingers to her ears; a second knelt down before her, and hid her face in her lap; a third threw herself between them, and embraced her sister with a thousand tears; some insisted on going home; others, unconscious of their actions, wanted sufficient presence of mind to repress the impertinence of their young partners, who sought to direct to themselves those sighs which the lips of our agitated beauties intended for heaven. Some of the gentlemen had gone down-stairs to smoke a quiet cigar, and the rest of the company gladly embraced a happy suggestion of the hostess to retire into another room which was provided with shutters and curtains. We had hardly got there, when Charlotte placed the chairs in a circle; and, when the company had sat down in compliance with her request, she forthwith proposed a round game. I noticed some of the company prepare their mouths and draw themselves up at the prospect of some agreeable forfeit. "Let us play at counting," said Charlotte. "Now, pay attention: I shall go round the circle from right to left; and each person is to count, one after the other, the number that comes to him, and must count fast; whoever stops or mistakes is to have a box on the ear, and so on, till we have counted a thousand." It was delightful to see the fun. She went round the circle with upraised arm. "One," said the first; "two," the second; "three," the third; and so on, till Charlotte went faster and faster. One made a mistake, instantly a box on the ear; and, amid the laughter that ensued, came another box; and so on, faster and faster. I myself came in for two. I fancied they were harder than the rest, and felt quite delighted. A general laughter and confusion put an end to the game long before we had counted as far as a thousand. The party broke up into little separate knots: the storm had ceased, and I followed Charlotte into the ballroom. On the way she said, "The game banished their fears of the storm." I could make no reply. "I myself," she continued, "was as much frightened as any of them; but by affecting courage, to keep up the spirits of the others, I forgot my apprehensions." We went to the window. It was still thundering at a distance: a soft rain was pouring down over the country, and filled the air around us with delicious odours. Charlotte leaned forward on her arm; her eyes wandered over the scene; she raised them to the sky, and then turned them upon me; they were moistened with tears; she placed her hand on mine and said, "Klopstock!" at once I remembered the magnificent ode which was in her thoughts: I felt oppressed with the weight of my sensations, and sank under them. It was more than I could bear. I bent over her hand, kissed it in a stream of delicious tears, and again looked up to her eyes. Divine Klopstock! why didst thou not see thy apotheosis in those eyes? And thy name so often profaned, would that I never heard it repeated! JUNE 19. I no longer remember where I stopped in my narrative: I only know it was two in the morning when I went to bed; and if you had been with me, that I might have talked instead of writing to you, I should, in all probability, have kept you up till daylight. I think I have not yet related what happened as we rode home from the ball, nor have I time to tell you now. It was a most magnificent sunrise: the whole country was refreshed, and the rain fell drop by drop from the trees in the forest. Our companions were asleep. Charlotte asked me if I did not wish to sleep also, and begged of me not to make any ceremony on her account. Looking steadfastly at her, I answered, "As long as I see those eyes open, there is no fear of my falling asleep." We both continued awake till we reached her door. The maid opened it softly, and assured her, in answer to her inquiries, that her father and the children were well, and still sleeping. I left her asking permission to visit her in the course of the day. She consented, and I went, and, since that time, sun, moon, and stars may pursue their course: I know not whether it is day or night; the whole world is nothing to me. JUNE 21. My days are as happy as those reserved by God for his elect; and, whatever be my fate hereafter, I can never say that I have not tasted joy,--the purest joy of life. You know Walheim. I am now completely settled there. In that spot I am only half a league from Charlotte; and there I enjoy myself, and taste all the pleasure which can fall to the lot of man. Little did I imagine, when I selected Walheim for my pedestrian excursions, that all heaven lay so near it. How often in my wanderings from the hillside or from the meadows across the river, have I beheld this hunting-lodge, which now contains within it all the joy of my heart! I have often, my dear Wilhelm, reflected on the eagerness men feel to wander and make new discoveries, and upon that secret impulse which afterward inclines them to return to their narrow circle, conform to the laws of custom, and embarrass themselves no longer with what passes around them. It is so strange how, when I came here first, and gazed upon that lovely valley from the hillside, I felt charmed with the entire scene surrounding me. The little wood opposite--how delightful to sit under its shade! How fine the view from that point of rock! Then, that delightful chain of hills, and the exquisite valleys at their feet! Could I but wander and lose myself amongst them! I went, and returned without finding what I wished. Distance, my friend, is like futurity. A dim vastness is spread before our souls: the perceptions of our mind are as obscure as those of our vision; and we desire earnestly to surrender up our whole being, that it may be filled with the complete and perfect bliss of one glorious emotion. But alas! when we have attained our object, when the distant there becomes the present here, all is changed: we are as poor and circumscribed as ever, and our souls still languish for unattainable happiness. So does the restless traveller pant for his native soil, and find in his own cottage, in the arms of his wife, in the affections of his children, and in the labour necessary for their support, that happiness which he had sought in vain through the wide world. When, in the morning at sunrise, I go out to Walheim, and with my own hands gather in the garden the pease which are to serve for my dinner, when I sit down to shell them, and read my Homer during the intervals, and then, selecting a saucepan from the kitchen, fetch my own butter, put my mess on the fire, cover it up, and sit down to stir it as occasion requires, I figure to myself the illustrious suitors of Penelope, killing, dressing, and preparing their own oxen and swine. Nothing fills me with a more pure and genuine sense of happiness than those traits of patriarchal life which, thank Heaven! I can imitate without affectation. Happy is it, indeed, for me that my heart is capable of feeling the same simple and innocent pleasure as the peasant whose table is covered with food of his own rearing, and who not only enjoys his meal, but remembers with delight the happy days and sunny mornings when he planted it, the soft evenings when he watered it, and the pleasure he experienced in watching its daily growth. JUNE 29. The day before yesterday, the physician came from the town to pay a visit to the judge. He found me on the floor playing with Charlotte's children. Some of them were scrambling over me, and others romped with me; and, as I caught and tickled them, they made a great noise. The doctor is a formal sort of personage: he adjusts the plaits of his ruffles, and continually settles his frill whilst he is talking to you; and he thought my conduct beneath the dignity of a sensible man. I could perceive this by his countenance. But I did not suffer myself to be disturbed. I allowed him to continue his wise conversation, whilst I rebuilt the children's card houses for them as fast as they threw them down. He went about the town afterward, complaining that the judge's children were spoiled enough before, but that now Werther was completely ruining them. Yes, my dear Wilhelm, nothing on this earth affects my heart so much as children. When I look on at their doings; when I mark in the little creatures the seeds of all those virtues and qualities which they will one day find so indispensable; when I behold in the obstinate all the future firmness and constancy of a noble character; in the capricious, that levity and gaiety of temper which will carry them lightly over the dangers and troubles of life, their whole nature simple and unpolluted,--then I call to mind the golden words of the Great Teacher of mankind, "Unless ye become like one of these!" And now, my friend, these children, who are our equals, whom we ought to consider as our models, we treat them as though they were our subjects. They are allowed no will of their own. And have we, then, none ourselves? Whence comes our exclusive right? Is it because we are older and more experienced? Great God! from the height of thy heaven thou beholdest great children and little children, and no others; and thy Son has long since declared which afford thee greatest pleasure. But they believe in him, and hear him not,--that, too, is an old story; and they train their children after their own image, etc. Adieu, Wilhelm: I will not further bewilder myself with this subject. JULY 1. The consolation Charlotte can bring to an invalid I experience from my own heart, which suffers more from her absence than many a poor creature lingering on a bed of sickness. She is gone to spend a few days in the town with a very worthy woman, who is given over by the physicians, and wishes to have Charlotte near her in her last moments. I accompanied her last week on a visit to the Vicar of S--, a small village in the mountains, about a league hence. We arrived about four o'clock: Charlotte had taken her little sister with her. When we entered the vicarage court, we found the good old man sitting on a bench before the door, under the shade of two large walnut-trees. At the sight of Charlotte he seemed to gain new life, rose, forgot his stick, and ventured to walk toward her. She ran to him, and made him sit down again; then, placing herself by his side, she gave him a number of messages from her father, and then caught up his youngest child, a dirty, ugly little thing, the joy of his old age, and kissed it. I wish you could have witnessed her attention to this old man,--how she raised her voice on account of his deafness; how she told him of healthy young people, who had been carried off when it was least expected; praised the virtues of Carlsbad, and commended his determination to spend the ensuing summer there; and assured him that he looked better and stronger than he did when she saw him last. I, in the meantime, paid attention to his good lady. The old man seemed quite in spirits; and as I could not help admiring the beauty of the walnut-trees, which formed such an agreeable shade over our heads, he began, though with some little difficulty, to tell us their history. "As to the oldest," said he, "we do not know who planted it,--some say one clergyman, and some another: but the younger one, there behind us, is exactly the age of my wife, fifty years old next October; her father planted it in the morning, and in the evening she came into the world. My wife's father was my predecessor here, and I cannot tell you how fond he was of that tree; and it is fully as dear to me. Under the shade of that very tree, upon a log of wood, my wife was seated knitting, when I, a poor student, came into this court for the first time, just seven and twenty years ago." Charlotte inquired for his daughter. He said she was gone with Herr Schmidt to the meadows, and was with the haymakers. The old man then resumed his story, and told us how his predecessor had taken a fancy to him, as had his daughter likewise; and how he had become first his curate, and subsequently his successor. He had scarcely finished his story when his daughter returned through the garden, accompanied by the above-mentioned Herr Schmidt. She welcomed Charlotte affectionately, and I confess I was much taken with her appearance. She was a lively-looking, good-humoured brunette, quite competent to amuse one for a short time in the country. Her lover (for such Herr Schmidt evidently appeared to be) was a polite, reserved personage, and would not join our conversation, notwithstanding all Charlotte's endeavours to draw him out. I was much annoyed at observing, by his countenance, that his silence did not arise from want of talent, but from caprice and ill-humour. This subsequently became very evident, when we set out to take a walk, and Frederica joining Charlotte, with whom I was talking, the worthy gentleman's face, which was naturally rather sombre, became so dark and angry that Charlotte was obliged to touch my arm, and remind me that I was talking too much to Frederica. Nothing distresses me more than to see men torment each other; particularly when in the flower of their age, in the very season of pleasure, they waste their few short days of sunshine in quarrels and disputes, and only perceive their error when it is too late to repair it. This thought dwelt upon my mind; and in the evening, when we returned to the vicar's, and were sitting round the table with our bread end milk, the conversation turned on the joys and sorrows of the world, I could not resist the temptation to inveigh bitterly against ill-humour. "We are apt," said I, "to complain, but--with very little cause, that our happy days are few, and our evil days many. If our hearts were always disposed to receive the benefits Heaven sends us, we should acquire strength to support evil when it comes." "But," observed the vicar's wife, "we cannot always command our tempers, so much depends upon the constitution: when the body suffers, the mind is ill at ease." "I acknowledge that," I continued; "but we must consider such a disposition in the light of a disease, and inquire whether there is no remedy for it." "I should be glad to hear one," said Charlotte: "at least, I think very much depends upon ourselves; I know it is so with me. When anything annoys me, and disturbs my temper, I hasten into the garden, hum a couple of country dances, and it is all right with me directly." "That is what I meant," I replied; "ill-humour resembles indolence: it is natural to us; but if once we have courage to exert ourselves, we find our work run fresh from our hands, and we experience in the activity from which we shrank a real enjoyment." Frederica listened very attentively: and the young man objected, that we were not masters of ourselves, and still less so of our feelings. "The question is about a disagreeable feeling," I added, "from which every one would willingly escape, but none know their own power without trial. Invalids are glad to consult physicians, and submit to the most scrupulous regimen, the most nauseous medicines, in order to recover their health." I observed that the good old man inclined his head, and exerted himself to hear our discourse; so I raised my voice, and addressed myself directly to him. "We preach against a great many crimes," I observed, "but I never remember a

noticed

How many times the word 'noticed' appears in the text?

will be no wiser at the end of my letter than you were at the beginning. Attend, then, and I will compel myself to give you the details. I mentioned to you the other day that I had become acquainted with S--, the district judge, and that he had invited me to go and visit him in his retirement, or rather in his little kingdom. But I neglected going, and perhaps should never have gone, if chance had not discovered to me the treasure which lay concealed in that retired spot. Some of our young people had proposed giving a ball in the country, at which I consented to be present. I offered my hand for the evening to a pretty and agreeable, but rather commonplace, sort of girl from the immediate neighbourhood; and it was agreed that I should engage a carriage, and call upon Charlotte, with my partner and her aunt, to convey them to the ball. My companion informed me, as we drove along through the park to the hunting-lodge, that I should make the acquaintance of a very charming young lady. "Take care," added the aunt, "that you do not lose your heart." "Why?" said I. "Because she is already engaged to a very worthy man," she replied, "who is gone to settle his affairs upon the death of his father, and will succeed to a very considerable inheritance." This information possessed no interest for me. When we arrived at the gate, the sun was setting behind the tops of the mountains. The atmosphere was heavy; and the ladies expressed their fears of an approaching storm, as masses of low black clouds were gathering in the horizon. I relieved their anxieties by pretending to be weather-wise, although I myself had some apprehensions lest our pleasure should be interrupted. I alighted; and a maid came to the door, and requested us to wait a moment for her mistress. I walked across the court to a well-built house, and, ascending the flight of steps in front, opened the door, and saw before me the most charming spectacle I had ever witnessed. Six children, from eleven to two years old, were running about the hall, and surrounding a lady of middle height, with a lovely figure, dressed in a robe of simple white, trimmed with pink ribbons. She was holding a rye loaf in her hand, and was cutting slices for the little ones all around, in proportion to their age and appetite. She performed her task in a graceful and affectionate manner; each claimant awaiting his turn with outstretched hands, and boisterously shouting his thanks. Some of them ran away at once, to enjoy their evening meal; whilst others, of a gentler disposition, retired to the courtyard to see the strangers, and to survey the carriage in which their Charlotte was to drive away. "Pray forgive me for giving you the trouble to come for me, and for keeping the ladies waiting: but dressing, and arranging some household duties before I leave, had made me forget my children's supper; and they do not like to take it from any one but me." I uttered some indifferent compliment: but my whole soul was absorbed by her air, her voice, her manner; and I had scarcely recovered myself when she ran into her room to fetch her gloves and fan. The young ones threw inquiring glances at me from a distance; whilst I approached the youngest, a most delicious little creature. He drew back; and Charlotte, entering at the very moment, said, "Louis, shake hands with your cousin." The little fellow obeyed willingly; and I could not resist giving him a hearty kiss, notwithstanding his rather dirty face. "Cousin," said I to Charlotte, as I handed her down, "do you think I deserve the happiness of being related to you?" She replied, with a ready smile, "Oh! I have such a number of cousins, that I should be sorry if you were the most undeserving of them." In taking leave, she desired her next sister, Sophy, a girl about eleven years old, to take great care of the children, and to say good-bye to papa for her when he came home from his ride. She enjoined to the little ones to obey their sister Sophy as they would herself, upon which some promised that they would; but a little fair-haired girl, about six years old, looked discontented, and said, "But Sophy is not you, Charlotte; and we like you best." The two eldest boys had clambered up the carriage; and, at my request, she permitted them to accompany us a little way through the forest, upon their promising to sit very still, and hold fast. We were hardly seated, and the ladies had scarcely exchanged compliments, making the usual remarks upon each other's dress, and upon the company they expected to meet, when Charlotte stopped the carriage, and made her brothers get down. They insisted upon kissing her hands once more; which the eldest did with all the tenderness of a youth of fifteen, but the other in a lighter and more careless manner. She desired them again to give her love to the children, and we drove off. The aunt inquired of Charlotte whether she had finished the book she had last sent her. "No," said Charlotte; "I did not like it: you can have it again. And the one before was not much better." I was surprised, upon asking the title, to hear that it was ____. (We feel obliged to suppress the passage in the letter, to prevent any one from feeling aggrieved; although no author need pay much attention to the opinion of a mere girl, or that of an unsteady young man.) I found penetration and character in everything she said: every expression seemed to brighten her features with new charms,--with new rays of genius,--which unfolded by degrees, as she felt herself understood. "When I was younger," she observed, "I loved nothing so much as romances. Nothing could equal my delight when, on some holiday, I could settle down quietly in a corner, and enter with my whole heart and soul into the joys or sorrows of some fictitious Leonora. I do not deny that they even possess some charms for me yet. But I read so seldom, that I prefer books suited exactly to my taste. And I like those authors best whose scenes describe my own situation in life,--and the friends who are about me, whose stories touch me with interest, from resembling my own homely existence,--which, without being absolutely paradise, is, on the whole, a source of indescribable happiness." I endeavoured to conceal the emotion which these words occasioned, but it was of slight avail; for, when she had expressed so truly her opinion of "The Vicar of Wakefield," and of other works, the names of which I omit (Though the names are omitted, yet the authors mentioned deserve Charlotte's approbation, and will feel it in their hearts when they read this passage. It concerns no other person.), I could no longer contain myself, but gave full utterance to what I thought of it: and it was not until Charlotte had addressed herself to the two other ladies, that I remembered their presence, and observed them sitting mute with astonishment. The aunt looked at me several times with an air of raillery, which, however, I did not at all mind. We talked of the pleasures of dancing. "If it is a fault to love it," said Charlotte, "I am ready to confess that I prize it above all other amusements. If anything disturbs me, I go to the piano, play an air to which I have danced, and all goes right again directly." You, who know me, can fancy how steadfastly I gazed upon her rich dark eyes during these remarks, how my very soul gloated over her warm lips and fresh, glowing cheeks, how I became quite lost in the delightful meaning of her words, so much so, that I scarcely heard the actual expressions. In short, I alighted from the carriage like a person in a dream, and was so lost to the dim world around me, that I scarcely heard the music which resounded from the illuminated ballroom. The two Messrs. Andran and a certain N. N. (I cannot trouble myself with the names), who were the aunt's and Charlotte's partners, received us at the carriage-door, and took possession of their ladies, whilst I followed with mine. We commenced with a minuet. I led out one lady after another, and precisely those who were the most disagreeable could not bring themselves to leave off. Charlotte and her partner began an English country dance, and you must imagine my delight when it was their turn to dance the figure with us. You should see Charlotte dance. She dances with her whole heart and soul: her figure is all harmony, elegance, and grace, as if she were conscious of nothing else, and had no other thought or feeling; and, doubtless, for the moment, every other sensation is extinct. She was engaged for the second country dance, but promised me the third, and assured me, with the most agreeable freedom, that she was very fond of waltzing. "It is the custom here," she said, "for the previous partners to waltz together; but my partner is an indifferent waltzer, and will feel delighted if I save him the trouble. Your partner is not allowed to waltz, and, indeed, is equally incapable: but I observed during the country dance that you waltz well; so, if you will waltz with me, I beg you would propose it to my partner, and I will propose it to yours." We agreed, and it was arranged that our partners should mutually entertain each other. We set off, and, at first, delighted ourselves with the usual graceful motions of the arms. With what grace, with what ease, she moved! When the waltz commenced, and the dancers whirled around each other in the giddy maze, there was some confusion, owing to the incapacity of some of the dancers. We judiciously remained still, allowing the others to weary themselves; and, when the awkward dancers had withdrawn, we joined in, and kept it up famously together with one other couple,--Andran and his partner. Never did I dance more lightly. I felt myself more than mortal, holding this loveliest of creatures in my arms, flying, with her as rapidly as the wind, till I lost sight of every other object; and O Wilhelm, I vowed at that moment, that a maiden whom I loved, or for whom I felt the slightest attachment, never, never should waltz with any one else but with me, if I went to perdition for it!--you will understand this. We took a few turns in the room to recover our breath. Charlotte sat down, and felt refreshed by partaking of some oranges which I had had secured,--the only ones that had been left; but at every slice which, from politeness, she offered to her neighbours, I felt as though a dagger went through my heart. We were the second couple in the third country dance. As we were going down (and Heaven knows with what ecstasy I gazed at her arms and eyes, beaming with the sweetest feeling of pure and genuine enjoyment), we passed a lady whom I had noticed for her charming expression of countenance; although she was no longer young. She looked at Charlotte with a smile, then, holding up her finger in a threatening attitude, repeated twice in a very significant tone of voice the name of "Albert." "Who is Albert," said I to Charlotte, "if it is not impertinent to ask?" She was about to answer, when we were obliged to separate, in order to execute a figure in the dance; and, as we crossed over again in front of each other, I perceived she looked somewhat pensive. "Why need I conceal it from you?" she said, as she gave me her hand for the promenade. "Albert is a worthy man, to whom I am engaged." Now, there was nothing new to me in this (for the girls had told me of it on the way); but it was so far new that I had not thought of it in connection with her whom, in so short a time, I had learned to prize so highly. Enough, I became confused, got out in the figure, and occasioned general confusion; so that it required all Charlotte's presence of mind to set me right by pulling and pushing me into my proper place. The dance was not yet finished when the lightning which had for some time been seen in the horizon, and which I had asserted to proceed entirely from heat, grew more violent; and the thunder was heard above the music. When any distress or terror surprises us in the midst of our amusements, it naturally makes a deeper impression than at other times, either because the contrast makes us more keenly susceptible, or rather perhaps because our senses are then more open to impressions, and the shock is consequently stronger. To this cause I must ascribe the fright and shrieks of the ladies. One sagaciously sat down in a corner with her back to the window, and held her fingers to her ears; a second knelt down before her, and hid her face in her lap; a third threw herself between them, and embraced her sister with a thousand tears; some insisted on going home; others, unconscious of their actions, wanted sufficient presence of mind to repress the impertinence of their young partners, who sought to direct to themselves those sighs which the lips of our agitated beauties intended for heaven. Some of the gentlemen had gone down-stairs to smoke a quiet cigar, and the rest of the company gladly embraced a happy suggestion of the hostess to retire into another room which was provided with shutters and curtains. We had hardly got there, when Charlotte placed the chairs in a circle; and, when the company had sat down in compliance with her request, she forthwith proposed a round game. I noticed some of the company prepare their mouths and draw themselves up at the prospect of some agreeable forfeit. "Let us play at counting," said Charlotte. "Now, pay attention: I shall go round the circle from right to left; and each person is to count, one after the other, the number that comes to him, and must count fast; whoever stops or mistakes is to have a box on the ear, and so on, till we have counted a thousand." It was delightful to see the fun. She went round the circle with upraised arm. "One," said the first; "two," the second; "three," the third; and so on, till Charlotte went faster and faster. One made a mistake, instantly a box on the ear; and, amid the laughter that ensued, came another box; and so on, faster and faster. I myself came in for two. I fancied they were harder than the rest, and felt quite delighted. A general laughter and confusion put an end to the game long before we had counted as far as a thousand. The party broke up into little separate knots: the storm had ceased, and I followed Charlotte into the ballroom. On the way she said, "The game banished their fears of the storm." I could make no reply. "I myself," she continued, "was as much frightened as any of them; but by affecting courage, to keep up the spirits of the others, I forgot my apprehensions." We went to the window. It was still thundering at a distance: a soft rain was pouring down over the country, and filled the air around us with delicious odours. Charlotte leaned forward on her arm; her eyes wandered over the scene; she raised them to the sky, and then turned them upon me; they were moistened with tears; she placed her hand on mine and said, "Klopstock!" at once I remembered the magnificent ode which was in her thoughts: I felt oppressed with the weight of my sensations, and sank under them. It was more than I could bear. I bent over her hand, kissed it in a stream of delicious tears, and again looked up to her eyes. Divine Klopstock! why didst thou not see thy apotheosis in those eyes? And thy name so often profaned, would that I never heard it repeated! JUNE 19. I no longer remember where I stopped in my narrative: I only know it was two in the morning when I went to bed; and if you had been with me, that I might have talked instead of writing to you, I should, in all probability, have kept you up till daylight. I think I have not yet related what happened as we rode home from the ball, nor have I time to tell you now. It was a most magnificent sunrise: the whole country was refreshed, and the rain fell drop by drop from the trees in the forest. Our companions were asleep. Charlotte asked me if I did not wish to sleep also, and begged of me not to make any ceremony on her account. Looking steadfastly at her, I answered, "As long as I see those eyes open, there is no fear of my falling asleep." We both continued awake till we reached her door. The maid opened it softly, and assured her, in answer to her inquiries, that her father and the children were well, and still sleeping. I left her asking permission to visit her in the course of the day. She consented, and I went, and, since that time, sun, moon, and stars may pursue their course: I know not whether it is day or night; the whole world is nothing to me. JUNE 21. My days are as happy as those reserved by God for his elect; and, whatever be my fate hereafter, I can never say that I have not tasted joy,--the purest joy of life. You know Walheim. I am now completely settled there. In that spot I am only half a league from Charlotte; and there I enjoy myself, and taste all the pleasure which can fall to the lot of man. Little did I imagine, when I selected Walheim for my pedestrian excursions, that all heaven lay so near it. How often in my wanderings from the hillside or from the meadows across the river, have I beheld this hunting-lodge, which now contains within it all the joy of my heart! I have often, my dear Wilhelm, reflected on the eagerness men feel to wander and make new discoveries, and upon that secret impulse which afterward inclines them to return to their narrow circle, conform to the laws of custom, and embarrass themselves no longer with what passes around them. It is so strange how, when I came here first, and gazed upon that lovely valley from the hillside, I felt charmed with the entire scene surrounding me. The little wood opposite--how delightful to sit under its shade! How fine the view from that point of rock! Then, that delightful chain of hills, and the exquisite valleys at their feet! Could I but wander and lose myself amongst them! I went, and returned without finding what I wished. Distance, my friend, is like futurity. A dim vastness is spread before our souls: the perceptions of our mind are as obscure as those of our vision; and we desire earnestly to surrender up our whole being, that it may be filled with the complete and perfect bliss of one glorious emotion. But alas! when we have attained our object, when the distant there becomes the present here, all is changed: we are as poor and circumscribed as ever, and our souls still languish for unattainable happiness. So does the restless traveller pant for his native soil, and find in his own cottage, in the arms of his wife, in the affections of his children, and in the labour necessary for their support, that happiness which he had sought in vain through the wide world. When, in the morning at sunrise, I go out to Walheim, and with my own hands gather in the garden the pease which are to serve for my dinner, when I sit down to shell them, and read my Homer during the intervals, and then, selecting a saucepan from the kitchen, fetch my own butter, put my mess on the fire, cover it up, and sit down to stir it as occasion requires, I figure to myself the illustrious suitors of Penelope, killing, dressing, and preparing their own oxen and swine. Nothing fills me with a more pure and genuine sense of happiness than those traits of patriarchal life which, thank Heaven! I can imitate without affectation. Happy is it, indeed, for me that my heart is capable of feeling the same simple and innocent pleasure as the peasant whose table is covered with food of his own rearing, and who not only enjoys his meal, but remembers with delight the happy days and sunny mornings when he planted it, the soft evenings when he watered it, and the pleasure he experienced in watching its daily growth. JUNE 29. The day before yesterday, the physician came from the town to pay a visit to the judge. He found me on the floor playing with Charlotte's children. Some of them were scrambling over me, and others romped with me; and, as I caught and tickled them, they made a great noise. The doctor is a formal sort of personage: he adjusts the plaits of his ruffles, and continually settles his frill whilst he is talking to you; and he thought my conduct beneath the dignity of a sensible man. I could perceive this by his countenance. But I did not suffer myself to be disturbed. I allowed him to continue his wise conversation, whilst I rebuilt the children's card houses for them as fast as they threw them down. He went about the town afterward, complaining that the judge's children were spoiled enough before, but that now Werther was completely ruining them. Yes, my dear Wilhelm, nothing on this earth affects my heart so much as children. When I look on at their doings; when I mark in the little creatures the seeds of all those virtues and qualities which they will one day find so indispensable; when I behold in the obstinate all the future firmness and constancy of a noble character; in the capricious, that levity and gaiety of temper which will carry them lightly over the dangers and troubles of life, their whole nature simple and unpolluted,--then I call to mind the golden words of the Great Teacher of mankind, "Unless ye become like one of these!" And now, my friend, these children, who are our equals, whom we ought to consider as our models, we treat them as though they were our subjects. They are allowed no will of their own. And have we, then, none ourselves? Whence comes our exclusive right? Is it because we are older and more experienced? Great God! from the height of thy heaven thou beholdest great children and little children, and no others; and thy Son has long since declared which afford thee greatest pleasure. But they believe in him, and hear him not,--that, too, is an old story; and they train their children after their own image, etc. Adieu, Wilhelm: I will not further bewilder myself with this subject. JULY 1. The consolation Charlotte can bring to an invalid I experience from my own heart, which suffers more from her absence than many a poor creature lingering on a bed of sickness. She is gone to spend a few days in the town with a very worthy woman, who is given over by the physicians, and wishes to have Charlotte near her in her last moments. I accompanied her last week on a visit to the Vicar of S--, a small village in the mountains, about a league hence. We arrived about four o'clock: Charlotte had taken her little sister with her. When we entered the vicarage court, we found the good old man sitting on a bench before the door, under the shade of two large walnut-trees. At the sight of Charlotte he seemed to gain new life, rose, forgot his stick, and ventured to walk toward her. She ran to him, and made him sit down again; then, placing herself by his side, she gave him a number of messages from her father, and then caught up his youngest child, a dirty, ugly little thing, the joy of his old age, and kissed it. I wish you could have witnessed her attention to this old man,--how she raised her voice on account of his deafness; how she told him of healthy young people, who had been carried off when it was least expected; praised the virtues of Carlsbad, and commended his determination to spend the ensuing summer there; and assured him that he looked better and stronger than he did when she saw him last. I, in the meantime, paid attention to his good lady. The old man seemed quite in spirits; and as I could not help admiring the beauty of the walnut-trees, which formed such an agreeable shade over our heads, he began, though with some little difficulty, to tell us their history. "As to the oldest," said he, "we do not know who planted it,--some say one clergyman, and some another: but the younger one, there behind us, is exactly the age of my wife, fifty years old next October; her father planted it in the morning, and in the evening she came into the world. My wife's father was my predecessor here, and I cannot tell you how fond he was of that tree; and it is fully as dear to me. Under the shade of that very tree, upon a log of wood, my wife was seated knitting, when I, a poor student, came into this court for the first time, just seven and twenty years ago." Charlotte inquired for his daughter. He said she was gone with Herr Schmidt to the meadows, and was with the haymakers. The old man then resumed his story, and told us how his predecessor had taken a fancy to him, as had his daughter likewise; and how he had become first his curate, and subsequently his successor. He had scarcely finished his story when his daughter returned through the garden, accompanied by the above-mentioned Herr Schmidt. She welcomed Charlotte affectionately, and I confess I was much taken with her appearance. She was a lively-looking, good-humoured brunette, quite competent to amuse one for a short time in the country. Her lover (for such Herr Schmidt evidently appeared to be) was a polite, reserved personage, and would not join our conversation, notwithstanding all Charlotte's endeavours to draw him out. I was much annoyed at observing, by his countenance, that his silence did not arise from want of talent, but from caprice and ill-humour. This subsequently became very evident, when we set out to take a walk, and Frederica joining Charlotte, with whom I was talking, the worthy gentleman's face, which was naturally rather sombre, became so dark and angry that Charlotte was obliged to touch my arm, and remind me that I was talking too much to Frederica. Nothing distresses me more than to see men torment each other; particularly when in the flower of their age, in the very season of pleasure, they waste their few short days of sunshine in quarrels and disputes, and only perceive their error when it is too late to repair it. This thought dwelt upon my mind; and in the evening, when we returned to the vicar's, and were sitting round the table with our bread end milk, the conversation turned on the joys and sorrows of the world, I could not resist the temptation to inveigh bitterly against ill-humour. "We are apt," said I, "to complain, but--with very little cause, that our happy days are few, and our evil days many. If our hearts were always disposed to receive the benefits Heaven sends us, we should acquire strength to support evil when it comes." "But," observed the vicar's wife, "we cannot always command our tempers, so much depends upon the constitution: when the body suffers, the mind is ill at ease." "I acknowledge that," I continued; "but we must consider such a disposition in the light of a disease, and inquire whether there is no remedy for it." "I should be glad to hear one," said Charlotte: "at least, I think very much depends upon ourselves; I know it is so with me. When anything annoys me, and disturbs my temper, I hasten into the garden, hum a couple of country dances, and it is all right with me directly." "That is what I meant," I replied; "ill-humour resembles indolence: it is natural to us; but if once we have courage to exert ourselves, we find our work run fresh from our hands, and we experience in the activity from which we shrank a real enjoyment." Frederica listened very attentively: and the young man objected, that we were not masters of ourselves, and still less so of our feelings. "The question is about a disagreeable feeling," I added, "from which every one would willingly escape, but none know their own power without trial. Invalids are glad to consult physicians, and submit to the most scrupulous regimen, the most nauseous medicines, in order to recover their health." I observed that the good old man inclined his head, and exerted himself to hear our discourse; so I raised my voice, and addressed myself directly to him. "We preach against a great many crimes," I observed, "but I never remember a

presence

How many times the word 'presence' appears in the text?

will be no wiser at the end of my letter than you were at the beginning. Attend, then, and I will compel myself to give you the details. I mentioned to you the other day that I had become acquainted with S--, the district judge, and that he had invited me to go and visit him in his retirement, or rather in his little kingdom. But I neglected going, and perhaps should never have gone, if chance had not discovered to me the treasure which lay concealed in that retired spot. Some of our young people had proposed giving a ball in the country, at which I consented to be present. I offered my hand for the evening to a pretty and agreeable, but rather commonplace, sort of girl from the immediate neighbourhood; and it was agreed that I should engage a carriage, and call upon Charlotte, with my partner and her aunt, to convey them to the ball. My companion informed me, as we drove along through the park to the hunting-lodge, that I should make the acquaintance of a very charming young lady. "Take care," added the aunt, "that you do not lose your heart." "Why?" said I. "Because she is already engaged to a very worthy man," she replied, "who is gone to settle his affairs upon the death of his father, and will succeed to a very considerable inheritance." This information possessed no interest for me. When we arrived at the gate, the sun was setting behind the tops of the mountains. The atmosphere was heavy; and the ladies expressed their fears of an approaching storm, as masses of low black clouds were gathering in the horizon. I relieved their anxieties by pretending to be weather-wise, although I myself had some apprehensions lest our pleasure should be interrupted. I alighted; and a maid came to the door, and requested us to wait a moment for her mistress. I walked across the court to a well-built house, and, ascending the flight of steps in front, opened the door, and saw before me the most charming spectacle I had ever witnessed. Six children, from eleven to two years old, were running about the hall, and surrounding a lady of middle height, with a lovely figure, dressed in a robe of simple white, trimmed with pink ribbons. She was holding a rye loaf in her hand, and was cutting slices for the little ones all around, in proportion to their age and appetite. She performed her task in a graceful and affectionate manner; each claimant awaiting his turn with outstretched hands, and boisterously shouting his thanks. Some of them ran away at once, to enjoy their evening meal; whilst others, of a gentler disposition, retired to the courtyard to see the strangers, and to survey the carriage in which their Charlotte was to drive away. "Pray forgive me for giving you the trouble to come for me, and for keeping the ladies waiting: but dressing, and arranging some household duties before I leave, had made me forget my children's supper; and they do not like to take it from any one but me." I uttered some indifferent compliment: but my whole soul was absorbed by her air, her voice, her manner; and I had scarcely recovered myself when she ran into her room to fetch her gloves and fan. The young ones threw inquiring glances at me from a distance; whilst I approached the youngest, a most delicious little creature. He drew back; and Charlotte, entering at the very moment, said, "Louis, shake hands with your cousin." The little fellow obeyed willingly; and I could not resist giving him a hearty kiss, notwithstanding his rather dirty face. "Cousin," said I to Charlotte, as I handed her down, "do you think I deserve the happiness of being related to you?" She replied, with a ready smile, "Oh! I have such a number of cousins, that I should be sorry if you were the most undeserving of them." In taking leave, she desired her next sister, Sophy, a girl about eleven years old, to take great care of the children, and to say good-bye to papa for her when he came home from his ride. She enjoined to the little ones to obey their sister Sophy as they would herself, upon which some promised that they would; but a little fair-haired girl, about six years old, looked discontented, and said, "But Sophy is not you, Charlotte; and we like you best." The two eldest boys had clambered up the carriage; and, at my request, she permitted them to accompany us a little way through the forest, upon their promising to sit very still, and hold fast. We were hardly seated, and the ladies had scarcely exchanged compliments, making the usual remarks upon each other's dress, and upon the company they expected to meet, when Charlotte stopped the carriage, and made her brothers get down. They insisted upon kissing her hands once more; which the eldest did with all the tenderness of a youth of fifteen, but the other in a lighter and more careless manner. She desired them again to give her love to the children, and we drove off. The aunt inquired of Charlotte whether she had finished the book she had last sent her. "No," said Charlotte; "I did not like it: you can have it again. And the one before was not much better." I was surprised, upon asking the title, to hear that it was ____. (We feel obliged to suppress the passage in the letter, to prevent any one from feeling aggrieved; although no author need pay much attention to the opinion of a mere girl, or that of an unsteady young man.) I found penetration and character in everything she said: every expression seemed to brighten her features with new charms,--with new rays of genius,--which unfolded by degrees, as she felt herself understood. "When I was younger," she observed, "I loved nothing so much as romances. Nothing could equal my delight when, on some holiday, I could settle down quietly in a corner, and enter with my whole heart and soul into the joys or sorrows of some fictitious Leonora. I do not deny that they even possess some charms for me yet. But I read so seldom, that I prefer books suited exactly to my taste. And I like those authors best whose scenes describe my own situation in life,--and the friends who are about me, whose stories touch me with interest, from resembling my own homely existence,--which, without being absolutely paradise, is, on the whole, a source of indescribable happiness." I endeavoured to conceal the emotion which these words occasioned, but it was of slight avail; for, when she had expressed so truly her opinion of "The Vicar of Wakefield," and of other works, the names of which I omit (Though the names are omitted, yet the authors mentioned deserve Charlotte's approbation, and will feel it in their hearts when they read this passage. It concerns no other person.), I could no longer contain myself, but gave full utterance to what I thought of it: and it was not until Charlotte had addressed herself to the two other ladies, that I remembered their presence, and observed them sitting mute with astonishment. The aunt looked at me several times with an air of raillery, which, however, I did not at all mind. We talked of the pleasures of dancing. "If it is a fault to love it," said Charlotte, "I am ready to confess that I prize it above all other amusements. If anything disturbs me, I go to the piano, play an air to which I have danced, and all goes right again directly." You, who know me, can fancy how steadfastly I gazed upon her rich dark eyes during these remarks, how my very soul gloated over her warm lips and fresh, glowing cheeks, how I became quite lost in the delightful meaning of her words, so much so, that I scarcely heard the actual expressions. In short, I alighted from the carriage like a person in a dream, and was so lost to the dim world around me, that I scarcely heard the music which resounded from the illuminated ballroom. The two Messrs. Andran and a certain N. N. (I cannot trouble myself with the names), who were the aunt's and Charlotte's partners, received us at the carriage-door, and took possession of their ladies, whilst I followed with mine. We commenced with a minuet. I led out one lady after another, and precisely those who were the most disagreeable could not bring themselves to leave off. Charlotte and her partner began an English country dance, and you must imagine my delight when it was their turn to dance the figure with us. You should see Charlotte dance. She dances with her whole heart and soul: her figure is all harmony, elegance, and grace, as if she were conscious of nothing else, and had no other thought or feeling; and, doubtless, for the moment, every other sensation is extinct. She was engaged for the second country dance, but promised me the third, and assured me, with the most agreeable freedom, that she was very fond of waltzing. "It is the custom here," she said, "for the previous partners to waltz together; but my partner is an indifferent waltzer, and will feel delighted if I save him the trouble. Your partner is not allowed to waltz, and, indeed, is equally incapable: but I observed during the country dance that you waltz well; so, if you will waltz with me, I beg you would propose it to my partner, and I will propose it to yours." We agreed, and it was arranged that our partners should mutually entertain each other. We set off, and, at first, delighted ourselves with the usual graceful motions of the arms. With what grace, with what ease, she moved! When the waltz commenced, and the dancers whirled around each other in the giddy maze, there was some confusion, owing to the incapacity of some of the dancers. We judiciously remained still, allowing the others to weary themselves; and, when the awkward dancers had withdrawn, we joined in, and kept it up famously together with one other couple,--Andran and his partner. Never did I dance more lightly. I felt myself more than mortal, holding this loveliest of creatures in my arms, flying, with her as rapidly as the wind, till I lost sight of every other object; and O Wilhelm, I vowed at that moment, that a maiden whom I loved, or for whom I felt the slightest attachment, never, never should waltz with any one else but with me, if I went to perdition for it!--you will understand this. We took a few turns in the room to recover our breath. Charlotte sat down, and felt refreshed by partaking of some oranges which I had had secured,--the only ones that had been left; but at every slice which, from politeness, she offered to her neighbours, I felt as though a dagger went through my heart. We were the second couple in the third country dance. As we were going down (and Heaven knows with what ecstasy I gazed at her arms and eyes, beaming with the sweetest feeling of pure and genuine enjoyment), we passed a lady whom I had noticed for her charming expression of countenance; although she was no longer young. She looked at Charlotte with a smile, then, holding up her finger in a threatening attitude, repeated twice in a very significant tone of voice the name of "Albert." "Who is Albert," said I to Charlotte, "if it is not impertinent to ask?" She was about to answer, when we were obliged to separate, in order to execute a figure in the dance; and, as we crossed over again in front of each other, I perceived she looked somewhat pensive. "Why need I conceal it from you?" she said, as she gave me her hand for the promenade. "Albert is a worthy man, to whom I am engaged." Now, there was nothing new to me in this (for the girls had told me of it on the way); but it was so far new that I had not thought of it in connection with her whom, in so short a time, I had learned to prize so highly. Enough, I became confused, got out in the figure, and occasioned general confusion; so that it required all Charlotte's presence of mind to set me right by pulling and pushing me into my proper place. The dance was not yet finished when the lightning which had for some time been seen in the horizon, and which I had asserted to proceed entirely from heat, grew more violent; and the thunder was heard above the music. When any distress or terror surprises us in the midst of our amusements, it naturally makes a deeper impression than at other times, either because the contrast makes us more keenly susceptible, or rather perhaps because our senses are then more open to impressions, and the shock is consequently stronger. To this cause I must ascribe the fright and shrieks of the ladies. One sagaciously sat down in a corner with her back to the window, and held her fingers to her ears; a second knelt down before her, and hid her face in her lap; a third threw herself between them, and embraced her sister with a thousand tears; some insisted on going home; others, unconscious of their actions, wanted sufficient presence of mind to repress the impertinence of their young partners, who sought to direct to themselves those sighs which the lips of our agitated beauties intended for heaven. Some of the gentlemen had gone down-stairs to smoke a quiet cigar, and the rest of the company gladly embraced a happy suggestion of the hostess to retire into another room which was provided with shutters and curtains. We had hardly got there, when Charlotte placed the chairs in a circle; and, when the company had sat down in compliance with her request, she forthwith proposed a round game. I noticed some of the company prepare their mouths and draw themselves up at the prospect of some agreeable forfeit. "Let us play at counting," said Charlotte. "Now, pay attention: I shall go round the circle from right to left; and each person is to count, one after the other, the number that comes to him, and must count fast; whoever stops or mistakes is to have a box on the ear, and so on, till we have counted a thousand." It was delightful to see the fun. She went round the circle with upraised arm. "One," said the first; "two," the second; "three," the third; and so on, till Charlotte went faster and faster. One made a mistake, instantly a box on the ear; and, amid the laughter that ensued, came another box; and so on, faster and faster. I myself came in for two. I fancied they were harder than the rest, and felt quite delighted. A general laughter and confusion put an end to the game long before we had counted as far as a thousand. The party broke up into little separate knots: the storm had ceased, and I followed Charlotte into the ballroom. On the way she said, "The game banished their fears of the storm." I could make no reply. "I myself," she continued, "was as much frightened as any of them; but by affecting courage, to keep up the spirits of the others, I forgot my apprehensions." We went to the window. It was still thundering at a distance: a soft rain was pouring down over the country, and filled the air around us with delicious odours. Charlotte leaned forward on her arm; her eyes wandered over the scene; she raised them to the sky, and then turned them upon me; they were moistened with tears; she placed her hand on mine and said, "Klopstock!" at once I remembered the magnificent ode which was in her thoughts: I felt oppressed with the weight of my sensations, and sank under them. It was more than I could bear. I bent over her hand, kissed it in a stream of delicious tears, and again looked up to her eyes. Divine Klopstock! why didst thou not see thy apotheosis in those eyes? And thy name so often profaned, would that I never heard it repeated! JUNE 19. I no longer remember where I stopped in my narrative: I only know it was two in the morning when I went to bed; and if you had been with me, that I might have talked instead of writing to you, I should, in all probability, have kept you up till daylight. I think I have not yet related what happened as we rode home from the ball, nor have I time to tell you now. It was a most magnificent sunrise: the whole country was refreshed, and the rain fell drop by drop from the trees in the forest. Our companions were asleep. Charlotte asked me if I did not wish to sleep also, and begged of me not to make any ceremony on her account. Looking steadfastly at her, I answered, "As long as I see those eyes open, there is no fear of my falling asleep." We both continued awake till we reached her door. The maid opened it softly, and assured her, in answer to her inquiries, that her father and the children were well, and still sleeping. I left her asking permission to visit her in the course of the day. She consented, and I went, and, since that time, sun, moon, and stars may pursue their course: I know not whether it is day or night; the whole world is nothing to me. JUNE 21. My days are as happy as those reserved by God for his elect; and, whatever be my fate hereafter, I can never say that I have not tasted joy,--the purest joy of life. You know Walheim. I am now completely settled there. In that spot I am only half a league from Charlotte; and there I enjoy myself, and taste all the pleasure which can fall to the lot of man. Little did I imagine, when I selected Walheim for my pedestrian excursions, that all heaven lay so near it. How often in my wanderings from the hillside or from the meadows across the river, have I beheld this hunting-lodge, which now contains within it all the joy of my heart! I have often, my dear Wilhelm, reflected on the eagerness men feel to wander and make new discoveries, and upon that secret impulse which afterward inclines them to return to their narrow circle, conform to the laws of custom, and embarrass themselves no longer with what passes around them. It is so strange how, when I came here first, and gazed upon that lovely valley from the hillside, I felt charmed with the entire scene surrounding me. The little wood opposite--how delightful to sit under its shade! How fine the view from that point of rock! Then, that delightful chain of hills, and the exquisite valleys at their feet! Could I but wander and lose myself amongst them! I went, and returned without finding what I wished. Distance, my friend, is like futurity. A dim vastness is spread before our souls: the perceptions of our mind are as obscure as those of our vision; and we desire earnestly to surrender up our whole being, that it may be filled with the complete and perfect bliss of one glorious emotion. But alas! when we have attained our object, when the distant there becomes the present here, all is changed: we are as poor and circumscribed as ever, and our souls still languish for unattainable happiness. So does the restless traveller pant for his native soil, and find in his own cottage, in the arms of his wife, in the affections of his children, and in the labour necessary for their support, that happiness which he had sought in vain through the wide world. When, in the morning at sunrise, I go out to Walheim, and with my own hands gather in the garden the pease which are to serve for my dinner, when I sit down to shell them, and read my Homer during the intervals, and then, selecting a saucepan from the kitchen, fetch my own butter, put my mess on the fire, cover it up, and sit down to stir it as occasion requires, I figure to myself the illustrious suitors of Penelope, killing, dressing, and preparing their own oxen and swine. Nothing fills me with a more pure and genuine sense of happiness than those traits of patriarchal life which, thank Heaven! I can imitate without affectation. Happy is it, indeed, for me that my heart is capable of feeling the same simple and innocent pleasure as the peasant whose table is covered with food of his own rearing, and who not only enjoys his meal, but remembers with delight the happy days and sunny mornings when he planted it, the soft evenings when he watered it, and the pleasure he experienced in watching its daily growth. JUNE 29. The day before yesterday, the physician came from the town to pay a visit to the judge. He found me on the floor playing with Charlotte's children. Some of them were scrambling over me, and others romped with me; and, as I caught and tickled them, they made a great noise. The doctor is a formal sort of personage: he adjusts the plaits of his ruffles, and continually settles his frill whilst he is talking to you; and he thought my conduct beneath the dignity of a sensible man. I could perceive this by his countenance. But I did not suffer myself to be disturbed. I allowed him to continue his wise conversation, whilst I rebuilt the children's card houses for them as fast as they threw them down. He went about the town afterward, complaining that the judge's children were spoiled enough before, but that now Werther was completely ruining them. Yes, my dear Wilhelm, nothing on this earth affects my heart so much as children. When I look on at their doings; when I mark in the little creatures the seeds of all those virtues and qualities which they will one day find so indispensable; when I behold in the obstinate all the future firmness and constancy of a noble character; in the capricious, that levity and gaiety of temper which will carry them lightly over the dangers and troubles of life, their whole nature simple and unpolluted,--then I call to mind the golden words of the Great Teacher of mankind, "Unless ye become like one of these!" And now, my friend, these children, who are our equals, whom we ought to consider as our models, we treat them as though they were our subjects. They are allowed no will of their own. And have we, then, none ourselves? Whence comes our exclusive right? Is it because we are older and more experienced? Great God! from the height of thy heaven thou beholdest great children and little children, and no others; and thy Son has long since declared which afford thee greatest pleasure. But they believe in him, and hear him not,--that, too, is an old story; and they train their children after their own image, etc. Adieu, Wilhelm: I will not further bewilder myself with this subject. JULY 1. The consolation Charlotte can bring to an invalid I experience from my own heart, which suffers more from her absence than many a poor creature lingering on a bed of sickness. She is gone to spend a few days in the town with a very worthy woman, who is given over by the physicians, and wishes to have Charlotte near her in her last moments. I accompanied her last week on a visit to the Vicar of S--, a small village in the mountains, about a league hence. We arrived about four o'clock: Charlotte had taken her little sister with her. When we entered the vicarage court, we found the good old man sitting on a bench before the door, under the shade of two large walnut-trees. At the sight of Charlotte he seemed to gain new life, rose, forgot his stick, and ventured to walk toward her. She ran to him, and made him sit down again; then, placing herself by his side, she gave him a number of messages from her father, and then caught up his youngest child, a dirty, ugly little thing, the joy of his old age, and kissed it. I wish you could have witnessed her attention to this old man,--how she raised her voice on account of his deafness; how she told him of healthy young people, who had been carried off when it was least expected; praised the virtues of Carlsbad, and commended his determination to spend the ensuing summer there; and assured him that he looked better and stronger than he did when she saw him last. I, in the meantime, paid attention to his good lady. The old man seemed quite in spirits; and as I could not help admiring the beauty of the walnut-trees, which formed such an agreeable shade over our heads, he began, though with some little difficulty, to tell us their history. "As to the oldest," said he, "we do not know who planted it,--some say one clergyman, and some another: but the younger one, there behind us, is exactly the age of my wife, fifty years old next October; her father planted it in the morning, and in the evening she came into the world. My wife's father was my predecessor here, and I cannot tell you how fond he was of that tree; and it is fully as dear to me. Under the shade of that very tree, upon a log of wood, my wife was seated knitting, when I, a poor student, came into this court for the first time, just seven and twenty years ago." Charlotte inquired for his daughter. He said she was gone with Herr Schmidt to the meadows, and was with the haymakers. The old man then resumed his story, and told us how his predecessor had taken a fancy to him, as had his daughter likewise; and how he had become first his curate, and subsequently his successor. He had scarcely finished his story when his daughter returned through the garden, accompanied by the above-mentioned Herr Schmidt. She welcomed Charlotte affectionately, and I confess I was much taken with her appearance. She was a lively-looking, good-humoured brunette, quite competent to amuse one for a short time in the country. Her lover (for such Herr Schmidt evidently appeared to be) was a polite, reserved personage, and would not join our conversation, notwithstanding all Charlotte's endeavours to draw him out. I was much annoyed at observing, by his countenance, that his silence did not arise from want of talent, but from caprice and ill-humour. This subsequently became very evident, when we set out to take a walk, and Frederica joining Charlotte, with whom I was talking, the worthy gentleman's face, which was naturally rather sombre, became so dark and angry that Charlotte was obliged to touch my arm, and remind me that I was talking too much to Frederica. Nothing distresses me more than to see men torment each other; particularly when in the flower of their age, in the very season of pleasure, they waste their few short days of sunshine in quarrels and disputes, and only perceive their error when it is too late to repair it. This thought dwelt upon my mind; and in the evening, when we returned to the vicar's, and were sitting round the table with our bread end milk, the conversation turned on the joys and sorrows of the world, I could not resist the temptation to inveigh bitterly against ill-humour. "We are apt," said I, "to complain, but--with very little cause, that our happy days are few, and our evil days many. If our hearts were always disposed to receive the benefits Heaven sends us, we should acquire strength to support evil when it comes." "But," observed the vicar's wife, "we cannot always command our tempers, so much depends upon the constitution: when the body suffers, the mind is ill at ease." "I acknowledge that," I continued; "but we must consider such a disposition in the light of a disease, and inquire whether there is no remedy for it." "I should be glad to hear one," said Charlotte: "at least, I think very much depends upon ourselves; I know it is so with me. When anything annoys me, and disturbs my temper, I hasten into the garden, hum a couple of country dances, and it is all right with me directly." "That is what I meant," I replied; "ill-humour resembles indolence: it is natural to us; but if once we have courage to exert ourselves, we find our work run fresh from our hands, and we experience in the activity from which we shrank a real enjoyment." Frederica listened very attentively: and the young man objected, that we were not masters of ourselves, and still less so of our feelings. "The question is about a disagreeable feeling," I added, "from which every one would willingly escape, but none know their own power without trial. Invalids are glad to consult physicians, and submit to the most scrupulous regimen, the most nauseous medicines, in order to recover their health." I observed that the good old man inclined his head, and exerted himself to hear our discourse; so I raised my voice, and addressed myself directly to him. "We preach against a great many crimes," I observed, "but I never remember a

venture

How many times the word 'venture' appears in the text?

will be no wiser at the end of my letter than you were at the beginning. Attend, then, and I will compel myself to give you the details. I mentioned to you the other day that I had become acquainted with S--, the district judge, and that he had invited me to go and visit him in his retirement, or rather in his little kingdom. But I neglected going, and perhaps should never have gone, if chance had not discovered to me the treasure which lay concealed in that retired spot. Some of our young people had proposed giving a ball in the country, at which I consented to be present. I offered my hand for the evening to a pretty and agreeable, but rather commonplace, sort of girl from the immediate neighbourhood; and it was agreed that I should engage a carriage, and call upon Charlotte, with my partner and her aunt, to convey them to the ball. My companion informed me, as we drove along through the park to the hunting-lodge, that I should make the acquaintance of a very charming young lady. "Take care," added the aunt, "that you do not lose your heart." "Why?" said I. "Because she is already engaged to a very worthy man," she replied, "who is gone to settle his affairs upon the death of his father, and will succeed to a very considerable inheritance." This information possessed no interest for me. When we arrived at the gate, the sun was setting behind the tops of the mountains. The atmosphere was heavy; and the ladies expressed their fears of an approaching storm, as masses of low black clouds were gathering in the horizon. I relieved their anxieties by pretending to be weather-wise, although I myself had some apprehensions lest our pleasure should be interrupted. I alighted; and a maid came to the door, and requested us to wait a moment for her mistress. I walked across the court to a well-built house, and, ascending the flight of steps in front, opened the door, and saw before me the most charming spectacle I had ever witnessed. Six children, from eleven to two years old, were running about the hall, and surrounding a lady of middle height, with a lovely figure, dressed in a robe of simple white, trimmed with pink ribbons. She was holding a rye loaf in her hand, and was cutting slices for the little ones all around, in proportion to their age and appetite. She performed her task in a graceful and affectionate manner; each claimant awaiting his turn with outstretched hands, and boisterously shouting his thanks. Some of them ran away at once, to enjoy their evening meal; whilst others, of a gentler disposition, retired to the courtyard to see the strangers, and to survey the carriage in which their Charlotte was to drive away. "Pray forgive me for giving you the trouble to come for me, and for keeping the ladies waiting: but dressing, and arranging some household duties before I leave, had made me forget my children's supper; and they do not like to take it from any one but me." I uttered some indifferent compliment: but my whole soul was absorbed by her air, her voice, her manner; and I had scarcely recovered myself when she ran into her room to fetch her gloves and fan. The young ones threw inquiring glances at me from a distance; whilst I approached the youngest, a most delicious little creature. He drew back; and Charlotte, entering at the very moment, said, "Louis, shake hands with your cousin." The little fellow obeyed willingly; and I could not resist giving him a hearty kiss, notwithstanding his rather dirty face. "Cousin," said I to Charlotte, as I handed her down, "do you think I deserve the happiness of being related to you?" She replied, with a ready smile, "Oh! I have such a number of cousins, that I should be sorry if you were the most undeserving of them." In taking leave, she desired her next sister, Sophy, a girl about eleven years old, to take great care of the children, and to say good-bye to papa for her when he came home from his ride. She enjoined to the little ones to obey their sister Sophy as they would herself, upon which some promised that they would; but a little fair-haired girl, about six years old, looked discontented, and said, "But Sophy is not you, Charlotte; and we like you best." The two eldest boys had clambered up the carriage; and, at my request, she permitted them to accompany us a little way through the forest, upon their promising to sit very still, and hold fast. We were hardly seated, and the ladies had scarcely exchanged compliments, making the usual remarks upon each other's dress, and upon the company they expected to meet, when Charlotte stopped the carriage, and made her brothers get down. They insisted upon kissing her hands once more; which the eldest did with all the tenderness of a youth of fifteen, but the other in a lighter and more careless manner. She desired them again to give her love to the children, and we drove off. The aunt inquired of Charlotte whether she had finished the book she had last sent her. "No," said Charlotte; "I did not like it: you can have it again. And the one before was not much better." I was surprised, upon asking the title, to hear that it was ____. (We feel obliged to suppress the passage in the letter, to prevent any one from feeling aggrieved; although no author need pay much attention to the opinion of a mere girl, or that of an unsteady young man.) I found penetration and character in everything she said: every expression seemed to brighten her features with new charms,--with new rays of genius,--which unfolded by degrees, as she felt herself understood. "When I was younger," she observed, "I loved nothing so much as romances. Nothing could equal my delight when, on some holiday, I could settle down quietly in a corner, and enter with my whole heart and soul into the joys or sorrows of some fictitious Leonora. I do not deny that they even possess some charms for me yet. But I read so seldom, that I prefer books suited exactly to my taste. And I like those authors best whose scenes describe my own situation in life,--and the friends who are about me, whose stories touch me with interest, from resembling my own homely existence,--which, without being absolutely paradise, is, on the whole, a source of indescribable happiness." I endeavoured to conceal the emotion which these words occasioned, but it was of slight avail; for, when she had expressed so truly her opinion of "The Vicar of Wakefield," and of other works, the names of which I omit (Though the names are omitted, yet the authors mentioned deserve Charlotte's approbation, and will feel it in their hearts when they read this passage. It concerns no other person.), I could no longer contain myself, but gave full utterance to what I thought of it: and it was not until Charlotte had addressed herself to the two other ladies, that I remembered their presence, and observed them sitting mute with astonishment. The aunt looked at me several times with an air of raillery, which, however, I did not at all mind. We talked of the pleasures of dancing. "If it is a fault to love it," said Charlotte, "I am ready to confess that I prize it above all other amusements. If anything disturbs me, I go to the piano, play an air to which I have danced, and all goes right again directly." You, who know me, can fancy how steadfastly I gazed upon her rich dark eyes during these remarks, how my very soul gloated over her warm lips and fresh, glowing cheeks, how I became quite lost in the delightful meaning of her words, so much so, that I scarcely heard the actual expressions. In short, I alighted from the carriage like a person in a dream, and was so lost to the dim world around me, that I scarcely heard the music which resounded from the illuminated ballroom. The two Messrs. Andran and a certain N. N. (I cannot trouble myself with the names), who were the aunt's and Charlotte's partners, received us at the carriage-door, and took possession of their ladies, whilst I followed with mine. We commenced with a minuet. I led out one lady after another, and precisely those who were the most disagreeable could not bring themselves to leave off. Charlotte and her partner began an English country dance, and you must imagine my delight when it was their turn to dance the figure with us. You should see Charlotte dance. She dances with her whole heart and soul: her figure is all harmony, elegance, and grace, as if she were conscious of nothing else, and had no other thought or feeling; and, doubtless, for the moment, every other sensation is extinct. She was engaged for the second country dance, but promised me the third, and assured me, with the most agreeable freedom, that she was very fond of waltzing. "It is the custom here," she said, "for the previous partners to waltz together; but my partner is an indifferent waltzer, and will feel delighted if I save him the trouble. Your partner is not allowed to waltz, and, indeed, is equally incapable: but I observed during the country dance that you waltz well; so, if you will waltz with me, I beg you would propose it to my partner, and I will propose it to yours." We agreed, and it was arranged that our partners should mutually entertain each other. We set off, and, at first, delighted ourselves with the usual graceful motions of the arms. With what grace, with what ease, she moved! When the waltz commenced, and the dancers whirled around each other in the giddy maze, there was some confusion, owing to the incapacity of some of the dancers. We judiciously remained still, allowing the others to weary themselves; and, when the awkward dancers had withdrawn, we joined in, and kept it up famously together with one other couple,--Andran and his partner. Never did I dance more lightly. I felt myself more than mortal, holding this loveliest of creatures in my arms, flying, with her as rapidly as the wind, till I lost sight of every other object; and O Wilhelm, I vowed at that moment, that a maiden whom I loved, or for whom I felt the slightest attachment, never, never should waltz with any one else but with me, if I went to perdition for it!--you will understand this. We took a few turns in the room to recover our breath. Charlotte sat down, and felt refreshed by partaking of some oranges which I had had secured,--the only ones that had been left; but at every slice which, from politeness, she offered to her neighbours, I felt as though a dagger went through my heart. We were the second couple in the third country dance. As we were going down (and Heaven knows with what ecstasy I gazed at her arms and eyes, beaming with the sweetest feeling of pure and genuine enjoyment), we passed a lady whom I had noticed for her charming expression of countenance; although she was no longer young. She looked at Charlotte with a smile, then, holding up her finger in a threatening attitude, repeated twice in a very significant tone of voice the name of "Albert." "Who is Albert," said I to Charlotte, "if it is not impertinent to ask?" She was about to answer, when we were obliged to separate, in order to execute a figure in the dance; and, as we crossed over again in front of each other, I perceived she looked somewhat pensive. "Why need I conceal it from you?" she said, as she gave me her hand for the promenade. "Albert is a worthy man, to whom I am engaged." Now, there was nothing new to me in this (for the girls had told me of it on the way); but it was so far new that I had not thought of it in connection with her whom, in so short a time, I had learned to prize so highly. Enough, I became confused, got out in the figure, and occasioned general confusion; so that it required all Charlotte's presence of mind to set me right by pulling and pushing me into my proper place. The dance was not yet finished when the lightning which had for some time been seen in the horizon, and which I had asserted to proceed entirely from heat, grew more violent; and the thunder was heard above the music. When any distress or terror surprises us in the midst of our amusements, it naturally makes a deeper impression than at other times, either because the contrast makes us more keenly susceptible, or rather perhaps because our senses are then more open to impressions, and the shock is consequently stronger. To this cause I must ascribe the fright and shrieks of the ladies. One sagaciously sat down in a corner with her back to the window, and held her fingers to her ears; a second knelt down before her, and hid her face in her lap; a third threw herself between them, and embraced her sister with a thousand tears; some insisted on going home; others, unconscious of their actions, wanted sufficient presence of mind to repress the impertinence of their young partners, who sought to direct to themselves those sighs which the lips of our agitated beauties intended for heaven. Some of the gentlemen had gone down-stairs to smoke a quiet cigar, and the rest of the company gladly embraced a happy suggestion of the hostess to retire into another room which was provided with shutters and curtains. We had hardly got there, when Charlotte placed the chairs in a circle; and, when the company had sat down in compliance with her request, she forthwith proposed a round game. I noticed some of the company prepare their mouths and draw themselves up at the prospect of some agreeable forfeit. "Let us play at counting," said Charlotte. "Now, pay attention: I shall go round the circle from right to left; and each person is to count, one after the other, the number that comes to him, and must count fast; whoever stops or mistakes is to have a box on the ear, and so on, till we have counted a thousand." It was delightful to see the fun. She went round the circle with upraised arm. "One," said the first; "two," the second; "three," the third; and so on, till Charlotte went faster and faster. One made a mistake, instantly a box on the ear; and, amid the laughter that ensued, came another box; and so on, faster and faster. I myself came in for two. I fancied they were harder than the rest, and felt quite delighted. A general laughter and confusion put an end to the game long before we had counted as far as a thousand. The party broke up into little separate knots: the storm had ceased, and I followed Charlotte into the ballroom. On the way she said, "The game banished their fears of the storm." I could make no reply. "I myself," she continued, "was as much frightened as any of them; but by affecting courage, to keep up the spirits of the others, I forgot my apprehensions." We went to the window. It was still thundering at a distance: a soft rain was pouring down over the country, and filled the air around us with delicious odours. Charlotte leaned forward on her arm; her eyes wandered over the scene; she raised them to the sky, and then turned them upon me; they were moistened with tears; she placed her hand on mine and said, "Klopstock!" at once I remembered the magnificent ode which was in her thoughts: I felt oppressed with the weight of my sensations, and sank under them. It was more than I could bear. I bent over her hand, kissed it in a stream of delicious tears, and again looked up to her eyes. Divine Klopstock! why didst thou not see thy apotheosis in those eyes? And thy name so often profaned, would that I never heard it repeated! JUNE 19. I no longer remember where I stopped in my narrative: I only know it was two in the morning when I went to bed; and if you had been with me, that I might have talked instead of writing to you, I should, in all probability, have kept you up till daylight. I think I have not yet related what happened as we rode home from the ball, nor have I time to tell you now. It was a most magnificent sunrise: the whole country was refreshed, and the rain fell drop by drop from the trees in the forest. Our companions were asleep. Charlotte asked me if I did not wish to sleep also, and begged of me not to make any ceremony on her account. Looking steadfastly at her, I answered, "As long as I see those eyes open, there is no fear of my falling asleep." We both continued awake till we reached her door. The maid opened it softly, and assured her, in answer to her inquiries, that her father and the children were well, and still sleeping. I left her asking permission to visit her in the course of the day. She consented, and I went, and, since that time, sun, moon, and stars may pursue their course: I know not whether it is day or night; the whole world is nothing to me. JUNE 21. My days are as happy as those reserved by God for his elect; and, whatever be my fate hereafter, I can never say that I have not tasted joy,--the purest joy of life. You know Walheim. I am now completely settled there. In that spot I am only half a league from Charlotte; and there I enjoy myself, and taste all the pleasure which can fall to the lot of man. Little did I imagine, when I selected Walheim for my pedestrian excursions, that all heaven lay so near it. How often in my wanderings from the hillside or from the meadows across the river, have I beheld this hunting-lodge, which now contains within it all the joy of my heart! I have often, my dear Wilhelm, reflected on the eagerness men feel to wander and make new discoveries, and upon that secret impulse which afterward inclines them to return to their narrow circle, conform to the laws of custom, and embarrass themselves no longer with what passes around them. It is so strange how, when I came here first, and gazed upon that lovely valley from the hillside, I felt charmed with the entire scene surrounding me. The little wood opposite--how delightful to sit under its shade! How fine the view from that point of rock! Then, that delightful chain of hills, and the exquisite valleys at their feet! Could I but wander and lose myself amongst them! I went, and returned without finding what I wished. Distance, my friend, is like futurity. A dim vastness is spread before our souls: the perceptions of our mind are as obscure as those of our vision; and we desire earnestly to surrender up our whole being, that it may be filled with the complete and perfect bliss of one glorious emotion. But alas! when we have attained our object, when the distant there becomes the present here, all is changed: we are as poor and circumscribed as ever, and our souls still languish for unattainable happiness. So does the restless traveller pant for his native soil, and find in his own cottage, in the arms of his wife, in the affections of his children, and in the labour necessary for their support, that happiness which he had sought in vain through the wide world. When, in the morning at sunrise, I go out to Walheim, and with my own hands gather in the garden the pease which are to serve for my dinner, when I sit down to shell them, and read my Homer during the intervals, and then, selecting a saucepan from the kitchen, fetch my own butter, put my mess on the fire, cover it up, and sit down to stir it as occasion requires, I figure to myself the illustrious suitors of Penelope, killing, dressing, and preparing their own oxen and swine. Nothing fills me with a more pure and genuine sense of happiness than those traits of patriarchal life which, thank Heaven! I can imitate without affectation. Happy is it, indeed, for me that my heart is capable of feeling the same simple and innocent pleasure as the peasant whose table is covered with food of his own rearing, and who not only enjoys his meal, but remembers with delight the happy days and sunny mornings when he planted it, the soft evenings when he watered it, and the pleasure he experienced in watching its daily growth. JUNE 29. The day before yesterday, the physician came from the town to pay a visit to the judge. He found me on the floor playing with Charlotte's children. Some of them were scrambling over me, and others romped with me; and, as I caught and tickled them, they made a great noise. The doctor is a formal sort of personage: he adjusts the plaits of his ruffles, and continually settles his frill whilst he is talking to you; and he thought my conduct beneath the dignity of a sensible man. I could perceive this by his countenance. But I did not suffer myself to be disturbed. I allowed him to continue his wise conversation, whilst I rebuilt the children's card houses for them as fast as they threw them down. He went about the town afterward, complaining that the judge's children were spoiled enough before, but that now Werther was completely ruining them. Yes, my dear Wilhelm, nothing on this earth affects my heart so much as children. When I look on at their doings; when I mark in the little creatures the seeds of all those virtues and qualities which they will one day find so indispensable; when I behold in the obstinate all the future firmness and constancy of a noble character; in the capricious, that levity and gaiety of temper which will carry them lightly over the dangers and troubles of life, their whole nature simple and unpolluted,--then I call to mind the golden words of the Great Teacher of mankind, "Unless ye become like one of these!" And now, my friend, these children, who are our equals, whom we ought to consider as our models, we treat them as though they were our subjects. They are allowed no will of their own. And have we, then, none ourselves? Whence comes our exclusive right? Is it because we are older and more experienced? Great God! from the height of thy heaven thou beholdest great children and little children, and no others; and thy Son has long since declared which afford thee greatest pleasure. But they believe in him, and hear him not,--that, too, is an old story; and they train their children after their own image, etc. Adieu, Wilhelm: I will not further bewilder myself with this subject. JULY 1. The consolation Charlotte can bring to an invalid I experience from my own heart, which suffers more from her absence than many a poor creature lingering on a bed of sickness. She is gone to spend a few days in the town with a very worthy woman, who is given over by the physicians, and wishes to have Charlotte near her in her last moments. I accompanied her last week on a visit to the Vicar of S--, a small village in the mountains, about a league hence. We arrived about four o'clock: Charlotte had taken her little sister with her. When we entered the vicarage court, we found the good old man sitting on a bench before the door, under the shade of two large walnut-trees. At the sight of Charlotte he seemed to gain new life, rose, forgot his stick, and ventured to walk toward her. She ran to him, and made him sit down again; then, placing herself by his side, she gave him a number of messages from her father, and then caught up his youngest child, a dirty, ugly little thing, the joy of his old age, and kissed it. I wish you could have witnessed her attention to this old man,--how she raised her voice on account of his deafness; how she told him of healthy young people, who had been carried off when it was least expected; praised the virtues of Carlsbad, and commended his determination to spend the ensuing summer there; and assured him that he looked better and stronger than he did when she saw him last. I, in the meantime, paid attention to his good lady. The old man seemed quite in spirits; and as I could not help admiring the beauty of the walnut-trees, which formed such an agreeable shade over our heads, he began, though with some little difficulty, to tell us their history. "As to the oldest," said he, "we do not know who planted it,--some say one clergyman, and some another: but the younger one, there behind us, is exactly the age of my wife, fifty years old next October; her father planted it in the morning, and in the evening she came into the world. My wife's father was my predecessor here, and I cannot tell you how fond he was of that tree; and it is fully as dear to me. Under the shade of that very tree, upon a log of wood, my wife was seated knitting, when I, a poor student, came into this court for the first time, just seven and twenty years ago." Charlotte inquired for his daughter. He said she was gone with Herr Schmidt to the meadows, and was with the haymakers. The old man then resumed his story, and told us how his predecessor had taken a fancy to him, as had his daughter likewise; and how he had become first his curate, and subsequently his successor. He had scarcely finished his story when his daughter returned through the garden, accompanied by the above-mentioned Herr Schmidt. She welcomed Charlotte affectionately, and I confess I was much taken with her appearance. She was a lively-looking, good-humoured brunette, quite competent to amuse one for a short time in the country. Her lover (for such Herr Schmidt evidently appeared to be) was a polite, reserved personage, and would not join our conversation, notwithstanding all Charlotte's endeavours to draw him out. I was much annoyed at observing, by his countenance, that his silence did not arise from want of talent, but from caprice and ill-humour. This subsequently became very evident, when we set out to take a walk, and Frederica joining Charlotte, with whom I was talking, the worthy gentleman's face, which was naturally rather sombre, became so dark and angry that Charlotte was obliged to touch my arm, and remind me that I was talking too much to Frederica. Nothing distresses me more than to see men torment each other; particularly when in the flower of their age, in the very season of pleasure, they waste their few short days of sunshine in quarrels and disputes, and only perceive their error when it is too late to repair it. This thought dwelt upon my mind; and in the evening, when we returned to the vicar's, and were sitting round the table with our bread end milk, the conversation turned on the joys and sorrows of the world, I could not resist the temptation to inveigh bitterly against ill-humour. "We are apt," said I, "to complain, but--with very little cause, that our happy days are few, and our evil days many. If our hearts were always disposed to receive the benefits Heaven sends us, we should acquire strength to support evil when it comes." "But," observed the vicar's wife, "we cannot always command our tempers, so much depends upon the constitution: when the body suffers, the mind is ill at ease." "I acknowledge that," I continued; "but we must consider such a disposition in the light of a disease, and inquire whether there is no remedy for it." "I should be glad to hear one," said Charlotte: "at least, I think very much depends upon ourselves; I know it is so with me. When anything annoys me, and disturbs my temper, I hasten into the garden, hum a couple of country dances, and it is all right with me directly." "That is what I meant," I replied; "ill-humour resembles indolence: it is natural to us; but if once we have courage to exert ourselves, we find our work run fresh from our hands, and we experience in the activity from which we shrank a real enjoyment." Frederica listened very attentively: and the young man objected, that we were not masters of ourselves, and still less so of our feelings. "The question is about a disagreeable feeling," I added, "from which every one would willingly escape, but none know their own power without trial. Invalids are glad to consult physicians, and submit to the most scrupulous regimen, the most nauseous medicines, in order to recover their health." I observed that the good old man inclined his head, and exerted himself to hear our discourse; so I raised my voice, and addressed myself directly to him. "We preach against a great many crimes," I observed, "but I never remember a

like

How many times the word 'like' appears in the text?

will be no wiser at the end of my letter than you were at the beginning. Attend, then, and I will compel myself to give you the details. I mentioned to you the other day that I had become acquainted with S--, the district judge, and that he had invited me to go and visit him in his retirement, or rather in his little kingdom. But I neglected going, and perhaps should never have gone, if chance had not discovered to me the treasure which lay concealed in that retired spot. Some of our young people had proposed giving a ball in the country, at which I consented to be present. I offered my hand for the evening to a pretty and agreeable, but rather commonplace, sort of girl from the immediate neighbourhood; and it was agreed that I should engage a carriage, and call upon Charlotte, with my partner and her aunt, to convey them to the ball. My companion informed me, as we drove along through the park to the hunting-lodge, that I should make the acquaintance of a very charming young lady. "Take care," added the aunt, "that you do not lose your heart." "Why?" said I. "Because she is already engaged to a very worthy man," she replied, "who is gone to settle his affairs upon the death of his father, and will succeed to a very considerable inheritance." This information possessed no interest for me. When we arrived at the gate, the sun was setting behind the tops of the mountains. The atmosphere was heavy; and the ladies expressed their fears of an approaching storm, as masses of low black clouds were gathering in the horizon. I relieved their anxieties by pretending to be weather-wise, although I myself had some apprehensions lest our pleasure should be interrupted. I alighted; and a maid came to the door, and requested us to wait a moment for her mistress. I walked across the court to a well-built house, and, ascending the flight of steps in front, opened the door, and saw before me the most charming spectacle I had ever witnessed. Six children, from eleven to two years old, were running about the hall, and surrounding a lady of middle height, with a lovely figure, dressed in a robe of simple white, trimmed with pink ribbons. She was holding a rye loaf in her hand, and was cutting slices for the little ones all around, in proportion to their age and appetite. She performed her task in a graceful and affectionate manner; each claimant awaiting his turn with outstretched hands, and boisterously shouting his thanks. Some of them ran away at once, to enjoy their evening meal; whilst others, of a gentler disposition, retired to the courtyard to see the strangers, and to survey the carriage in which their Charlotte was to drive away. "Pray forgive me for giving you the trouble to come for me, and for keeping the ladies waiting: but dressing, and arranging some household duties before I leave, had made me forget my children's supper; and they do not like to take it from any one but me." I uttered some indifferent compliment: but my whole soul was absorbed by her air, her voice, her manner; and I had scarcely recovered myself when she ran into her room to fetch her gloves and fan. The young ones threw inquiring glances at me from a distance; whilst I approached the youngest, a most delicious little creature. He drew back; and Charlotte, entering at the very moment, said, "Louis, shake hands with your cousin." The little fellow obeyed willingly; and I could not resist giving him a hearty kiss, notwithstanding his rather dirty face. "Cousin," said I to Charlotte, as I handed her down, "do you think I deserve the happiness of being related to you?" She replied, with a ready smile, "Oh! I have such a number of cousins, that I should be sorry if you were the most undeserving of them." In taking leave, she desired her next sister, Sophy, a girl about eleven years old, to take great care of the children, and to say good-bye to papa for her when he came home from his ride. She enjoined to the little ones to obey their sister Sophy as they would herself, upon which some promised that they would; but a little fair-haired girl, about six years old, looked discontented, and said, "But Sophy is not you, Charlotte; and we like you best." The two eldest boys had clambered up the carriage; and, at my request, she permitted them to accompany us a little way through the forest, upon their promising to sit very still, and hold fast. We were hardly seated, and the ladies had scarcely exchanged compliments, making the usual remarks upon each other's dress, and upon the company they expected to meet, when Charlotte stopped the carriage, and made her brothers get down. They insisted upon kissing her hands once more; which the eldest did with all the tenderness of a youth of fifteen, but the other in a lighter and more careless manner. She desired them again to give her love to the children, and we drove off. The aunt inquired of Charlotte whether she had finished the book she had last sent her. "No," said Charlotte; "I did not like it: you can have it again. And the one before was not much better." I was surprised, upon asking the title, to hear that it was ____. (We feel obliged to suppress the passage in the letter, to prevent any one from feeling aggrieved; although no author need pay much attention to the opinion of a mere girl, or that of an unsteady young man.) I found penetration and character in everything she said: every expression seemed to brighten her features with new charms,--with new rays of genius,--which unfolded by degrees, as she felt herself understood. "When I was younger," she observed, "I loved nothing so much as romances. Nothing could equal my delight when, on some holiday, I could settle down quietly in a corner, and enter with my whole heart and soul into the joys or sorrows of some fictitious Leonora. I do not deny that they even possess some charms for me yet. But I read so seldom, that I prefer books suited exactly to my taste. And I like those authors best whose scenes describe my own situation in life,--and the friends who are about me, whose stories touch me with interest, from resembling my own homely existence,--which, without being absolutely paradise, is, on the whole, a source of indescribable happiness." I endeavoured to conceal the emotion which these words occasioned, but it was of slight avail; for, when she had expressed so truly her opinion of "The Vicar of Wakefield," and of other works, the names of which I omit (Though the names are omitted, yet the authors mentioned deserve Charlotte's approbation, and will feel it in their hearts when they read this passage. It concerns no other person.), I could no longer contain myself, but gave full utterance to what I thought of it: and it was not until Charlotte had addressed herself to the two other ladies, that I remembered their presence, and observed them sitting mute with astonishment. The aunt looked at me several times with an air of raillery, which, however, I did not at all mind. We talked of the pleasures of dancing. "If it is a fault to love it," said Charlotte, "I am ready to confess that I prize it above all other amusements. If anything disturbs me, I go to the piano, play an air to which I have danced, and all goes right again directly." You, who know me, can fancy how steadfastly I gazed upon her rich dark eyes during these remarks, how my very soul gloated over her warm lips and fresh, glowing cheeks, how I became quite lost in the delightful meaning of her words, so much so, that I scarcely heard the actual expressions. In short, I alighted from the carriage like a person in a dream, and was so lost to the dim world around me, that I scarcely heard the music which resounded from the illuminated ballroom. The two Messrs. Andran and a certain N. N. (I cannot trouble myself with the names), who were the aunt's and Charlotte's partners, received us at the carriage-door, and took possession of their ladies, whilst I followed with mine. We commenced with a minuet. I led out one lady after another, and precisely those who were the most disagreeable could not bring themselves to leave off. Charlotte and her partner began an English country dance, and you must imagine my delight when it was their turn to dance the figure with us. You should see Charlotte dance. She dances with her whole heart and soul: her figure is all harmony, elegance, and grace, as if she were conscious of nothing else, and had no other thought or feeling; and, doubtless, for the moment, every other sensation is extinct. She was engaged for the second country dance, but promised me the third, and assured me, with the most agreeable freedom, that she was very fond of waltzing. "It is the custom here," she said, "for the previous partners to waltz together; but my partner is an indifferent waltzer, and will feel delighted if I save him the trouble. Your partner is not allowed to waltz, and, indeed, is equally incapable: but I observed during the country dance that you waltz well; so, if you will waltz with me, I beg you would propose it to my partner, and I will propose it to yours." We agreed, and it was arranged that our partners should mutually entertain each other. We set off, and, at first, delighted ourselves with the usual graceful motions of the arms. With what grace, with what ease, she moved! When the waltz commenced, and the dancers whirled around each other in the giddy maze, there was some confusion, owing to the incapacity of some of the dancers. We judiciously remained still, allowing the others to weary themselves; and, when the awkward dancers had withdrawn, we joined in, and kept it up famously together with one other couple,--Andran and his partner. Never did I dance more lightly. I felt myself more than mortal, holding this loveliest of creatures in my arms, flying, with her as rapidly as the wind, till I lost sight of every other object; and O Wilhelm, I vowed at that moment, that a maiden whom I loved, or for whom I felt the slightest attachment, never, never should waltz with any one else but with me, if I went to perdition for it!--you will understand this. We took a few turns in the room to recover our breath. Charlotte sat down, and felt refreshed by partaking of some oranges which I had had secured,--the only ones that had been left; but at every slice which, from politeness, she offered to her neighbours, I felt as though a dagger went through my heart. We were the second couple in the third country dance. As we were going down (and Heaven knows with what ecstasy I gazed at her arms and eyes, beaming with the sweetest feeling of pure and genuine enjoyment), we passed a lady whom I had noticed for her charming expression of countenance; although she was no longer young. She looked at Charlotte with a smile, then, holding up her finger in a threatening attitude, repeated twice in a very significant tone of voice the name of "Albert." "Who is Albert," said I to Charlotte, "if it is not impertinent to ask?" She was about to answer, when we were obliged to separate, in order to execute a figure in the dance; and, as we crossed over again in front of each other, I perceived she looked somewhat pensive. "Why need I conceal it from you?" she said, as she gave me her hand for the promenade. "Albert is a worthy man, to whom I am engaged." Now, there was nothing new to me in this (for the girls had told me of it on the way); but it was so far new that I had not thought of it in connection with her whom, in so short a time, I had learned to prize so highly. Enough, I became confused, got out in the figure, and occasioned general confusion; so that it required all Charlotte's presence of mind to set me right by pulling and pushing me into my proper place. The dance was not yet finished when the lightning which had for some time been seen in the horizon, and which I had asserted to proceed entirely from heat, grew more violent; and the thunder was heard above the music. When any distress or terror surprises us in the midst of our amusements, it naturally makes a deeper impression than at other times, either because the contrast makes us more keenly susceptible, or rather perhaps because our senses are then more open to impressions, and the shock is consequently stronger. To this cause I must ascribe the fright and shrieks of the ladies. One sagaciously sat down in a corner with her back to the window, and held her fingers to her ears; a second knelt down before her, and hid her face in her lap; a third threw herself between them, and embraced her sister with a thousand tears; some insisted on going home; others, unconscious of their actions, wanted sufficient presence of mind to repress the impertinence of their young partners, who sought to direct to themselves those sighs which the lips of our agitated beauties intended for heaven. Some of the gentlemen had gone down-stairs to smoke a quiet cigar, and the rest of the company gladly embraced a happy suggestion of the hostess to retire into another room which was provided with shutters and curtains. We had hardly got there, when Charlotte placed the chairs in a circle; and, when the company had sat down in compliance with her request, she forthwith proposed a round game. I noticed some of the company prepare their mouths and draw themselves up at the prospect of some agreeable forfeit. "Let us play at counting," said Charlotte. "Now, pay attention: I shall go round the circle from right to left; and each person is to count, one after the other, the number that comes to him, and must count fast; whoever stops or mistakes is to have a box on the ear, and so on, till we have counted a thousand." It was delightful to see the fun. She went round the circle with upraised arm. "One," said the first; "two," the second; "three," the third; and so on, till Charlotte went faster and faster. One made a mistake, instantly a box on the ear; and, amid the laughter that ensued, came another box; and so on, faster and faster. I myself came in for two. I fancied they were harder than the rest, and felt quite delighted. A general laughter and confusion put an end to the game long before we had counted as far as a thousand. The party broke up into little separate knots: the storm had ceased, and I followed Charlotte into the ballroom. On the way she said, "The game banished their fears of the storm." I could make no reply. "I myself," she continued, "was as much frightened as any of them; but by affecting courage, to keep up the spirits of the others, I forgot my apprehensions." We went to the window. It was still thundering at a distance: a soft rain was pouring down over the country, and filled the air around us with delicious odours. Charlotte leaned forward on her arm; her eyes wandered over the scene; she raised them to the sky, and then turned them upon me; they were moistened with tears; she placed her hand on mine and said, "Klopstock!" at once I remembered the magnificent ode which was in her thoughts: I felt oppressed with the weight of my sensations, and sank under them. It was more than I could bear. I bent over her hand, kissed it in a stream of delicious tears, and again looked up to her eyes. Divine Klopstock! why didst thou not see thy apotheosis in those eyes? And thy name so often profaned, would that I never heard it repeated! JUNE 19. I no longer remember where I stopped in my narrative: I only know it was two in the morning when I went to bed; and if you had been with me, that I might have talked instead of writing to you, I should, in all probability, have kept you up till daylight. I think I have not yet related what happened as we rode home from the ball, nor have I time to tell you now. It was a most magnificent sunrise: the whole country was refreshed, and the rain fell drop by drop from the trees in the forest. Our companions were asleep. Charlotte asked me if I did not wish to sleep also, and begged of me not to make any ceremony on her account. Looking steadfastly at her, I answered, "As long as I see those eyes open, there is no fear of my falling asleep." We both continued awake till we reached her door. The maid opened it softly, and assured her, in answer to her inquiries, that her father and the children were well, and still sleeping. I left her asking permission to visit her in the course of the day. She consented, and I went, and, since that time, sun, moon, and stars may pursue their course: I know not whether it is day or night; the whole world is nothing to me. JUNE 21. My days are as happy as those reserved by God for his elect; and, whatever be my fate hereafter, I can never say that I have not tasted joy,--the purest joy of life. You know Walheim. I am now completely settled there. In that spot I am only half a league from Charlotte; and there I enjoy myself, and taste all the pleasure which can fall to the lot of man. Little did I imagine, when I selected Walheim for my pedestrian excursions, that all heaven lay so near it. How often in my wanderings from the hillside or from the meadows across the river, have I beheld this hunting-lodge, which now contains within it all the joy of my heart! I have often, my dear Wilhelm, reflected on the eagerness men feel to wander and make new discoveries, and upon that secret impulse which afterward inclines them to return to their narrow circle, conform to the laws of custom, and embarrass themselves no longer with what passes around them. It is so strange how, when I came here first, and gazed upon that lovely valley from the hillside, I felt charmed with the entire scene surrounding me. The little wood opposite--how delightful to sit under its shade! How fine the view from that point of rock! Then, that delightful chain of hills, and the exquisite valleys at their feet! Could I but wander and lose myself amongst them! I went, and returned without finding what I wished. Distance, my friend, is like futurity. A dim vastness is spread before our souls: the perceptions of our mind are as obscure as those of our vision; and we desire earnestly to surrender up our whole being, that it may be filled with the complete and perfect bliss of one glorious emotion. But alas! when we have attained our object, when the distant there becomes the present here, all is changed: we are as poor and circumscribed as ever, and our souls still languish for unattainable happiness. So does the restless traveller pant for his native soil, and find in his own cottage, in the arms of his wife, in the affections of his children, and in the labour necessary for their support, that happiness which he had sought in vain through the wide world. When, in the morning at sunrise, I go out to Walheim, and with my own hands gather in the garden the pease which are to serve for my dinner, when I sit down to shell them, and read my Homer during the intervals, and then, selecting a saucepan from the kitchen, fetch my own butter, put my mess on the fire, cover it up, and sit down to stir it as occasion requires, I figure to myself the illustrious suitors of Penelope, killing, dressing, and preparing their own oxen and swine. Nothing fills me with a more pure and genuine sense of happiness than those traits of patriarchal life which, thank Heaven! I can imitate without affectation. Happy is it, indeed, for me that my heart is capable of feeling the same simple and innocent pleasure as the peasant whose table is covered with food of his own rearing, and who not only enjoys his meal, but remembers with delight the happy days and sunny mornings when he planted it, the soft evenings when he watered it, and the pleasure he experienced in watching its daily growth. JUNE 29. The day before yesterday, the physician came from the town to pay a visit to the judge. He found me on the floor playing with Charlotte's children. Some of them were scrambling over me, and others romped with me; and, as I caught and tickled them, they made a great noise. The doctor is a formal sort of personage: he adjusts the plaits of his ruffles, and continually settles his frill whilst he is talking to you; and he thought my conduct beneath the dignity of a sensible man. I could perceive this by his countenance. But I did not suffer myself to be disturbed. I allowed him to continue his wise conversation, whilst I rebuilt the children's card houses for them as fast as they threw them down. He went about the town afterward, complaining that the judge's children were spoiled enough before, but that now Werther was completely ruining them. Yes, my dear Wilhelm, nothing on this earth affects my heart so much as children. When I look on at their doings; when I mark in the little creatures the seeds of all those virtues and qualities which they will one day find so indispensable; when I behold in the obstinate all the future firmness and constancy of a noble character; in the capricious, that levity and gaiety of temper which will carry them lightly over the dangers and troubles of life, their whole nature simple and unpolluted,--then I call to mind the golden words of the Great Teacher of mankind, "Unless ye become like one of these!" And now, my friend, these children, who are our equals, whom we ought to consider as our models, we treat them as though they were our subjects. They are allowed no will of their own. And have we, then, none ourselves? Whence comes our exclusive right? Is it because we are older and more experienced? Great God! from the height of thy heaven thou beholdest great children and little children, and no others; and thy Son has long since declared which afford thee greatest pleasure. But they believe in him, and hear him not,--that, too, is an old story; and they train their children after their own image, etc. Adieu, Wilhelm: I will not further bewilder myself with this subject. JULY 1. The consolation Charlotte can bring to an invalid I experience from my own heart, which suffers more from her absence than many a poor creature lingering on a bed of sickness. She is gone to spend a few days in the town with a very worthy woman, who is given over by the physicians, and wishes to have Charlotte near her in her last moments. I accompanied her last week on a visit to the Vicar of S--, a small village in the mountains, about a league hence. We arrived about four o'clock: Charlotte had taken her little sister with her. When we entered the vicarage court, we found the good old man sitting on a bench before the door, under the shade of two large walnut-trees. At the sight of Charlotte he seemed to gain new life, rose, forgot his stick, and ventured to walk toward her. She ran to him, and made him sit down again; then, placing herself by his side, she gave him a number of messages from her father, and then caught up his youngest child, a dirty, ugly little thing, the joy of his old age, and kissed it. I wish you could have witnessed her attention to this old man,--how she raised her voice on account of his deafness; how she told him of healthy young people, who had been carried off when it was least expected; praised the virtues of Carlsbad, and commended his determination to spend the ensuing summer there; and assured him that he looked better and stronger than he did when she saw him last. I, in the meantime, paid attention to his good lady. The old man seemed quite in spirits; and as I could not help admiring the beauty of the walnut-trees, which formed such an agreeable shade over our heads, he began, though with some little difficulty, to tell us their history. "As to the oldest," said he, "we do not know who planted it,--some say one clergyman, and some another: but the younger one, there behind us, is exactly the age of my wife, fifty years old next October; her father planted it in the morning, and in the evening she came into the world. My wife's father was my predecessor here, and I cannot tell you how fond he was of that tree; and it is fully as dear to me. Under the shade of that very tree, upon a log of wood, my wife was seated knitting, when I, a poor student, came into this court for the first time, just seven and twenty years ago." Charlotte inquired for his daughter. He said she was gone with Herr Schmidt to the meadows, and was with the haymakers. The old man then resumed his story, and told us how his predecessor had taken a fancy to him, as had his daughter likewise; and how he had become first his curate, and subsequently his successor. He had scarcely finished his story when his daughter returned through the garden, accompanied by the above-mentioned Herr Schmidt. She welcomed Charlotte affectionately, and I confess I was much taken with her appearance. She was a lively-looking, good-humoured brunette, quite competent to amuse one for a short time in the country. Her lover (for such Herr Schmidt evidently appeared to be) was a polite, reserved personage, and would not join our conversation, notwithstanding all Charlotte's endeavours to draw him out. I was much annoyed at observing, by his countenance, that his silence did not arise from want of talent, but from caprice and ill-humour. This subsequently became very evident, when we set out to take a walk, and Frederica joining Charlotte, with whom I was talking, the worthy gentleman's face, which was naturally rather sombre, became so dark and angry that Charlotte was obliged to touch my arm, and remind me that I was talking too much to Frederica. Nothing distresses me more than to see men torment each other; particularly when in the flower of their age, in the very season of pleasure, they waste their few short days of sunshine in quarrels and disputes, and only perceive their error when it is too late to repair it. This thought dwelt upon my mind; and in the evening, when we returned to the vicar's, and were sitting round the table with our bread end milk, the conversation turned on the joys and sorrows of the world, I could not resist the temptation to inveigh bitterly against ill-humour. "We are apt," said I, "to complain, but--with very little cause, that our happy days are few, and our evil days many. If our hearts were always disposed to receive the benefits Heaven sends us, we should acquire strength to support evil when it comes." "But," observed the vicar's wife, "we cannot always command our tempers, so much depends upon the constitution: when the body suffers, the mind is ill at ease." "I acknowledge that," I continued; "but we must consider such a disposition in the light of a disease, and inquire whether there is no remedy for it." "I should be glad to hear one," said Charlotte: "at least, I think very much depends upon ourselves; I know it is so with me. When anything annoys me, and disturbs my temper, I hasten into the garden, hum a couple of country dances, and it is all right with me directly." "That is what I meant," I replied; "ill-humour resembles indolence: it is natural to us; but if once we have courage to exert ourselves, we find our work run fresh from our hands, and we experience in the activity from which we shrank a real enjoyment." Frederica listened very attentively: and the young man objected, that we were not masters of ourselves, and still less so of our feelings. "The question is about a disagreeable feeling," I added, "from which every one would willingly escape, but none know their own power without trial. Invalids are glad to consult physicians, and submit to the most scrupulous regimen, the most nauseous medicines, in order to recover their health." I observed that the good old man inclined his head, and exerted himself to hear our discourse; so I raised my voice, and addressed myself directly to him. "We preach against a great many crimes," I observed, "but I never remember a

frequency

How many times the word 'frequency' appears in the text?

will be no wiser at the end of my letter than you were at the beginning. Attend, then, and I will compel myself to give you the details. I mentioned to you the other day that I had become acquainted with S--, the district judge, and that he had invited me to go and visit him in his retirement, or rather in his little kingdom. But I neglected going, and perhaps should never have gone, if chance had not discovered to me the treasure which lay concealed in that retired spot. Some of our young people had proposed giving a ball in the country, at which I consented to be present. I offered my hand for the evening to a pretty and agreeable, but rather commonplace, sort of girl from the immediate neighbourhood; and it was agreed that I should engage a carriage, and call upon Charlotte, with my partner and her aunt, to convey them to the ball. My companion informed me, as we drove along through the park to the hunting-lodge, that I should make the acquaintance of a very charming young lady. "Take care," added the aunt, "that you do not lose your heart." "Why?" said I. "Because she is already engaged to a very worthy man," she replied, "who is gone to settle his affairs upon the death of his father, and will succeed to a very considerable inheritance." This information possessed no interest for me. When we arrived at the gate, the sun was setting behind the tops of the mountains. The atmosphere was heavy; and the ladies expressed their fears of an approaching storm, as masses of low black clouds were gathering in the horizon. I relieved their anxieties by pretending to be weather-wise, although I myself had some apprehensions lest our pleasure should be interrupted. I alighted; and a maid came to the door, and requested us to wait a moment for her mistress. I walked across the court to a well-built house, and, ascending the flight of steps in front, opened the door, and saw before me the most charming spectacle I had ever witnessed. Six children, from eleven to two years old, were running about the hall, and surrounding a lady of middle height, with a lovely figure, dressed in a robe of simple white, trimmed with pink ribbons. She was holding a rye loaf in her hand, and was cutting slices for the little ones all around, in proportion to their age and appetite. She performed her task in a graceful and affectionate manner; each claimant awaiting his turn with outstretched hands, and boisterously shouting his thanks. Some of them ran away at once, to enjoy their evening meal; whilst others, of a gentler disposition, retired to the courtyard to see the strangers, and to survey the carriage in which their Charlotte was to drive away. "Pray forgive me for giving you the trouble to come for me, and for keeping the ladies waiting: but dressing, and arranging some household duties before I leave, had made me forget my children's supper; and they do not like to take it from any one but me." I uttered some indifferent compliment: but my whole soul was absorbed by her air, her voice, her manner; and I had scarcely recovered myself when she ran into her room to fetch her gloves and fan. The young ones threw inquiring glances at me from a distance; whilst I approached the youngest, a most delicious little creature. He drew back; and Charlotte, entering at the very moment, said, "Louis, shake hands with your cousin." The little fellow obeyed willingly; and I could not resist giving him a hearty kiss, notwithstanding his rather dirty face. "Cousin," said I to Charlotte, as I handed her down, "do you think I deserve the happiness of being related to you?" She replied, with a ready smile, "Oh! I have such a number of cousins, that I should be sorry if you were the most undeserving of them." In taking leave, she desired her next sister, Sophy, a girl about eleven years old, to take great care of the children, and to say good-bye to papa for her when he came home from his ride. She enjoined to the little ones to obey their sister Sophy as they would herself, upon which some promised that they would; but a little fair-haired girl, about six years old, looked discontented, and said, "But Sophy is not you, Charlotte; and we like you best." The two eldest boys had clambered up the carriage; and, at my request, she permitted them to accompany us a little way through the forest, upon their promising to sit very still, and hold fast. We were hardly seated, and the ladies had scarcely exchanged compliments, making the usual remarks upon each other's dress, and upon the company they expected to meet, when Charlotte stopped the carriage, and made her brothers get down. They insisted upon kissing her hands once more; which the eldest did with all the tenderness of a youth of fifteen, but the other in a lighter and more careless manner. She desired them again to give her love to the children, and we drove off. The aunt inquired of Charlotte whether she had finished the book she had last sent her. "No," said Charlotte; "I did not like it: you can have it again. And the one before was not much better." I was surprised, upon asking the title, to hear that it was ____. (We feel obliged to suppress the passage in the letter, to prevent any one from feeling aggrieved; although no author need pay much attention to the opinion of a mere girl, or that of an unsteady young man.) I found penetration and character in everything she said: every expression seemed to brighten her features with new charms,--with new rays of genius,--which unfolded by degrees, as she felt herself understood. "When I was younger," she observed, "I loved nothing so much as romances. Nothing could equal my delight when, on some holiday, I could settle down quietly in a corner, and enter with my whole heart and soul into the joys or sorrows of some fictitious Leonora. I do not deny that they even possess some charms for me yet. But I read so seldom, that I prefer books suited exactly to my taste. And I like those authors best whose scenes describe my own situation in life,--and the friends who are about me, whose stories touch me with interest, from resembling my own homely existence,--which, without being absolutely paradise, is, on the whole, a source of indescribable happiness." I endeavoured to conceal the emotion which these words occasioned, but it was of slight avail; for, when she had expressed so truly her opinion of "The Vicar of Wakefield," and of other works, the names of which I omit (Though the names are omitted, yet the authors mentioned deserve Charlotte's approbation, and will feel it in their hearts when they read this passage. It concerns no other person.), I could no longer contain myself, but gave full utterance to what I thought of it: and it was not until Charlotte had addressed herself to the two other ladies, that I remembered their presence, and observed them sitting mute with astonishment. The aunt looked at me several times with an air of raillery, which, however, I did not at all mind. We talked of the pleasures of dancing. "If it is a fault to love it," said Charlotte, "I am ready to confess that I prize it above all other amusements. If anything disturbs me, I go to the piano, play an air to which I have danced, and all goes right again directly." You, who know me, can fancy how steadfastly I gazed upon her rich dark eyes during these remarks, how my very soul gloated over her warm lips and fresh, glowing cheeks, how I became quite lost in the delightful meaning of her words, so much so, that I scarcely heard the actual expressions. In short, I alighted from the carriage like a person in a dream, and was so lost to the dim world around me, that I scarcely heard the music which resounded from the illuminated ballroom. The two Messrs. Andran and a certain N. N. (I cannot trouble myself with the names), who were the aunt's and Charlotte's partners, received us at the carriage-door, and took possession of their ladies, whilst I followed with mine. We commenced with a minuet. I led out one lady after another, and precisely those who were the most disagreeable could not bring themselves to leave off. Charlotte and her partner began an English country dance, and you must imagine my delight when it was their turn to dance the figure with us. You should see Charlotte dance. She dances with her whole heart and soul: her figure is all harmony, elegance, and grace, as if she were conscious of nothing else, and had no other thought or feeling; and, doubtless, for the moment, every other sensation is extinct. She was engaged for the second country dance, but promised me the third, and assured me, with the most agreeable freedom, that she was very fond of waltzing. "It is the custom here," she said, "for the previous partners to waltz together; but my partner is an indifferent waltzer, and will feel delighted if I save him the trouble. Your partner is not allowed to waltz, and, indeed, is equally incapable: but I observed during the country dance that you waltz well; so, if you will waltz with me, I beg you would propose it to my partner, and I will propose it to yours." We agreed, and it was arranged that our partners should mutually entertain each other. We set off, and, at first, delighted ourselves with the usual graceful motions of the arms. With what grace, with what ease, she moved! When the waltz commenced, and the dancers whirled around each other in the giddy maze, there was some confusion, owing to the incapacity of some of the dancers. We judiciously remained still, allowing the others to weary themselves; and, when the awkward dancers had withdrawn, we joined in, and kept it up famously together with one other couple,--Andran and his partner. Never did I dance more lightly. I felt myself more than mortal, holding this loveliest of creatures in my arms, flying, with her as rapidly as the wind, till I lost sight of every other object; and O Wilhelm, I vowed at that moment, that a maiden whom I loved, or for whom I felt the slightest attachment, never, never should waltz with any one else but with me, if I went to perdition for it!--you will understand this. We took a few turns in the room to recover our breath. Charlotte sat down, and felt refreshed by partaking of some oranges which I had had secured,--the only ones that had been left; but at every slice which, from politeness, she offered to her neighbours, I felt as though a dagger went through my heart. We were the second couple in the third country dance. As we were going down (and Heaven knows with what ecstasy I gazed at her arms and eyes, beaming with the sweetest feeling of pure and genuine enjoyment), we passed a lady whom I had noticed for her charming expression of countenance; although she was no longer young. She looked at Charlotte with a smile, then, holding up her finger in a threatening attitude, repeated twice in a very significant tone of voice the name of "Albert." "Who is Albert," said I to Charlotte, "if it is not impertinent to ask?" She was about to answer, when we were obliged to separate, in order to execute a figure in the dance; and, as we crossed over again in front of each other, I perceived she looked somewhat pensive. "Why need I conceal it from you?" she said, as she gave me her hand for the promenade. "Albert is a worthy man, to whom I am engaged." Now, there was nothing new to me in this (for the girls had told me of it on the way); but it was so far new that I had not thought of it in connection with her whom, in so short a time, I had learned to prize so highly. Enough, I became confused, got out in the figure, and occasioned general confusion; so that it required all Charlotte's presence of mind to set me right by pulling and pushing me into my proper place. The dance was not yet finished when the lightning which had for some time been seen in the horizon, and which I had asserted to proceed entirely from heat, grew more violent; and the thunder was heard above the music. When any distress or terror surprises us in the midst of our amusements, it naturally makes a deeper impression than at other times, either because the contrast makes us more keenly susceptible, or rather perhaps because our senses are then more open to impressions, and the shock is consequently stronger. To this cause I must ascribe the fright and shrieks of the ladies. One sagaciously sat down in a corner with her back to the window, and held her fingers to her ears; a second knelt down before her, and hid her face in her lap; a third threw herself between them, and embraced her sister with a thousand tears; some insisted on going home; others, unconscious of their actions, wanted sufficient presence of mind to repress the impertinence of their young partners, who sought to direct to themselves those sighs which the lips of our agitated beauties intended for heaven. Some of the gentlemen had gone down-stairs to smoke a quiet cigar, and the rest of the company gladly embraced a happy suggestion of the hostess to retire into another room which was provided with shutters and curtains. We had hardly got there, when Charlotte placed the chairs in a circle; and, when the company had sat down in compliance with her request, she forthwith proposed a round game. I noticed some of the company prepare their mouths and draw themselves up at the prospect of some agreeable forfeit. "Let us play at counting," said Charlotte. "Now, pay attention: I shall go round the circle from right to left; and each person is to count, one after the other, the number that comes to him, and must count fast; whoever stops or mistakes is to have a box on the ear, and so on, till we have counted a thousand." It was delightful to see the fun. She went round the circle with upraised arm. "One," said the first; "two," the second; "three," the third; and so on, till Charlotte went faster and faster. One made a mistake, instantly a box on the ear; and, amid the laughter that ensued, came another box; and so on, faster and faster. I myself came in for two. I fancied they were harder than the rest, and felt quite delighted. A general laughter and confusion put an end to the game long before we had counted as far as a thousand. The party broke up into little separate knots: the storm had ceased, and I followed Charlotte into the ballroom. On the way she said, "The game banished their fears of the storm." I could make no reply. "I myself," she continued, "was as much frightened as any of them; but by affecting courage, to keep up the spirits of the others, I forgot my apprehensions." We went to the window. It was still thundering at a distance: a soft rain was pouring down over the country, and filled the air around us with delicious odours. Charlotte leaned forward on her arm; her eyes wandered over the scene; she raised them to the sky, and then turned them upon me; they were moistened with tears; she placed her hand on mine and said, "Klopstock!" at once I remembered the magnificent ode which was in her thoughts: I felt oppressed with the weight of my sensations, and sank under them. It was more than I could bear. I bent over her hand, kissed it in a stream of delicious tears, and again looked up to her eyes. Divine Klopstock! why didst thou not see thy apotheosis in those eyes? And thy name so often profaned, would that I never heard it repeated! JUNE 19. I no longer remember where I stopped in my narrative: I only know it was two in the morning when I went to bed; and if you had been with me, that I might have talked instead of writing to you, I should, in all probability, have kept you up till daylight. I think I have not yet related what happened as we rode home from the ball, nor have I time to tell you now. It was a most magnificent sunrise: the whole country was refreshed, and the rain fell drop by drop from the trees in the forest. Our companions were asleep. Charlotte asked me if I did not wish to sleep also, and begged of me not to make any ceremony on her account. Looking steadfastly at her, I answered, "As long as I see those eyes open, there is no fear of my falling asleep." We both continued awake till we reached her door. The maid opened it softly, and assured her, in answer to her inquiries, that her father and the children were well, and still sleeping. I left her asking permission to visit her in the course of the day. She consented, and I went, and, since that time, sun, moon, and stars may pursue their course: I know not whether it is day or night; the whole world is nothing to me. JUNE 21. My days are as happy as those reserved by God for his elect; and, whatever be my fate hereafter, I can never say that I have not tasted joy,--the purest joy of life. You know Walheim. I am now completely settled there. In that spot I am only half a league from Charlotte; and there I enjoy myself, and taste all the pleasure which can fall to the lot of man. Little did I imagine, when I selected Walheim for my pedestrian excursions, that all heaven lay so near it. How often in my wanderings from the hillside or from the meadows across the river, have I beheld this hunting-lodge, which now contains within it all the joy of my heart! I have often, my dear Wilhelm, reflected on the eagerness men feel to wander and make new discoveries, and upon that secret impulse which afterward inclines them to return to their narrow circle, conform to the laws of custom, and embarrass themselves no longer with what passes around them. It is so strange how, when I came here first, and gazed upon that lovely valley from the hillside, I felt charmed with the entire scene surrounding me. The little wood opposite--how delightful to sit under its shade! How fine the view from that point of rock! Then, that delightful chain of hills, and the exquisite valleys at their feet! Could I but wander and lose myself amongst them! I went, and returned without finding what I wished. Distance, my friend, is like futurity. A dim vastness is spread before our souls: the perceptions of our mind are as obscure as those of our vision; and we desire earnestly to surrender up our whole being, that it may be filled with the complete and perfect bliss of one glorious emotion. But alas! when we have attained our object, when the distant there becomes the present here, all is changed: we are as poor and circumscribed as ever, and our souls still languish for unattainable happiness. So does the restless traveller pant for his native soil, and find in his own cottage, in the arms of his wife, in the affections of his children, and in the labour necessary for their support, that happiness which he had sought in vain through the wide world. When, in the morning at sunrise, I go out to Walheim, and with my own hands gather in the garden the pease which are to serve for my dinner, when I sit down to shell them, and read my Homer during the intervals, and then, selecting a saucepan from the kitchen, fetch my own butter, put my mess on the fire, cover it up, and sit down to stir it as occasion requires, I figure to myself the illustrious suitors of Penelope, killing, dressing, and preparing their own oxen and swine. Nothing fills me with a more pure and genuine sense of happiness than those traits of patriarchal life which, thank Heaven! I can imitate without affectation. Happy is it, indeed, for me that my heart is capable of feeling the same simple and innocent pleasure as the peasant whose table is covered with food of his own rearing, and who not only enjoys his meal, but remembers with delight the happy days and sunny mornings when he planted it, the soft evenings when he watered it, and the pleasure he experienced in watching its daily growth. JUNE 29. The day before yesterday, the physician came from the town to pay a visit to the judge. He found me on the floor playing with Charlotte's children. Some of them were scrambling over me, and others romped with me; and, as I caught and tickled them, they made a great noise. The doctor is a formal sort of personage: he adjusts the plaits of his ruffles, and continually settles his frill whilst he is talking to you; and he thought my conduct beneath the dignity of a sensible man. I could perceive this by his countenance. But I did not suffer myself to be disturbed. I allowed him to continue his wise conversation, whilst I rebuilt the children's card houses for them as fast as they threw them down. He went about the town afterward, complaining that the judge's children were spoiled enough before, but that now Werther was completely ruining them. Yes, my dear Wilhelm, nothing on this earth affects my heart so much as children. When I look on at their doings; when I mark in the little creatures the seeds of all those virtues and qualities which they will one day find so indispensable; when I behold in the obstinate all the future firmness and constancy of a noble character; in the capricious, that levity and gaiety of temper which will carry them lightly over the dangers and troubles of life, their whole nature simple and unpolluted,--then I call to mind the golden words of the Great Teacher of mankind, "Unless ye become like one of these!" And now, my friend, these children, who are our equals, whom we ought to consider as our models, we treat them as though they were our subjects. They are allowed no will of their own. And have we, then, none ourselves? Whence comes our exclusive right? Is it because we are older and more experienced? Great God! from the height of thy heaven thou beholdest great children and little children, and no others; and thy Son has long since declared which afford thee greatest pleasure. But they believe in him, and hear him not,--that, too, is an old story; and they train their children after their own image, etc. Adieu, Wilhelm: I will not further bewilder myself with this subject. JULY 1. The consolation Charlotte can bring to an invalid I experience from my own heart, which suffers more from her absence than many a poor creature lingering on a bed of sickness. She is gone to spend a few days in the town with a very worthy woman, who is given over by the physicians, and wishes to have Charlotte near her in her last moments. I accompanied her last week on a visit to the Vicar of S--, a small village in the mountains, about a league hence. We arrived about four o'clock: Charlotte had taken her little sister with her. When we entered the vicarage court, we found the good old man sitting on a bench before the door, under the shade of two large walnut-trees. At the sight of Charlotte he seemed to gain new life, rose, forgot his stick, and ventured to walk toward her. She ran to him, and made him sit down again; then, placing herself by his side, she gave him a number of messages from her father, and then caught up his youngest child, a dirty, ugly little thing, the joy of his old age, and kissed it. I wish you could have witnessed her attention to this old man,--how she raised her voice on account of his deafness; how she told him of healthy young people, who had been carried off when it was least expected; praised the virtues of Carlsbad, and commended his determination to spend the ensuing summer there; and assured him that he looked better and stronger than he did when she saw him last. I, in the meantime, paid attention to his good lady. The old man seemed quite in spirits; and as I could not help admiring the beauty of the walnut-trees, which formed such an agreeable shade over our heads, he began, though with some little difficulty, to tell us their history. "As to the oldest," said he, "we do not know who planted it,--some say one clergyman, and some another: but the younger one, there behind us, is exactly the age of my wife, fifty years old next October; her father planted it in the morning, and in the evening she came into the world. My wife's father was my predecessor here, and I cannot tell you how fond he was of that tree; and it is fully as dear to me. Under the shade of that very tree, upon a log of wood, my wife was seated knitting, when I, a poor student, came into this court for the first time, just seven and twenty years ago." Charlotte inquired for his daughter. He said she was gone with Herr Schmidt to the meadows, and was with the haymakers. The old man then resumed his story, and told us how his predecessor had taken a fancy to him, as had his daughter likewise; and how he had become first his curate, and subsequently his successor. He had scarcely finished his story when his daughter returned through the garden, accompanied by the above-mentioned Herr Schmidt. She welcomed Charlotte affectionately, and I confess I was much taken with her appearance. She was a lively-looking, good-humoured brunette, quite competent to amuse one for a short time in the country. Her lover (for such Herr Schmidt evidently appeared to be) was a polite, reserved personage, and would not join our conversation, notwithstanding all Charlotte's endeavours to draw him out. I was much annoyed at observing, by his countenance, that his silence did not arise from want of talent, but from caprice and ill-humour. This subsequently became very evident, when we set out to take a walk, and Frederica joining Charlotte, with whom I was talking, the worthy gentleman's face, which was naturally rather sombre, became so dark and angry that Charlotte was obliged to touch my arm, and remind me that I was talking too much to Frederica. Nothing distresses me more than to see men torment each other; particularly when in the flower of their age, in the very season of pleasure, they waste their few short days of sunshine in quarrels and disputes, and only perceive their error when it is too late to repair it. This thought dwelt upon my mind; and in the evening, when we returned to the vicar's, and were sitting round the table with our bread end milk, the conversation turned on the joys and sorrows of the world, I could not resist the temptation to inveigh bitterly against ill-humour. "We are apt," said I, "to complain, but--with very little cause, that our happy days are few, and our evil days many. If our hearts were always disposed to receive the benefits Heaven sends us, we should acquire strength to support evil when it comes." "But," observed the vicar's wife, "we cannot always command our tempers, so much depends upon the constitution: when the body suffers, the mind is ill at ease." "I acknowledge that," I continued; "but we must consider such a disposition in the light of a disease, and inquire whether there is no remedy for it." "I should be glad to hear one," said Charlotte: "at least, I think very much depends upon ourselves; I know it is so with me. When anything annoys me, and disturbs my temper, I hasten into the garden, hum a couple of country dances, and it is all right with me directly." "That is what I meant," I replied; "ill-humour resembles indolence: it is natural to us; but if once we have courage to exert ourselves, we find our work run fresh from our hands, and we experience in the activity from which we shrank a real enjoyment." Frederica listened very attentively: and the young man objected, that we were not masters of ourselves, and still less so of our feelings. "The question is about a disagreeable feeling," I added, "from which every one would willingly escape, but none know their own power without trial. Invalids are glad to consult physicians, and submit to the most scrupulous regimen, the most nauseous medicines, in order to recover their health." I observed that the good old man inclined his head, and exerted himself to hear our discourse; so I raised my voice, and addressed myself directly to him. "We preach against a great many crimes," I observed, "but I never remember a

scarcely

How many times the word 'scarcely' appears in the text?

will be no wiser at the end of my letter than you were at the beginning. Attend, then, and I will compel myself to give you the details. I mentioned to you the other day that I had become acquainted with S--, the district judge, and that he had invited me to go and visit him in his retirement, or rather in his little kingdom. But I neglected going, and perhaps should never have gone, if chance had not discovered to me the treasure which lay concealed in that retired spot. Some of our young people had proposed giving a ball in the country, at which I consented to be present. I offered my hand for the evening to a pretty and agreeable, but rather commonplace, sort of girl from the immediate neighbourhood; and it was agreed that I should engage a carriage, and call upon Charlotte, with my partner and her aunt, to convey them to the ball. My companion informed me, as we drove along through the park to the hunting-lodge, that I should make the acquaintance of a very charming young lady. "Take care," added the aunt, "that you do not lose your heart." "Why?" said I. "Because she is already engaged to a very worthy man," she replied, "who is gone to settle his affairs upon the death of his father, and will succeed to a very considerable inheritance." This information possessed no interest for me. When we arrived at the gate, the sun was setting behind the tops of the mountains. The atmosphere was heavy; and the ladies expressed their fears of an approaching storm, as masses of low black clouds were gathering in the horizon. I relieved their anxieties by pretending to be weather-wise, although I myself had some apprehensions lest our pleasure should be interrupted. I alighted; and a maid came to the door, and requested us to wait a moment for her mistress. I walked across the court to a well-built house, and, ascending the flight of steps in front, opened the door, and saw before me the most charming spectacle I had ever witnessed. Six children, from eleven to two years old, were running about the hall, and surrounding a lady of middle height, with a lovely figure, dressed in a robe of simple white, trimmed with pink ribbons. She was holding a rye loaf in her hand, and was cutting slices for the little ones all around, in proportion to their age and appetite. She performed her task in a graceful and affectionate manner; each claimant awaiting his turn with outstretched hands, and boisterously shouting his thanks. Some of them ran away at once, to enjoy their evening meal; whilst others, of a gentler disposition, retired to the courtyard to see the strangers, and to survey the carriage in which their Charlotte was to drive away. "Pray forgive me for giving you the trouble to come for me, and for keeping the ladies waiting: but dressing, and arranging some household duties before I leave, had made me forget my children's supper; and they do not like to take it from any one but me." I uttered some indifferent compliment: but my whole soul was absorbed by her air, her voice, her manner; and I had scarcely recovered myself when she ran into her room to fetch her gloves and fan. The young ones threw inquiring glances at me from a distance; whilst I approached the youngest, a most delicious little creature. He drew back; and Charlotte, entering at the very moment, said, "Louis, shake hands with your cousin." The little fellow obeyed willingly; and I could not resist giving him a hearty kiss, notwithstanding his rather dirty face. "Cousin," said I to Charlotte, as I handed her down, "do you think I deserve the happiness of being related to you?" She replied, with a ready smile, "Oh! I have such a number of cousins, that I should be sorry if you were the most undeserving of them." In taking leave, she desired her next sister, Sophy, a girl about eleven years old, to take great care of the children, and to say good-bye to papa for her when he came home from his ride. She enjoined to the little ones to obey their sister Sophy as they would herself, upon which some promised that they would; but a little fair-haired girl, about six years old, looked discontented, and said, "But Sophy is not you, Charlotte; and we like you best." The two eldest boys had clambered up the carriage; and, at my request, she permitted them to accompany us a little way through the forest, upon their promising to sit very still, and hold fast. We were hardly seated, and the ladies had scarcely exchanged compliments, making the usual remarks upon each other's dress, and upon the company they expected to meet, when Charlotte stopped the carriage, and made her brothers get down. They insisted upon kissing her hands once more; which the eldest did with all the tenderness of a youth of fifteen, but the other in a lighter and more careless manner. She desired them again to give her love to the children, and we drove off. The aunt inquired of Charlotte whether she had finished the book she had last sent her. "No," said Charlotte; "I did not like it: you can have it again. And the one before was not much better." I was surprised, upon asking the title, to hear that it was ____. (We feel obliged to suppress the passage in the letter, to prevent any one from feeling aggrieved; although no author need pay much attention to the opinion of a mere girl, or that of an unsteady young man.) I found penetration and character in everything she said: every expression seemed to brighten her features with new charms,--with new rays of genius,--which unfolded by degrees, as she felt herself understood. "When I was younger," she observed, "I loved nothing so much as romances. Nothing could equal my delight when, on some holiday, I could settle down quietly in a corner, and enter with my whole heart and soul into the joys or sorrows of some fictitious Leonora. I do not deny that they even possess some charms for me yet. But I read so seldom, that I prefer books suited exactly to my taste. And I like those authors best whose scenes describe my own situation in life,--and the friends who are about me, whose stories touch me with interest, from resembling my own homely existence,--which, without being absolutely paradise, is, on the whole, a source of indescribable happiness." I endeavoured to conceal the emotion which these words occasioned, but it was of slight avail; for, when she had expressed so truly her opinion of "The Vicar of Wakefield," and of other works, the names of which I omit (Though the names are omitted, yet the authors mentioned deserve Charlotte's approbation, and will feel it in their hearts when they read this passage. It concerns no other person.), I could no longer contain myself, but gave full utterance to what I thought of it: and it was not until Charlotte had addressed herself to the two other ladies, that I remembered their presence, and observed them sitting mute with astonishment. The aunt looked at me several times with an air of raillery, which, however, I did not at all mind. We talked of the pleasures of dancing. "If it is a fault to love it," said Charlotte, "I am ready to confess that I prize it above all other amusements. If anything disturbs me, I go to the piano, play an air to which I have danced, and all goes right again directly." You, who know me, can fancy how steadfastly I gazed upon her rich dark eyes during these remarks, how my very soul gloated over her warm lips and fresh, glowing cheeks, how I became quite lost in the delightful meaning of her words, so much so, that I scarcely heard the actual expressions. In short, I alighted from the carriage like a person in a dream, and was so lost to the dim world around me, that I scarcely heard the music which resounded from the illuminated ballroom. The two Messrs. Andran and a certain N. N. (I cannot trouble myself with the names), who were the aunt's and Charlotte's partners, received us at the carriage-door, and took possession of their ladies, whilst I followed with mine. We commenced with a minuet. I led out one lady after another, and precisely those who were the most disagreeable could not bring themselves to leave off. Charlotte and her partner began an English country dance, and you must imagine my delight when it was their turn to dance the figure with us. You should see Charlotte dance. She dances with her whole heart and soul: her figure is all harmony, elegance, and grace, as if she were conscious of nothing else, and had no other thought or feeling; and, doubtless, for the moment, every other sensation is extinct. She was engaged for the second country dance, but promised me the third, and assured me, with the most agreeable freedom, that she was very fond of waltzing. "It is the custom here," she said, "for the previous partners to waltz together; but my partner is an indifferent waltzer, and will feel delighted if I save him the trouble. Your partner is not allowed to waltz, and, indeed, is equally incapable: but I observed during the country dance that you waltz well; so, if you will waltz with me, I beg you would propose it to my partner, and I will propose it to yours." We agreed, and it was arranged that our partners should mutually entertain each other. We set off, and, at first, delighted ourselves with the usual graceful motions of the arms. With what grace, with what ease, she moved! When the waltz commenced, and the dancers whirled around each other in the giddy maze, there was some confusion, owing to the incapacity of some of the dancers. We judiciously remained still, allowing the others to weary themselves; and, when the awkward dancers had withdrawn, we joined in, and kept it up famously together with one other couple,--Andran and his partner. Never did I dance more lightly. I felt myself more than mortal, holding this loveliest of creatures in my arms, flying, with her as rapidly as the wind, till I lost sight of every other object; and O Wilhelm, I vowed at that moment, that a maiden whom I loved, or for whom I felt the slightest attachment, never, never should waltz with any one else but with me, if I went to perdition for it!--you will understand this. We took a few turns in the room to recover our breath. Charlotte sat down, and felt refreshed by partaking of some oranges which I had had secured,--the only ones that had been left; but at every slice which, from politeness, she offered to her neighbours, I felt as though a dagger went through my heart. We were the second couple in the third country dance. As we were going down (and Heaven knows with what ecstasy I gazed at her arms and eyes, beaming with the sweetest feeling of pure and genuine enjoyment), we passed a lady whom I had noticed for her charming expression of countenance; although she was no longer young. She looked at Charlotte with a smile, then, holding up her finger in a threatening attitude, repeated twice in a very significant tone of voice the name of "Albert." "Who is Albert," said I to Charlotte, "if it is not impertinent to ask?" She was about to answer, when we were obliged to separate, in order to execute a figure in the dance; and, as we crossed over again in front of each other, I perceived she looked somewhat pensive. "Why need I conceal it from you?" she said, as she gave me her hand for the promenade. "Albert is a worthy man, to whom I am engaged." Now, there was nothing new to me in this (for the girls had told me of it on the way); but it was so far new that I had not thought of it in connection with her whom, in so short a time, I had learned to prize so highly. Enough, I became confused, got out in the figure, and occasioned general confusion; so that it required all Charlotte's presence of mind to set me right by pulling and pushing me into my proper place. The dance was not yet finished when the lightning which had for some time been seen in the horizon, and which I had asserted to proceed entirely from heat, grew more violent; and the thunder was heard above the music. When any distress or terror surprises us in the midst of our amusements, it naturally makes a deeper impression than at other times, either because the contrast makes us more keenly susceptible, or rather perhaps because our senses are then more open to impressions, and the shock is consequently stronger. To this cause I must ascribe the fright and shrieks of the ladies. One sagaciously sat down in a corner with her back to the window, and held her fingers to her ears; a second knelt down before her, and hid her face in her lap; a third threw herself between them, and embraced her sister with a thousand tears; some insisted on going home; others, unconscious of their actions, wanted sufficient presence of mind to repress the impertinence of their young partners, who sought to direct to themselves those sighs which the lips of our agitated beauties intended for heaven. Some of the gentlemen had gone down-stairs to smoke a quiet cigar, and the rest of the company gladly embraced a happy suggestion of the hostess to retire into another room which was provided with shutters and curtains. We had hardly got there, when Charlotte placed the chairs in a circle; and, when the company had sat down in compliance with her request, she forthwith proposed a round game. I noticed some of the company prepare their mouths and draw themselves up at the prospect of some agreeable forfeit. "Let us play at counting," said Charlotte. "Now, pay attention: I shall go round the circle from right to left; and each person is to count, one after the other, the number that comes to him, and must count fast; whoever stops or mistakes is to have a box on the ear, and so on, till we have counted a thousand." It was delightful to see the fun. She went round the circle with upraised arm. "One," said the first; "two," the second; "three," the third; and so on, till Charlotte went faster and faster. One made a mistake, instantly a box on the ear; and, amid the laughter that ensued, came another box; and so on, faster and faster. I myself came in for two. I fancied they were harder than the rest, and felt quite delighted. A general laughter and confusion put an end to the game long before we had counted as far as a thousand. The party broke up into little separate knots: the storm had ceased, and I followed Charlotte into the ballroom. On the way she said, "The game banished their fears of the storm." I could make no reply. "I myself," she continued, "was as much frightened as any of them; but by affecting courage, to keep up the spirits of the others, I forgot my apprehensions." We went to the window. It was still thundering at a distance: a soft rain was pouring down over the country, and filled the air around us with delicious odours. Charlotte leaned forward on her arm; her eyes wandered over the scene; she raised them to the sky, and then turned them upon me; they were moistened with tears; she placed her hand on mine and said, "Klopstock!" at once I remembered the magnificent ode which was in her thoughts: I felt oppressed with the weight of my sensations, and sank under them. It was more than I could bear. I bent over her hand, kissed it in a stream of delicious tears, and again looked up to her eyes. Divine Klopstock! why didst thou not see thy apotheosis in those eyes? And thy name so often profaned, would that I never heard it repeated! JUNE 19. I no longer remember where I stopped in my narrative: I only know it was two in the morning when I went to bed; and if you had been with me, that I might have talked instead of writing to you, I should, in all probability, have kept you up till daylight. I think I have not yet related what happened as we rode home from the ball, nor have I time to tell you now. It was a most magnificent sunrise: the whole country was refreshed, and the rain fell drop by drop from the trees in the forest. Our companions were asleep. Charlotte asked me if I did not wish to sleep also, and begged of me not to make any ceremony on her account. Looking steadfastly at her, I answered, "As long as I see those eyes open, there is no fear of my falling asleep." We both continued awake till we reached her door. The maid opened it softly, and assured her, in answer to her inquiries, that her father and the children were well, and still sleeping. I left her asking permission to visit her in the course of the day. She consented, and I went, and, since that time, sun, moon, and stars may pursue their course: I know not whether it is day or night; the whole world is nothing to me. JUNE 21. My days are as happy as those reserved by God for his elect; and, whatever be my fate hereafter, I can never say that I have not tasted joy,--the purest joy of life. You know Walheim. I am now completely settled there. In that spot I am only half a league from Charlotte; and there I enjoy myself, and taste all the pleasure which can fall to the lot of man. Little did I imagine, when I selected Walheim for my pedestrian excursions, that all heaven lay so near it. How often in my wanderings from the hillside or from the meadows across the river, have I beheld this hunting-lodge, which now contains within it all the joy of my heart! I have often, my dear Wilhelm, reflected on the eagerness men feel to wander and make new discoveries, and upon that secret impulse which afterward inclines them to return to their narrow circle, conform to the laws of custom, and embarrass themselves no longer with what passes around them. It is so strange how, when I came here first, and gazed upon that lovely valley from the hillside, I felt charmed with the entire scene surrounding me. The little wood opposite--how delightful to sit under its shade! How fine the view from that point of rock! Then, that delightful chain of hills, and the exquisite valleys at their feet! Could I but wander and lose myself amongst them! I went, and returned without finding what I wished. Distance, my friend, is like futurity. A dim vastness is spread before our souls: the perceptions of our mind are as obscure as those of our vision; and we desire earnestly to surrender up our whole being, that it may be filled with the complete and perfect bliss of one glorious emotion. But alas! when we have attained our object, when the distant there becomes the present here, all is changed: we are as poor and circumscribed as ever, and our souls still languish for unattainable happiness. So does the restless traveller pant for his native soil, and find in his own cottage, in the arms of his wife, in the affections of his children, and in the labour necessary for their support, that happiness which he had sought in vain through the wide world. When, in the morning at sunrise, I go out to Walheim, and with my own hands gather in the garden the pease which are to serve for my dinner, when I sit down to shell them, and read my Homer during the intervals, and then, selecting a saucepan from the kitchen, fetch my own butter, put my mess on the fire, cover it up, and sit down to stir it as occasion requires, I figure to myself the illustrious suitors of Penelope, killing, dressing, and preparing their own oxen and swine. Nothing fills me with a more pure and genuine sense of happiness than those traits of patriarchal life which, thank Heaven! I can imitate without affectation. Happy is it, indeed, for me that my heart is capable of feeling the same simple and innocent pleasure as the peasant whose table is covered with food of his own rearing, and who not only enjoys his meal, but remembers with delight the happy days and sunny mornings when he planted it, the soft evenings when he watered it, and the pleasure he experienced in watching its daily growth. JUNE 29. The day before yesterday, the physician came from the town to pay a visit to the judge. He found me on the floor playing with Charlotte's children. Some of them were scrambling over me, and others romped with me; and, as I caught and tickled them, they made a great noise. The doctor is a formal sort of personage: he adjusts the plaits of his ruffles, and continually settles his frill whilst he is talking to you; and he thought my conduct beneath the dignity of a sensible man. I could perceive this by his countenance. But I did not suffer myself to be disturbed. I allowed him to continue his wise conversation, whilst I rebuilt the children's card houses for them as fast as they threw them down. He went about the town afterward, complaining that the judge's children were spoiled enough before, but that now Werther was completely ruining them. Yes, my dear Wilhelm, nothing on this earth affects my heart so much as children. When I look on at their doings; when I mark in the little creatures the seeds of all those virtues and qualities which they will one day find so indispensable; when I behold in the obstinate all the future firmness and constancy of a noble character; in the capricious, that levity and gaiety of temper which will carry them lightly over the dangers and troubles of life, their whole nature simple and unpolluted,--then I call to mind the golden words of the Great Teacher of mankind, "Unless ye become like one of these!" And now, my friend, these children, who are our equals, whom we ought to consider as our models, we treat them as though they were our subjects. They are allowed no will of their own. And have we, then, none ourselves? Whence comes our exclusive right? Is it because we are older and more experienced? Great God! from the height of thy heaven thou beholdest great children and little children, and no others; and thy Son has long since declared which afford thee greatest pleasure. But they believe in him, and hear him not,--that, too, is an old story; and they train their children after their own image, etc. Adieu, Wilhelm: I will not further bewilder myself with this subject. JULY 1. The consolation Charlotte can bring to an invalid I experience from my own heart, which suffers more from her absence than many a poor creature lingering on a bed of sickness. She is gone to spend a few days in the town with a very worthy woman, who is given over by the physicians, and wishes to have Charlotte near her in her last moments. I accompanied her last week on a visit to the Vicar of S--, a small village in the mountains, about a league hence. We arrived about four o'clock: Charlotte had taken her little sister with her. When we entered the vicarage court, we found the good old man sitting on a bench before the door, under the shade of two large walnut-trees. At the sight of Charlotte he seemed to gain new life, rose, forgot his stick, and ventured to walk toward her. She ran to him, and made him sit down again; then, placing herself by his side, she gave him a number of messages from her father, and then caught up his youngest child, a dirty, ugly little thing, the joy of his old age, and kissed it. I wish you could have witnessed her attention to this old man,--how she raised her voice on account of his deafness; how she told him of healthy young people, who had been carried off when it was least expected; praised the virtues of Carlsbad, and commended his determination to spend the ensuing summer there; and assured him that he looked better and stronger than he did when she saw him last. I, in the meantime, paid attention to his good lady. The old man seemed quite in spirits; and as I could not help admiring the beauty of the walnut-trees, which formed such an agreeable shade over our heads, he began, though with some little difficulty, to tell us their history. "As to the oldest," said he, "we do not know who planted it,--some say one clergyman, and some another: but the younger one, there behind us, is exactly the age of my wife, fifty years old next October; her father planted it in the morning, and in the evening she came into the world. My wife's father was my predecessor here, and I cannot tell you how fond he was of that tree; and it is fully as dear to me. Under the shade of that very tree, upon a log of wood, my wife was seated knitting, when I, a poor student, came into this court for the first time, just seven and twenty years ago." Charlotte inquired for his daughter. He said she was gone with Herr Schmidt to the meadows, and was with the haymakers. The old man then resumed his story, and told us how his predecessor had taken a fancy to him, as had his daughter likewise; and how he had become first his curate, and subsequently his successor. He had scarcely finished his story when his daughter returned through the garden, accompanied by the above-mentioned Herr Schmidt. She welcomed Charlotte affectionately, and I confess I was much taken with her appearance. She was a lively-looking, good-humoured brunette, quite competent to amuse one for a short time in the country. Her lover (for such Herr Schmidt evidently appeared to be) was a polite, reserved personage, and would not join our conversation, notwithstanding all Charlotte's endeavours to draw him out. I was much annoyed at observing, by his countenance, that his silence did not arise from want of talent, but from caprice and ill-humour. This subsequently became very evident, when we set out to take a walk, and Frederica joining Charlotte, with whom I was talking, the worthy gentleman's face, which was naturally rather sombre, became so dark and angry that Charlotte was obliged to touch my arm, and remind me that I was talking too much to Frederica. Nothing distresses me more than to see men torment each other; particularly when in the flower of their age, in the very season of pleasure, they waste their few short days of sunshine in quarrels and disputes, and only perceive their error when it is too late to repair it. This thought dwelt upon my mind; and in the evening, when we returned to the vicar's, and were sitting round the table with our bread end milk, the conversation turned on the joys and sorrows of the world, I could not resist the temptation to inveigh bitterly against ill-humour. "We are apt," said I, "to complain, but--with very little cause, that our happy days are few, and our evil days many. If our hearts were always disposed to receive the benefits Heaven sends us, we should acquire strength to support evil when it comes." "But," observed the vicar's wife, "we cannot always command our tempers, so much depends upon the constitution: when the body suffers, the mind is ill at ease." "I acknowledge that," I continued; "but we must consider such a disposition in the light of a disease, and inquire whether there is no remedy for it." "I should be glad to hear one," said Charlotte: "at least, I think very much depends upon ourselves; I know it is so with me. When anything annoys me, and disturbs my temper, I hasten into the garden, hum a couple of country dances, and it is all right with me directly." "That is what I meant," I replied; "ill-humour resembles indolence: it is natural to us; but if once we have courage to exert ourselves, we find our work run fresh from our hands, and we experience in the activity from which we shrank a real enjoyment." Frederica listened very attentively: and the young man objected, that we were not masters of ourselves, and still less so of our feelings. "The question is about a disagreeable feeling," I added, "from which every one would willingly escape, but none know their own power without trial. Invalids are glad to consult physicians, and submit to the most scrupulous regimen, the most nauseous medicines, in order to recover their health." I observed that the good old man inclined his head, and exerted himself to hear our discourse; so I raised my voice, and addressed myself directly to him. "We preach against a great many crimes," I observed, "but I never remember a

into

How many times the word 'into' appears in the text?

will be no wiser at the end of my letter than you were at the beginning. Attend, then, and I will compel myself to give you the details. I mentioned to you the other day that I had become acquainted with S--, the district judge, and that he had invited me to go and visit him in his retirement, or rather in his little kingdom. But I neglected going, and perhaps should never have gone, if chance had not discovered to me the treasure which lay concealed in that retired spot. Some of our young people had proposed giving a ball in the country, at which I consented to be present. I offered my hand for the evening to a pretty and agreeable, but rather commonplace, sort of girl from the immediate neighbourhood; and it was agreed that I should engage a carriage, and call upon Charlotte, with my partner and her aunt, to convey them to the ball. My companion informed me, as we drove along through the park to the hunting-lodge, that I should make the acquaintance of a very charming young lady. "Take care," added the aunt, "that you do not lose your heart." "Why?" said I. "Because she is already engaged to a very worthy man," she replied, "who is gone to settle his affairs upon the death of his father, and will succeed to a very considerable inheritance." This information possessed no interest for me. When we arrived at the gate, the sun was setting behind the tops of the mountains. The atmosphere was heavy; and the ladies expressed their fears of an approaching storm, as masses of low black clouds were gathering in the horizon. I relieved their anxieties by pretending to be weather-wise, although I myself had some apprehensions lest our pleasure should be interrupted. I alighted; and a maid came to the door, and requested us to wait a moment for her mistress. I walked across the court to a well-built house, and, ascending the flight of steps in front, opened the door, and saw before me the most charming spectacle I had ever witnessed. Six children, from eleven to two years old, were running about the hall, and surrounding a lady of middle height, with a lovely figure, dressed in a robe of simple white, trimmed with pink ribbons. She was holding a rye loaf in her hand, and was cutting slices for the little ones all around, in proportion to their age and appetite. She performed her task in a graceful and affectionate manner; each claimant awaiting his turn with outstretched hands, and boisterously shouting his thanks. Some of them ran away at once, to enjoy their evening meal; whilst others, of a gentler disposition, retired to the courtyard to see the strangers, and to survey the carriage in which their Charlotte was to drive away. "Pray forgive me for giving you the trouble to come for me, and for keeping the ladies waiting: but dressing, and arranging some household duties before I leave, had made me forget my children's supper; and they do not like to take it from any one but me." I uttered some indifferent compliment: but my whole soul was absorbed by her air, her voice, her manner; and I had scarcely recovered myself when she ran into her room to fetch her gloves and fan. The young ones threw inquiring glances at me from a distance; whilst I approached the youngest, a most delicious little creature. He drew back; and Charlotte, entering at the very moment, said, "Louis, shake hands with your cousin." The little fellow obeyed willingly; and I could not resist giving him a hearty kiss, notwithstanding his rather dirty face. "Cousin," said I to Charlotte, as I handed her down, "do you think I deserve the happiness of being related to you?" She replied, with a ready smile, "Oh! I have such a number of cousins, that I should be sorry if you were the most undeserving of them." In taking leave, she desired her next sister, Sophy, a girl about eleven years old, to take great care of the children, and to say good-bye to papa for her when he came home from his ride. She enjoined to the little ones to obey their sister Sophy as they would herself, upon which some promised that they would; but a little fair-haired girl, about six years old, looked discontented, and said, "But Sophy is not you, Charlotte; and we like you best." The two eldest boys had clambered up the carriage; and, at my request, she permitted them to accompany us a little way through the forest, upon their promising to sit very still, and hold fast. We were hardly seated, and the ladies had scarcely exchanged compliments, making the usual remarks upon each other's dress, and upon the company they expected to meet, when Charlotte stopped the carriage, and made her brothers get down. They insisted upon kissing her hands once more; which the eldest did with all the tenderness of a youth of fifteen, but the other in a lighter and more careless manner. She desired them again to give her love to the children, and we drove off. The aunt inquired of Charlotte whether she had finished the book she had last sent her. "No," said Charlotte; "I did not like it: you can have it again. And the one before was not much better." I was surprised, upon asking the title, to hear that it was ____. (We feel obliged to suppress the passage in the letter, to prevent any one from feeling aggrieved; although no author need pay much attention to the opinion of a mere girl, or that of an unsteady young man.) I found penetration and character in everything she said: every expression seemed to brighten her features with new charms,--with new rays of genius,--which unfolded by degrees, as she felt herself understood. "When I was younger," she observed, "I loved nothing so much as romances. Nothing could equal my delight when, on some holiday, I could settle down quietly in a corner, and enter with my whole heart and soul into the joys or sorrows of some fictitious Leonora. I do not deny that they even possess some charms for me yet. But I read so seldom, that I prefer books suited exactly to my taste. And I like those authors best whose scenes describe my own situation in life,--and the friends who are about me, whose stories touch me with interest, from resembling my own homely existence,--which, without being absolutely paradise, is, on the whole, a source of indescribable happiness." I endeavoured to conceal the emotion which these words occasioned, but it was of slight avail; for, when she had expressed so truly her opinion of "The Vicar of Wakefield," and of other works, the names of which I omit (Though the names are omitted, yet the authors mentioned deserve Charlotte's approbation, and will feel it in their hearts when they read this passage. It concerns no other person.), I could no longer contain myself, but gave full utterance to what I thought of it: and it was not until Charlotte had addressed herself to the two other ladies, that I remembered their presence, and observed them sitting mute with astonishment. The aunt looked at me several times with an air of raillery, which, however, I did not at all mind. We talked of the pleasures of dancing. "If it is a fault to love it," said Charlotte, "I am ready to confess that I prize it above all other amusements. If anything disturbs me, I go to the piano, play an air to which I have danced, and all goes right again directly." You, who know me, can fancy how steadfastly I gazed upon her rich dark eyes during these remarks, how my very soul gloated over her warm lips and fresh, glowing cheeks, how I became quite lost in the delightful meaning of her words, so much so, that I scarcely heard the actual expressions. In short, I alighted from the carriage like a person in a dream, and was so lost to the dim world around me, that I scarcely heard the music which resounded from the illuminated ballroom. The two Messrs. Andran and a certain N. N. (I cannot trouble myself with the names), who were the aunt's and Charlotte's partners, received us at the carriage-door, and took possession of their ladies, whilst I followed with mine. We commenced with a minuet. I led out one lady after another, and precisely those who were the most disagreeable could not bring themselves to leave off. Charlotte and her partner began an English country dance, and you must imagine my delight when it was their turn to dance the figure with us. You should see Charlotte dance. She dances with her whole heart and soul: her figure is all harmony, elegance, and grace, as if she were conscious of nothing else, and had no other thought or feeling; and, doubtless, for the moment, every other sensation is extinct. She was engaged for the second country dance, but promised me the third, and assured me, with the most agreeable freedom, that she was very fond of waltzing. "It is the custom here," she said, "for the previous partners to waltz together; but my partner is an indifferent waltzer, and will feel delighted if I save him the trouble. Your partner is not allowed to waltz, and, indeed, is equally incapable: but I observed during the country dance that you waltz well; so, if you will waltz with me, I beg you would propose it to my partner, and I will propose it to yours." We agreed, and it was arranged that our partners should mutually entertain each other. We set off, and, at first, delighted ourselves with the usual graceful motions of the arms. With what grace, with what ease, she moved! When the waltz commenced, and the dancers whirled around each other in the giddy maze, there was some confusion, owing to the incapacity of some of the dancers. We judiciously remained still, allowing the others to weary themselves; and, when the awkward dancers had withdrawn, we joined in, and kept it up famously together with one other couple,--Andran and his partner. Never did I dance more lightly. I felt myself more than mortal, holding this loveliest of creatures in my arms, flying, with her as rapidly as the wind, till I lost sight of every other object; and O Wilhelm, I vowed at that moment, that a maiden whom I loved, or for whom I felt the slightest attachment, never, never should waltz with any one else but with me, if I went to perdition for it!--you will understand this. We took a few turns in the room to recover our breath. Charlotte sat down, and felt refreshed by partaking of some oranges which I had had secured,--the only ones that had been left; but at every slice which, from politeness, she offered to her neighbours, I felt as though a dagger went through my heart. We were the second couple in the third country dance. As we were going down (and Heaven knows with what ecstasy I gazed at her arms and eyes, beaming with the sweetest feeling of pure and genuine enjoyment), we passed a lady whom I had noticed for her charming expression of countenance; although she was no longer young. She looked at Charlotte with a smile, then, holding up her finger in a threatening attitude, repeated twice in a very significant tone of voice the name of "Albert." "Who is Albert," said I to Charlotte, "if it is not impertinent to ask?" She was about to answer, when we were obliged to separate, in order to execute a figure in the dance; and, as we crossed over again in front of each other, I perceived she looked somewhat pensive. "Why need I conceal it from you?" she said, as she gave me her hand for the promenade. "Albert is a worthy man, to whom I am engaged." Now, there was nothing new to me in this (for the girls had told me of it on the way); but it was so far new that I had not thought of it in connection with her whom, in so short a time, I had learned to prize so highly. Enough, I became confused, got out in the figure, and occasioned general confusion; so that it required all Charlotte's presence of mind to set me right by pulling and pushing me into my proper place. The dance was not yet finished when the lightning which had for some time been seen in the horizon, and which I had asserted to proceed entirely from heat, grew more violent; and the thunder was heard above the music. When any distress or terror surprises us in the midst of our amusements, it naturally makes a deeper impression than at other times, either because the contrast makes us more keenly susceptible, or rather perhaps because our senses are then more open to impressions, and the shock is consequently stronger. To this cause I must ascribe the fright and shrieks of the ladies. One sagaciously sat down in a corner with her back to the window, and held her fingers to her ears; a second knelt down before her, and hid her face in her lap; a third threw herself between them, and embraced her sister with a thousand tears; some insisted on going home; others, unconscious of their actions, wanted sufficient presence of mind to repress the impertinence of their young partners, who sought to direct to themselves those sighs which the lips of our agitated beauties intended for heaven. Some of the gentlemen had gone down-stairs to smoke a quiet cigar, and the rest of the company gladly embraced a happy suggestion of the hostess to retire into another room which was provided with shutters and curtains. We had hardly got there, when Charlotte placed the chairs in a circle; and, when the company had sat down in compliance with her request, she forthwith proposed a round game. I noticed some of the company prepare their mouths and draw themselves up at the prospect of some agreeable forfeit. "Let us play at counting," said Charlotte. "Now, pay attention: I shall go round the circle from right to left; and each person is to count, one after the other, the number that comes to him, and must count fast; whoever stops or mistakes is to have a box on the ear, and so on, till we have counted a thousand." It was delightful to see the fun. She went round the circle with upraised arm. "One," said the first; "two," the second; "three," the third; and so on, till Charlotte went faster and faster. One made a mistake, instantly a box on the ear; and, amid the laughter that ensued, came another box; and so on, faster and faster. I myself came in for two. I fancied they were harder than the rest, and felt quite delighted. A general laughter and confusion put an end to the game long before we had counted as far as a thousand. The party broke up into little separate knots: the storm had ceased, and I followed Charlotte into the ballroom. On the way she said, "The game banished their fears of the storm." I could make no reply. "I myself," she continued, "was as much frightened as any of them; but by affecting courage, to keep up the spirits of the others, I forgot my apprehensions." We went to the window. It was still thundering at a distance: a soft rain was pouring down over the country, and filled the air around us with delicious odours. Charlotte leaned forward on her arm; her eyes wandered over the scene; she raised them to the sky, and then turned them upon me; they were moistened with tears; she placed her hand on mine and said, "Klopstock!" at once I remembered the magnificent ode which was in her thoughts: I felt oppressed with the weight of my sensations, and sank under them. It was more than I could bear. I bent over her hand, kissed it in a stream of delicious tears, and again looked up to her eyes. Divine Klopstock! why didst thou not see thy apotheosis in those eyes? And thy name so often profaned, would that I never heard it repeated! JUNE 19. I no longer remember where I stopped in my narrative: I only know it was two in the morning when I went to bed; and if you had been with me, that I might have talked instead of writing to you, I should, in all probability, have kept you up till daylight. I think I have not yet related what happened as we rode home from the ball, nor have I time to tell you now. It was a most magnificent sunrise: the whole country was refreshed, and the rain fell drop by drop from the trees in the forest. Our companions were asleep. Charlotte asked me if I did not wish to sleep also, and begged of me not to make any ceremony on her account. Looking steadfastly at her, I answered, "As long as I see those eyes open, there is no fear of my falling asleep." We both continued awake till we reached her door. The maid opened it softly, and assured her, in answer to her inquiries, that her father and the children were well, and still sleeping. I left her asking permission to visit her in the course of the day. She consented, and I went, and, since that time, sun, moon, and stars may pursue their course: I know not whether it is day or night; the whole world is nothing to me. JUNE 21. My days are as happy as those reserved by God for his elect; and, whatever be my fate hereafter, I can never say that I have not tasted joy,--the purest joy of life. You know Walheim. I am now completely settled there. In that spot I am only half a league from Charlotte; and there I enjoy myself, and taste all the pleasure which can fall to the lot of man. Little did I imagine, when I selected Walheim for my pedestrian excursions, that all heaven lay so near it. How often in my wanderings from the hillside or from the meadows across the river, have I beheld this hunting-lodge, which now contains within it all the joy of my heart! I have often, my dear Wilhelm, reflected on the eagerness men feel to wander and make new discoveries, and upon that secret impulse which afterward inclines them to return to their narrow circle, conform to the laws of custom, and embarrass themselves no longer with what passes around them. It is so strange how, when I came here first, and gazed upon that lovely valley from the hillside, I felt charmed with the entire scene surrounding me. The little wood opposite--how delightful to sit under its shade! How fine the view from that point of rock! Then, that delightful chain of hills, and the exquisite valleys at their feet! Could I but wander and lose myself amongst them! I went, and returned without finding what I wished. Distance, my friend, is like futurity. A dim vastness is spread before our souls: the perceptions of our mind are as obscure as those of our vision; and we desire earnestly to surrender up our whole being, that it may be filled with the complete and perfect bliss of one glorious emotion. But alas! when we have attained our object, when the distant there becomes the present here, all is changed: we are as poor and circumscribed as ever, and our souls still languish for unattainable happiness. So does the restless traveller pant for his native soil, and find in his own cottage, in the arms of his wife, in the affections of his children, and in the labour necessary for their support, that happiness which he had sought in vain through the wide world. When, in the morning at sunrise, I go out to Walheim, and with my own hands gather in the garden the pease which are to serve for my dinner, when I sit down to shell them, and read my Homer during the intervals, and then, selecting a saucepan from the kitchen, fetch my own butter, put my mess on the fire, cover it up, and sit down to stir it as occasion requires, I figure to myself the illustrious suitors of Penelope, killing, dressing, and preparing their own oxen and swine. Nothing fills me with a more pure and genuine sense of happiness than those traits of patriarchal life which, thank Heaven! I can imitate without affectation. Happy is it, indeed, for me that my heart is capable of feeling the same simple and innocent pleasure as the peasant whose table is covered with food of his own rearing, and who not only enjoys his meal, but remembers with delight the happy days and sunny mornings when he planted it, the soft evenings when he watered it, and the pleasure he experienced in watching its daily growth. JUNE 29. The day before yesterday, the physician came from the town to pay a visit to the judge. He found me on the floor playing with Charlotte's children. Some of them were scrambling over me, and others romped with me; and, as I caught and tickled them, they made a great noise. The doctor is a formal sort of personage: he adjusts the plaits of his ruffles, and continually settles his frill whilst he is talking to you; and he thought my conduct beneath the dignity of a sensible man. I could perceive this by his countenance. But I did not suffer myself to be disturbed. I allowed him to continue his wise conversation, whilst I rebuilt the children's card houses for them as fast as they threw them down. He went about the town afterward, complaining that the judge's children were spoiled enough before, but that now Werther was completely ruining them. Yes, my dear Wilhelm, nothing on this earth affects my heart so much as children. When I look on at their doings; when I mark in the little creatures the seeds of all those virtues and qualities which they will one day find so indispensable; when I behold in the obstinate all the future firmness and constancy of a noble character; in the capricious, that levity and gaiety of temper which will carry them lightly over the dangers and troubles of life, their whole nature simple and unpolluted,--then I call to mind the golden words of the Great Teacher of mankind, "Unless ye become like one of these!" And now, my friend, these children, who are our equals, whom we ought to consider as our models, we treat them as though they were our subjects. They are allowed no will of their own. And have we, then, none ourselves? Whence comes our exclusive right? Is it because we are older and more experienced? Great God! from the height of thy heaven thou beholdest great children and little children, and no others; and thy Son has long since declared which afford thee greatest pleasure. But they believe in him, and hear him not,--that, too, is an old story; and they train their children after their own image, etc. Adieu, Wilhelm: I will not further bewilder myself with this subject. JULY 1. The consolation Charlotte can bring to an invalid I experience from my own heart, which suffers more from her absence than many a poor creature lingering on a bed of sickness. She is gone to spend a few days in the town with a very worthy woman, who is given over by the physicians, and wishes to have Charlotte near her in her last moments. I accompanied her last week on a visit to the Vicar of S--, a small village in the mountains, about a league hence. We arrived about four o'clock: Charlotte had taken her little sister with her. When we entered the vicarage court, we found the good old man sitting on a bench before the door, under the shade of two large walnut-trees. At the sight of Charlotte he seemed to gain new life, rose, forgot his stick, and ventured to walk toward her. She ran to him, and made him sit down again; then, placing herself by his side, she gave him a number of messages from her father, and then caught up his youngest child, a dirty, ugly little thing, the joy of his old age, and kissed it. I wish you could have witnessed her attention to this old man,--how she raised her voice on account of his deafness; how she told him of healthy young people, who had been carried off when it was least expected; praised the virtues of Carlsbad, and commended his determination to spend the ensuing summer there; and assured him that he looked better and stronger than he did when she saw him last. I, in the meantime, paid attention to his good lady. The old man seemed quite in spirits; and as I could not help admiring the beauty of the walnut-trees, which formed such an agreeable shade over our heads, he began, though with some little difficulty, to tell us their history. "As to the oldest," said he, "we do not know who planted it,--some say one clergyman, and some another: but the younger one, there behind us, is exactly the age of my wife, fifty years old next October; her father planted it in the morning, and in the evening she came into the world. My wife's father was my predecessor here, and I cannot tell you how fond he was of that tree; and it is fully as dear to me. Under the shade of that very tree, upon a log of wood, my wife was seated knitting, when I, a poor student, came into this court for the first time, just seven and twenty years ago." Charlotte inquired for his daughter. He said she was gone with Herr Schmidt to the meadows, and was with the haymakers. The old man then resumed his story, and told us how his predecessor had taken a fancy to him, as had his daughter likewise; and how he had become first his curate, and subsequently his successor. He had scarcely finished his story when his daughter returned through the garden, accompanied by the above-mentioned Herr Schmidt. She welcomed Charlotte affectionately, and I confess I was much taken with her appearance. She was a lively-looking, good-humoured brunette, quite competent to amuse one for a short time in the country. Her lover (for such Herr Schmidt evidently appeared to be) was a polite, reserved personage, and would not join our conversation, notwithstanding all Charlotte's endeavours to draw him out. I was much annoyed at observing, by his countenance, that his silence did not arise from want of talent, but from caprice and ill-humour. This subsequently became very evident, when we set out to take a walk, and Frederica joining Charlotte, with whom I was talking, the worthy gentleman's face, which was naturally rather sombre, became so dark and angry that Charlotte was obliged to touch my arm, and remind me that I was talking too much to Frederica. Nothing distresses me more than to see men torment each other; particularly when in the flower of their age, in the very season of pleasure, they waste their few short days of sunshine in quarrels and disputes, and only perceive their error when it is too late to repair it. This thought dwelt upon my mind; and in the evening, when we returned to the vicar's, and were sitting round the table with our bread end milk, the conversation turned on the joys and sorrows of the world, I could not resist the temptation to inveigh bitterly against ill-humour. "We are apt," said I, "to complain, but--with very little cause, that our happy days are few, and our evil days many. If our hearts were always disposed to receive the benefits Heaven sends us, we should acquire strength to support evil when it comes." "But," observed the vicar's wife, "we cannot always command our tempers, so much depends upon the constitution: when the body suffers, the mind is ill at ease." "I acknowledge that," I continued; "but we must consider such a disposition in the light of a disease, and inquire whether there is no remedy for it." "I should be glad to hear one," said Charlotte: "at least, I think very much depends upon ourselves; I know it is so with me. When anything annoys me, and disturbs my temper, I hasten into the garden, hum a couple of country dances, and it is all right with me directly." "That is what I meant," I replied; "ill-humour resembles indolence: it is natural to us; but if once we have courage to exert ourselves, we find our work run fresh from our hands, and we experience in the activity from which we shrank a real enjoyment." Frederica listened very attentively: and the young man objected, that we were not masters of ourselves, and still less so of our feelings. "The question is about a disagreeable feeling," I added, "from which every one would willingly escape, but none know their own power without trial. Invalids are glad to consult physicians, and submit to the most scrupulous regimen, the most nauseous medicines, in order to recover their health." I observed that the good old man inclined his head, and exerted himself to hear our discourse; so I raised my voice, and addressed myself directly to him. "We preach against a great many crimes," I observed, "but I never remember a

care

How many times the word 'care' appears in the text?

will be no wiser at the end of my letter than you were at the beginning. Attend, then, and I will compel myself to give you the details. I mentioned to you the other day that I had become acquainted with S--, the district judge, and that he had invited me to go and visit him in his retirement, or rather in his little kingdom. But I neglected going, and perhaps should never have gone, if chance had not discovered to me the treasure which lay concealed in that retired spot. Some of our young people had proposed giving a ball in the country, at which I consented to be present. I offered my hand for the evening to a pretty and agreeable, but rather commonplace, sort of girl from the immediate neighbourhood; and it was agreed that I should engage a carriage, and call upon Charlotte, with my partner and her aunt, to convey them to the ball. My companion informed me, as we drove along through the park to the hunting-lodge, that I should make the acquaintance of a very charming young lady. "Take care," added the aunt, "that you do not lose your heart." "Why?" said I. "Because she is already engaged to a very worthy man," she replied, "who is gone to settle his affairs upon the death of his father, and will succeed to a very considerable inheritance." This information possessed no interest for me. When we arrived at the gate, the sun was setting behind the tops of the mountains. The atmosphere was heavy; and the ladies expressed their fears of an approaching storm, as masses of low black clouds were gathering in the horizon. I relieved their anxieties by pretending to be weather-wise, although I myself had some apprehensions lest our pleasure should be interrupted. I alighted; and a maid came to the door, and requested us to wait a moment for her mistress. I walked across the court to a well-built house, and, ascending the flight of steps in front, opened the door, and saw before me the most charming spectacle I had ever witnessed. Six children, from eleven to two years old, were running about the hall, and surrounding a lady of middle height, with a lovely figure, dressed in a robe of simple white, trimmed with pink ribbons. She was holding a rye loaf in her hand, and was cutting slices for the little ones all around, in proportion to their age and appetite. She performed her task in a graceful and affectionate manner; each claimant awaiting his turn with outstretched hands, and boisterously shouting his thanks. Some of them ran away at once, to enjoy their evening meal; whilst others, of a gentler disposition, retired to the courtyard to see the strangers, and to survey the carriage in which their Charlotte was to drive away. "Pray forgive me for giving you the trouble to come for me, and for keeping the ladies waiting: but dressing, and arranging some household duties before I leave, had made me forget my children's supper; and they do not like to take it from any one but me." I uttered some indifferent compliment: but my whole soul was absorbed by her air, her voice, her manner; and I had scarcely recovered myself when she ran into her room to fetch her gloves and fan. The young ones threw inquiring glances at me from a distance; whilst I approached the youngest, a most delicious little creature. He drew back; and Charlotte, entering at the very moment, said, "Louis, shake hands with your cousin." The little fellow obeyed willingly; and I could not resist giving him a hearty kiss, notwithstanding his rather dirty face. "Cousin," said I to Charlotte, as I handed her down, "do you think I deserve the happiness of being related to you?" She replied, with a ready smile, "Oh! I have such a number of cousins, that I should be sorry if you were the most undeserving of them." In taking leave, she desired her next sister, Sophy, a girl about eleven years old, to take great care of the children, and to say good-bye to papa for her when he came home from his ride. She enjoined to the little ones to obey their sister Sophy as they would herself, upon which some promised that they would; but a little fair-haired girl, about six years old, looked discontented, and said, "But Sophy is not you, Charlotte; and we like you best." The two eldest boys had clambered up the carriage; and, at my request, she permitted them to accompany us a little way through the forest, upon their promising to sit very still, and hold fast. We were hardly seated, and the ladies had scarcely exchanged compliments, making the usual remarks upon each other's dress, and upon the company they expected to meet, when Charlotte stopped the carriage, and made her brothers get down. They insisted upon kissing her hands once more; which the eldest did with all the tenderness of a youth of fifteen, but the other in a lighter and more careless manner. She desired them again to give her love to the children, and we drove off. The aunt inquired of Charlotte whether she had finished the book she had last sent her. "No," said Charlotte; "I did not like it: you can have it again. And the one before was not much better." I was surprised, upon asking the title, to hear that it was ____. (We feel obliged to suppress the passage in the letter, to prevent any one from feeling aggrieved; although no author need pay much attention to the opinion of a mere girl, or that of an unsteady young man.) I found penetration and character in everything she said: every expression seemed to brighten her features with new charms,--with new rays of genius,--which unfolded by degrees, as she felt herself understood. "When I was younger," she observed, "I loved nothing so much as romances. Nothing could equal my delight when, on some holiday, I could settle down quietly in a corner, and enter with my whole heart and soul into the joys or sorrows of some fictitious Leonora. I do not deny that they even possess some charms for me yet. But I read so seldom, that I prefer books suited exactly to my taste. And I like those authors best whose scenes describe my own situation in life,--and the friends who are about me, whose stories touch me with interest, from resembling my own homely existence,--which, without being absolutely paradise, is, on the whole, a source of indescribable happiness." I endeavoured to conceal the emotion which these words occasioned, but it was of slight avail; for, when she had expressed so truly her opinion of "The Vicar of Wakefield," and of other works, the names of which I omit (Though the names are omitted, yet the authors mentioned deserve Charlotte's approbation, and will feel it in their hearts when they read this passage. It concerns no other person.), I could no longer contain myself, but gave full utterance to what I thought of it: and it was not until Charlotte had addressed herself to the two other ladies, that I remembered their presence, and observed them sitting mute with astonishment. The aunt looked at me several times with an air of raillery, which, however, I did not at all mind. We talked of the pleasures of dancing. "If it is a fault to love it," said Charlotte, "I am ready to confess that I prize it above all other amusements. If anything disturbs me, I go to the piano, play an air to which I have danced, and all goes right again directly." You, who know me, can fancy how steadfastly I gazed upon her rich dark eyes during these remarks, how my very soul gloated over her warm lips and fresh, glowing cheeks, how I became quite lost in the delightful meaning of her words, so much so, that I scarcely heard the actual expressions. In short, I alighted from the carriage like a person in a dream, and was so lost to the dim world around me, that I scarcely heard the music which resounded from the illuminated ballroom. The two Messrs. Andran and a certain N. N. (I cannot trouble myself with the names), who were the aunt's and Charlotte's partners, received us at the carriage-door, and took possession of their ladies, whilst I followed with mine. We commenced with a minuet. I led out one lady after another, and precisely those who were the most disagreeable could not bring themselves to leave off. Charlotte and her partner began an English country dance, and you must imagine my delight when it was their turn to dance the figure with us. You should see Charlotte dance. She dances with her whole heart and soul: her figure is all harmony, elegance, and grace, as if she were conscious of nothing else, and had no other thought or feeling; and, doubtless, for the moment, every other sensation is extinct. She was engaged for the second country dance, but promised me the third, and assured me, with the most agreeable freedom, that she was very fond of waltzing. "It is the custom here," she said, "for the previous partners to waltz together; but my partner is an indifferent waltzer, and will feel delighted if I save him the trouble. Your partner is not allowed to waltz, and, indeed, is equally incapable: but I observed during the country dance that you waltz well; so, if you will waltz with me, I beg you would propose it to my partner, and I will propose it to yours." We agreed, and it was arranged that our partners should mutually entertain each other. We set off, and, at first, delighted ourselves with the usual graceful motions of the arms. With what grace, with what ease, she moved! When the waltz commenced, and the dancers whirled around each other in the giddy maze, there was some confusion, owing to the incapacity of some of the dancers. We judiciously remained still, allowing the others to weary themselves; and, when the awkward dancers had withdrawn, we joined in, and kept it up famously together with one other couple,--Andran and his partner. Never did I dance more lightly. I felt myself more than mortal, holding this loveliest of creatures in my arms, flying, with her as rapidly as the wind, till I lost sight of every other object; and O Wilhelm, I vowed at that moment, that a maiden whom I loved, or for whom I felt the slightest attachment, never, never should waltz with any one else but with me, if I went to perdition for it!--you will understand this. We took a few turns in the room to recover our breath. Charlotte sat down, and felt refreshed by partaking of some oranges which I had had secured,--the only ones that had been left; but at every slice which, from politeness, she offered to her neighbours, I felt as though a dagger went through my heart. We were the second couple in the third country dance. As we were going down (and Heaven knows with what ecstasy I gazed at her arms and eyes, beaming with the sweetest feeling of pure and genuine enjoyment), we passed a lady whom I had noticed for her charming expression of countenance; although she was no longer young. She looked at Charlotte with a smile, then, holding up her finger in a threatening attitude, repeated twice in a very significant tone of voice the name of "Albert." "Who is Albert," said I to Charlotte, "if it is not impertinent to ask?" She was about to answer, when we were obliged to separate, in order to execute a figure in the dance; and, as we crossed over again in front of each other, I perceived she looked somewhat pensive. "Why need I conceal it from you?" she said, as she gave me her hand for the promenade. "Albert is a worthy man, to whom I am engaged." Now, there was nothing new to me in this (for the girls had told me of it on the way); but it was so far new that I had not thought of it in connection with her whom, in so short a time, I had learned to prize so highly. Enough, I became confused, got out in the figure, and occasioned general confusion; so that it required all Charlotte's presence of mind to set me right by pulling and pushing me into my proper place. The dance was not yet finished when the lightning which had for some time been seen in the horizon, and which I had asserted to proceed entirely from heat, grew more violent; and the thunder was heard above the music. When any distress or terror surprises us in the midst of our amusements, it naturally makes a deeper impression than at other times, either because the contrast makes us more keenly susceptible, or rather perhaps because our senses are then more open to impressions, and the shock is consequently stronger. To this cause I must ascribe the fright and shrieks of the ladies. One sagaciously sat down in a corner with her back to the window, and held her fingers to her ears; a second knelt down before her, and hid her face in her lap; a third threw herself between them, and embraced her sister with a thousand tears; some insisted on going home; others, unconscious of their actions, wanted sufficient presence of mind to repress the impertinence of their young partners, who sought to direct to themselves those sighs which the lips of our agitated beauties intended for heaven. Some of the gentlemen had gone down-stairs to smoke a quiet cigar, and the rest of the company gladly embraced a happy suggestion of the hostess to retire into another room which was provided with shutters and curtains. We had hardly got there, when Charlotte placed the chairs in a circle; and, when the company had sat down in compliance with her request, she forthwith proposed a round game. I noticed some of the company prepare their mouths and draw themselves up at the prospect of some agreeable forfeit. "Let us play at counting," said Charlotte. "Now, pay attention: I shall go round the circle from right to left; and each person is to count, one after the other, the number that comes to him, and must count fast; whoever stops or mistakes is to have a box on the ear, and so on, till we have counted a thousand." It was delightful to see the fun. She went round the circle with upraised arm. "One," said the first; "two," the second; "three," the third; and so on, till Charlotte went faster and faster. One made a mistake, instantly a box on the ear; and, amid the laughter that ensued, came another box; and so on, faster and faster. I myself came in for two. I fancied they were harder than the rest, and felt quite delighted. A general laughter and confusion put an end to the game long before we had counted as far as a thousand. The party broke up into little separate knots: the storm had ceased, and I followed Charlotte into the ballroom. On the way she said, "The game banished their fears of the storm." I could make no reply. "I myself," she continued, "was as much frightened as any of them; but by affecting courage, to keep up the spirits of the others, I forgot my apprehensions." We went to the window. It was still thundering at a distance: a soft rain was pouring down over the country, and filled the air around us with delicious odours. Charlotte leaned forward on her arm; her eyes wandered over the scene; she raised them to the sky, and then turned them upon me; they were moistened with tears; she placed her hand on mine and said, "Klopstock!" at once I remembered the magnificent ode which was in her thoughts: I felt oppressed with the weight of my sensations, and sank under them. It was more than I could bear. I bent over her hand, kissed it in a stream of delicious tears, and again looked up to her eyes. Divine Klopstock! why didst thou not see thy apotheosis in those eyes? And thy name so often profaned, would that I never heard it repeated! JUNE 19. I no longer remember where I stopped in my narrative: I only know it was two in the morning when I went to bed; and if you had been with me, that I might have talked instead of writing to you, I should, in all probability, have kept you up till daylight. I think I have not yet related what happened as we rode home from the ball, nor have I time to tell you now. It was a most magnificent sunrise: the whole country was refreshed, and the rain fell drop by drop from the trees in the forest. Our companions were asleep. Charlotte asked me if I did not wish to sleep also, and begged of me not to make any ceremony on her account. Looking steadfastly at her, I answered, "As long as I see those eyes open, there is no fear of my falling asleep." We both continued awake till we reached her door. The maid opened it softly, and assured her, in answer to her inquiries, that her father and the children were well, and still sleeping. I left her asking permission to visit her in the course of the day. She consented, and I went, and, since that time, sun, moon, and stars may pursue their course: I know not whether it is day or night; the whole world is nothing to me. JUNE 21. My days are as happy as those reserved by God for his elect; and, whatever be my fate hereafter, I can never say that I have not tasted joy,--the purest joy of life. You know Walheim. I am now completely settled there. In that spot I am only half a league from Charlotte; and there I enjoy myself, and taste all the pleasure which can fall to the lot of man. Little did I imagine, when I selected Walheim for my pedestrian excursions, that all heaven lay so near it. How often in my wanderings from the hillside or from the meadows across the river, have I beheld this hunting-lodge, which now contains within it all the joy of my heart! I have often, my dear Wilhelm, reflected on the eagerness men feel to wander and make new discoveries, and upon that secret impulse which afterward inclines them to return to their narrow circle, conform to the laws of custom, and embarrass themselves no longer with what passes around them. It is so strange how, when I came here first, and gazed upon that lovely valley from the hillside, I felt charmed with the entire scene surrounding me. The little wood opposite--how delightful to sit under its shade! How fine the view from that point of rock! Then, that delightful chain of hills, and the exquisite valleys at their feet! Could I but wander and lose myself amongst them! I went, and returned without finding what I wished. Distance, my friend, is like futurity. A dim vastness is spread before our souls: the perceptions of our mind are as obscure as those of our vision; and we desire earnestly to surrender up our whole being, that it may be filled with the complete and perfect bliss of one glorious emotion. But alas! when we have attained our object, when the distant there becomes the present here, all is changed: we are as poor and circumscribed as ever, and our souls still languish for unattainable happiness. So does the restless traveller pant for his native soil, and find in his own cottage, in the arms of his wife, in the affections of his children, and in the labour necessary for their support, that happiness which he had sought in vain through the wide world. When, in the morning at sunrise, I go out to Walheim, and with my own hands gather in the garden the pease which are to serve for my dinner, when I sit down to shell them, and read my Homer during the intervals, and then, selecting a saucepan from the kitchen, fetch my own butter, put my mess on the fire, cover it up, and sit down to stir it as occasion requires, I figure to myself the illustrious suitors of Penelope, killing, dressing, and preparing their own oxen and swine. Nothing fills me with a more pure and genuine sense of happiness than those traits of patriarchal life which, thank Heaven! I can imitate without affectation. Happy is it, indeed, for me that my heart is capable of feeling the same simple and innocent pleasure as the peasant whose table is covered with food of his own rearing, and who not only enjoys his meal, but remembers with delight the happy days and sunny mornings when he planted it, the soft evenings when he watered it, and the pleasure he experienced in watching its daily growth. JUNE 29. The day before yesterday, the physician came from the town to pay a visit to the judge. He found me on the floor playing with Charlotte's children. Some of them were scrambling over me, and others romped with me; and, as I caught and tickled them, they made a great noise. The doctor is a formal sort of personage: he adjusts the plaits of his ruffles, and continually settles his frill whilst he is talking to you; and he thought my conduct beneath the dignity of a sensible man. I could perceive this by his countenance. But I did not suffer myself to be disturbed. I allowed him to continue his wise conversation, whilst I rebuilt the children's card houses for them as fast as they threw them down. He went about the town afterward, complaining that the judge's children were spoiled enough before, but that now Werther was completely ruining them. Yes, my dear Wilhelm, nothing on this earth affects my heart so much as children. When I look on at their doings; when I mark in the little creatures the seeds of all those virtues and qualities which they will one day find so indispensable; when I behold in the obstinate all the future firmness and constancy of a noble character; in the capricious, that levity and gaiety of temper which will carry them lightly over the dangers and troubles of life, their whole nature simple and unpolluted,--then I call to mind the golden words of the Great Teacher of mankind, "Unless ye become like one of these!" And now, my friend, these children, who are our equals, whom we ought to consider as our models, we treat them as though they were our subjects. They are allowed no will of their own. And have we, then, none ourselves? Whence comes our exclusive right? Is it because we are older and more experienced? Great God! from the height of thy heaven thou beholdest great children and little children, and no others; and thy Son has long since declared which afford thee greatest pleasure. But they believe in him, and hear him not,--that, too, is an old story; and they train their children after their own image, etc. Adieu, Wilhelm: I will not further bewilder myself with this subject. JULY 1. The consolation Charlotte can bring to an invalid I experience from my own heart, which suffers more from her absence than many a poor creature lingering on a bed of sickness. She is gone to spend a few days in the town with a very worthy woman, who is given over by the physicians, and wishes to have Charlotte near her in her last moments. I accompanied her last week on a visit to the Vicar of S--, a small village in the mountains, about a league hence. We arrived about four o'clock: Charlotte had taken her little sister with her. When we entered the vicarage court, we found the good old man sitting on a bench before the door, under the shade of two large walnut-trees. At the sight of Charlotte he seemed to gain new life, rose, forgot his stick, and ventured to walk toward her. She ran to him, and made him sit down again; then, placing herself by his side, she gave him a number of messages from her father, and then caught up his youngest child, a dirty, ugly little thing, the joy of his old age, and kissed it. I wish you could have witnessed her attention to this old man,--how she raised her voice on account of his deafness; how she told him of healthy young people, who had been carried off when it was least expected; praised the virtues of Carlsbad, and commended his determination to spend the ensuing summer there; and assured him that he looked better and stronger than he did when she saw him last. I, in the meantime, paid attention to his good lady. The old man seemed quite in spirits; and as I could not help admiring the beauty of the walnut-trees, which formed such an agreeable shade over our heads, he began, though with some little difficulty, to tell us their history. "As to the oldest," said he, "we do not know who planted it,--some say one clergyman, and some another: but the younger one, there behind us, is exactly the age of my wife, fifty years old next October; her father planted it in the morning, and in the evening she came into the world. My wife's father was my predecessor here, and I cannot tell you how fond he was of that tree; and it is fully as dear to me. Under the shade of that very tree, upon a log of wood, my wife was seated knitting, when I, a poor student, came into this court for the first time, just seven and twenty years ago." Charlotte inquired for his daughter. He said she was gone with Herr Schmidt to the meadows, and was with the haymakers. The old man then resumed his story, and told us how his predecessor had taken a fancy to him, as had his daughter likewise; and how he had become first his curate, and subsequently his successor. He had scarcely finished his story when his daughter returned through the garden, accompanied by the above-mentioned Herr Schmidt. She welcomed Charlotte affectionately, and I confess I was much taken with her appearance. She was a lively-looking, good-humoured brunette, quite competent to amuse one for a short time in the country. Her lover (for such Herr Schmidt evidently appeared to be) was a polite, reserved personage, and would not join our conversation, notwithstanding all Charlotte's endeavours to draw him out. I was much annoyed at observing, by his countenance, that his silence did not arise from want of talent, but from caprice and ill-humour. This subsequently became very evident, when we set out to take a walk, and Frederica joining Charlotte, with whom I was talking, the worthy gentleman's face, which was naturally rather sombre, became so dark and angry that Charlotte was obliged to touch my arm, and remind me that I was talking too much to Frederica. Nothing distresses me more than to see men torment each other; particularly when in the flower of their age, in the very season of pleasure, they waste their few short days of sunshine in quarrels and disputes, and only perceive their error when it is too late to repair it. This thought dwelt upon my mind; and in the evening, when we returned to the vicar's, and were sitting round the table with our bread end milk, the conversation turned on the joys and sorrows of the world, I could not resist the temptation to inveigh bitterly against ill-humour. "We are apt," said I, "to complain, but--with very little cause, that our happy days are few, and our evil days many. If our hearts were always disposed to receive the benefits Heaven sends us, we should acquire strength to support evil when it comes." "But," observed the vicar's wife, "we cannot always command our tempers, so much depends upon the constitution: when the body suffers, the mind is ill at ease." "I acknowledge that," I continued; "but we must consider such a disposition in the light of a disease, and inquire whether there is no remedy for it." "I should be glad to hear one," said Charlotte: "at least, I think very much depends upon ourselves; I know it is so with me. When anything annoys me, and disturbs my temper, I hasten into the garden, hum a couple of country dances, and it is all right with me directly." "That is what I meant," I replied; "ill-humour resembles indolence: it is natural to us; but if once we have courage to exert ourselves, we find our work run fresh from our hands, and we experience in the activity from which we shrank a real enjoyment." Frederica listened very attentively: and the young man objected, that we were not masters of ourselves, and still less so of our feelings. "The question is about a disagreeable feeling," I added, "from which every one would willingly escape, but none know their own power without trial. Invalids are glad to consult physicians, and submit to the most scrupulous regimen, the most nauseous medicines, in order to recover their health." I observed that the good old man inclined his head, and exerted himself to hear our discourse; so I raised my voice, and addressed myself directly to him. "We preach against a great many crimes," I observed, "but I never remember a

every

How many times the word 'every' appears in the text?

will be no wiser at the end of my letter than you were at the beginning. Attend, then, and I will compel myself to give you the details. I mentioned to you the other day that I had become acquainted with S--, the district judge, and that he had invited me to go and visit him in his retirement, or rather in his little kingdom. But I neglected going, and perhaps should never have gone, if chance had not discovered to me the treasure which lay concealed in that retired spot. Some of our young people had proposed giving a ball in the country, at which I consented to be present. I offered my hand for the evening to a pretty and agreeable, but rather commonplace, sort of girl from the immediate neighbourhood; and it was agreed that I should engage a carriage, and call upon Charlotte, with my partner and her aunt, to convey them to the ball. My companion informed me, as we drove along through the park to the hunting-lodge, that I should make the acquaintance of a very charming young lady. "Take care," added the aunt, "that you do not lose your heart." "Why?" said I. "Because she is already engaged to a very worthy man," she replied, "who is gone to settle his affairs upon the death of his father, and will succeed to a very considerable inheritance." This information possessed no interest for me. When we arrived at the gate, the sun was setting behind the tops of the mountains. The atmosphere was heavy; and the ladies expressed their fears of an approaching storm, as masses of low black clouds were gathering in the horizon. I relieved their anxieties by pretending to be weather-wise, although I myself had some apprehensions lest our pleasure should be interrupted. I alighted; and a maid came to the door, and requested us to wait a moment for her mistress. I walked across the court to a well-built house, and, ascending the flight of steps in front, opened the door, and saw before me the most charming spectacle I had ever witnessed. Six children, from eleven to two years old, were running about the hall, and surrounding a lady of middle height, with a lovely figure, dressed in a robe of simple white, trimmed with pink ribbons. She was holding a rye loaf in her hand, and was cutting slices for the little ones all around, in proportion to their age and appetite. She performed her task in a graceful and affectionate manner; each claimant awaiting his turn with outstretched hands, and boisterously shouting his thanks. Some of them ran away at once, to enjoy their evening meal; whilst others, of a gentler disposition, retired to the courtyard to see the strangers, and to survey the carriage in which their Charlotte was to drive away. "Pray forgive me for giving you the trouble to come for me, and for keeping the ladies waiting: but dressing, and arranging some household duties before I leave, had made me forget my children's supper; and they do not like to take it from any one but me." I uttered some indifferent compliment: but my whole soul was absorbed by her air, her voice, her manner; and I had scarcely recovered myself when she ran into her room to fetch her gloves and fan. The young ones threw inquiring glances at me from a distance; whilst I approached the youngest, a most delicious little creature. He drew back; and Charlotte, entering at the very moment, said, "Louis, shake hands with your cousin." The little fellow obeyed willingly; and I could not resist giving him a hearty kiss, notwithstanding his rather dirty face. "Cousin," said I to Charlotte, as I handed her down, "do you think I deserve the happiness of being related to you?" She replied, with a ready smile, "Oh! I have such a number of cousins, that I should be sorry if you were the most undeserving of them." In taking leave, she desired her next sister, Sophy, a girl about eleven years old, to take great care of the children, and to say good-bye to papa for her when he came home from his ride. She enjoined to the little ones to obey their sister Sophy as they would herself, upon which some promised that they would; but a little fair-haired girl, about six years old, looked discontented, and said, "But Sophy is not you, Charlotte; and we like you best." The two eldest boys had clambered up the carriage; and, at my request, she permitted them to accompany us a little way through the forest, upon their promising to sit very still, and hold fast. We were hardly seated, and the ladies had scarcely exchanged compliments, making the usual remarks upon each other's dress, and upon the company they expected to meet, when Charlotte stopped the carriage, and made her brothers get down. They insisted upon kissing her hands once more; which the eldest did with all the tenderness of a youth of fifteen, but the other in a lighter and more careless manner. She desired them again to give her love to the children, and we drove off. The aunt inquired of Charlotte whether she had finished the book she had last sent her. "No," said Charlotte; "I did not like it: you can have it again. And the one before was not much better." I was surprised, upon asking the title, to hear that it was ____. (We feel obliged to suppress the passage in the letter, to prevent any one from feeling aggrieved; although no author need pay much attention to the opinion of a mere girl, or that of an unsteady young man.) I found penetration and character in everything she said: every expression seemed to brighten her features with new charms,--with new rays of genius,--which unfolded by degrees, as she felt herself understood. "When I was younger," she observed, "I loved nothing so much as romances. Nothing could equal my delight when, on some holiday, I could settle down quietly in a corner, and enter with my whole heart and soul into the joys or sorrows of some fictitious Leonora. I do not deny that they even possess some charms for me yet. But I read so seldom, that I prefer books suited exactly to my taste. And I like those authors best whose scenes describe my own situation in life,--and the friends who are about me, whose stories touch me with interest, from resembling my own homely existence,--which, without being absolutely paradise, is, on the whole, a source of indescribable happiness." I endeavoured to conceal the emotion which these words occasioned, but it was of slight avail; for, when she had expressed so truly her opinion of "The Vicar of Wakefield," and of other works, the names of which I omit (Though the names are omitted, yet the authors mentioned deserve Charlotte's approbation, and will feel it in their hearts when they read this passage. It concerns no other person.), I could no longer contain myself, but gave full utterance to what I thought of it: and it was not until Charlotte had addressed herself to the two other ladies, that I remembered their presence, and observed them sitting mute with astonishment. The aunt looked at me several times with an air of raillery, which, however, I did not at all mind. We talked of the pleasures of dancing. "If it is a fault to love it," said Charlotte, "I am ready to confess that I prize it above all other amusements. If anything disturbs me, I go to the piano, play an air to which I have danced, and all goes right again directly." You, who know me, can fancy how steadfastly I gazed upon her rich dark eyes during these remarks, how my very soul gloated over her warm lips and fresh, glowing cheeks, how I became quite lost in the delightful meaning of her words, so much so, that I scarcely heard the actual expressions. In short, I alighted from the carriage like a person in a dream, and was so lost to the dim world around me, that I scarcely heard the music which resounded from the illuminated ballroom. The two Messrs. Andran and a certain N. N. (I cannot trouble myself with the names), who were the aunt's and Charlotte's partners, received us at the carriage-door, and took possession of their ladies, whilst I followed with mine. We commenced with a minuet. I led out one lady after another, and precisely those who were the most disagreeable could not bring themselves to leave off. Charlotte and her partner began an English country dance, and you must imagine my delight when it was their turn to dance the figure with us. You should see Charlotte dance. She dances with her whole heart and soul: her figure is all harmony, elegance, and grace, as if she were conscious of nothing else, and had no other thought or feeling; and, doubtless, for the moment, every other sensation is extinct. She was engaged for the second country dance, but promised me the third, and assured me, with the most agreeable freedom, that she was very fond of waltzing. "It is the custom here," she said, "for the previous partners to waltz together; but my partner is an indifferent waltzer, and will feel delighted if I save him the trouble. Your partner is not allowed to waltz, and, indeed, is equally incapable: but I observed during the country dance that you waltz well; so, if you will waltz with me, I beg you would propose it to my partner, and I will propose it to yours." We agreed, and it was arranged that our partners should mutually entertain each other. We set off, and, at first, delighted ourselves with the usual graceful motions of the arms. With what grace, with what ease, she moved! When the waltz commenced, and the dancers whirled around each other in the giddy maze, there was some confusion, owing to the incapacity of some of the dancers. We judiciously remained still, allowing the others to weary themselves; and, when the awkward dancers had withdrawn, we joined in, and kept it up famously together with one other couple,--Andran and his partner. Never did I dance more lightly. I felt myself more than mortal, holding this loveliest of creatures in my arms, flying, with her as rapidly as the wind, till I lost sight of every other object; and O Wilhelm, I vowed at that moment, that a maiden whom I loved, or for whom I felt the slightest attachment, never, never should waltz with any one else but with me, if I went to perdition for it!--you will understand this. We took a few turns in the room to recover our breath. Charlotte sat down, and felt refreshed by partaking of some oranges which I had had secured,--the only ones that had been left; but at every slice which, from politeness, she offered to her neighbours, I felt as though a dagger went through my heart. We were the second couple in the third country dance. As we were going down (and Heaven knows with what ecstasy I gazed at her arms and eyes, beaming with the sweetest feeling of pure and genuine enjoyment), we passed a lady whom I had noticed for her charming expression of countenance; although she was no longer young. She looked at Charlotte with a smile, then, holding up her finger in a threatening attitude, repeated twice in a very significant tone of voice the name of "Albert." "Who is Albert," said I to Charlotte, "if it is not impertinent to ask?" She was about to answer, when we were obliged to separate, in order to execute a figure in the dance; and, as we crossed over again in front of each other, I perceived she looked somewhat pensive. "Why need I conceal it from you?" she said, as she gave me her hand for the promenade. "Albert is a worthy man, to whom I am engaged." Now, there was nothing new to me in this (for the girls had told me of it on the way); but it was so far new that I had not thought of it in connection with her whom, in so short a time, I had learned to prize so highly. Enough, I became confused, got out in the figure, and occasioned general confusion; so that it required all Charlotte's presence of mind to set me right by pulling and pushing me into my proper place. The dance was not yet finished when the lightning which had for some time been seen in the horizon, and which I had asserted to proceed entirely from heat, grew more violent; and the thunder was heard above the music. When any distress or terror surprises us in the midst of our amusements, it naturally makes a deeper impression than at other times, either because the contrast makes us more keenly susceptible, or rather perhaps because our senses are then more open to impressions, and the shock is consequently stronger. To this cause I must ascribe the fright and shrieks of the ladies. One sagaciously sat down in a corner with her back to the window, and held her fingers to her ears; a second knelt down before her, and hid her face in her lap; a third threw herself between them, and embraced her sister with a thousand tears; some insisted on going home; others, unconscious of their actions, wanted sufficient presence of mind to repress the impertinence of their young partners, who sought to direct to themselves those sighs which the lips of our agitated beauties intended for heaven. Some of the gentlemen had gone down-stairs to smoke a quiet cigar, and the rest of the company gladly embraced a happy suggestion of the hostess to retire into another room which was provided with shutters and curtains. We had hardly got there, when Charlotte placed the chairs in a circle; and, when the company had sat down in compliance with her request, she forthwith proposed a round game. I noticed some of the company prepare their mouths and draw themselves up at the prospect of some agreeable forfeit. "Let us play at counting," said Charlotte. "Now, pay attention: I shall go round the circle from right to left; and each person is to count, one after the other, the number that comes to him, and must count fast; whoever stops or mistakes is to have a box on the ear, and so on, till we have counted a thousand." It was delightful to see the fun. She went round the circle with upraised arm. "One," said the first; "two," the second; "three," the third; and so on, till Charlotte went faster and faster. One made a mistake, instantly a box on the ear; and, amid the laughter that ensued, came another box; and so on, faster and faster. I myself came in for two. I fancied they were harder than the rest, and felt quite delighted. A general laughter and confusion put an end to the game long before we had counted as far as a thousand. The party broke up into little separate knots: the storm had ceased, and I followed Charlotte into the ballroom. On the way she said, "The game banished their fears of the storm." I could make no reply. "I myself," she continued, "was as much frightened as any of them; but by affecting courage, to keep up the spirits of the others, I forgot my apprehensions." We went to the window. It was still thundering at a distance: a soft rain was pouring down over the country, and filled the air around us with delicious odours. Charlotte leaned forward on her arm; her eyes wandered over the scene; she raised them to the sky, and then turned them upon me; they were moistened with tears; she placed her hand on mine and said, "Klopstock!" at once I remembered the magnificent ode which was in her thoughts: I felt oppressed with the weight of my sensations, and sank under them. It was more than I could bear. I bent over her hand, kissed it in a stream of delicious tears, and again looked up to her eyes. Divine Klopstock! why didst thou not see thy apotheosis in those eyes? And thy name so often profaned, would that I never heard it repeated! JUNE 19. I no longer remember where I stopped in my narrative: I only know it was two in the morning when I went to bed; and if you had been with me, that I might have talked instead of writing to you, I should, in all probability, have kept you up till daylight. I think I have not yet related what happened as we rode home from the ball, nor have I time to tell you now. It was a most magnificent sunrise: the whole country was refreshed, and the rain fell drop by drop from the trees in the forest. Our companions were asleep. Charlotte asked me if I did not wish to sleep also, and begged of me not to make any ceremony on her account. Looking steadfastly at her, I answered, "As long as I see those eyes open, there is no fear of my falling asleep." We both continued awake till we reached her door. The maid opened it softly, and assured her, in answer to her inquiries, that her father and the children were well, and still sleeping. I left her asking permission to visit her in the course of the day. She consented, and I went, and, since that time, sun, moon, and stars may pursue their course: I know not whether it is day or night; the whole world is nothing to me. JUNE 21. My days are as happy as those reserved by God for his elect; and, whatever be my fate hereafter, I can never say that I have not tasted joy,--the purest joy of life. You know Walheim. I am now completely settled there. In that spot I am only half a league from Charlotte; and there I enjoy myself, and taste all the pleasure which can fall to the lot of man. Little did I imagine, when I selected Walheim for my pedestrian excursions, that all heaven lay so near it. How often in my wanderings from the hillside or from the meadows across the river, have I beheld this hunting-lodge, which now contains within it all the joy of my heart! I have often, my dear Wilhelm, reflected on the eagerness men feel to wander and make new discoveries, and upon that secret impulse which afterward inclines them to return to their narrow circle, conform to the laws of custom, and embarrass themselves no longer with what passes around them. It is so strange how, when I came here first, and gazed upon that lovely valley from the hillside, I felt charmed with the entire scene surrounding me. The little wood opposite--how delightful to sit under its shade! How fine the view from that point of rock! Then, that delightful chain of hills, and the exquisite valleys at their feet! Could I but wander and lose myself amongst them! I went, and returned without finding what I wished. Distance, my friend, is like futurity. A dim vastness is spread before our souls: the perceptions of our mind are as obscure as those of our vision; and we desire earnestly to surrender up our whole being, that it may be filled with the complete and perfect bliss of one glorious emotion. But alas! when we have attained our object, when the distant there becomes the present here, all is changed: we are as poor and circumscribed as ever, and our souls still languish for unattainable happiness. So does the restless traveller pant for his native soil, and find in his own cottage, in the arms of his wife, in the affections of his children, and in the labour necessary for their support, that happiness which he had sought in vain through the wide world. When, in the morning at sunrise, I go out to Walheim, and with my own hands gather in the garden the pease which are to serve for my dinner, when I sit down to shell them, and read my Homer during the intervals, and then, selecting a saucepan from the kitchen, fetch my own butter, put my mess on the fire, cover it up, and sit down to stir it as occasion requires, I figure to myself the illustrious suitors of Penelope, killing, dressing, and preparing their own oxen and swine. Nothing fills me with a more pure and genuine sense of happiness than those traits of patriarchal life which, thank Heaven! I can imitate without affectation. Happy is it, indeed, for me that my heart is capable of feeling the same simple and innocent pleasure as the peasant whose table is covered with food of his own rearing, and who not only enjoys his meal, but remembers with delight the happy days and sunny mornings when he planted it, the soft evenings when he watered it, and the pleasure he experienced in watching its daily growth. JUNE 29. The day before yesterday, the physician came from the town to pay a visit to the judge. He found me on the floor playing with Charlotte's children. Some of them were scrambling over me, and others romped with me; and, as I caught and tickled them, they made a great noise. The doctor is a formal sort of personage: he adjusts the plaits of his ruffles, and continually settles his frill whilst he is talking to you; and he thought my conduct beneath the dignity of a sensible man. I could perceive this by his countenance. But I did not suffer myself to be disturbed. I allowed him to continue his wise conversation, whilst I rebuilt the children's card houses for them as fast as they threw them down. He went about the town afterward, complaining that the judge's children were spoiled enough before, but that now Werther was completely ruining them. Yes, my dear Wilhelm, nothing on this earth affects my heart so much as children. When I look on at their doings; when I mark in the little creatures the seeds of all those virtues and qualities which they will one day find so indispensable; when I behold in the obstinate all the future firmness and constancy of a noble character; in the capricious, that levity and gaiety of temper which will carry them lightly over the dangers and troubles of life, their whole nature simple and unpolluted,--then I call to mind the golden words of the Great Teacher of mankind, "Unless ye become like one of these!" And now, my friend, these children, who are our equals, whom we ought to consider as our models, we treat them as though they were our subjects. They are allowed no will of their own. And have we, then, none ourselves? Whence comes our exclusive right? Is it because we are older and more experienced? Great God! from the height of thy heaven thou beholdest great children and little children, and no others; and thy Son has long since declared which afford thee greatest pleasure. But they believe in him, and hear him not,--that, too, is an old story; and they train their children after their own image, etc. Adieu, Wilhelm: I will not further bewilder myself with this subject. JULY 1. The consolation Charlotte can bring to an invalid I experience from my own heart, which suffers more from her absence than many a poor creature lingering on a bed of sickness. She is gone to spend a few days in the town with a very worthy woman, who is given over by the physicians, and wishes to have Charlotte near her in her last moments. I accompanied her last week on a visit to the Vicar of S--, a small village in the mountains, about a league hence. We arrived about four o'clock: Charlotte had taken her little sister with her. When we entered the vicarage court, we found the good old man sitting on a bench before the door, under the shade of two large walnut-trees. At the sight of Charlotte he seemed to gain new life, rose, forgot his stick, and ventured to walk toward her. She ran to him, and made him sit down again; then, placing herself by his side, she gave him a number of messages from her father, and then caught up his youngest child, a dirty, ugly little thing, the joy of his old age, and kissed it. I wish you could have witnessed her attention to this old man,--how she raised her voice on account of his deafness; how she told him of healthy young people, who had been carried off when it was least expected; praised the virtues of Carlsbad, and commended his determination to spend the ensuing summer there; and assured him that he looked better and stronger than he did when she saw him last. I, in the meantime, paid attention to his good lady. The old man seemed quite in spirits; and as I could not help admiring the beauty of the walnut-trees, which formed such an agreeable shade over our heads, he began, though with some little difficulty, to tell us their history. "As to the oldest," said he, "we do not know who planted it,--some say one clergyman, and some another: but the younger one, there behind us, is exactly the age of my wife, fifty years old next October; her father planted it in the morning, and in the evening she came into the world. My wife's father was my predecessor here, and I cannot tell you how fond he was of that tree; and it is fully as dear to me. Under the shade of that very tree, upon a log of wood, my wife was seated knitting, when I, a poor student, came into this court for the first time, just seven and twenty years ago." Charlotte inquired for his daughter. He said she was gone with Herr Schmidt to the meadows, and was with the haymakers. The old man then resumed his story, and told us how his predecessor had taken a fancy to him, as had his daughter likewise; and how he had become first his curate, and subsequently his successor. He had scarcely finished his story when his daughter returned through the garden, accompanied by the above-mentioned Herr Schmidt. She welcomed Charlotte affectionately, and I confess I was much taken with her appearance. She was a lively-looking, good-humoured brunette, quite competent to amuse one for a short time in the country. Her lover (for such Herr Schmidt evidently appeared to be) was a polite, reserved personage, and would not join our conversation, notwithstanding all Charlotte's endeavours to draw him out. I was much annoyed at observing, by his countenance, that his silence did not arise from want of talent, but from caprice and ill-humour. This subsequently became very evident, when we set out to take a walk, and Frederica joining Charlotte, with whom I was talking, the worthy gentleman's face, which was naturally rather sombre, became so dark and angry that Charlotte was obliged to touch my arm, and remind me that I was talking too much to Frederica. Nothing distresses me more than to see men torment each other; particularly when in the flower of their age, in the very season of pleasure, they waste their few short days of sunshine in quarrels and disputes, and only perceive their error when it is too late to repair it. This thought dwelt upon my mind; and in the evening, when we returned to the vicar's, and were sitting round the table with our bread end milk, the conversation turned on the joys and sorrows of the world, I could not resist the temptation to inveigh bitterly against ill-humour. "We are apt," said I, "to complain, but--with very little cause, that our happy days are few, and our evil days many. If our hearts were always disposed to receive the benefits Heaven sends us, we should acquire strength to support evil when it comes." "But," observed the vicar's wife, "we cannot always command our tempers, so much depends upon the constitution: when the body suffers, the mind is ill at ease." "I acknowledge that," I continued; "but we must consider such a disposition in the light of a disease, and inquire whether there is no remedy for it." "I should be glad to hear one," said Charlotte: "at least, I think very much depends upon ourselves; I know it is so with me. When anything annoys me, and disturbs my temper, I hasten into the garden, hum a couple of country dances, and it is all right with me directly." "That is what I meant," I replied; "ill-humour resembles indolence: it is natural to us; but if once we have courage to exert ourselves, we find our work run fresh from our hands, and we experience in the activity from which we shrank a real enjoyment." Frederica listened very attentively: and the young man objected, that we were not masters of ourselves, and still less so of our feelings. "The question is about a disagreeable feeling," I added, "from which every one would willingly escape, but none know their own power without trial. Invalids are glad to consult physicians, and submit to the most scrupulous regimen, the most nauseous medicines, in order to recover their health." I observed that the good old man inclined his head, and exerted himself to hear our discourse; so I raised my voice, and addressed myself directly to him. "We preach against a great many crimes," I observed, "but I never remember a

inadequate

How many times the word 'inadequate' appears in the text?

will be no wiser at the end of my letter than you were at the beginning. Attend, then, and I will compel myself to give you the details. I mentioned to you the other day that I had become acquainted with S--, the district judge, and that he had invited me to go and visit him in his retirement, or rather in his little kingdom. But I neglected going, and perhaps should never have gone, if chance had not discovered to me the treasure which lay concealed in that retired spot. Some of our young people had proposed giving a ball in the country, at which I consented to be present. I offered my hand for the evening to a pretty and agreeable, but rather commonplace, sort of girl from the immediate neighbourhood; and it was agreed that I should engage a carriage, and call upon Charlotte, with my partner and her aunt, to convey them to the ball. My companion informed me, as we drove along through the park to the hunting-lodge, that I should make the acquaintance of a very charming young lady. "Take care," added the aunt, "that you do not lose your heart." "Why?" said I. "Because she is already engaged to a very worthy man," she replied, "who is gone to settle his affairs upon the death of his father, and will succeed to a very considerable inheritance." This information possessed no interest for me. When we arrived at the gate, the sun was setting behind the tops of the mountains. The atmosphere was heavy; and the ladies expressed their fears of an approaching storm, as masses of low black clouds were gathering in the horizon. I relieved their anxieties by pretending to be weather-wise, although I myself had some apprehensions lest our pleasure should be interrupted. I alighted; and a maid came to the door, and requested us to wait a moment for her mistress. I walked across the court to a well-built house, and, ascending the flight of steps in front, opened the door, and saw before me the most charming spectacle I had ever witnessed. Six children, from eleven to two years old, were running about the hall, and surrounding a lady of middle height, with a lovely figure, dressed in a robe of simple white, trimmed with pink ribbons. She was holding a rye loaf in her hand, and was cutting slices for the little ones all around, in proportion to their age and appetite. She performed her task in a graceful and affectionate manner; each claimant awaiting his turn with outstretched hands, and boisterously shouting his thanks. Some of them ran away at once, to enjoy their evening meal; whilst others, of a gentler disposition, retired to the courtyard to see the strangers, and to survey the carriage in which their Charlotte was to drive away. "Pray forgive me for giving you the trouble to come for me, and for keeping the ladies waiting: but dressing, and arranging some household duties before I leave, had made me forget my children's supper; and they do not like to take it from any one but me." I uttered some indifferent compliment: but my whole soul was absorbed by her air, her voice, her manner; and I had scarcely recovered myself when she ran into her room to fetch her gloves and fan. The young ones threw inquiring glances at me from a distance; whilst I approached the youngest, a most delicious little creature. He drew back; and Charlotte, entering at the very moment, said, "Louis, shake hands with your cousin." The little fellow obeyed willingly; and I could not resist giving him a hearty kiss, notwithstanding his rather dirty face. "Cousin," said I to Charlotte, as I handed her down, "do you think I deserve the happiness of being related to you?" She replied, with a ready smile, "Oh! I have such a number of cousins, that I should be sorry if you were the most undeserving of them." In taking leave, she desired her next sister, Sophy, a girl about eleven years old, to take great care of the children, and to say good-bye to papa for her when he came home from his ride. She enjoined to the little ones to obey their sister Sophy as they would herself, upon which some promised that they would; but a little fair-haired girl, about six years old, looked discontented, and said, "But Sophy is not you, Charlotte; and we like you best." The two eldest boys had clambered up the carriage; and, at my request, she permitted them to accompany us a little way through the forest, upon their promising to sit very still, and hold fast. We were hardly seated, and the ladies had scarcely exchanged compliments, making the usual remarks upon each other's dress, and upon the company they expected to meet, when Charlotte stopped the carriage, and made her brothers get down. They insisted upon kissing her hands once more; which the eldest did with all the tenderness of a youth of fifteen, but the other in a lighter and more careless manner. She desired them again to give her love to the children, and we drove off. The aunt inquired of Charlotte whether she had finished the book she had last sent her. "No," said Charlotte; "I did not like it: you can have it again. And the one before was not much better." I was surprised, upon asking the title, to hear that it was ____. (We feel obliged to suppress the passage in the letter, to prevent any one from feeling aggrieved; although no author need pay much attention to the opinion of a mere girl, or that of an unsteady young man.) I found penetration and character in everything she said: every expression seemed to brighten her features with new charms,--with new rays of genius,--which unfolded by degrees, as she felt herself understood. "When I was younger," she observed, "I loved nothing so much as romances. Nothing could equal my delight when, on some holiday, I could settle down quietly in a corner, and enter with my whole heart and soul into the joys or sorrows of some fictitious Leonora. I do not deny that they even possess some charms for me yet. But I read so seldom, that I prefer books suited exactly to my taste. And I like those authors best whose scenes describe my own situation in life,--and the friends who are about me, whose stories touch me with interest, from resembling my own homely existence,--which, without being absolutely paradise, is, on the whole, a source of indescribable happiness." I endeavoured to conceal the emotion which these words occasioned, but it was of slight avail; for, when she had expressed so truly her opinion of "The Vicar of Wakefield," and of other works, the names of which I omit (Though the names are omitted, yet the authors mentioned deserve Charlotte's approbation, and will feel it in their hearts when they read this passage. It concerns no other person.), I could no longer contain myself, but gave full utterance to what I thought of it: and it was not until Charlotte had addressed herself to the two other ladies, that I remembered their presence, and observed them sitting mute with astonishment. The aunt looked at me several times with an air of raillery, which, however, I did not at all mind. We talked of the pleasures of dancing. "If it is a fault to love it," said Charlotte, "I am ready to confess that I prize it above all other amusements. If anything disturbs me, I go to the piano, play an air to which I have danced, and all goes right again directly." You, who know me, can fancy how steadfastly I gazed upon her rich dark eyes during these remarks, how my very soul gloated over her warm lips and fresh, glowing cheeks, how I became quite lost in the delightful meaning of her words, so much so, that I scarcely heard the actual expressions. In short, I alighted from the carriage like a person in a dream, and was so lost to the dim world around me, that I scarcely heard the music which resounded from the illuminated ballroom. The two Messrs. Andran and a certain N. N. (I cannot trouble myself with the names), who were the aunt's and Charlotte's partners, received us at the carriage-door, and took possession of their ladies, whilst I followed with mine. We commenced with a minuet. I led out one lady after another, and precisely those who were the most disagreeable could not bring themselves to leave off. Charlotte and her partner began an English country dance, and you must imagine my delight when it was their turn to dance the figure with us. You should see Charlotte dance. She dances with her whole heart and soul: her figure is all harmony, elegance, and grace, as if she were conscious of nothing else, and had no other thought or feeling; and, doubtless, for the moment, every other sensation is extinct. She was engaged for the second country dance, but promised me the third, and assured me, with the most agreeable freedom, that she was very fond of waltzing. "It is the custom here," she said, "for the previous partners to waltz together; but my partner is an indifferent waltzer, and will feel delighted if I save him the trouble. Your partner is not allowed to waltz, and, indeed, is equally incapable: but I observed during the country dance that you waltz well; so, if you will waltz with me, I beg you would propose it to my partner, and I will propose it to yours." We agreed, and it was arranged that our partners should mutually entertain each other. We set off, and, at first, delighted ourselves with the usual graceful motions of the arms. With what grace, with what ease, she moved! When the waltz commenced, and the dancers whirled around each other in the giddy maze, there was some confusion, owing to the incapacity of some of the dancers. We judiciously remained still, allowing the others to weary themselves; and, when the awkward dancers had withdrawn, we joined in, and kept it up famously together with one other couple,--Andran and his partner. Never did I dance more lightly. I felt myself more than mortal, holding this loveliest of creatures in my arms, flying, with her as rapidly as the wind, till I lost sight of every other object; and O Wilhelm, I vowed at that moment, that a maiden whom I loved, or for whom I felt the slightest attachment, never, never should waltz with any one else but with me, if I went to perdition for it!--you will understand this. We took a few turns in the room to recover our breath. Charlotte sat down, and felt refreshed by partaking of some oranges which I had had secured,--the only ones that had been left; but at every slice which, from politeness, she offered to her neighbours, I felt as though a dagger went through my heart. We were the second couple in the third country dance. As we were going down (and Heaven knows with what ecstasy I gazed at her arms and eyes, beaming with the sweetest feeling of pure and genuine enjoyment), we passed a lady whom I had noticed for her charming expression of countenance; although she was no longer young. She looked at Charlotte with a smile, then, holding up her finger in a threatening attitude, repeated twice in a very significant tone of voice the name of "Albert." "Who is Albert," said I to Charlotte, "if it is not impertinent to ask?" She was about to answer, when we were obliged to separate, in order to execute a figure in the dance; and, as we crossed over again in front of each other, I perceived she looked somewhat pensive. "Why need I conceal it from you?" she said, as she gave me her hand for the promenade. "Albert is a worthy man, to whom I am engaged." Now, there was nothing new to me in this (for the girls had told me of it on the way); but it was so far new that I had not thought of it in connection with her whom, in so short a time, I had learned to prize so highly. Enough, I became confused, got out in the figure, and occasioned general confusion; so that it required all Charlotte's presence of mind to set me right by pulling and pushing me into my proper place. The dance was not yet finished when the lightning which had for some time been seen in the horizon, and which I had asserted to proceed entirely from heat, grew more violent; and the thunder was heard above the music. When any distress or terror surprises us in the midst of our amusements, it naturally makes a deeper impression than at other times, either because the contrast makes us more keenly susceptible, or rather perhaps because our senses are then more open to impressions, and the shock is consequently stronger. To this cause I must ascribe the fright and shrieks of the ladies. One sagaciously sat down in a corner with her back to the window, and held her fingers to her ears; a second knelt down before her, and hid her face in her lap; a third threw herself between them, and embraced her sister with a thousand tears; some insisted on going home; others, unconscious of their actions, wanted sufficient presence of mind to repress the impertinence of their young partners, who sought to direct to themselves those sighs which the lips of our agitated beauties intended for heaven. Some of the gentlemen had gone down-stairs to smoke a quiet cigar, and the rest of the company gladly embraced a happy suggestion of the hostess to retire into another room which was provided with shutters and curtains. We had hardly got there, when Charlotte placed the chairs in a circle; and, when the company had sat down in compliance with her request, she forthwith proposed a round game. I noticed some of the company prepare their mouths and draw themselves up at the prospect of some agreeable forfeit. "Let us play at counting," said Charlotte. "Now, pay attention: I shall go round the circle from right to left; and each person is to count, one after the other, the number that comes to him, and must count fast; whoever stops or mistakes is to have a box on the ear, and so on, till we have counted a thousand." It was delightful to see the fun. She went round the circle with upraised arm. "One," said the first; "two," the second; "three," the third; and so on, till Charlotte went faster and faster. One made a mistake, instantly a box on the ear; and, amid the laughter that ensued, came another box; and so on, faster and faster. I myself came in for two. I fancied they were harder than the rest, and felt quite delighted. A general laughter and confusion put an end to the game long before we had counted as far as a thousand. The party broke up into little separate knots: the storm had ceased, and I followed Charlotte into the ballroom. On the way she said, "The game banished their fears of the storm." I could make no reply. "I myself," she continued, "was as much frightened as any of them; but by affecting courage, to keep up the spirits of the others, I forgot my apprehensions." We went to the window. It was still thundering at a distance: a soft rain was pouring down over the country, and filled the air around us with delicious odours. Charlotte leaned forward on her arm; her eyes wandered over the scene; she raised them to the sky, and then turned them upon me; they were moistened with tears; she placed her hand on mine and said, "Klopstock!" at once I remembered the magnificent ode which was in her thoughts: I felt oppressed with the weight of my sensations, and sank under them. It was more than I could bear. I bent over her hand, kissed it in a stream of delicious tears, and again looked up to her eyes. Divine Klopstock! why didst thou not see thy apotheosis in those eyes? And thy name so often profaned, would that I never heard it repeated! JUNE 19. I no longer remember where I stopped in my narrative: I only know it was two in the morning when I went to bed; and if you had been with me, that I might have talked instead of writing to you, I should, in all probability, have kept you up till daylight. I think I have not yet related what happened as we rode home from the ball, nor have I time to tell you now. It was a most magnificent sunrise: the whole country was refreshed, and the rain fell drop by drop from the trees in the forest. Our companions were asleep. Charlotte asked me if I did not wish to sleep also, and begged of me not to make any ceremony on her account. Looking steadfastly at her, I answered, "As long as I see those eyes open, there is no fear of my falling asleep." We both continued awake till we reached her door. The maid opened it softly, and assured her, in answer to her inquiries, that her father and the children were well, and still sleeping. I left her asking permission to visit her in the course of the day. She consented, and I went, and, since that time, sun, moon, and stars may pursue their course: I know not whether it is day or night; the whole world is nothing to me. JUNE 21. My days are as happy as those reserved by God for his elect; and, whatever be my fate hereafter, I can never say that I have not tasted joy,--the purest joy of life. You know Walheim. I am now completely settled there. In that spot I am only half a league from Charlotte; and there I enjoy myself, and taste all the pleasure which can fall to the lot of man. Little did I imagine, when I selected Walheim for my pedestrian excursions, that all heaven lay so near it. How often in my wanderings from the hillside or from the meadows across the river, have I beheld this hunting-lodge, which now contains within it all the joy of my heart! I have often, my dear Wilhelm, reflected on the eagerness men feel to wander and make new discoveries, and upon that secret impulse which afterward inclines them to return to their narrow circle, conform to the laws of custom, and embarrass themselves no longer with what passes around them. It is so strange how, when I came here first, and gazed upon that lovely valley from the hillside, I felt charmed with the entire scene surrounding me. The little wood opposite--how delightful to sit under its shade! How fine the view from that point of rock! Then, that delightful chain of hills, and the exquisite valleys at their feet! Could I but wander and lose myself amongst them! I went, and returned without finding what I wished. Distance, my friend, is like futurity. A dim vastness is spread before our souls: the perceptions of our mind are as obscure as those of our vision; and we desire earnestly to surrender up our whole being, that it may be filled with the complete and perfect bliss of one glorious emotion. But alas! when we have attained our object, when the distant there becomes the present here, all is changed: we are as poor and circumscribed as ever, and our souls still languish for unattainable happiness. So does the restless traveller pant for his native soil, and find in his own cottage, in the arms of his wife, in the affections of his children, and in the labour necessary for their support, that happiness which he had sought in vain through the wide world. When, in the morning at sunrise, I go out to Walheim, and with my own hands gather in the garden the pease which are to serve for my dinner, when I sit down to shell them, and read my Homer during the intervals, and then, selecting a saucepan from the kitchen, fetch my own butter, put my mess on the fire, cover it up, and sit down to stir it as occasion requires, I figure to myself the illustrious suitors of Penelope, killing, dressing, and preparing their own oxen and swine. Nothing fills me with a more pure and genuine sense of happiness than those traits of patriarchal life which, thank Heaven! I can imitate without affectation. Happy is it, indeed, for me that my heart is capable of feeling the same simple and innocent pleasure as the peasant whose table is covered with food of his own rearing, and who not only enjoys his meal, but remembers with delight the happy days and sunny mornings when he planted it, the soft evenings when he watered it, and the pleasure he experienced in watching its daily growth. JUNE 29. The day before yesterday, the physician came from the town to pay a visit to the judge. He found me on the floor playing with Charlotte's children. Some of them were scrambling over me, and others romped with me; and, as I caught and tickled them, they made a great noise. The doctor is a formal sort of personage: he adjusts the plaits of his ruffles, and continually settles his frill whilst he is talking to you; and he thought my conduct beneath the dignity of a sensible man. I could perceive this by his countenance. But I did not suffer myself to be disturbed. I allowed him to continue his wise conversation, whilst I rebuilt the children's card houses for them as fast as they threw them down. He went about the town afterward, complaining that the judge's children were spoiled enough before, but that now Werther was completely ruining them. Yes, my dear Wilhelm, nothing on this earth affects my heart so much as children. When I look on at their doings; when I mark in the little creatures the seeds of all those virtues and qualities which they will one day find so indispensable; when I behold in the obstinate all the future firmness and constancy of a noble character; in the capricious, that levity and gaiety of temper which will carry them lightly over the dangers and troubles of life, their whole nature simple and unpolluted,--then I call to mind the golden words of the Great Teacher of mankind, "Unless ye become like one of these!" And now, my friend, these children, who are our equals, whom we ought to consider as our models, we treat them as though they were our subjects. They are allowed no will of their own. And have we, then, none ourselves? Whence comes our exclusive right? Is it because we are older and more experienced? Great God! from the height of thy heaven thou beholdest great children and little children, and no others; and thy Son has long since declared which afford thee greatest pleasure. But they believe in him, and hear him not,--that, too, is an old story; and they train their children after their own image, etc. Adieu, Wilhelm: I will not further bewilder myself with this subject. JULY 1. The consolation Charlotte can bring to an invalid I experience from my own heart, which suffers more from her absence than many a poor creature lingering on a bed of sickness. She is gone to spend a few days in the town with a very worthy woman, who is given over by the physicians, and wishes to have Charlotte near her in her last moments. I accompanied her last week on a visit to the Vicar of S--, a small village in the mountains, about a league hence. We arrived about four o'clock: Charlotte had taken her little sister with her. When we entered the vicarage court, we found the good old man sitting on a bench before the door, under the shade of two large walnut-trees. At the sight of Charlotte he seemed to gain new life, rose, forgot his stick, and ventured to walk toward her. She ran to him, and made him sit down again; then, placing herself by his side, she gave him a number of messages from her father, and then caught up his youngest child, a dirty, ugly little thing, the joy of his old age, and kissed it. I wish you could have witnessed her attention to this old man,--how she raised her voice on account of his deafness; how she told him of healthy young people, who had been carried off when it was least expected; praised the virtues of Carlsbad, and commended his determination to spend the ensuing summer there; and assured him that he looked better and stronger than he did when she saw him last. I, in the meantime, paid attention to his good lady. The old man seemed quite in spirits; and as I could not help admiring the beauty of the walnut-trees, which formed such an agreeable shade over our heads, he began, though with some little difficulty, to tell us their history. "As to the oldest," said he, "we do not know who planted it,--some say one clergyman, and some another: but the younger one, there behind us, is exactly the age of my wife, fifty years old next October; her father planted it in the morning, and in the evening she came into the world. My wife's father was my predecessor here, and I cannot tell you how fond he was of that tree; and it is fully as dear to me. Under the shade of that very tree, upon a log of wood, my wife was seated knitting, when I, a poor student, came into this court for the first time, just seven and twenty years ago." Charlotte inquired for his daughter. He said she was gone with Herr Schmidt to the meadows, and was with the haymakers. The old man then resumed his story, and told us how his predecessor had taken a fancy to him, as had his daughter likewise; and how he had become first his curate, and subsequently his successor. He had scarcely finished his story when his daughter returned through the garden, accompanied by the above-mentioned Herr Schmidt. She welcomed Charlotte affectionately, and I confess I was much taken with her appearance. She was a lively-looking, good-humoured brunette, quite competent to amuse one for a short time in the country. Her lover (for such Herr Schmidt evidently appeared to be) was a polite, reserved personage, and would not join our conversation, notwithstanding all Charlotte's endeavours to draw him out. I was much annoyed at observing, by his countenance, that his silence did not arise from want of talent, but from caprice and ill-humour. This subsequently became very evident, when we set out to take a walk, and Frederica joining Charlotte, with whom I was talking, the worthy gentleman's face, which was naturally rather sombre, became so dark and angry that Charlotte was obliged to touch my arm, and remind me that I was talking too much to Frederica. Nothing distresses me more than to see men torment each other; particularly when in the flower of their age, in the very season of pleasure, they waste their few short days of sunshine in quarrels and disputes, and only perceive their error when it is too late to repair it. This thought dwelt upon my mind; and in the evening, when we returned to the vicar's, and were sitting round the table with our bread end milk, the conversation turned on the joys and sorrows of the world, I could not resist the temptation to inveigh bitterly against ill-humour. "We are apt," said I, "to complain, but--with very little cause, that our happy days are few, and our evil days many. If our hearts were always disposed to receive the benefits Heaven sends us, we should acquire strength to support evil when it comes." "But," observed the vicar's wife, "we cannot always command our tempers, so much depends upon the constitution: when the body suffers, the mind is ill at ease." "I acknowledge that," I continued; "but we must consider such a disposition in the light of a disease, and inquire whether there is no remedy for it." "I should be glad to hear one," said Charlotte: "at least, I think very much depends upon ourselves; I know it is so with me. When anything annoys me, and disturbs my temper, I hasten into the garden, hum a couple of country dances, and it is all right with me directly." "That is what I meant," I replied; "ill-humour resembles indolence: it is natural to us; but if once we have courage to exert ourselves, we find our work run fresh from our hands, and we experience in the activity from which we shrank a real enjoyment." Frederica listened very attentively: and the young man objected, that we were not masters of ourselves, and still less so of our feelings. "The question is about a disagreeable feeling," I added, "from which every one would willingly escape, but none know their own power without trial. Invalids are glad to consult physicians, and submit to the most scrupulous regimen, the most nauseous medicines, in order to recover their health." I observed that the good old man inclined his head, and exerted himself to hear our discourse; so I raised my voice, and addressed myself directly to him. "We preach against a great many crimes," I observed, "but I never remember a

far

How many times the word 'far' appears in the text?

will be no wiser at the end of my letter than you were at the beginning. Attend, then, and I will compel myself to give you the details. I mentioned to you the other day that I had become acquainted with S--, the district judge, and that he had invited me to go and visit him in his retirement, or rather in his little kingdom. But I neglected going, and perhaps should never have gone, if chance had not discovered to me the treasure which lay concealed in that retired spot. Some of our young people had proposed giving a ball in the country, at which I consented to be present. I offered my hand for the evening to a pretty and agreeable, but rather commonplace, sort of girl from the immediate neighbourhood; and it was agreed that I should engage a carriage, and call upon Charlotte, with my partner and her aunt, to convey them to the ball. My companion informed me, as we drove along through the park to the hunting-lodge, that I should make the acquaintance of a very charming young lady. "Take care," added the aunt, "that you do not lose your heart." "Why?" said I. "Because she is already engaged to a very worthy man," she replied, "who is gone to settle his affairs upon the death of his father, and will succeed to a very considerable inheritance." This information possessed no interest for me. When we arrived at the gate, the sun was setting behind the tops of the mountains. The atmosphere was heavy; and the ladies expressed their fears of an approaching storm, as masses of low black clouds were gathering in the horizon. I relieved their anxieties by pretending to be weather-wise, although I myself had some apprehensions lest our pleasure should be interrupted. I alighted; and a maid came to the door, and requested us to wait a moment for her mistress. I walked across the court to a well-built house, and, ascending the flight of steps in front, opened the door, and saw before me the most charming spectacle I had ever witnessed. Six children, from eleven to two years old, were running about the hall, and surrounding a lady of middle height, with a lovely figure, dressed in a robe of simple white, trimmed with pink ribbons. She was holding a rye loaf in her hand, and was cutting slices for the little ones all around, in proportion to their age and appetite. She performed her task in a graceful and affectionate manner; each claimant awaiting his turn with outstretched hands, and boisterously shouting his thanks. Some of them ran away at once, to enjoy their evening meal; whilst others, of a gentler disposition, retired to the courtyard to see the strangers, and to survey the carriage in which their Charlotte was to drive away. "Pray forgive me for giving you the trouble to come for me, and for keeping the ladies waiting: but dressing, and arranging some household duties before I leave, had made me forget my children's supper; and they do not like to take it from any one but me." I uttered some indifferent compliment: but my whole soul was absorbed by her air, her voice, her manner; and I had scarcely recovered myself when she ran into her room to fetch her gloves and fan. The young ones threw inquiring glances at me from a distance; whilst I approached the youngest, a most delicious little creature. He drew back; and Charlotte, entering at the very moment, said, "Louis, shake hands with your cousin." The little fellow obeyed willingly; and I could not resist giving him a hearty kiss, notwithstanding his rather dirty face. "Cousin," said I to Charlotte, as I handed her down, "do you think I deserve the happiness of being related to you?" She replied, with a ready smile, "Oh! I have such a number of cousins, that I should be sorry if you were the most undeserving of them." In taking leave, she desired her next sister, Sophy, a girl about eleven years old, to take great care of the children, and to say good-bye to papa for her when he came home from his ride. She enjoined to the little ones to obey their sister Sophy as they would herself, upon which some promised that they would; but a little fair-haired girl, about six years old, looked discontented, and said, "But Sophy is not you, Charlotte; and we like you best." The two eldest boys had clambered up the carriage; and, at my request, she permitted them to accompany us a little way through the forest, upon their promising to sit very still, and hold fast. We were hardly seated, and the ladies had scarcely exchanged compliments, making the usual remarks upon each other's dress, and upon the company they expected to meet, when Charlotte stopped the carriage, and made her brothers get down. They insisted upon kissing her hands once more; which the eldest did with all the tenderness of a youth of fifteen, but the other in a lighter and more careless manner. She desired them again to give her love to the children, and we drove off. The aunt inquired of Charlotte whether she had finished the book she had last sent her. "No," said Charlotte; "I did not like it: you can have it again. And the one before was not much better." I was surprised, upon asking the title, to hear that it was ____. (We feel obliged to suppress the passage in the letter, to prevent any one from feeling aggrieved; although no author need pay much attention to the opinion of a mere girl, or that of an unsteady young man.) I found penetration and character in everything she said: every expression seemed to brighten her features with new charms,--with new rays of genius,--which unfolded by degrees, as she felt herself understood. "When I was younger," she observed, "I loved nothing so much as romances. Nothing could equal my delight when, on some holiday, I could settle down quietly in a corner, and enter with my whole heart and soul into the joys or sorrows of some fictitious Leonora. I do not deny that they even possess some charms for me yet. But I read so seldom, that I prefer books suited exactly to my taste. And I like those authors best whose scenes describe my own situation in life,--and the friends who are about me, whose stories touch me with interest, from resembling my own homely existence,--which, without being absolutely paradise, is, on the whole, a source of indescribable happiness." I endeavoured to conceal the emotion which these words occasioned, but it was of slight avail; for, when she had expressed so truly her opinion of "The Vicar of Wakefield," and of other works, the names of which I omit (Though the names are omitted, yet the authors mentioned deserve Charlotte's approbation, and will feel it in their hearts when they read this passage. It concerns no other person.), I could no longer contain myself, but gave full utterance to what I thought of it: and it was not until Charlotte had addressed herself to the two other ladies, that I remembered their presence, and observed them sitting mute with astonishment. The aunt looked at me several times with an air of raillery, which, however, I did not at all mind. We talked of the pleasures of dancing. "If it is a fault to love it," said Charlotte, "I am ready to confess that I prize it above all other amusements. If anything disturbs me, I go to the piano, play an air to which I have danced, and all goes right again directly." You, who know me, can fancy how steadfastly I gazed upon her rich dark eyes during these remarks, how my very soul gloated over her warm lips and fresh, glowing cheeks, how I became quite lost in the delightful meaning of her words, so much so, that I scarcely heard the actual expressions. In short, I alighted from the carriage like a person in a dream, and was so lost to the dim world around me, that I scarcely heard the music which resounded from the illuminated ballroom. The two Messrs. Andran and a certain N. N. (I cannot trouble myself with the names), who were the aunt's and Charlotte's partners, received us at the carriage-door, and took possession of their ladies, whilst I followed with mine. We commenced with a minuet. I led out one lady after another, and precisely those who were the most disagreeable could not bring themselves to leave off. Charlotte and her partner began an English country dance, and you must imagine my delight when it was their turn to dance the figure with us. You should see Charlotte dance. She dances with her whole heart and soul: her figure is all harmony, elegance, and grace, as if she were conscious of nothing else, and had no other thought or feeling; and, doubtless, for the moment, every other sensation is extinct. She was engaged for the second country dance, but promised me the third, and assured me, with the most agreeable freedom, that she was very fond of waltzing. "It is the custom here," she said, "for the previous partners to waltz together; but my partner is an indifferent waltzer, and will feel delighted if I save him the trouble. Your partner is not allowed to waltz, and, indeed, is equally incapable: but I observed during the country dance that you waltz well; so, if you will waltz with me, I beg you would propose it to my partner, and I will propose it to yours." We agreed, and it was arranged that our partners should mutually entertain each other. We set off, and, at first, delighted ourselves with the usual graceful motions of the arms. With what grace, with what ease, she moved! When the waltz commenced, and the dancers whirled around each other in the giddy maze, there was some confusion, owing to the incapacity of some of the dancers. We judiciously remained still, allowing the others to weary themselves; and, when the awkward dancers had withdrawn, we joined in, and kept it up famously together with one other couple,--Andran and his partner. Never did I dance more lightly. I felt myself more than mortal, holding this loveliest of creatures in my arms, flying, with her as rapidly as the wind, till I lost sight of every other object; and O Wilhelm, I vowed at that moment, that a maiden whom I loved, or for whom I felt the slightest attachment, never, never should waltz with any one else but with me, if I went to perdition for it!--you will understand this. We took a few turns in the room to recover our breath. Charlotte sat down, and felt refreshed by partaking of some oranges which I had had secured,--the only ones that had been left; but at every slice which, from politeness, she offered to her neighbours, I felt as though a dagger went through my heart. We were the second couple in the third country dance. As we were going down (and Heaven knows with what ecstasy I gazed at her arms and eyes, beaming with the sweetest feeling of pure and genuine enjoyment), we passed a lady whom I had noticed for her charming expression of countenance; although she was no longer young. She looked at Charlotte with a smile, then, holding up her finger in a threatening attitude, repeated twice in a very significant tone of voice the name of "Albert." "Who is Albert," said I to Charlotte, "if it is not impertinent to ask?" She was about to answer, when we were obliged to separate, in order to execute a figure in the dance; and, as we crossed over again in front of each other, I perceived she looked somewhat pensive. "Why need I conceal it from you?" she said, as she gave me her hand for the promenade. "Albert is a worthy man, to whom I am engaged." Now, there was nothing new to me in this (for the girls had told me of it on the way); but it was so far new that I had not thought of it in connection with her whom, in so short a time, I had learned to prize so highly. Enough, I became confused, got out in the figure, and occasioned general confusion; so that it required all Charlotte's presence of mind to set me right by pulling and pushing me into my proper place. The dance was not yet finished when the lightning which had for some time been seen in the horizon, and which I had asserted to proceed entirely from heat, grew more violent; and the thunder was heard above the music. When any distress or terror surprises us in the midst of our amusements, it naturally makes a deeper impression than at other times, either because the contrast makes us more keenly susceptible, or rather perhaps because our senses are then more open to impressions, and the shock is consequently stronger. To this cause I must ascribe the fright and shrieks of the ladies. One sagaciously sat down in a corner with her back to the window, and held her fingers to her ears; a second knelt down before her, and hid her face in her lap; a third threw herself between them, and embraced her sister with a thousand tears; some insisted on going home; others, unconscious of their actions, wanted sufficient presence of mind to repress the impertinence of their young partners, who sought to direct to themselves those sighs which the lips of our agitated beauties intended for heaven. Some of the gentlemen had gone down-stairs to smoke a quiet cigar, and the rest of the company gladly embraced a happy suggestion of the hostess to retire into another room which was provided with shutters and curtains. We had hardly got there, when Charlotte placed the chairs in a circle; and, when the company had sat down in compliance with her request, she forthwith proposed a round game. I noticed some of the company prepare their mouths and draw themselves up at the prospect of some agreeable forfeit. "Let us play at counting," said Charlotte. "Now, pay attention: I shall go round the circle from right to left; and each person is to count, one after the other, the number that comes to him, and must count fast; whoever stops or mistakes is to have a box on the ear, and so on, till we have counted a thousand." It was delightful to see the fun. She went round the circle with upraised arm. "One," said the first; "two," the second; "three," the third; and so on, till Charlotte went faster and faster. One made a mistake, instantly a box on the ear; and, amid the laughter that ensued, came another box; and so on, faster and faster. I myself came in for two. I fancied they were harder than the rest, and felt quite delighted. A general laughter and confusion put an end to the game long before we had counted as far as a thousand. The party broke up into little separate knots: the storm had ceased, and I followed Charlotte into the ballroom. On the way she said, "The game banished their fears of the storm." I could make no reply. "I myself," she continued, "was as much frightened as any of them; but by affecting courage, to keep up the spirits of the others, I forgot my apprehensions." We went to the window. It was still thundering at a distance: a soft rain was pouring down over the country, and filled the air around us with delicious odours. Charlotte leaned forward on her arm; her eyes wandered over the scene; she raised them to the sky, and then turned them upon me; they were moistened with tears; she placed her hand on mine and said, "Klopstock!" at once I remembered the magnificent ode which was in her thoughts: I felt oppressed with the weight of my sensations, and sank under them. It was more than I could bear. I bent over her hand, kissed it in a stream of delicious tears, and again looked up to her eyes. Divine Klopstock! why didst thou not see thy apotheosis in those eyes? And thy name so often profaned, would that I never heard it repeated! JUNE 19. I no longer remember where I stopped in my narrative: I only know it was two in the morning when I went to bed; and if you had been with me, that I might have talked instead of writing to you, I should, in all probability, have kept you up till daylight. I think I have not yet related what happened as we rode home from the ball, nor have I time to tell you now. It was a most magnificent sunrise: the whole country was refreshed, and the rain fell drop by drop from the trees in the forest. Our companions were asleep. Charlotte asked me if I did not wish to sleep also, and begged of me not to make any ceremony on her account. Looking steadfastly at her, I answered, "As long as I see those eyes open, there is no fear of my falling asleep." We both continued awake till we reached her door. The maid opened it softly, and assured her, in answer to her inquiries, that her father and the children were well, and still sleeping. I left her asking permission to visit her in the course of the day. She consented, and I went, and, since that time, sun, moon, and stars may pursue their course: I know not whether it is day or night; the whole world is nothing to me. JUNE 21. My days are as happy as those reserved by God for his elect; and, whatever be my fate hereafter, I can never say that I have not tasted joy,--the purest joy of life. You know Walheim. I am now completely settled there. In that spot I am only half a league from Charlotte; and there I enjoy myself, and taste all the pleasure which can fall to the lot of man. Little did I imagine, when I selected Walheim for my pedestrian excursions, that all heaven lay so near it. How often in my wanderings from the hillside or from the meadows across the river, have I beheld this hunting-lodge, which now contains within it all the joy of my heart! I have often, my dear Wilhelm, reflected on the eagerness men feel to wander and make new discoveries, and upon that secret impulse which afterward inclines them to return to their narrow circle, conform to the laws of custom, and embarrass themselves no longer with what passes around them. It is so strange how, when I came here first, and gazed upon that lovely valley from the hillside, I felt charmed with the entire scene surrounding me. The little wood opposite--how delightful to sit under its shade! How fine the view from that point of rock! Then, that delightful chain of hills, and the exquisite valleys at their feet! Could I but wander and lose myself amongst them! I went, and returned without finding what I wished. Distance, my friend, is like futurity. A dim vastness is spread before our souls: the perceptions of our mind are as obscure as those of our vision; and we desire earnestly to surrender up our whole being, that it may be filled with the complete and perfect bliss of one glorious emotion. But alas! when we have attained our object, when the distant there becomes the present here, all is changed: we are as poor and circumscribed as ever, and our souls still languish for unattainable happiness. So does the restless traveller pant for his native soil, and find in his own cottage, in the arms of his wife, in the affections of his children, and in the labour necessary for their support, that happiness which he had sought in vain through the wide world. When, in the morning at sunrise, I go out to Walheim, and with my own hands gather in the garden the pease which are to serve for my dinner, when I sit down to shell them, and read my Homer during the intervals, and then, selecting a saucepan from the kitchen, fetch my own butter, put my mess on the fire, cover it up, and sit down to stir it as occasion requires, I figure to myself the illustrious suitors of Penelope, killing, dressing, and preparing their own oxen and swine. Nothing fills me with a more pure and genuine sense of happiness than those traits of patriarchal life which, thank Heaven! I can imitate without affectation. Happy is it, indeed, for me that my heart is capable of feeling the same simple and innocent pleasure as the peasant whose table is covered with food of his own rearing, and who not only enjoys his meal, but remembers with delight the happy days and sunny mornings when he planted it, the soft evenings when he watered it, and the pleasure he experienced in watching its daily growth. JUNE 29. The day before yesterday, the physician came from the town to pay a visit to the judge. He found me on the floor playing with Charlotte's children. Some of them were scrambling over me, and others romped with me; and, as I caught and tickled them, they made a great noise. The doctor is a formal sort of personage: he adjusts the plaits of his ruffles, and continually settles his frill whilst he is talking to you; and he thought my conduct beneath the dignity of a sensible man. I could perceive this by his countenance. But I did not suffer myself to be disturbed. I allowed him to continue his wise conversation, whilst I rebuilt the children's card houses for them as fast as they threw them down. He went about the town afterward, complaining that the judge's children were spoiled enough before, but that now Werther was completely ruining them. Yes, my dear Wilhelm, nothing on this earth affects my heart so much as children. When I look on at their doings; when I mark in the little creatures the seeds of all those virtues and qualities which they will one day find so indispensable; when I behold in the obstinate all the future firmness and constancy of a noble character; in the capricious, that levity and gaiety of temper which will carry them lightly over the dangers and troubles of life, their whole nature simple and unpolluted,--then I call to mind the golden words of the Great Teacher of mankind, "Unless ye become like one of these!" And now, my friend, these children, who are our equals, whom we ought to consider as our models, we treat them as though they were our subjects. They are allowed no will of their own. And have we, then, none ourselves? Whence comes our exclusive right? Is it because we are older and more experienced? Great God! from the height of thy heaven thou beholdest great children and little children, and no others; and thy Son has long since declared which afford thee greatest pleasure. But they believe in him, and hear him not,--that, too, is an old story; and they train their children after their own image, etc. Adieu, Wilhelm: I will not further bewilder myself with this subject. JULY 1. The consolation Charlotte can bring to an invalid I experience from my own heart, which suffers more from her absence than many a poor creature lingering on a bed of sickness. She is gone to spend a few days in the town with a very worthy woman, who is given over by the physicians, and wishes to have Charlotte near her in her last moments. I accompanied her last week on a visit to the Vicar of S--, a small village in the mountains, about a league hence. We arrived about four o'clock: Charlotte had taken her little sister with her. When we entered the vicarage court, we found the good old man sitting on a bench before the door, under the shade of two large walnut-trees. At the sight of Charlotte he seemed to gain new life, rose, forgot his stick, and ventured to walk toward her. She ran to him, and made him sit down again; then, placing herself by his side, she gave him a number of messages from her father, and then caught up his youngest child, a dirty, ugly little thing, the joy of his old age, and kissed it. I wish you could have witnessed her attention to this old man,--how she raised her voice on account of his deafness; how she told him of healthy young people, who had been carried off when it was least expected; praised the virtues of Carlsbad, and commended his determination to spend the ensuing summer there; and assured him that he looked better and stronger than he did when she saw him last. I, in the meantime, paid attention to his good lady. The old man seemed quite in spirits; and as I could not help admiring the beauty of the walnut-trees, which formed such an agreeable shade over our heads, he began, though with some little difficulty, to tell us their history. "As to the oldest," said he, "we do not know who planted it,--some say one clergyman, and some another: but the younger one, there behind us, is exactly the age of my wife, fifty years old next October; her father planted it in the morning, and in the evening she came into the world. My wife's father was my predecessor here, and I cannot tell you how fond he was of that tree; and it is fully as dear to me. Under the shade of that very tree, upon a log of wood, my wife was seated knitting, when I, a poor student, came into this court for the first time, just seven and twenty years ago." Charlotte inquired for his daughter. He said she was gone with Herr Schmidt to the meadows, and was with the haymakers. The old man then resumed his story, and told us how his predecessor had taken a fancy to him, as had his daughter likewise; and how he had become first his curate, and subsequently his successor. He had scarcely finished his story when his daughter returned through the garden, accompanied by the above-mentioned Herr Schmidt. She welcomed Charlotte affectionately, and I confess I was much taken with her appearance. She was a lively-looking, good-humoured brunette, quite competent to amuse one for a short time in the country. Her lover (for such Herr Schmidt evidently appeared to be) was a polite, reserved personage, and would not join our conversation, notwithstanding all Charlotte's endeavours to draw him out. I was much annoyed at observing, by his countenance, that his silence did not arise from want of talent, but from caprice and ill-humour. This subsequently became very evident, when we set out to take a walk, and Frederica joining Charlotte, with whom I was talking, the worthy gentleman's face, which was naturally rather sombre, became so dark and angry that Charlotte was obliged to touch my arm, and remind me that I was talking too much to Frederica. Nothing distresses me more than to see men torment each other; particularly when in the flower of their age, in the very season of pleasure, they waste their few short days of sunshine in quarrels and disputes, and only perceive their error when it is too late to repair it. This thought dwelt upon my mind; and in the evening, when we returned to the vicar's, and were sitting round the table with our bread end milk, the conversation turned on the joys and sorrows of the world, I could not resist the temptation to inveigh bitterly against ill-humour. "We are apt," said I, "to complain, but--with very little cause, that our happy days are few, and our evil days many. If our hearts were always disposed to receive the benefits Heaven sends us, we should acquire strength to support evil when it comes." "But," observed the vicar's wife, "we cannot always command our tempers, so much depends upon the constitution: when the body suffers, the mind is ill at ease." "I acknowledge that," I continued; "but we must consider such a disposition in the light of a disease, and inquire whether there is no remedy for it." "I should be glad to hear one," said Charlotte: "at least, I think very much depends upon ourselves; I know it is so with me. When anything annoys me, and disturbs my temper, I hasten into the garden, hum a couple of country dances, and it is all right with me directly." "That is what I meant," I replied; "ill-humour resembles indolence: it is natural to us; but if once we have courage to exert ourselves, we find our work run fresh from our hands, and we experience in the activity from which we shrank a real enjoyment." Frederica listened very attentively: and the young man objected, that we were not masters of ourselves, and still less so of our feelings. "The question is about a disagreeable feeling," I added, "from which every one would willingly escape, but none know their own power without trial. Invalids are glad to consult physicians, and submit to the most scrupulous regimen, the most nauseous medicines, in order to recover their health." I observed that the good old man inclined his head, and exerted himself to hear our discourse; so I raised my voice, and addressed myself directly to him. "We preach against a great many crimes," I observed, "but I never remember a

punctiliously

How many times the word 'punctiliously' appears in the text?

will be no wiser at the end of my letter than you were at the beginning. Attend, then, and I will compel myself to give you the details. I mentioned to you the other day that I had become acquainted with S--, the district judge, and that he had invited me to go and visit him in his retirement, or rather in his little kingdom. But I neglected going, and perhaps should never have gone, if chance had not discovered to me the treasure which lay concealed in that retired spot. Some of our young people had proposed giving a ball in the country, at which I consented to be present. I offered my hand for the evening to a pretty and agreeable, but rather commonplace, sort of girl from the immediate neighbourhood; and it was agreed that I should engage a carriage, and call upon Charlotte, with my partner and her aunt, to convey them to the ball. My companion informed me, as we drove along through the park to the hunting-lodge, that I should make the acquaintance of a very charming young lady. "Take care," added the aunt, "that you do not lose your heart." "Why?" said I. "Because she is already engaged to a very worthy man," she replied, "who is gone to settle his affairs upon the death of his father, and will succeed to a very considerable inheritance." This information possessed no interest for me. When we arrived at the gate, the sun was setting behind the tops of the mountains. The atmosphere was heavy; and the ladies expressed their fears of an approaching storm, as masses of low black clouds were gathering in the horizon. I relieved their anxieties by pretending to be weather-wise, although I myself had some apprehensions lest our pleasure should be interrupted. I alighted; and a maid came to the door, and requested us to wait a moment for her mistress. I walked across the court to a well-built house, and, ascending the flight of steps in front, opened the door, and saw before me the most charming spectacle I had ever witnessed. Six children, from eleven to two years old, were running about the hall, and surrounding a lady of middle height, with a lovely figure, dressed in a robe of simple white, trimmed with pink ribbons. She was holding a rye loaf in her hand, and was cutting slices for the little ones all around, in proportion to their age and appetite. She performed her task in a graceful and affectionate manner; each claimant awaiting his turn with outstretched hands, and boisterously shouting his thanks. Some of them ran away at once, to enjoy their evening meal; whilst others, of a gentler disposition, retired to the courtyard to see the strangers, and to survey the carriage in which their Charlotte was to drive away. "Pray forgive me for giving you the trouble to come for me, and for keeping the ladies waiting: but dressing, and arranging some household duties before I leave, had made me forget my children's supper; and they do not like to take it from any one but me." I uttered some indifferent compliment: but my whole soul was absorbed by her air, her voice, her manner; and I had scarcely recovered myself when she ran into her room to fetch her gloves and fan. The young ones threw inquiring glances at me from a distance; whilst I approached the youngest, a most delicious little creature. He drew back; and Charlotte, entering at the very moment, said, "Louis, shake hands with your cousin." The little fellow obeyed willingly; and I could not resist giving him a hearty kiss, notwithstanding his rather dirty face. "Cousin," said I to Charlotte, as I handed her down, "do you think I deserve the happiness of being related to you?" She replied, with a ready smile, "Oh! I have such a number of cousins, that I should be sorry if you were the most undeserving of them." In taking leave, she desired her next sister, Sophy, a girl about eleven years old, to take great care of the children, and to say good-bye to papa for her when he came home from his ride. She enjoined to the little ones to obey their sister Sophy as they would herself, upon which some promised that they would; but a little fair-haired girl, about six years old, looked discontented, and said, "But Sophy is not you, Charlotte; and we like you best." The two eldest boys had clambered up the carriage; and, at my request, she permitted them to accompany us a little way through the forest, upon their promising to sit very still, and hold fast. We were hardly seated, and the ladies had scarcely exchanged compliments, making the usual remarks upon each other's dress, and upon the company they expected to meet, when Charlotte stopped the carriage, and made her brothers get down. They insisted upon kissing her hands once more; which the eldest did with all the tenderness of a youth of fifteen, but the other in a lighter and more careless manner. She desired them again to give her love to the children, and we drove off. The aunt inquired of Charlotte whether she had finished the book she had last sent her. "No," said Charlotte; "I did not like it: you can have it again. And the one before was not much better." I was surprised, upon asking the title, to hear that it was ____. (We feel obliged to suppress the passage in the letter, to prevent any one from feeling aggrieved; although no author need pay much attention to the opinion of a mere girl, or that of an unsteady young man.) I found penetration and character in everything she said: every expression seemed to brighten her features with new charms,--with new rays of genius,--which unfolded by degrees, as she felt herself understood. "When I was younger," she observed, "I loved nothing so much as romances. Nothing could equal my delight when, on some holiday, I could settle down quietly in a corner, and enter with my whole heart and soul into the joys or sorrows of some fictitious Leonora. I do not deny that they even possess some charms for me yet. But I read so seldom, that I prefer books suited exactly to my taste. And I like those authors best whose scenes describe my own situation in life,--and the friends who are about me, whose stories touch me with interest, from resembling my own homely existence,--which, without being absolutely paradise, is, on the whole, a source of indescribable happiness." I endeavoured to conceal the emotion which these words occasioned, but it was of slight avail; for, when she had expressed so truly her opinion of "The Vicar of Wakefield," and of other works, the names of which I omit (Though the names are omitted, yet the authors mentioned deserve Charlotte's approbation, and will feel it in their hearts when they read this passage. It concerns no other person.), I could no longer contain myself, but gave full utterance to what I thought of it: and it was not until Charlotte had addressed herself to the two other ladies, that I remembered their presence, and observed them sitting mute with astonishment. The aunt looked at me several times with an air of raillery, which, however, I did not at all mind. We talked of the pleasures of dancing. "If it is a fault to love it," said Charlotte, "I am ready to confess that I prize it above all other amusements. If anything disturbs me, I go to the piano, play an air to which I have danced, and all goes right again directly." You, who know me, can fancy how steadfastly I gazed upon her rich dark eyes during these remarks, how my very soul gloated over her warm lips and fresh, glowing cheeks, how I became quite lost in the delightful meaning of her words, so much so, that I scarcely heard the actual expressions. In short, I alighted from the carriage like a person in a dream, and was so lost to the dim world around me, that I scarcely heard the music which resounded from the illuminated ballroom. The two Messrs. Andran and a certain N. N. (I cannot trouble myself with the names), who were the aunt's and Charlotte's partners, received us at the carriage-door, and took possession of their ladies, whilst I followed with mine. We commenced with a minuet. I led out one lady after another, and precisely those who were the most disagreeable could not bring themselves to leave off. Charlotte and her partner began an English country dance, and you must imagine my delight when it was their turn to dance the figure with us. You should see Charlotte dance. She dances with her whole heart and soul: her figure is all harmony, elegance, and grace, as if she were conscious of nothing else, and had no other thought or feeling; and, doubtless, for the moment, every other sensation is extinct. She was engaged for the second country dance, but promised me the third, and assured me, with the most agreeable freedom, that she was very fond of waltzing. "It is the custom here," she said, "for the previous partners to waltz together; but my partner is an indifferent waltzer, and will feel delighted if I save him the trouble. Your partner is not allowed to waltz, and, indeed, is equally incapable: but I observed during the country dance that you waltz well; so, if you will waltz with me, I beg you would propose it to my partner, and I will propose it to yours." We agreed, and it was arranged that our partners should mutually entertain each other. We set off, and, at first, delighted ourselves with the usual graceful motions of the arms. With what grace, with what ease, she moved! When the waltz commenced, and the dancers whirled around each other in the giddy maze, there was some confusion, owing to the incapacity of some of the dancers. We judiciously remained still, allowing the others to weary themselves; and, when the awkward dancers had withdrawn, we joined in, and kept it up famously together with one other couple,--Andran and his partner. Never did I dance more lightly. I felt myself more than mortal, holding this loveliest of creatures in my arms, flying, with her as rapidly as the wind, till I lost sight of every other object; and O Wilhelm, I vowed at that moment, that a maiden whom I loved, or for whom I felt the slightest attachment, never, never should waltz with any one else but with me, if I went to perdition for it!--you will understand this. We took a few turns in the room to recover our breath. Charlotte sat down, and felt refreshed by partaking of some oranges which I had had secured,--the only ones that had been left; but at every slice which, from politeness, she offered to her neighbours, I felt as though a dagger went through my heart. We were the second couple in the third country dance. As we were going down (and Heaven knows with what ecstasy I gazed at her arms and eyes, beaming with the sweetest feeling of pure and genuine enjoyment), we passed a lady whom I had noticed for her charming expression of countenance; although she was no longer young. She looked at Charlotte with a smile, then, holding up her finger in a threatening attitude, repeated twice in a very significant tone of voice the name of "Albert." "Who is Albert," said I to Charlotte, "if it is not impertinent to ask?" She was about to answer, when we were obliged to separate, in order to execute a figure in the dance; and, as we crossed over again in front of each other, I perceived she looked somewhat pensive. "Why need I conceal it from you?" she said, as she gave me her hand for the promenade. "Albert is a worthy man, to whom I am engaged." Now, there was nothing new to me in this (for the girls had told me of it on the way); but it was so far new that I had not thought of it in connection with her whom, in so short a time, I had learned to prize so highly. Enough, I became confused, got out in the figure, and occasioned general confusion; so that it required all Charlotte's presence of mind to set me right by pulling and pushing me into my proper place. The dance was not yet finished when the lightning which had for some time been seen in the horizon, and which I had asserted to proceed entirely from heat, grew more violent; and the thunder was heard above the music. When any distress or terror surprises us in the midst of our amusements, it naturally makes a deeper impression than at other times, either because the contrast makes us more keenly susceptible, or rather perhaps because our senses are then more open to impressions, and the shock is consequently stronger. To this cause I must ascribe the fright and shrieks of the ladies. One sagaciously sat down in a corner with her back to the window, and held her fingers to her ears; a second knelt down before her, and hid her face in her lap; a third threw herself between them, and embraced her sister with a thousand tears; some insisted on going home; others, unconscious of their actions, wanted sufficient presence of mind to repress the impertinence of their young partners, who sought to direct to themselves those sighs which the lips of our agitated beauties intended for heaven. Some of the gentlemen had gone down-stairs to smoke a quiet cigar, and the rest of the company gladly embraced a happy suggestion of the hostess to retire into another room which was provided with shutters and curtains. We had hardly got there, when Charlotte placed the chairs in a circle; and, when the company had sat down in compliance with her request, she forthwith proposed a round game. I noticed some of the company prepare their mouths and draw themselves up at the prospect of some agreeable forfeit. "Let us play at counting," said Charlotte. "Now, pay attention: I shall go round the circle from right to left; and each person is to count, one after the other, the number that comes to him, and must count fast; whoever stops or mistakes is to have a box on the ear, and so on, till we have counted a thousand." It was delightful to see the fun. She went round the circle with upraised arm. "One," said the first; "two," the second; "three," the third; and so on, till Charlotte went faster and faster. One made a mistake, instantly a box on the ear; and, amid the laughter that ensued, came another box; and so on, faster and faster. I myself came in for two. I fancied they were harder than the rest, and felt quite delighted. A general laughter and confusion put an end to the game long before we had counted as far as a thousand. The party broke up into little separate knots: the storm had ceased, and I followed Charlotte into the ballroom. On the way she said, "The game banished their fears of the storm." I could make no reply. "I myself," she continued, "was as much frightened as any of them; but by affecting courage, to keep up the spirits of the others, I forgot my apprehensions." We went to the window. It was still thundering at a distance: a soft rain was pouring down over the country, and filled the air around us with delicious odours. Charlotte leaned forward on her arm; her eyes wandered over the scene; she raised them to the sky, and then turned them upon me; they were moistened with tears; she placed her hand on mine and said, "Klopstock!" at once I remembered the magnificent ode which was in her thoughts: I felt oppressed with the weight of my sensations, and sank under them. It was more than I could bear. I bent over her hand, kissed it in a stream of delicious tears, and again looked up to her eyes. Divine Klopstock! why didst thou not see thy apotheosis in those eyes? And thy name so often profaned, would that I never heard it repeated! JUNE 19. I no longer remember where I stopped in my narrative: I only know it was two in the morning when I went to bed; and if you had been with me, that I might have talked instead of writing to you, I should, in all probability, have kept you up till daylight. I think I have not yet related what happened as we rode home from the ball, nor have I time to tell you now. It was a most magnificent sunrise: the whole country was refreshed, and the rain fell drop by drop from the trees in the forest. Our companions were asleep. Charlotte asked me if I did not wish to sleep also, and begged of me not to make any ceremony on her account. Looking steadfastly at her, I answered, "As long as I see those eyes open, there is no fear of my falling asleep." We both continued awake till we reached her door. The maid opened it softly, and assured her, in answer to her inquiries, that her father and the children were well, and still sleeping. I left her asking permission to visit her in the course of the day. She consented, and I went, and, since that time, sun, moon, and stars may pursue their course: I know not whether it is day or night; the whole world is nothing to me. JUNE 21. My days are as happy as those reserved by God for his elect; and, whatever be my fate hereafter, I can never say that I have not tasted joy,--the purest joy of life. You know Walheim. I am now completely settled there. In that spot I am only half a league from Charlotte; and there I enjoy myself, and taste all the pleasure which can fall to the lot of man. Little did I imagine, when I selected Walheim for my pedestrian excursions, that all heaven lay so near it. How often in my wanderings from the hillside or from the meadows across the river, have I beheld this hunting-lodge, which now contains within it all the joy of my heart! I have often, my dear Wilhelm, reflected on the eagerness men feel to wander and make new discoveries, and upon that secret impulse which afterward inclines them to return to their narrow circle, conform to the laws of custom, and embarrass themselves no longer with what passes around them. It is so strange how, when I came here first, and gazed upon that lovely valley from the hillside, I felt charmed with the entire scene surrounding me. The little wood opposite--how delightful to sit under its shade! How fine the view from that point of rock! Then, that delightful chain of hills, and the exquisite valleys at their feet! Could I but wander and lose myself amongst them! I went, and returned without finding what I wished. Distance, my friend, is like futurity. A dim vastness is spread before our souls: the perceptions of our mind are as obscure as those of our vision; and we desire earnestly to surrender up our whole being, that it may be filled with the complete and perfect bliss of one glorious emotion. But alas! when we have attained our object, when the distant there becomes the present here, all is changed: we are as poor and circumscribed as ever, and our souls still languish for unattainable happiness. So does the restless traveller pant for his native soil, and find in his own cottage, in the arms of his wife, in the affections of his children, and in the labour necessary for their support, that happiness which he had sought in vain through the wide world. When, in the morning at sunrise, I go out to Walheim, and with my own hands gather in the garden the pease which are to serve for my dinner, when I sit down to shell them, and read my Homer during the intervals, and then, selecting a saucepan from the kitchen, fetch my own butter, put my mess on the fire, cover it up, and sit down to stir it as occasion requires, I figure to myself the illustrious suitors of Penelope, killing, dressing, and preparing their own oxen and swine. Nothing fills me with a more pure and genuine sense of happiness than those traits of patriarchal life which, thank Heaven! I can imitate without affectation. Happy is it, indeed, for me that my heart is capable of feeling the same simple and innocent pleasure as the peasant whose table is covered with food of his own rearing, and who not only enjoys his meal, but remembers with delight the happy days and sunny mornings when he planted it, the soft evenings when he watered it, and the pleasure he experienced in watching its daily growth. JUNE 29. The day before yesterday, the physician came from the town to pay a visit to the judge. He found me on the floor playing with Charlotte's children. Some of them were scrambling over me, and others romped with me; and, as I caught and tickled them, they made a great noise. The doctor is a formal sort of personage: he adjusts the plaits of his ruffles, and continually settles his frill whilst he is talking to you; and he thought my conduct beneath the dignity of a sensible man. I could perceive this by his countenance. But I did not suffer myself to be disturbed. I allowed him to continue his wise conversation, whilst I rebuilt the children's card houses for them as fast as they threw them down. He went about the town afterward, complaining that the judge's children were spoiled enough before, but that now Werther was completely ruining them. Yes, my dear Wilhelm, nothing on this earth affects my heart so much as children. When I look on at their doings; when I mark in the little creatures the seeds of all those virtues and qualities which they will one day find so indispensable; when I behold in the obstinate all the future firmness and constancy of a noble character; in the capricious, that levity and gaiety of temper which will carry them lightly over the dangers and troubles of life, their whole nature simple and unpolluted,--then I call to mind the golden words of the Great Teacher of mankind, "Unless ye become like one of these!" And now, my friend, these children, who are our equals, whom we ought to consider as our models, we treat them as though they were our subjects. They are allowed no will of their own. And have we, then, none ourselves? Whence comes our exclusive right? Is it because we are older and more experienced? Great God! from the height of thy heaven thou beholdest great children and little children, and no others; and thy Son has long since declared which afford thee greatest pleasure. But they believe in him, and hear him not,--that, too, is an old story; and they train their children after their own image, etc. Adieu, Wilhelm: I will not further bewilder myself with this subject. JULY 1. The consolation Charlotte can bring to an invalid I experience from my own heart, which suffers more from her absence than many a poor creature lingering on a bed of sickness. She is gone to spend a few days in the town with a very worthy woman, who is given over by the physicians, and wishes to have Charlotte near her in her last moments. I accompanied her last week on a visit to the Vicar of S--, a small village in the mountains, about a league hence. We arrived about four o'clock: Charlotte had taken her little sister with her. When we entered the vicarage court, we found the good old man sitting on a bench before the door, under the shade of two large walnut-trees. At the sight of Charlotte he seemed to gain new life, rose, forgot his stick, and ventured to walk toward her. She ran to him, and made him sit down again; then, placing herself by his side, she gave him a number of messages from her father, and then caught up his youngest child, a dirty, ugly little thing, the joy of his old age, and kissed it. I wish you could have witnessed her attention to this old man,--how she raised her voice on account of his deafness; how she told him of healthy young people, who had been carried off when it was least expected; praised the virtues of Carlsbad, and commended his determination to spend the ensuing summer there; and assured him that he looked better and stronger than he did when she saw him last. I, in the meantime, paid attention to his good lady. The old man seemed quite in spirits; and as I could not help admiring the beauty of the walnut-trees, which formed such an agreeable shade over our heads, he began, though with some little difficulty, to tell us their history. "As to the oldest," said he, "we do not know who planted it,--some say one clergyman, and some another: but the younger one, there behind us, is exactly the age of my wife, fifty years old next October; her father planted it in the morning, and in the evening she came into the world. My wife's father was my predecessor here, and I cannot tell you how fond he was of that tree; and it is fully as dear to me. Under the shade of that very tree, upon a log of wood, my wife was seated knitting, when I, a poor student, came into this court for the first time, just seven and twenty years ago." Charlotte inquired for his daughter. He said she was gone with Herr Schmidt to the meadows, and was with the haymakers. The old man then resumed his story, and told us how his predecessor had taken a fancy to him, as had his daughter likewise; and how he had become first his curate, and subsequently his successor. He had scarcely finished his story when his daughter returned through the garden, accompanied by the above-mentioned Herr Schmidt. She welcomed Charlotte affectionately, and I confess I was much taken with her appearance. She was a lively-looking, good-humoured brunette, quite competent to amuse one for a short time in the country. Her lover (for such Herr Schmidt evidently appeared to be) was a polite, reserved personage, and would not join our conversation, notwithstanding all Charlotte's endeavours to draw him out. I was much annoyed at observing, by his countenance, that his silence did not arise from want of talent, but from caprice and ill-humour. This subsequently became very evident, when we set out to take a walk, and Frederica joining Charlotte, with whom I was talking, the worthy gentleman's face, which was naturally rather sombre, became so dark and angry that Charlotte was obliged to touch my arm, and remind me that I was talking too much to Frederica. Nothing distresses me more than to see men torment each other; particularly when in the flower of their age, in the very season of pleasure, they waste their few short days of sunshine in quarrels and disputes, and only perceive their error when it is too late to repair it. This thought dwelt upon my mind; and in the evening, when we returned to the vicar's, and were sitting round the table with our bread end milk, the conversation turned on the joys and sorrows of the world, I could not resist the temptation to inveigh bitterly against ill-humour. "We are apt," said I, "to complain, but--with very little cause, that our happy days are few, and our evil days many. If our hearts were always disposed to receive the benefits Heaven sends us, we should acquire strength to support evil when it comes." "But," observed the vicar's wife, "we cannot always command our tempers, so much depends upon the constitution: when the body suffers, the mind is ill at ease." "I acknowledge that," I continued; "but we must consider such a disposition in the light of a disease, and inquire whether there is no remedy for it." "I should be glad to hear one," said Charlotte: "at least, I think very much depends upon ourselves; I know it is so with me. When anything annoys me, and disturbs my temper, I hasten into the garden, hum a couple of country dances, and it is all right with me directly." "That is what I meant," I replied; "ill-humour resembles indolence: it is natural to us; but if once we have courage to exert ourselves, we find our work run fresh from our hands, and we experience in the activity from which we shrank a real enjoyment." Frederica listened very attentively: and the young man objected, that we were not masters of ourselves, and still less so of our feelings. "The question is about a disagreeable feeling," I added, "from which every one would willingly escape, but none know their own power without trial. Invalids are glad to consult physicians, and submit to the most scrupulous regimen, the most nauseous medicines, in order to recover their health." I observed that the good old man inclined his head, and exerted himself to hear our discourse; so I raised my voice, and addressed myself directly to him. "We preach against a great many crimes," I observed, "but I never remember a

medder

How many times the word 'medder' appears in the text?

will be no wiser at the end of my letter than you were at the beginning. Attend, then, and I will compel myself to give you the details. I mentioned to you the other day that I had become acquainted with S--, the district judge, and that he had invited me to go and visit him in his retirement, or rather in his little kingdom. But I neglected going, and perhaps should never have gone, if chance had not discovered to me the treasure which lay concealed in that retired spot. Some of our young people had proposed giving a ball in the country, at which I consented to be present. I offered my hand for the evening to a pretty and agreeable, but rather commonplace, sort of girl from the immediate neighbourhood; and it was agreed that I should engage a carriage, and call upon Charlotte, with my partner and her aunt, to convey them to the ball. My companion informed me, as we drove along through the park to the hunting-lodge, that I should make the acquaintance of a very charming young lady. "Take care," added the aunt, "that you do not lose your heart." "Why?" said I. "Because she is already engaged to a very worthy man," she replied, "who is gone to settle his affairs upon the death of his father, and will succeed to a very considerable inheritance." This information possessed no interest for me. When we arrived at the gate, the sun was setting behind the tops of the mountains. The atmosphere was heavy; and the ladies expressed their fears of an approaching storm, as masses of low black clouds were gathering in the horizon. I relieved their anxieties by pretending to be weather-wise, although I myself had some apprehensions lest our pleasure should be interrupted. I alighted; and a maid came to the door, and requested us to wait a moment for her mistress. I walked across the court to a well-built house, and, ascending the flight of steps in front, opened the door, and saw before me the most charming spectacle I had ever witnessed. Six children, from eleven to two years old, were running about the hall, and surrounding a lady of middle height, with a lovely figure, dressed in a robe of simple white, trimmed with pink ribbons. She was holding a rye loaf in her hand, and was cutting slices for the little ones all around, in proportion to their age and appetite. She performed her task in a graceful and affectionate manner; each claimant awaiting his turn with outstretched hands, and boisterously shouting his thanks. Some of them ran away at once, to enjoy their evening meal; whilst others, of a gentler disposition, retired to the courtyard to see the strangers, and to survey the carriage in which their Charlotte was to drive away. "Pray forgive me for giving you the trouble to come for me, and for keeping the ladies waiting: but dressing, and arranging some household duties before I leave, had made me forget my children's supper; and they do not like to take it from any one but me." I uttered some indifferent compliment: but my whole soul was absorbed by her air, her voice, her manner; and I had scarcely recovered myself when she ran into her room to fetch her gloves and fan. The young ones threw inquiring glances at me from a distance; whilst I approached the youngest, a most delicious little creature. He drew back; and Charlotte, entering at the very moment, said, "Louis, shake hands with your cousin." The little fellow obeyed willingly; and I could not resist giving him a hearty kiss, notwithstanding his rather dirty face. "Cousin," said I to Charlotte, as I handed her down, "do you think I deserve the happiness of being related to you?" She replied, with a ready smile, "Oh! I have such a number of cousins, that I should be sorry if you were the most undeserving of them." In taking leave, she desired her next sister, Sophy, a girl about eleven years old, to take great care of the children, and to say good-bye to papa for her when he came home from his ride. She enjoined to the little ones to obey their sister Sophy as they would herself, upon which some promised that they would; but a little fair-haired girl, about six years old, looked discontented, and said, "But Sophy is not you, Charlotte; and we like you best." The two eldest boys had clambered up the carriage; and, at my request, she permitted them to accompany us a little way through the forest, upon their promising to sit very still, and hold fast. We were hardly seated, and the ladies had scarcely exchanged compliments, making the usual remarks upon each other's dress, and upon the company they expected to meet, when Charlotte stopped the carriage, and made her brothers get down. They insisted upon kissing her hands once more; which the eldest did with all the tenderness of a youth of fifteen, but the other in a lighter and more careless manner. She desired them again to give her love to the children, and we drove off. The aunt inquired of Charlotte whether she had finished the book she had last sent her. "No," said Charlotte; "I did not like it: you can have it again. And the one before was not much better." I was surprised, upon asking the title, to hear that it was ____. (We feel obliged to suppress the passage in the letter, to prevent any one from feeling aggrieved; although no author need pay much attention to the opinion of a mere girl, or that of an unsteady young man.) I found penetration and character in everything she said: every expression seemed to brighten her features with new charms,--with new rays of genius,--which unfolded by degrees, as she felt herself understood. "When I was younger," she observed, "I loved nothing so much as romances. Nothing could equal my delight when, on some holiday, I could settle down quietly in a corner, and enter with my whole heart and soul into the joys or sorrows of some fictitious Leonora. I do not deny that they even possess some charms for me yet. But I read so seldom, that I prefer books suited exactly to my taste. And I like those authors best whose scenes describe my own situation in life,--and the friends who are about me, whose stories touch me with interest, from resembling my own homely existence,--which, without being absolutely paradise, is, on the whole, a source of indescribable happiness." I endeavoured to conceal the emotion which these words occasioned, but it was of slight avail; for, when she had expressed so truly her opinion of "The Vicar of Wakefield," and of other works, the names of which I omit (Though the names are omitted, yet the authors mentioned deserve Charlotte's approbation, and will feel it in their hearts when they read this passage. It concerns no other person.), I could no longer contain myself, but gave full utterance to what I thought of it: and it was not until Charlotte had addressed herself to the two other ladies, that I remembered their presence, and observed them sitting mute with astonishment. The aunt looked at me several times with an air of raillery, which, however, I did not at all mind. We talked of the pleasures of dancing. "If it is a fault to love it," said Charlotte, "I am ready to confess that I prize it above all other amusements. If anything disturbs me, I go to the piano, play an air to which I have danced, and all goes right again directly." You, who know me, can fancy how steadfastly I gazed upon her rich dark eyes during these remarks, how my very soul gloated over her warm lips and fresh, glowing cheeks, how I became quite lost in the delightful meaning of her words, so much so, that I scarcely heard the actual expressions. In short, I alighted from the carriage like a person in a dream, and was so lost to the dim world around me, that I scarcely heard the music which resounded from the illuminated ballroom. The two Messrs. Andran and a certain N. N. (I cannot trouble myself with the names), who were the aunt's and Charlotte's partners, received us at the carriage-door, and took possession of their ladies, whilst I followed with mine. We commenced with a minuet. I led out one lady after another, and precisely those who were the most disagreeable could not bring themselves to leave off. Charlotte and her partner began an English country dance, and you must imagine my delight when it was their turn to dance the figure with us. You should see Charlotte dance. She dances with her whole heart and soul: her figure is all harmony, elegance, and grace, as if she were conscious of nothing else, and had no other thought or feeling; and, doubtless, for the moment, every other sensation is extinct. She was engaged for the second country dance, but promised me the third, and assured me, with the most agreeable freedom, that she was very fond of waltzing. "It is the custom here," she said, "for the previous partners to waltz together; but my partner is an indifferent waltzer, and will feel delighted if I save him the trouble. Your partner is not allowed to waltz, and, indeed, is equally incapable: but I observed during the country dance that you waltz well; so, if you will waltz with me, I beg you would propose it to my partner, and I will propose it to yours." We agreed, and it was arranged that our partners should mutually entertain each other. We set off, and, at first, delighted ourselves with the usual graceful motions of the arms. With what grace, with what ease, she moved! When the waltz commenced, and the dancers whirled around each other in the giddy maze, there was some confusion, owing to the incapacity of some of the dancers. We judiciously remained still, allowing the others to weary themselves; and, when the awkward dancers had withdrawn, we joined in, and kept it up famously together with one other couple,--Andran and his partner. Never did I dance more lightly. I felt myself more than mortal, holding this loveliest of creatures in my arms, flying, with her as rapidly as the wind, till I lost sight of every other object; and O Wilhelm, I vowed at that moment, that a maiden whom I loved, or for whom I felt the slightest attachment, never, never should waltz with any one else but with me, if I went to perdition for it!--you will understand this. We took a few turns in the room to recover our breath. Charlotte sat down, and felt refreshed by partaking of some oranges which I had had secured,--the only ones that had been left; but at every slice which, from politeness, she offered to her neighbours, I felt as though a dagger went through my heart. We were the second couple in the third country dance. As we were going down (and Heaven knows with what ecstasy I gazed at her arms and eyes, beaming with the sweetest feeling of pure and genuine enjoyment), we passed a lady whom I had noticed for her charming expression of countenance; although she was no longer young. She looked at Charlotte with a smile, then, holding up her finger in a threatening attitude, repeated twice in a very significant tone of voice the name of "Albert." "Who is Albert," said I to Charlotte, "if it is not impertinent to ask?" She was about to answer, when we were obliged to separate, in order to execute a figure in the dance; and, as we crossed over again in front of each other, I perceived she looked somewhat pensive. "Why need I conceal it from you?" she said, as she gave me her hand for the promenade. "Albert is a worthy man, to whom I am engaged." Now, there was nothing new to me in this (for the girls had told me of it on the way); but it was so far new that I had not thought of it in connection with her whom, in so short a time, I had learned to prize so highly. Enough, I became confused, got out in the figure, and occasioned general confusion; so that it required all Charlotte's presence of mind to set me right by pulling and pushing me into my proper place. The dance was not yet finished when the lightning which had for some time been seen in the horizon, and which I had asserted to proceed entirely from heat, grew more violent; and the thunder was heard above the music. When any distress or terror surprises us in the midst of our amusements, it naturally makes a deeper impression than at other times, either because the contrast makes us more keenly susceptible, or rather perhaps because our senses are then more open to impressions, and the shock is consequently stronger. To this cause I must ascribe the fright and shrieks of the ladies. One sagaciously sat down in a corner with her back to the window, and held her fingers to her ears; a second knelt down before her, and hid her face in her lap; a third threw herself between them, and embraced her sister with a thousand tears; some insisted on going home; others, unconscious of their actions, wanted sufficient presence of mind to repress the impertinence of their young partners, who sought to direct to themselves those sighs which the lips of our agitated beauties intended for heaven. Some of the gentlemen had gone down-stairs to smoke a quiet cigar, and the rest of the company gladly embraced a happy suggestion of the hostess to retire into another room which was provided with shutters and curtains. We had hardly got there, when Charlotte placed the chairs in a circle; and, when the company had sat down in compliance with her request, she forthwith proposed a round game. I noticed some of the company prepare their mouths and draw themselves up at the prospect of some agreeable forfeit. "Let us play at counting," said Charlotte. "Now, pay attention: I shall go round the circle from right to left; and each person is to count, one after the other, the number that comes to him, and must count fast; whoever stops or mistakes is to have a box on the ear, and so on, till we have counted a thousand." It was delightful to see the fun. She went round the circle with upraised arm. "One," said the first; "two," the second; "three," the third; and so on, till Charlotte went faster and faster. One made a mistake, instantly a box on the ear; and, amid the laughter that ensued, came another box; and so on, faster and faster. I myself came in for two. I fancied they were harder than the rest, and felt quite delighted. A general laughter and confusion put an end to the game long before we had counted as far as a thousand. The party broke up into little separate knots: the storm had ceased, and I followed Charlotte into the ballroom. On the way she said, "The game banished their fears of the storm." I could make no reply. "I myself," she continued, "was as much frightened as any of them; but by affecting courage, to keep up the spirits of the others, I forgot my apprehensions." We went to the window. It was still thundering at a distance: a soft rain was pouring down over the country, and filled the air around us with delicious odours. Charlotte leaned forward on her arm; her eyes wandered over the scene; she raised them to the sky, and then turned them upon me; they were moistened with tears; she placed her hand on mine and said, "Klopstock!" at once I remembered the magnificent ode which was in her thoughts: I felt oppressed with the weight of my sensations, and sank under them. It was more than I could bear. I bent over her hand, kissed it in a stream of delicious tears, and again looked up to her eyes. Divine Klopstock! why didst thou not see thy apotheosis in those eyes? And thy name so often profaned, would that I never heard it repeated! JUNE 19. I no longer remember where I stopped in my narrative: I only know it was two in the morning when I went to bed; and if you had been with me, that I might have talked instead of writing to you, I should, in all probability, have kept you up till daylight. I think I have not yet related what happened as we rode home from the ball, nor have I time to tell you now. It was a most magnificent sunrise: the whole country was refreshed, and the rain fell drop by drop from the trees in the forest. Our companions were asleep. Charlotte asked me if I did not wish to sleep also, and begged of me not to make any ceremony on her account. Looking steadfastly at her, I answered, "As long as I see those eyes open, there is no fear of my falling asleep." We both continued awake till we reached her door. The maid opened it softly, and assured her, in answer to her inquiries, that her father and the children were well, and still sleeping. I left her asking permission to visit her in the course of the day. She consented, and I went, and, since that time, sun, moon, and stars may pursue their course: I know not whether it is day or night; the whole world is nothing to me. JUNE 21. My days are as happy as those reserved by God for his elect; and, whatever be my fate hereafter, I can never say that I have not tasted joy,--the purest joy of life. You know Walheim. I am now completely settled there. In that spot I am only half a league from Charlotte; and there I enjoy myself, and taste all the pleasure which can fall to the lot of man. Little did I imagine, when I selected Walheim for my pedestrian excursions, that all heaven lay so near it. How often in my wanderings from the hillside or from the meadows across the river, have I beheld this hunting-lodge, which now contains within it all the joy of my heart! I have often, my dear Wilhelm, reflected on the eagerness men feel to wander and make new discoveries, and upon that secret impulse which afterward inclines them to return to their narrow circle, conform to the laws of custom, and embarrass themselves no longer with what passes around them. It is so strange how, when I came here first, and gazed upon that lovely valley from the hillside, I felt charmed with the entire scene surrounding me. The little wood opposite--how delightful to sit under its shade! How fine the view from that point of rock! Then, that delightful chain of hills, and the exquisite valleys at their feet! Could I but wander and lose myself amongst them! I went, and returned without finding what I wished. Distance, my friend, is like futurity. A dim vastness is spread before our souls: the perceptions of our mind are as obscure as those of our vision; and we desire earnestly to surrender up our whole being, that it may be filled with the complete and perfect bliss of one glorious emotion. But alas! when we have attained our object, when the distant there becomes the present here, all is changed: we are as poor and circumscribed as ever, and our souls still languish for unattainable happiness. So does the restless traveller pant for his native soil, and find in his own cottage, in the arms of his wife, in the affections of his children, and in the labour necessary for their support, that happiness which he had sought in vain through the wide world. When, in the morning at sunrise, I go out to Walheim, and with my own hands gather in the garden the pease which are to serve for my dinner, when I sit down to shell them, and read my Homer during the intervals, and then, selecting a saucepan from the kitchen, fetch my own butter, put my mess on the fire, cover it up, and sit down to stir it as occasion requires, I figure to myself the illustrious suitors of Penelope, killing, dressing, and preparing their own oxen and swine. Nothing fills me with a more pure and genuine sense of happiness than those traits of patriarchal life which, thank Heaven! I can imitate without affectation. Happy is it, indeed, for me that my heart is capable of feeling the same simple and innocent pleasure as the peasant whose table is covered with food of his own rearing, and who not only enjoys his meal, but remembers with delight the happy days and sunny mornings when he planted it, the soft evenings when he watered it, and the pleasure he experienced in watching its daily growth. JUNE 29. The day before yesterday, the physician came from the town to pay a visit to the judge. He found me on the floor playing with Charlotte's children. Some of them were scrambling over me, and others romped with me; and, as I caught and tickled them, they made a great noise. The doctor is a formal sort of personage: he adjusts the plaits of his ruffles, and continually settles his frill whilst he is talking to you; and he thought my conduct beneath the dignity of a sensible man. I could perceive this by his countenance. But I did not suffer myself to be disturbed. I allowed him to continue his wise conversation, whilst I rebuilt the children's card houses for them as fast as they threw them down. He went about the town afterward, complaining that the judge's children were spoiled enough before, but that now Werther was completely ruining them. Yes, my dear Wilhelm, nothing on this earth affects my heart so much as children. When I look on at their doings; when I mark in the little creatures the seeds of all those virtues and qualities which they will one day find so indispensable; when I behold in the obstinate all the future firmness and constancy of a noble character; in the capricious, that levity and gaiety of temper which will carry them lightly over the dangers and troubles of life, their whole nature simple and unpolluted,--then I call to mind the golden words of the Great Teacher of mankind, "Unless ye become like one of these!" And now, my friend, these children, who are our equals, whom we ought to consider as our models, we treat them as though they were our subjects. They are allowed no will of their own. And have we, then, none ourselves? Whence comes our exclusive right? Is it because we are older and more experienced? Great God! from the height of thy heaven thou beholdest great children and little children, and no others; and thy Son has long since declared which afford thee greatest pleasure. But they believe in him, and hear him not,--that, too, is an old story; and they train their children after their own image, etc. Adieu, Wilhelm: I will not further bewilder myself with this subject. JULY 1. The consolation Charlotte can bring to an invalid I experience from my own heart, which suffers more from her absence than many a poor creature lingering on a bed of sickness. She is gone to spend a few days in the town with a very worthy woman, who is given over by the physicians, and wishes to have Charlotte near her in her last moments. I accompanied her last week on a visit to the Vicar of S--, a small village in the mountains, about a league hence. We arrived about four o'clock: Charlotte had taken her little sister with her. When we entered the vicarage court, we found the good old man sitting on a bench before the door, under the shade of two large walnut-trees. At the sight of Charlotte he seemed to gain new life, rose, forgot his stick, and ventured to walk toward her. She ran to him, and made him sit down again; then, placing herself by his side, she gave him a number of messages from her father, and then caught up his youngest child, a dirty, ugly little thing, the joy of his old age, and kissed it. I wish you could have witnessed her attention to this old man,--how she raised her voice on account of his deafness; how she told him of healthy young people, who had been carried off when it was least expected; praised the virtues of Carlsbad, and commended his determination to spend the ensuing summer there; and assured him that he looked better and stronger than he did when she saw him last. I, in the meantime, paid attention to his good lady. The old man seemed quite in spirits; and as I could not help admiring the beauty of the walnut-trees, which formed such an agreeable shade over our heads, he began, though with some little difficulty, to tell us their history. "As to the oldest," said he, "we do not know who planted it,--some say one clergyman, and some another: but the younger one, there behind us, is exactly the age of my wife, fifty years old next October; her father planted it in the morning, and in the evening she came into the world. My wife's father was my predecessor here, and I cannot tell you how fond he was of that tree; and it is fully as dear to me. Under the shade of that very tree, upon a log of wood, my wife was seated knitting, when I, a poor student, came into this court for the first time, just seven and twenty years ago." Charlotte inquired for his daughter. He said she was gone with Herr Schmidt to the meadows, and was with the haymakers. The old man then resumed his story, and told us how his predecessor had taken a fancy to him, as had his daughter likewise; and how he had become first his curate, and subsequently his successor. He had scarcely finished his story when his daughter returned through the garden, accompanied by the above-mentioned Herr Schmidt. She welcomed Charlotte affectionately, and I confess I was much taken with her appearance. She was a lively-looking, good-humoured brunette, quite competent to amuse one for a short time in the country. Her lover (for such Herr Schmidt evidently appeared to be) was a polite, reserved personage, and would not join our conversation, notwithstanding all Charlotte's endeavours to draw him out. I was much annoyed at observing, by his countenance, that his silence did not arise from want of talent, but from caprice and ill-humour. This subsequently became very evident, when we set out to take a walk, and Frederica joining Charlotte, with whom I was talking, the worthy gentleman's face, which was naturally rather sombre, became so dark and angry that Charlotte was obliged to touch my arm, and remind me that I was talking too much to Frederica. Nothing distresses me more than to see men torment each other; particularly when in the flower of their age, in the very season of pleasure, they waste their few short days of sunshine in quarrels and disputes, and only perceive their error when it is too late to repair it. This thought dwelt upon my mind; and in the evening, when we returned to the vicar's, and were sitting round the table with our bread end milk, the conversation turned on the joys and sorrows of the world, I could not resist the temptation to inveigh bitterly against ill-humour. "We are apt," said I, "to complain, but--with very little cause, that our happy days are few, and our evil days many. If our hearts were always disposed to receive the benefits Heaven sends us, we should acquire strength to support evil when it comes." "But," observed the vicar's wife, "we cannot always command our tempers, so much depends upon the constitution: when the body suffers, the mind is ill at ease." "I acknowledge that," I continued; "but we must consider such a disposition in the light of a disease, and inquire whether there is no remedy for it." "I should be glad to hear one," said Charlotte: "at least, I think very much depends upon ourselves; I know it is so with me. When anything annoys me, and disturbs my temper, I hasten into the garden, hum a couple of country dances, and it is all right with me directly." "That is what I meant," I replied; "ill-humour resembles indolence: it is natural to us; but if once we have courage to exert ourselves, we find our work run fresh from our hands, and we experience in the activity from which we shrank a real enjoyment." Frederica listened very attentively: and the young man objected, that we were not masters of ourselves, and still less so of our feelings. "The question is about a disagreeable feeling," I added, "from which every one would willingly escape, but none know their own power without trial. Invalids are glad to consult physicians, and submit to the most scrupulous regimen, the most nauseous medicines, in order to recover their health." I observed that the good old man inclined his head, and exerted himself to hear our discourse; so I raised my voice, and addressed myself directly to him. "We preach against a great many crimes," I observed, "but I never remember a

yes,'m

How many times the word 'yes,'m' appears in the text?

will be no wiser at the end of my letter than you were at the beginning. Attend, then, and I will compel myself to give you the details. I mentioned to you the other day that I had become acquainted with S--, the district judge, and that he had invited me to go and visit him in his retirement, or rather in his little kingdom. But I neglected going, and perhaps should never have gone, if chance had not discovered to me the treasure which lay concealed in that retired spot. Some of our young people had proposed giving a ball in the country, at which I consented to be present. I offered my hand for the evening to a pretty and agreeable, but rather commonplace, sort of girl from the immediate neighbourhood; and it was agreed that I should engage a carriage, and call upon Charlotte, with my partner and her aunt, to convey them to the ball. My companion informed me, as we drove along through the park to the hunting-lodge, that I should make the acquaintance of a very charming young lady. "Take care," added the aunt, "that you do not lose your heart." "Why?" said I. "Because she is already engaged to a very worthy man," she replied, "who is gone to settle his affairs upon the death of his father, and will succeed to a very considerable inheritance." This information possessed no interest for me. When we arrived at the gate, the sun was setting behind the tops of the mountains. The atmosphere was heavy; and the ladies expressed their fears of an approaching storm, as masses of low black clouds were gathering in the horizon. I relieved their anxieties by pretending to be weather-wise, although I myself had some apprehensions lest our pleasure should be interrupted. I alighted; and a maid came to the door, and requested us to wait a moment for her mistress. I walked across the court to a well-built house, and, ascending the flight of steps in front, opened the door, and saw before me the most charming spectacle I had ever witnessed. Six children, from eleven to two years old, were running about the hall, and surrounding a lady of middle height, with a lovely figure, dressed in a robe of simple white, trimmed with pink ribbons. She was holding a rye loaf in her hand, and was cutting slices for the little ones all around, in proportion to their age and appetite. She performed her task in a graceful and affectionate manner; each claimant awaiting his turn with outstretched hands, and boisterously shouting his thanks. Some of them ran away at once, to enjoy their evening meal; whilst others, of a gentler disposition, retired to the courtyard to see the strangers, and to survey the carriage in which their Charlotte was to drive away. "Pray forgive me for giving you the trouble to come for me, and for keeping the ladies waiting: but dressing, and arranging some household duties before I leave, had made me forget my children's supper; and they do not like to take it from any one but me." I uttered some indifferent compliment: but my whole soul was absorbed by her air, her voice, her manner; and I had scarcely recovered myself when she ran into her room to fetch her gloves and fan. The young ones threw inquiring glances at me from a distance; whilst I approached the youngest, a most delicious little creature. He drew back; and Charlotte, entering at the very moment, said, "Louis, shake hands with your cousin." The little fellow obeyed willingly; and I could not resist giving him a hearty kiss, notwithstanding his rather dirty face. "Cousin," said I to Charlotte, as I handed her down, "do you think I deserve the happiness of being related to you?" She replied, with a ready smile, "Oh! I have such a number of cousins, that I should be sorry if you were the most undeserving of them." In taking leave, she desired her next sister, Sophy, a girl about eleven years old, to take great care of the children, and to say good-bye to papa for her when he came home from his ride. She enjoined to the little ones to obey their sister Sophy as they would herself, upon which some promised that they would; but a little fair-haired girl, about six years old, looked discontented, and said, "But Sophy is not you, Charlotte; and we like you best." The two eldest boys had clambered up the carriage; and, at my request, she permitted them to accompany us a little way through the forest, upon their promising to sit very still, and hold fast. We were hardly seated, and the ladies had scarcely exchanged compliments, making the usual remarks upon each other's dress, and upon the company they expected to meet, when Charlotte stopped the carriage, and made her brothers get down. They insisted upon kissing her hands once more; which the eldest did with all the tenderness of a youth of fifteen, but the other in a lighter and more careless manner. She desired them again to give her love to the children, and we drove off. The aunt inquired of Charlotte whether she had finished the book she had last sent her. "No," said Charlotte; "I did not like it: you can have it again. And the one before was not much better." I was surprised, upon asking the title, to hear that it was ____. (We feel obliged to suppress the passage in the letter, to prevent any one from feeling aggrieved; although no author need pay much attention to the opinion of a mere girl, or that of an unsteady young man.) I found penetration and character in everything she said: every expression seemed to brighten her features with new charms,--with new rays of genius,--which unfolded by degrees, as she felt herself understood. "When I was younger," she observed, "I loved nothing so much as romances. Nothing could equal my delight when, on some holiday, I could settle down quietly in a corner, and enter with my whole heart and soul into the joys or sorrows of some fictitious Leonora. I do not deny that they even possess some charms for me yet. But I read so seldom, that I prefer books suited exactly to my taste. And I like those authors best whose scenes describe my own situation in life,--and the friends who are about me, whose stories touch me with interest, from resembling my own homely existence,--which, without being absolutely paradise, is, on the whole, a source of indescribable happiness." I endeavoured to conceal the emotion which these words occasioned, but it was of slight avail; for, when she had expressed so truly her opinion of "The Vicar of Wakefield," and of other works, the names of which I omit (Though the names are omitted, yet the authors mentioned deserve Charlotte's approbation, and will feel it in their hearts when they read this passage. It concerns no other person.), I could no longer contain myself, but gave full utterance to what I thought of it: and it was not until Charlotte had addressed herself to the two other ladies, that I remembered their presence, and observed them sitting mute with astonishment. The aunt looked at me several times with an air of raillery, which, however, I did not at all mind. We talked of the pleasures of dancing. "If it is a fault to love it," said Charlotte, "I am ready to confess that I prize it above all other amusements. If anything disturbs me, I go to the piano, play an air to which I have danced, and all goes right again directly." You, who know me, can fancy how steadfastly I gazed upon her rich dark eyes during these remarks, how my very soul gloated over her warm lips and fresh, glowing cheeks, how I became quite lost in the delightful meaning of her words, so much so, that I scarcely heard the actual expressions. In short, I alighted from the carriage like a person in a dream, and was so lost to the dim world around me, that I scarcely heard the music which resounded from the illuminated ballroom. The two Messrs. Andran and a certain N. N. (I cannot trouble myself with the names), who were the aunt's and Charlotte's partners, received us at the carriage-door, and took possession of their ladies, whilst I followed with mine. We commenced with a minuet. I led out one lady after another, and precisely those who were the most disagreeable could not bring themselves to leave off. Charlotte and her partner began an English country dance, and you must imagine my delight when it was their turn to dance the figure with us. You should see Charlotte dance. She dances with her whole heart and soul: her figure is all harmony, elegance, and grace, as if she were conscious of nothing else, and had no other thought or feeling; and, doubtless, for the moment, every other sensation is extinct. She was engaged for the second country dance, but promised me the third, and assured me, with the most agreeable freedom, that she was very fond of waltzing. "It is the custom here," she said, "for the previous partners to waltz together; but my partner is an indifferent waltzer, and will feel delighted if I save him the trouble. Your partner is not allowed to waltz, and, indeed, is equally incapable: but I observed during the country dance that you waltz well; so, if you will waltz with me, I beg you would propose it to my partner, and I will propose it to yours." We agreed, and it was arranged that our partners should mutually entertain each other. We set off, and, at first, delighted ourselves with the usual graceful motions of the arms. With what grace, with what ease, she moved! When the waltz commenced, and the dancers whirled around each other in the giddy maze, there was some confusion, owing to the incapacity of some of the dancers. We judiciously remained still, allowing the others to weary themselves; and, when the awkward dancers had withdrawn, we joined in, and kept it up famously together with one other couple,--Andran and his partner. Never did I dance more lightly. I felt myself more than mortal, holding this loveliest of creatures in my arms, flying, with her as rapidly as the wind, till I lost sight of every other object; and O Wilhelm, I vowed at that moment, that a maiden whom I loved, or for whom I felt the slightest attachment, never, never should waltz with any one else but with me, if I went to perdition for it!--you will understand this. We took a few turns in the room to recover our breath. Charlotte sat down, and felt refreshed by partaking of some oranges which I had had secured,--the only ones that had been left; but at every slice which, from politeness, she offered to her neighbours, I felt as though a dagger went through my heart. We were the second couple in the third country dance. As we were going down (and Heaven knows with what ecstasy I gazed at her arms and eyes, beaming with the sweetest feeling of pure and genuine enjoyment), we passed a lady whom I had noticed for her charming expression of countenance; although she was no longer young. She looked at Charlotte with a smile, then, holding up her finger in a threatening attitude, repeated twice in a very significant tone of voice the name of "Albert." "Who is Albert," said I to Charlotte, "if it is not impertinent to ask?" She was about to answer, when we were obliged to separate, in order to execute a figure in the dance; and, as we crossed over again in front of each other, I perceived she looked somewhat pensive. "Why need I conceal it from you?" she said, as she gave me her hand for the promenade. "Albert is a worthy man, to whom I am engaged." Now, there was nothing new to me in this (for the girls had told me of it on the way); but it was so far new that I had not thought of it in connection with her whom, in so short a time, I had learned to prize so highly. Enough, I became confused, got out in the figure, and occasioned general confusion; so that it required all Charlotte's presence of mind to set me right by pulling and pushing me into my proper place. The dance was not yet finished when the lightning which had for some time been seen in the horizon, and which I had asserted to proceed entirely from heat, grew more violent; and the thunder was heard above the music. When any distress or terror surprises us in the midst of our amusements, it naturally makes a deeper impression than at other times, either because the contrast makes us more keenly susceptible, or rather perhaps because our senses are then more open to impressions, and the shock is consequently stronger. To this cause I must ascribe the fright and shrieks of the ladies. One sagaciously sat down in a corner with her back to the window, and held her fingers to her ears; a second knelt down before her, and hid her face in her lap; a third threw herself between them, and embraced her sister with a thousand tears; some insisted on going home; others, unconscious of their actions, wanted sufficient presence of mind to repress the impertinence of their young partners, who sought to direct to themselves those sighs which the lips of our agitated beauties intended for heaven. Some of the gentlemen had gone down-stairs to smoke a quiet cigar, and the rest of the company gladly embraced a happy suggestion of the hostess to retire into another room which was provided with shutters and curtains. We had hardly got there, when Charlotte placed the chairs in a circle; and, when the company had sat down in compliance with her request, she forthwith proposed a round game. I noticed some of the company prepare their mouths and draw themselves up at the prospect of some agreeable forfeit. "Let us play at counting," said Charlotte. "Now, pay attention: I shall go round the circle from right to left; and each person is to count, one after the other, the number that comes to him, and must count fast; whoever stops or mistakes is to have a box on the ear, and so on, till we have counted a thousand." It was delightful to see the fun. She went round the circle with upraised arm. "One," said the first; "two," the second; "three," the third; and so on, till Charlotte went faster and faster. One made a mistake, instantly a box on the ear; and, amid the laughter that ensued, came another box; and so on, faster and faster. I myself came in for two. I fancied they were harder than the rest, and felt quite delighted. A general laughter and confusion put an end to the game long before we had counted as far as a thousand. The party broke up into little separate knots: the storm had ceased, and I followed Charlotte into the ballroom. On the way she said, "The game banished their fears of the storm." I could make no reply. "I myself," she continued, "was as much frightened as any of them; but by affecting courage, to keep up the spirits of the others, I forgot my apprehensions." We went to the window. It was still thundering at a distance: a soft rain was pouring down over the country, and filled the air around us with delicious odours. Charlotte leaned forward on her arm; her eyes wandered over the scene; she raised them to the sky, and then turned them upon me; they were moistened with tears; she placed her hand on mine and said, "Klopstock!" at once I remembered the magnificent ode which was in her thoughts: I felt oppressed with the weight of my sensations, and sank under them. It was more than I could bear. I bent over her hand, kissed it in a stream of delicious tears, and again looked up to her eyes. Divine Klopstock! why didst thou not see thy apotheosis in those eyes? And thy name so often profaned, would that I never heard it repeated! JUNE 19. I no longer remember where I stopped in my narrative: I only know it was two in the morning when I went to bed; and if you had been with me, that I might have talked instead of writing to you, I should, in all probability, have kept you up till daylight. I think I have not yet related what happened as we rode home from the ball, nor have I time to tell you now. It was a most magnificent sunrise: the whole country was refreshed, and the rain fell drop by drop from the trees in the forest. Our companions were asleep. Charlotte asked me if I did not wish to sleep also, and begged of me not to make any ceremony on her account. Looking steadfastly at her, I answered, "As long as I see those eyes open, there is no fear of my falling asleep." We both continued awake till we reached her door. The maid opened it softly, and assured her, in answer to her inquiries, that her father and the children were well, and still sleeping. I left her asking permission to visit her in the course of the day. She consented, and I went, and, since that time, sun, moon, and stars may pursue their course: I know not whether it is day or night; the whole world is nothing to me. JUNE 21. My days are as happy as those reserved by God for his elect; and, whatever be my fate hereafter, I can never say that I have not tasted joy,--the purest joy of life. You know Walheim. I am now completely settled there. In that spot I am only half a league from Charlotte; and there I enjoy myself, and taste all the pleasure which can fall to the lot of man. Little did I imagine, when I selected Walheim for my pedestrian excursions, that all heaven lay so near it. How often in my wanderings from the hillside or from the meadows across the river, have I beheld this hunting-lodge, which now contains within it all the joy of my heart! I have often, my dear Wilhelm, reflected on the eagerness men feel to wander and make new discoveries, and upon that secret impulse which afterward inclines them to return to their narrow circle, conform to the laws of custom, and embarrass themselves no longer with what passes around them. It is so strange how, when I came here first, and gazed upon that lovely valley from the hillside, I felt charmed with the entire scene surrounding me. The little wood opposite--how delightful to sit under its shade! How fine the view from that point of rock! Then, that delightful chain of hills, and the exquisite valleys at their feet! Could I but wander and lose myself amongst them! I went, and returned without finding what I wished. Distance, my friend, is like futurity. A dim vastness is spread before our souls: the perceptions of our mind are as obscure as those of our vision; and we desire earnestly to surrender up our whole being, that it may be filled with the complete and perfect bliss of one glorious emotion. But alas! when we have attained our object, when the distant there becomes the present here, all is changed: we are as poor and circumscribed as ever, and our souls still languish for unattainable happiness. So does the restless traveller pant for his native soil, and find in his own cottage, in the arms of his wife, in the affections of his children, and in the labour necessary for their support, that happiness which he had sought in vain through the wide world. When, in the morning at sunrise, I go out to Walheim, and with my own hands gather in the garden the pease which are to serve for my dinner, when I sit down to shell them, and read my Homer during the intervals, and then, selecting a saucepan from the kitchen, fetch my own butter, put my mess on the fire, cover it up, and sit down to stir it as occasion requires, I figure to myself the illustrious suitors of Penelope, killing, dressing, and preparing their own oxen and swine. Nothing fills me with a more pure and genuine sense of happiness than those traits of patriarchal life which, thank Heaven! I can imitate without affectation. Happy is it, indeed, for me that my heart is capable of feeling the same simple and innocent pleasure as the peasant whose table is covered with food of his own rearing, and who not only enjoys his meal, but remembers with delight the happy days and sunny mornings when he planted it, the soft evenings when he watered it, and the pleasure he experienced in watching its daily growth. JUNE 29. The day before yesterday, the physician came from the town to pay a visit to the judge. He found me on the floor playing with Charlotte's children. Some of them were scrambling over me, and others romped with me; and, as I caught and tickled them, they made a great noise. The doctor is a formal sort of personage: he adjusts the plaits of his ruffles, and continually settles his frill whilst he is talking to you; and he thought my conduct beneath the dignity of a sensible man. I could perceive this by his countenance. But I did not suffer myself to be disturbed. I allowed him to continue his wise conversation, whilst I rebuilt the children's card houses for them as fast as they threw them down. He went about the town afterward, complaining that the judge's children were spoiled enough before, but that now Werther was completely ruining them. Yes, my dear Wilhelm, nothing on this earth affects my heart so much as children. When I look on at their doings; when I mark in the little creatures the seeds of all those virtues and qualities which they will one day find so indispensable; when I behold in the obstinate all the future firmness and constancy of a noble character; in the capricious, that levity and gaiety of temper which will carry them lightly over the dangers and troubles of life, their whole nature simple and unpolluted,--then I call to mind the golden words of the Great Teacher of mankind, "Unless ye become like one of these!" And now, my friend, these children, who are our equals, whom we ought to consider as our models, we treat them as though they were our subjects. They are allowed no will of their own. And have we, then, none ourselves? Whence comes our exclusive right? Is it because we are older and more experienced? Great God! from the height of thy heaven thou beholdest great children and little children, and no others; and thy Son has long since declared which afford thee greatest pleasure. But they believe in him, and hear him not,--that, too, is an old story; and they train their children after their own image, etc. Adieu, Wilhelm: I will not further bewilder myself with this subject. JULY 1. The consolation Charlotte can bring to an invalid I experience from my own heart, which suffers more from her absence than many a poor creature lingering on a bed of sickness. She is gone to spend a few days in the town with a very worthy woman, who is given over by the physicians, and wishes to have Charlotte near her in her last moments. I accompanied her last week on a visit to the Vicar of S--, a small village in the mountains, about a league hence. We arrived about four o'clock: Charlotte had taken her little sister with her. When we entered the vicarage court, we found the good old man sitting on a bench before the door, under the shade of two large walnut-trees. At the sight of Charlotte he seemed to gain new life, rose, forgot his stick, and ventured to walk toward her. She ran to him, and made him sit down again; then, placing herself by his side, she gave him a number of messages from her father, and then caught up his youngest child, a dirty, ugly little thing, the joy of his old age, and kissed it. I wish you could have witnessed her attention to this old man,--how she raised her voice on account of his deafness; how she told him of healthy young people, who had been carried off when it was least expected; praised the virtues of Carlsbad, and commended his determination to spend the ensuing summer there; and assured him that he looked better and stronger than he did when she saw him last. I, in the meantime, paid attention to his good lady. The old man seemed quite in spirits; and as I could not help admiring the beauty of the walnut-trees, which formed such an agreeable shade over our heads, he began, though with some little difficulty, to tell us their history. "As to the oldest," said he, "we do not know who planted it,--some say one clergyman, and some another: but the younger one, there behind us, is exactly the age of my wife, fifty years old next October; her father planted it in the morning, and in the evening she came into the world. My wife's father was my predecessor here, and I cannot tell you how fond he was of that tree; and it is fully as dear to me. Under the shade of that very tree, upon a log of wood, my wife was seated knitting, when I, a poor student, came into this court for the first time, just seven and twenty years ago." Charlotte inquired for his daughter. He said she was gone with Herr Schmidt to the meadows, and was with the haymakers. The old man then resumed his story, and told us how his predecessor had taken a fancy to him, as had his daughter likewise; and how he had become first his curate, and subsequently his successor. He had scarcely finished his story when his daughter returned through the garden, accompanied by the above-mentioned Herr Schmidt. She welcomed Charlotte affectionately, and I confess I was much taken with her appearance. She was a lively-looking, good-humoured brunette, quite competent to amuse one for a short time in the country. Her lover (for such Herr Schmidt evidently appeared to be) was a polite, reserved personage, and would not join our conversation, notwithstanding all Charlotte's endeavours to draw him out. I was much annoyed at observing, by his countenance, that his silence did not arise from want of talent, but from caprice and ill-humour. This subsequently became very evident, when we set out to take a walk, and Frederica joining Charlotte, with whom I was talking, the worthy gentleman's face, which was naturally rather sombre, became so dark and angry that Charlotte was obliged to touch my arm, and remind me that I was talking too much to Frederica. Nothing distresses me more than to see men torment each other; particularly when in the flower of their age, in the very season of pleasure, they waste their few short days of sunshine in quarrels and disputes, and only perceive their error when it is too late to repair it. This thought dwelt upon my mind; and in the evening, when we returned to the vicar's, and were sitting round the table with our bread end milk, the conversation turned on the joys and sorrows of the world, I could not resist the temptation to inveigh bitterly against ill-humour. "We are apt," said I, "to complain, but--with very little cause, that our happy days are few, and our evil days many. If our hearts were always disposed to receive the benefits Heaven sends us, we should acquire strength to support evil when it comes." "But," observed the vicar's wife, "we cannot always command our tempers, so much depends upon the constitution: when the body suffers, the mind is ill at ease." "I acknowledge that," I continued; "but we must consider such a disposition in the light of a disease, and inquire whether there is no remedy for it." "I should be glad to hear one," said Charlotte: "at least, I think very much depends upon ourselves; I know it is so with me. When anything annoys me, and disturbs my temper, I hasten into the garden, hum a couple of country dances, and it is all right with me directly." "That is what I meant," I replied; "ill-humour resembles indolence: it is natural to us; but if once we have courage to exert ourselves, we find our work run fresh from our hands, and we experience in the activity from which we shrank a real enjoyment." Frederica listened very attentively: and the young man objected, that we were not masters of ourselves, and still less so of our feelings. "The question is about a disagreeable feeling," I added, "from which every one would willingly escape, but none know their own power without trial. Invalids are glad to consult physicians, and submit to the most scrupulous regimen, the most nauseous medicines, in order to recover their health." I observed that the good old man inclined his head, and exerted himself to hear our discourse; so I raised my voice, and addressed myself directly to him. "We preach against a great many crimes," I observed, "but I never remember a

albert

How many times the word 'albert' appears in the text?

will choose time. I think the University goes down just when Oxford begins to be most beautiful. The walks and meadows are so fragrant and bright now, the hay half carried, and the short new grass appearing." "Reding ought to live here all through the Long," said Tenby: "does any one live through the Vacation, sir, in Oxford?" "Do you mean they die before the end of it, Mr. Tenby?" asked Vincent. "It can't be denied," he continued, "that many, like Mr. Reding, think it a most pleasant time. _I_ am fond of Oxford; but it is not my _habitat_ out of term-time." "Well, I think I should like to make it so," said Charles, "but, I suppose, undergraduates are not allowed." Mr. Vincent answered with more than necessary gravity, "No;" it rested with the Principal; but he conceived that he would not consent to it. Vincent added that certainly there _were_ parties who remained in Oxford through the Long Vacation. It was said mysteriously. Charles answered that, if it was against college rules, there was no help for it; else, were he reading for his degree, he should like nothing better than to pass the Long Vacation in Oxford, if he might judge by the pleasantness of the last ten days. "That is a compliment, Mr. Reding, to your company," said Vincent. At this moment the door opened, and in came the manciple with the dinner paper, which Mr. Vincent had formally to run his eye over. "Watkins," he said, giving it back to him, "I almost think to-day is one of the Fasts of the Church. Go and look, Watkins, and bring me word." The astonished manciple, who had never been sent on such a commission in his whole career before, hastened out of the room, to task his wits how best to fulfil it. The question seemed to strike the company as forcibly, for there was a sudden silence, which was succeeded by a shuffling of feet and a leave-taking; as if, though they had secured their ham and mutton at breakfast, they did not like to risk their dinner. Watkins returned sooner than could have been expected. He said that Mr. Vincent was right; to-day he had found was "the feast of the Apostles." "The Vigil of St. Peter, you mean, Watkins," said Mr. Vincent; "I thought so. Then let us have a plain beefsteak and a saddle of mutton; no Portugal onions, Watkins, or currant-jelly; and some simple pudding, Charlotte pudding, Watkins--that will do." Watkins vanished. By this time, Charles found himself alone with the college authority; who began to speak to him in a more confidential tone. "Mr. Reding," said he, "I did not like to question you before the others, but I conceive you had no particular _meaning_ in your praise of Oxford in the Long Vacation? In the mouths of some it would have been suspicious." Charles was all surprise. "To tell the truth, Mr. Reding, as things stand," he proceeded, "it is often a mark of _party_, this residence in the Vacation; though, of course, there is nothing in the _thing_ itself but what is perfectly natural and right." Charles was all attention. "My good sir," the tutor proceeded, "avoid parties; be sure to avoid party. You are young in your career among us. I always feel anxious about young men of talent; there is the greatest danger of the talent of the University being absorbed in party." Reding expressed a hope that nothing he had done had given cause to his tutor's remark. "No," replied Mr. Vincent, "no;" yet with some slight hesitation; "no, I don't know that it has. But I have thought some of your remarks and questions at lecture were like a person pushing things _too far_, and wishing to form a _system_." Charles was so much taken aback by the charge, that the unexplained mystery of the Long Vacation went out of his head. He said he was "very sorry," and "obliged;" and tried to recollect what he could have said to give ground to Mr. Vincent's remark. Not being able at the moment to recollect, he went on. "I assure you, sir, I know so little of parties in the place, that I hardly know their leaders. I have heard persons mentioned, but, if I tried, I think I should, in some cases, mismatch names and opinions." "I believe it," said Vincent; "but you are young; I am cautioning you against _tendencies_. You may suddenly find yourself absorbed before you know where you are." Charles thought this a good opportunity of asking some questions in detail, about points which puzzled him. He asked whether Dr. Brownside was considered a safe divine to follow. "I hold, d'ye see," answered Vincent, "that all errors are counterfeits of truth. Clever men say true things, Mr. Reding, true in their substance, but," sinking his voice to a whisper, "they go _too far_. It might even be shown that all sects are in one sense but parts of the Catholic Church. I don't say true parts, that is a further question; but they _embody_ great _principles_. The Quakers represent the principle of simplicity and evangelical poverty; they even have a dress of their own, like monks. The Independents represent the rights of the laity; the Wesleyans cherish the devotional principle; the Irvingites, the symbolical and mystical; the High Church party, the principle of obedience; the Liberals are the guardians of reason. No party, then, I conceive, is entirely right or entirely wrong. As to Dr. Brownside, there certainly have been various opinions entertained about his divinity; still, he is an able man, and I think you will gain _good_, gain _good_ from his teaching. But mind, I don't _recommend_ him; yet I respect him, and I consider that he says many things very well worth your attention. I would advise you, then, to accept the _good_ which his sermons offer, without committing yourself to the _bad_. That, depend upon it, Mr. Reding, is the golden though the obvious rule in these matters." Charles said, in answer, that Mr. Vincent was overrating his powers; that he had to learn before he could judge; and that he wished very much to know whether Vincent could recommend him any book, in which he might see at once _what_ the true Church-of-England doctrine was on a number of points which perplexed him. Mr. Vincent replied, he must be on his guard against dissipating his mind with such reading, at a time when his University duties had a definite claim upon him. He ought to avoid all controversies of the day, all authors of the day. He would advise him to read _no_ living authors. "Read dead authors alone," he continued; "dead authors are safe. Our great divines," and he stood upright, "were models; 'there were giants on the earth in those days,' as King George the Third had once said of them to Dr. Johnson. They had that depth, and power, and gravity, and fulness, and erudition; and they were so racy, always racy, and what might be called English. They had that richness, too, such a mine of thought, such a world of opinion, such activity of mind, such inexhaustible resource, such diversity, too. Then they were so eloquent; the majestic Hooker, the imaginative Taylor, the brilliant Hall, the learning of Barrow, the strong sense of South, the keen logic of Chillingworth, good, honest old Burnet," etc., etc. There did not seem much reason why he should stop at one moment more than another; at length, however, he did stop. It was prose, but it was pleasant prose to Charles; he knew just enough about these writers to feel interested in hearing them talked about, and to him Vincent seemed to be saying a good deal, when in fact he was saying very little. When he stopped, Charles said he believed that there were persons in the University who were promoting the study of these authors. Mr. Vincent looked grave. "It is true," he said; "but, my young friend, I have already hinted to you that indifferent things are perverted to the purposes of _party_. At this moment the names of some of our greatest divines are little better than a watchword by which the opinions of living individuals are signified." "Which opinions, I suppose," Charles answered, "are not to be found in those authors." "I'll not say that," said Mr. Vincent. "I have the greatest respect for the individuals in question, and I am not denying that they have done good to our Church by drawing attention in this lax day to the old Church-of-England divinity. But it is one thing to agree with these gentlemen; another," laying his hand on Charles's shoulder, "another to belong to their party. Do not make man your master; get good from all; think well of all persons, and you will be a wise man." Reding inquired, with some timidity, if this was not something like what Dr. Brownside had said in the University pulpit; but perhaps the latter advocated a toleration of opinions in a different sense? Mr. Vincent answered rather shortly, that he had not heard Dr. Brownside's sermon; but, for himself, he had been speaking only of persons in our own communion. "Our Church," he said, "admitted of great liberty of thought within her pale. Even our greatest divines differed from each other in many respects; nay, Bishop Taylor differed from himself. It was a great principle in the English Church. Her true children agree to differ. In truth," he continued, "there is that robust, masculine, noble independence in the English mind, which refuses to be tied down to artificial shapes, but is like, I will say, some great and beautiful production of nature,--a tree, which is rich in foliage and fantastic in limb, no sickly denizen of the hothouse, or helpless dependent of the garden wall, but in careless magnificence sheds its fruits upon the free earth, for the bird of the air and the beast of the field, and all sorts of cattle, to eat thereof and rejoice." When Charles came away, he tried to think what he had gained by his conversation with Mr. Vincent; not exactly what he had wanted, some practical rules to guide his mind and keep him steady; but still some useful hints. He had already been averse to parties, and offended at what he saw of individuals attached to them. Vincent had confirmed him in his resolution to keep aloof from them, and to attend to his duties in the place. He felt pleased to have had this talk with him; but what could he mean by suspecting a tendency in himself to push things too far, and thereby to implicate himself in party? He was obliged to resign himself to ignorance on the subject, and to be content with keeping a watch over himself in future. CHAPTER XI. No opportunity has occurred of informing the reader that, during the last week or two, Charles had accidentally been a good deal thrown across Willis, the _umbra_ of White at Bateman's breakfast-party. He had liked his looks on that occasion, when he was dumb; he did not like him so much when he heard him talk; still he could not help being interested in him, and not the least for this reason, that Willis seemed to have taken a great fancy to himself. He certainly did court Charles, and seemed anxious to stand well with him. Charles, however, did not like his mode of talking better than he did White's; and when he first saw his rooms, there was much in them which shocked both his good sense and his religious principles. A large ivory crucifix, in a glass case, was a conspicuous ornament between the windows; an engraving, representing the Blessed Trinity, as is usual in Catholic countries, hung over the fireplace, and a picture of the Madonna and St. Dominic was opposite to it. On the mantelpiece were a rosary, a thuribulum, and other tokens of Catholicism, of which Charles did not know the uses; a missal, ritual, and some Catholic tracts, lay on the table; and, as he happened to come on Willis unexpectedly, he found him sitting in a vestment more like a cassock than a reading-gown, and engaged upon some portion of the Breviary. Virgil and Sophocles, Herodotus and Cicero seemed, as impure pagans, to have hid themselves in corners, or flitted away, before the awful presence of the Ancient Church. Charles had taken upon himself to protest against some of these singularities, but without success. On the evening before his departure for the country he had occasion to go towards Folly Bridge to pay a bill, when he was startled, as he passed what he had ever taken for a dissenting chapel, to see Willis come out of it. He hardly could believe he saw correctly; he knew, indeed, that Willis had been detained in Oxford, as he had been himself; but what had compelled him to a visit so extraordinary as that which he had just made, Charles had no means of determining. "Willis!" he cried, as he stopped. Willis coloured, and tried to look easy. "Do come a few paces with me," said Charles. "What in the world has taken you there? Is it not a dissenting meeting?" "Dissenting meeting!" cried Willis, surprised and offended in his turn: "what on earth could make you think I would go to a dissenting meeting?" "Well, I beg your pardon," said Charles; "I recollect now: it's the exhibition room. However, _once_ it _was_ a chapel: that's my mistake. Isn't it what is called 'the Old Methodist Chapel?' I never was there; they showed there the _Dio-astro-doxon_, so I think they called it." Charles talked on, to cover his own mistake, for he was ashamed of the charge he had made. Willis did not know whether he was in jest or earnest. "Reding," he said, "don't go on; you offend me." "Well, what is it?" said Charles. "You know well enough," answered Willis, "though you wish to annoy me." "I don't indeed." "It's the Catholic church," said Willis. Reding was silent a moment; then he said, "Well, I don't think you have mended the matter; it _is_ a dissenting meeting, call it what you will, though not the kind of one I meant." "What can you mean?" asked Willis. "Rather, what mean _you_ by going to such places?" retorted Charles; "why, it is against your oath." "My oath! what oath?" "There's not an oath now; but there was an oath till lately," said Reding; "and we still make a very solemn engagement. Don't you recollect your matriculation at the Vice-Chancellor's, and what oaths and declarations you made?" "I don't know what I made: my tutor told me nothing about it. I signed a book or two." "You did more," said Reding. "I was told most carefully. You solemnly engaged to keep the statutes; and one statute is, not to go into any dissenting chapel or meeting whatever." "Catholics are not Dissenters," said Willis. "Oh, don't speak so," said Charles; "you know it's meant to include them. The statute wishes us to keep from all places of worship whatever but our own." "But it is an illegal declaration or vow," said Willis, "and so not binding." "Where did you find that get-off?" said Charles; "the priest put that into your head." "I don't know the priest; I never spoke a word to him," answered Willis. "Well, any how, it's not your own answer," said Reding; "and does not help you. I am no casuist; but if it is an illegal engagement you should not continue to enjoy the benefit of it." "What benefit?" "Your cap and gown; a university education; the chance of a scholarship or fellowship. Give up these, and then plead, if you will, and lawfully, that you are quit of your engagement; but don't sail under false colours: don't take the benefit and break the stipulation." "You take it too seriously; there are half a hundred statutes _you_ don't keep, any more than I. You are most inconsistent." "Well, if we don't keep them," said Charles, "I suppose it is in points where the authorities don't enforce them; for instance, they don't mean us to dress in brown, though the statutes order it." "But they _do_ mean to keep you from walking down High Street in beaver," answered Willis; "for the Proctors march up and down, and send you back, if they catch you." "But _this_ is a different matter," said Reding, changing his ground; "this is a matter of religion. It can't be right to go to strange places of worship or meetings." "Why," said Willis, "if we are one Church with the Roman Catholics, I can't make out for the life of me how it's wrong for us to go to them or them to us." "I'm no divine, I don't understand what is meant by one Church," said Charles; "but I know well that there's not a bishop, not a clergyman, not a sober churchman in the land but would give it against you. It's a sheer absurdity." "Don't talk in that way," answered Willis, "please don't. I feel all my heart drawn to the Catholic worship; our own service is so cold." "That's just what every stiff Dissenter says," answered Charles; "every poor cottager, too, who knows no better, and goes after the Methodists--after her dear Mr. Spoutaway or the preaching cobbler. _She_ says (I have heard them), 'Oh, sir, I suppose we ought to go where we get most good. Mr. So-and-so goes to my heart--he goes through me.'" Willis laughed; "Well, not a bad reason, as times go, _I_ think," said he: "poor souls, what better means of judging have they? how can you hope they will like 'the Scripture moveth us'? Really you are making too much of it. This is only the second time I have been there, and, I tell you in earnest, I find my mind filled with awe and devotion there; as I think you would too. I really am better for it; I cannot pray in church; there's a bad smell there, and the pews hide everything; I can't see through a deal board. But here, when I went in, I found all still, and calm, the space open, and, in the twilight, the Tabernacle just visible, pointed out by the lamp." Charles looked very uncomfortable. "Really, Willis," he said, "I don't know what to say to you. Heaven forbid that I should speak against the Roman Catholics; I know nothing about them. But _this_ I know, that you are not a Roman Catholic, and have no business there. If they have such sacred things among them as those you allude to, still these are not yours; you are an intruder. I know nothing about it; I don't like to give a judgment, I am sure. But it's a tampering with sacred things; running here and there, touching and tasting, taking up, putting down. I don't like it," he added, with vehemence; "it's taking liberties with God." "Oh, my dear Reding, please don't speak so very severely," said poor Willis; "now what have I done more than you would do yourself, were you in France or Italy? Do you mean to say you wouldn't enter the churches abroad?" "I will only decide about what is before me," answered Reding; "when I go abroad, then will be the time to think about your question. It is quite enough to know what we ought to do at the moment, and I am clear you have been doing wrong. How did you find your way there?" "White took me." "Then there is one man in the world more thoughtless than you: do many of the gownsmen go there?" "Not that I know of; one or two have gone from curiosity; there is no practice of going, at least this is what I am told." "Well," said Charles, "you must promise me you will not go again. Come, we won't part till you do." "That is too much," said Willis, gently; then, disengaging his arm from Reding's, he suddenly darted away from him, saying, "Good-bye, good-bye; to our next merry meeting--_au revoir_." There was no help for it. Charles walked slowly home, saying to himself: "What if, after all, the Roman Catholic Church is the true Church? I wish I knew what to believe; no one will tell me what to believe; I am so left to myself." Then he thought: "I suppose I know quite enough for practice--more than I _do_ practise; and I ought surely to be contented and thankful." CHAPTER XII. Charles was an affectionate son, and the Long Vacation passed very happily at home. He was up early, and read steadily till luncheon, and then he was at the service of his father, mother, and sisters for the rest of the day. He loved the calm, quiet country; he loved the monotonous flow of time, when each day is like the other; and, after the excitement of Oxford, the secluded parsonage was like a haven beyond the tossing of the waves. The whirl of opinions and perplexities which had encircled him at Oxford now were like the distant sound of the ocean--they reminded him of his present security. The undulating meadows, the green lanes, the open heath, the common with its wide-spreading dusky elms, the high timber which fringed the level path from village to village, ever and anon broken and thrown into groups, or losing itself in copses--even the gate, and the stile, and the turnpike-road had the charm, not of novelty, but of long familiar use; they had the poetry of many recollections. Nor was the dilapidated, deformed church, with its outside staircases, its unsightly galleries, its wide intruded windows, its uncouth pews, its low nunting table, its forlorn vestry, and its damp earthy smell, without its pleasant associations to the inner man; for there it was that for many a year, Sunday after Sunday, he had heard his dear father read and preach; there were the old monuments, with Latin inscriptions and strange devices, the black boards with white letters, the Resurgams and grinning skulls, the fire-buckets, the faded militia-colours, and, almost as much a fixture, the old clerk, with a Welsh wig over his ears, shouting the responses out of place--which had arrested his imagination, and awed him when a child. And then there was his home itself; its well-known rooms, its pleasant routine, its order, and its comfort--an old and true friend, the dearer to him because he had made new ones. "Where I shall be in time to come I know not," he said to himself; "I am but a boy; many things which I have not a dream of, which my imagination cannot compass, may come on me before I die--if I live; but here at least, and now, I am happy, and I will enjoy my happiness. Some say that school is the pleasantest time of one's life; this does not exclude college. I suppose care is what makes life so wearing. At present I have no care, no responsibility; I suppose I shall feel a little when I go up for my degree. Care is a terrible thing; I have had a little of it at times at school. What a strange thing to fancy, I shall be one day twenty-five or thirty! How the weeks are flying by! the Vacation will soon be over. Oh, I am so happy, it quite makes me afraid. Yet I shall have strength for my day." Sometimes, however, his thoughts took a sadder turn, and he anticipated the future more vividly than he enjoyed the present. Mr. Malcolm had come to see them, after an absence from the parsonage for several years: his visit was a great pleasure to Mr. Reding, and not much less to himself, to whom a green home and a family circle were agreeable sights, after his bachelor-life at college. He had been a great favourite with Charles and his sisters as children, though now his popularity with them for the most part rested on the memory of the past. When he told them amusing stories, or allowed them to climb his knee and take off his spectacles, he did all that was necessary to gain their childish hearts; more is necessary to conciliate the affection of young men and women; and thus it is not surprising that he lived in their minds principally by prescription. He neither knew this, nor would have thought much about it if he had; for, like many persons of advancing years, he made himself very much his own centre, did not care to enter into the minds of others, did not consult for them, or find his happiness in them. He was kind and friendly to the young people, as he would be kind to a canary-bird or a lap-dog; it was a sort of external love; and, though they got on capitally with him, they did not miss him when gone, nor would have been much troubled to know that he was never to come again. Charles drove him about the country, stamped his letters, secured him his newspapers from the neighbouring town, and listened to his stories about Oxford and Oxford men. He really liked him, and wished to please him; but, as to consulting him in any serious matter, or going to him for comfort in affliction, he would as soon have thought of betaking him to Dan the pedlar, or old Isaac who played the Sunday bassoon. "How have your peaches been this year, Malcolm?" said Mr. Reding one day after dinner to his guest. "You ought to know that we have no peaches in Oxford," answered Mr. Malcolm. "My memory plays me false, then: I had a vision of, at least, October peaches on one occasion, and fine ones too." "Ah, you mean at old Tom Spindle's, the jockey's," answered Mr. Malcolm; "it's true, he had a bit of a brick wall, and was proud of it. But peaches come when there is no one in Oxford to eat them; so either the tree, or at least the fruit, is a great rarity there. Oxford wasn't so empty once; you have old mulberry-trees there in record of better days." "At that time, too," said Charles, "I suppose, the more expensive fruits were not cultivated. Mulberries are the witness, not only of a full college, but of simple tastes." "Charles is secretly cutting at our hothouse here," said Mr. Reding; "as if our first father did not prefer fruits and flowers to beef and mutton." "No, indeed," said Charles, "I think peaches capital things; and as to flowers, I am even too fond of scents." "Charles has some theory, then, about scents, I'll be bound," said his father; "I never knew a boy who so placed his likings and dislikings on fancies. He began to eat olives directly he read the OEdipus of Sophocles; and, I verily believe, will soon give up oranges from his dislike to King William." "Every one does so," said Charles: "who would not be in the fashion? There's Aunt Kitty, she calls a bonnet, 'a sweet' one year, which makes her 'a perfect fright' the next." "You're right, papa, in this instance," said his mother; "I know he has some good reason, though I never can recollect it, why he smells a rose, or distils lavender. What is it, my dear Mary?" "'Relics ye are of Eden's bowers,'" said she. "Why, sir, that was precisely your own reason just now," said Charles to his father. "There's more than that," said Mrs. Reding, "if I knew what it was." "He thinks the scent more intellectual than the other senses," said Mary, smiling. "Such a boy for paradoxes!" said his mother. "Well, so it is in a certain way," said Charles, "but I can't explain. Sounds and scents are more ethereal, less material; they have no shape--like the angels." Mr. Malcolm laughed. "Well, I grant it, Charles," he said; "they are length without breadth!" "Did you ever hear the like?" said Mrs. Reding, laughing too; "don't encourage him, Mr. Malcolm; you are worse than he. Angels length without breadth!" "They pass from place to place, they come, they go," continued Mr. Malcolm. "They conjure up the past so vividly," said Charles. "But sounds surely more than scents," said Mr. Malcolm. "Pardon me; the reverse as _I_ think," answered Charles. "That _is_ a paradox, Charles," said Mr. Malcolm; "the smell of roast-beef never went further than to remind a man of dinner; but sounds are pathetic and inspiring." "Well, sir, but think of this," said Charles, "scents are complete in themselves, yet do not consist of parts. Think how very distinct the smell of a rose is from a pink, a pink from a sweet-pea, a sweet-pea from a stock, a stock from lilac, lilac from lavender, lavender from jasmine, jasmine from honeysuckle, honeysuckle from hawthorn, hawthorn from hyacinth, hyacinth"---- "Spare us," interrupted Mr. Malcolm; "you are going through the index of Loudon!" "And these are only the scents of flowers; how different flowers smell from fruits, fruits from spices, spices from roast-beef or pork-cutlets, and so on. Now, what I was coming to is this--these scents are perfectly distinct from each other, and _sui generis_; they never can be confused; yet each is communicated to the apprehension in an instant. Sights take up a great space, a tune is a succession of sounds; but scents are at once specific and complete, yet indivisible. Who can halve a scent? they need neither time nor space; thus they are immaterial or spiritual." "Charles hasn't been to Oxford for nothing," said his mother, laughing and looking at Mary; "this is what I call chopping logic!" "Well done, Charles,"

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will choose time. I think the University goes down just when Oxford begins to be most beautiful. The walks and meadows are so fragrant and bright now, the hay half carried, and the short new grass appearing." "Reding ought to live here all through the Long," said Tenby: "does any one live through the Vacation, sir, in Oxford?" "Do you mean they die before the end of it, Mr. Tenby?" asked Vincent. "It can't be denied," he continued, "that many, like Mr. Reding, think it a most pleasant time. _I_ am fond of Oxford; but it is not my _habitat_ out of term-time." "Well, I think I should like to make it so," said Charles, "but, I suppose, undergraduates are not allowed." Mr. Vincent answered with more than necessary gravity, "No;" it rested with the Principal; but he conceived that he would not consent to it. Vincent added that certainly there _were_ parties who remained in Oxford through the Long Vacation. It was said mysteriously. Charles answered that, if it was against college rules, there was no help for it; else, were he reading for his degree, he should like nothing better than to pass the Long Vacation in Oxford, if he might judge by the pleasantness of the last ten days. "That is a compliment, Mr. Reding, to your company," said Vincent. At this moment the door opened, and in came the manciple with the dinner paper, which Mr. Vincent had formally to run his eye over. "Watkins," he said, giving it back to him, "I almost think to-day is one of the Fasts of the Church. Go and look, Watkins, and bring me word." The astonished manciple, who had never been sent on such a commission in his whole career before, hastened out of the room, to task his wits how best to fulfil it. The question seemed to strike the company as forcibly, for there was a sudden silence, which was succeeded by a shuffling of feet and a leave-taking; as if, though they had secured their ham and mutton at breakfast, they did not like to risk their dinner. Watkins returned sooner than could have been expected. He said that Mr. Vincent was right; to-day he had found was "the feast of the Apostles." "The Vigil of St. Peter, you mean, Watkins," said Mr. Vincent; "I thought so. Then let us have a plain beefsteak and a saddle of mutton; no Portugal onions, Watkins, or currant-jelly; and some simple pudding, Charlotte pudding, Watkins--that will do." Watkins vanished. By this time, Charles found himself alone with the college authority; who began to speak to him in a more confidential tone. "Mr. Reding," said he, "I did not like to question you before the others, but I conceive you had no particular _meaning_ in your praise of Oxford in the Long Vacation? In the mouths of some it would have been suspicious." Charles was all surprise. "To tell the truth, Mr. Reding, as things stand," he proceeded, "it is often a mark of _party_, this residence in the Vacation; though, of course, there is nothing in the _thing_ itself but what is perfectly natural and right." Charles was all attention. "My good sir," the tutor proceeded, "avoid parties; be sure to avoid party. You are young in your career among us. I always feel anxious about young men of talent; there is the greatest danger of the talent of the University being absorbed in party." Reding expressed a hope that nothing he had done had given cause to his tutor's remark. "No," replied Mr. Vincent, "no;" yet with some slight hesitation; "no, I don't know that it has. But I have thought some of your remarks and questions at lecture were like a person pushing things _too far_, and wishing to form a _system_." Charles was so much taken aback by the charge, that the unexplained mystery of the Long Vacation went out of his head. He said he was "very sorry," and "obliged;" and tried to recollect what he could have said to give ground to Mr. Vincent's remark. Not being able at the moment to recollect, he went on. "I assure you, sir, I know so little of parties in the place, that I hardly know their leaders. I have heard persons mentioned, but, if I tried, I think I should, in some cases, mismatch names and opinions." "I believe it," said Vincent; "but you are young; I am cautioning you against _tendencies_. You may suddenly find yourself absorbed before you know where you are." Charles thought this a good opportunity of asking some questions in detail, about points which puzzled him. He asked whether Dr. Brownside was considered a safe divine to follow. "I hold, d'ye see," answered Vincent, "that all errors are counterfeits of truth. Clever men say true things, Mr. Reding, true in their substance, but," sinking his voice to a whisper, "they go _too far_. It might even be shown that all sects are in one sense but parts of the Catholic Church. I don't say true parts, that is a further question; but they _embody_ great _principles_. The Quakers represent the principle of simplicity and evangelical poverty; they even have a dress of their own, like monks. The Independents represent the rights of the laity; the Wesleyans cherish the devotional principle; the Irvingites, the symbolical and mystical; the High Church party, the principle of obedience; the Liberals are the guardians of reason. No party, then, I conceive, is entirely right or entirely wrong. As to Dr. Brownside, there certainly have been various opinions entertained about his divinity; still, he is an able man, and I think you will gain _good_, gain _good_ from his teaching. But mind, I don't _recommend_ him; yet I respect him, and I consider that he says many things very well worth your attention. I would advise you, then, to accept the _good_ which his sermons offer, without committing yourself to the _bad_. That, depend upon it, Mr. Reding, is the golden though the obvious rule in these matters." Charles said, in answer, that Mr. Vincent was overrating his powers; that he had to learn before he could judge; and that he wished very much to know whether Vincent could recommend him any book, in which he might see at once _what_ the true Church-of-England doctrine was on a number of points which perplexed him. Mr. Vincent replied, he must be on his guard against dissipating his mind with such reading, at a time when his University duties had a definite claim upon him. He ought to avoid all controversies of the day, all authors of the day. He would advise him to read _no_ living authors. "Read dead authors alone," he continued; "dead authors are safe. Our great divines," and he stood upright, "were models; 'there were giants on the earth in those days,' as King George the Third had once said of them to Dr. Johnson. They had that depth, and power, and gravity, and fulness, and erudition; and they were so racy, always racy, and what might be called English. They had that richness, too, such a mine of thought, such a world of opinion, such activity of mind, such inexhaustible resource, such diversity, too. Then they were so eloquent; the majestic Hooker, the imaginative Taylor, the brilliant Hall, the learning of Barrow, the strong sense of South, the keen logic of Chillingworth, good, honest old Burnet," etc., etc. There did not seem much reason why he should stop at one moment more than another; at length, however, he did stop. It was prose, but it was pleasant prose to Charles; he knew just enough about these writers to feel interested in hearing them talked about, and to him Vincent seemed to be saying a good deal, when in fact he was saying very little. When he stopped, Charles said he believed that there were persons in the University who were promoting the study of these authors. Mr. Vincent looked grave. "It is true," he said; "but, my young friend, I have already hinted to you that indifferent things are perverted to the purposes of _party_. At this moment the names of some of our greatest divines are little better than a watchword by which the opinions of living individuals are signified." "Which opinions, I suppose," Charles answered, "are not to be found in those authors." "I'll not say that," said Mr. Vincent. "I have the greatest respect for the individuals in question, and I am not denying that they have done good to our Church by drawing attention in this lax day to the old Church-of-England divinity. But it is one thing to agree with these gentlemen; another," laying his hand on Charles's shoulder, "another to belong to their party. Do not make man your master; get good from all; think well of all persons, and you will be a wise man." Reding inquired, with some timidity, if this was not something like what Dr. Brownside had said in the University pulpit; but perhaps the latter advocated a toleration of opinions in a different sense? Mr. Vincent answered rather shortly, that he had not heard Dr. Brownside's sermon; but, for himself, he had been speaking only of persons in our own communion. "Our Church," he said, "admitted of great liberty of thought within her pale. Even our greatest divines differed from each other in many respects; nay, Bishop Taylor differed from himself. It was a great principle in the English Church. Her true children agree to differ. In truth," he continued, "there is that robust, masculine, noble independence in the English mind, which refuses to be tied down to artificial shapes, but is like, I will say, some great and beautiful production of nature,--a tree, which is rich in foliage and fantastic in limb, no sickly denizen of the hothouse, or helpless dependent of the garden wall, but in careless magnificence sheds its fruits upon the free earth, for the bird of the air and the beast of the field, and all sorts of cattle, to eat thereof and rejoice." When Charles came away, he tried to think what he had gained by his conversation with Mr. Vincent; not exactly what he had wanted, some practical rules to guide his mind and keep him steady; but still some useful hints. He had already been averse to parties, and offended at what he saw of individuals attached to them. Vincent had confirmed him in his resolution to keep aloof from them, and to attend to his duties in the place. He felt pleased to have had this talk with him; but what could he mean by suspecting a tendency in himself to push things too far, and thereby to implicate himself in party? He was obliged to resign himself to ignorance on the subject, and to be content with keeping a watch over himself in future. CHAPTER XI. No opportunity has occurred of informing the reader that, during the last week or two, Charles had accidentally been a good deal thrown across Willis, the _umbra_ of White at Bateman's breakfast-party. He had liked his looks on that occasion, when he was dumb; he did not like him so much when he heard him talk; still he could not help being interested in him, and not the least for this reason, that Willis seemed to have taken a great fancy to himself. He certainly did court Charles, and seemed anxious to stand well with him. Charles, however, did not like his mode of talking better than he did White's; and when he first saw his rooms, there was much in them which shocked both his good sense and his religious principles. A large ivory crucifix, in a glass case, was a conspicuous ornament between the windows; an engraving, representing the Blessed Trinity, as is usual in Catholic countries, hung over the fireplace, and a picture of the Madonna and St. Dominic was opposite to it. On the mantelpiece were a rosary, a thuribulum, and other tokens of Catholicism, of which Charles did not know the uses; a missal, ritual, and some Catholic tracts, lay on the table; and, as he happened to come on Willis unexpectedly, he found him sitting in a vestment more like a cassock than a reading-gown, and engaged upon some portion of the Breviary. Virgil and Sophocles, Herodotus and Cicero seemed, as impure pagans, to have hid themselves in corners, or flitted away, before the awful presence of the Ancient Church. Charles had taken upon himself to protest against some of these singularities, but without success. On the evening before his departure for the country he had occasion to go towards Folly Bridge to pay a bill, when he was startled, as he passed what he had ever taken for a dissenting chapel, to see Willis come out of it. He hardly could believe he saw correctly; he knew, indeed, that Willis had been detained in Oxford, as he had been himself; but what had compelled him to a visit so extraordinary as that which he had just made, Charles had no means of determining. "Willis!" he cried, as he stopped. Willis coloured, and tried to look easy. "Do come a few paces with me," said Charles. "What in the world has taken you there? Is it not a dissenting meeting?" "Dissenting meeting!" cried Willis, surprised and offended in his turn: "what on earth could make you think I would go to a dissenting meeting?" "Well, I beg your pardon," said Charles; "I recollect now: it's the exhibition room. However, _once_ it _was_ a chapel: that's my mistake. Isn't it what is called 'the Old Methodist Chapel?' I never was there; they showed there the _Dio-astro-doxon_, so I think they called it." Charles talked on, to cover his own mistake, for he was ashamed of the charge he had made. Willis did not know whether he was in jest or earnest. "Reding," he said, "don't go on; you offend me." "Well, what is it?" said Charles. "You know well enough," answered Willis, "though you wish to annoy me." "I don't indeed." "It's the Catholic church," said Willis. Reding was silent a moment; then he said, "Well, I don't think you have mended the matter; it _is_ a dissenting meeting, call it what you will, though not the kind of one I meant." "What can you mean?" asked Willis. "Rather, what mean _you_ by going to such places?" retorted Charles; "why, it is against your oath." "My oath! what oath?" "There's not an oath now; but there was an oath till lately," said Reding; "and we still make a very solemn engagement. Don't you recollect your matriculation at the Vice-Chancellor's, and what oaths and declarations you made?" "I don't know what I made: my tutor told me nothing about it. I signed a book or two." "You did more," said Reding. "I was told most carefully. You solemnly engaged to keep the statutes; and one statute is, not to go into any dissenting chapel or meeting whatever." "Catholics are not Dissenters," said Willis. "Oh, don't speak so," said Charles; "you know it's meant to include them. The statute wishes us to keep from all places of worship whatever but our own." "But it is an illegal declaration or vow," said Willis, "and so not binding." "Where did you find that get-off?" said Charles; "the priest put that into your head." "I don't know the priest; I never spoke a word to him," answered Willis. "Well, any how, it's not your own answer," said Reding; "and does not help you. I am no casuist; but if it is an illegal engagement you should not continue to enjoy the benefit of it." "What benefit?" "Your cap and gown; a university education; the chance of a scholarship or fellowship. Give up these, and then plead, if you will, and lawfully, that you are quit of your engagement; but don't sail under false colours: don't take the benefit and break the stipulation." "You take it too seriously; there are half a hundred statutes _you_ don't keep, any more than I. You are most inconsistent." "Well, if we don't keep them," said Charles, "I suppose it is in points where the authorities don't enforce them; for instance, they don't mean us to dress in brown, though the statutes order it." "But they _do_ mean to keep you from walking down High Street in beaver," answered Willis; "for the Proctors march up and down, and send you back, if they catch you." "But _this_ is a different matter," said Reding, changing his ground; "this is a matter of religion. It can't be right to go to strange places of worship or meetings." "Why," said Willis, "if we are one Church with the Roman Catholics, I can't make out for the life of me how it's wrong for us to go to them or them to us." "I'm no divine, I don't understand what is meant by one Church," said Charles; "but I know well that there's not a bishop, not a clergyman, not a sober churchman in the land but would give it against you. It's a sheer absurdity." "Don't talk in that way," answered Willis, "please don't. I feel all my heart drawn to the Catholic worship; our own service is so cold." "That's just what every stiff Dissenter says," answered Charles; "every poor cottager, too, who knows no better, and goes after the Methodists--after her dear Mr. Spoutaway or the preaching cobbler. _She_ says (I have heard them), 'Oh, sir, I suppose we ought to go where we get most good. Mr. So-and-so goes to my heart--he goes through me.'" Willis laughed; "Well, not a bad reason, as times go, _I_ think," said he: "poor souls, what better means of judging have they? how can you hope they will like 'the Scripture moveth us'? Really you are making too much of it. This is only the second time I have been there, and, I tell you in earnest, I find my mind filled with awe and devotion there; as I think you would too. I really am better for it; I cannot pray in church; there's a bad smell there, and the pews hide everything; I can't see through a deal board. But here, when I went in, I found all still, and calm, the space open, and, in the twilight, the Tabernacle just visible, pointed out by the lamp." Charles looked very uncomfortable. "Really, Willis," he said, "I don't know what to say to you. Heaven forbid that I should speak against the Roman Catholics; I know nothing about them. But _this_ I know, that you are not a Roman Catholic, and have no business there. If they have such sacred things among them as those you allude to, still these are not yours; you are an intruder. I know nothing about it; I don't like to give a judgment, I am sure. But it's a tampering with sacred things; running here and there, touching and tasting, taking up, putting down. I don't like it," he added, with vehemence; "it's taking liberties with God." "Oh, my dear Reding, please don't speak so very severely," said poor Willis; "now what have I done more than you would do yourself, were you in France or Italy? Do you mean to say you wouldn't enter the churches abroad?" "I will only decide about what is before me," answered Reding; "when I go abroad, then will be the time to think about your question. It is quite enough to know what we ought to do at the moment, and I am clear you have been doing wrong. How did you find your way there?" "White took me." "Then there is one man in the world more thoughtless than you: do many of the gownsmen go there?" "Not that I know of; one or two have gone from curiosity; there is no practice of going, at least this is what I am told." "Well," said Charles, "you must promise me you will not go again. Come, we won't part till you do." "That is too much," said Willis, gently; then, disengaging his arm from Reding's, he suddenly darted away from him, saying, "Good-bye, good-bye; to our next merry meeting--_au revoir_." There was no help for it. Charles walked slowly home, saying to himself: "What if, after all, the Roman Catholic Church is the true Church? I wish I knew what to believe; no one will tell me what to believe; I am so left to myself." Then he thought: "I suppose I know quite enough for practice--more than I _do_ practise; and I ought surely to be contented and thankful." CHAPTER XII. Charles was an affectionate son, and the Long Vacation passed very happily at home. He was up early, and read steadily till luncheon, and then he was at the service of his father, mother, and sisters for the rest of the day. He loved the calm, quiet country; he loved the monotonous flow of time, when each day is like the other; and, after the excitement of Oxford, the secluded parsonage was like a haven beyond the tossing of the waves. The whirl of opinions and perplexities which had encircled him at Oxford now were like the distant sound of the ocean--they reminded him of his present security. The undulating meadows, the green lanes, the open heath, the common with its wide-spreading dusky elms, the high timber which fringed the level path from village to village, ever and anon broken and thrown into groups, or losing itself in copses--even the gate, and the stile, and the turnpike-road had the charm, not of novelty, but of long familiar use; they had the poetry of many recollections. Nor was the dilapidated, deformed church, with its outside staircases, its unsightly galleries, its wide intruded windows, its uncouth pews, its low nunting table, its forlorn vestry, and its damp earthy smell, without its pleasant associations to the inner man; for there it was that for many a year, Sunday after Sunday, he had heard his dear father read and preach; there were the old monuments, with Latin inscriptions and strange devices, the black boards with white letters, the Resurgams and grinning skulls, the fire-buckets, the faded militia-colours, and, almost as much a fixture, the old clerk, with a Welsh wig over his ears, shouting the responses out of place--which had arrested his imagination, and awed him when a child. And then there was his home itself; its well-known rooms, its pleasant routine, its order, and its comfort--an old and true friend, the dearer to him because he had made new ones. "Where I shall be in time to come I know not," he said to himself; "I am but a boy; many things which I have not a dream of, which my imagination cannot compass, may come on me before I die--if I live; but here at least, and now, I am happy, and I will enjoy my happiness. Some say that school is the pleasantest time of one's life; this does not exclude college. I suppose care is what makes life so wearing. At present I have no care, no responsibility; I suppose I shall feel a little when I go up for my degree. Care is a terrible thing; I have had a little of it at times at school. What a strange thing to fancy, I shall be one day twenty-five or thirty! How the weeks are flying by! the Vacation will soon be over. Oh, I am so happy, it quite makes me afraid. Yet I shall have strength for my day." Sometimes, however, his thoughts took a sadder turn, and he anticipated the future more vividly than he enjoyed the present. Mr. Malcolm had come to see them, after an absence from the parsonage for several years: his visit was a great pleasure to Mr. Reding, and not much less to himself, to whom a green home and a family circle were agreeable sights, after his bachelor-life at college. He had been a great favourite with Charles and his sisters as children, though now his popularity with them for the most part rested on the memory of the past. When he told them amusing stories, or allowed them to climb his knee and take off his spectacles, he did all that was necessary to gain their childish hearts; more is necessary to conciliate the affection of young men and women; and thus it is not surprising that he lived in their minds principally by prescription. He neither knew this, nor would have thought much about it if he had; for, like many persons of advancing years, he made himself very much his own centre, did not care to enter into the minds of others, did not consult for them, or find his happiness in them. He was kind and friendly to the young people, as he would be kind to a canary-bird or a lap-dog; it was a sort of external love; and, though they got on capitally with him, they did not miss him when gone, nor would have been much troubled to know that he was never to come again. Charles drove him about the country, stamped his letters, secured him his newspapers from the neighbouring town, and listened to his stories about Oxford and Oxford men. He really liked him, and wished to please him; but, as to consulting him in any serious matter, or going to him for comfort in affliction, he would as soon have thought of betaking him to Dan the pedlar, or old Isaac who played the Sunday bassoon. "How have your peaches been this year, Malcolm?" said Mr. Reding one day after dinner to his guest. "You ought to know that we have no peaches in Oxford," answered Mr. Malcolm. "My memory plays me false, then: I had a vision of, at least, October peaches on one occasion, and fine ones too." "Ah, you mean at old Tom Spindle's, the jockey's," answered Mr. Malcolm; "it's true, he had a bit of a brick wall, and was proud of it. But peaches come when there is no one in Oxford to eat them; so either the tree, or at least the fruit, is a great rarity there. Oxford wasn't so empty once; you have old mulberry-trees there in record of better days." "At that time, too," said Charles, "I suppose, the more expensive fruits were not cultivated. Mulberries are the witness, not only of a full college, but of simple tastes." "Charles is secretly cutting at our hothouse here," said Mr. Reding; "as if our first father did not prefer fruits and flowers to beef and mutton." "No, indeed," said Charles, "I think peaches capital things; and as to flowers, I am even too fond of scents." "Charles has some theory, then, about scents, I'll be bound," said his father; "I never knew a boy who so placed his likings and dislikings on fancies. He began to eat olives directly he read the OEdipus of Sophocles; and, I verily believe, will soon give up oranges from his dislike to King William." "Every one does so," said Charles: "who would not be in the fashion? There's Aunt Kitty, she calls a bonnet, 'a sweet' one year, which makes her 'a perfect fright' the next." "You're right, papa, in this instance," said his mother; "I know he has some good reason, though I never can recollect it, why he smells a rose, or distils lavender. What is it, my dear Mary?" "'Relics ye are of Eden's bowers,'" said she. "Why, sir, that was precisely your own reason just now," said Charles to his father. "There's more than that," said Mrs. Reding, "if I knew what it was." "He thinks the scent more intellectual than the other senses," said Mary, smiling. "Such a boy for paradoxes!" said his mother. "Well, so it is in a certain way," said Charles, "but I can't explain. Sounds and scents are more ethereal, less material; they have no shape--like the angels." Mr. Malcolm laughed. "Well, I grant it, Charles," he said; "they are length without breadth!" "Did you ever hear the like?" said Mrs. Reding, laughing too; "don't encourage him, Mr. Malcolm; you are worse than he. Angels length without breadth!" "They pass from place to place, they come, they go," continued Mr. Malcolm. "They conjure up the past so vividly," said Charles. "But sounds surely more than scents," said Mr. Malcolm. "Pardon me; the reverse as _I_ think," answered Charles. "That _is_ a paradox, Charles," said Mr. Malcolm; "the smell of roast-beef never went further than to remind a man of dinner; but sounds are pathetic and inspiring." "Well, sir, but think of this," said Charles, "scents are complete in themselves, yet do not consist of parts. Think how very distinct the smell of a rose is from a pink, a pink from a sweet-pea, a sweet-pea from a stock, a stock from lilac, lilac from lavender, lavender from jasmine, jasmine from honeysuckle, honeysuckle from hawthorn, hawthorn from hyacinth, hyacinth"---- "Spare us," interrupted Mr. Malcolm; "you are going through the index of Loudon!" "And these are only the scents of flowers; how different flowers smell from fruits, fruits from spices, spices from roast-beef or pork-cutlets, and so on. Now, what I was coming to is this--these scents are perfectly distinct from each other, and _sui generis_; they never can be confused; yet each is communicated to the apprehension in an instant. Sights take up a great space, a tune is a succession of sounds; but scents are at once specific and complete, yet indivisible. Who can halve a scent? they need neither time nor space; thus they are immaterial or spiritual." "Charles hasn't been to Oxford for nothing," said his mother, laughing and looking at Mary; "this is what I call chopping logic!" "Well done, Charles,"

helping

How many times the word 'helping' appears in the text?

will choose time. I think the University goes down just when Oxford begins to be most beautiful. The walks and meadows are so fragrant and bright now, the hay half carried, and the short new grass appearing." "Reding ought to live here all through the Long," said Tenby: "does any one live through the Vacation, sir, in Oxford?" "Do you mean they die before the end of it, Mr. Tenby?" asked Vincent. "It can't be denied," he continued, "that many, like Mr. Reding, think it a most pleasant time. _I_ am fond of Oxford; but it is not my _habitat_ out of term-time." "Well, I think I should like to make it so," said Charles, "but, I suppose, undergraduates are not allowed." Mr. Vincent answered with more than necessary gravity, "No;" it rested with the Principal; but he conceived that he would not consent to it. Vincent added that certainly there _were_ parties who remained in Oxford through the Long Vacation. It was said mysteriously. Charles answered that, if it was against college rules, there was no help for it; else, were he reading for his degree, he should like nothing better than to pass the Long Vacation in Oxford, if he might judge by the pleasantness of the last ten days. "That is a compliment, Mr. Reding, to your company," said Vincent. At this moment the door opened, and in came the manciple with the dinner paper, which Mr. Vincent had formally to run his eye over. "Watkins," he said, giving it back to him, "I almost think to-day is one of the Fasts of the Church. Go and look, Watkins, and bring me word." The astonished manciple, who had never been sent on such a commission in his whole career before, hastened out of the room, to task his wits how best to fulfil it. The question seemed to strike the company as forcibly, for there was a sudden silence, which was succeeded by a shuffling of feet and a leave-taking; as if, though they had secured their ham and mutton at breakfast, they did not like to risk their dinner. Watkins returned sooner than could have been expected. He said that Mr. Vincent was right; to-day he had found was "the feast of the Apostles." "The Vigil of St. Peter, you mean, Watkins," said Mr. Vincent; "I thought so. Then let us have a plain beefsteak and a saddle of mutton; no Portugal onions, Watkins, or currant-jelly; and some simple pudding, Charlotte pudding, Watkins--that will do." Watkins vanished. By this time, Charles found himself alone with the college authority; who began to speak to him in a more confidential tone. "Mr. Reding," said he, "I did not like to question you before the others, but I conceive you had no particular _meaning_ in your praise of Oxford in the Long Vacation? In the mouths of some it would have been suspicious." Charles was all surprise. "To tell the truth, Mr. Reding, as things stand," he proceeded, "it is often a mark of _party_, this residence in the Vacation; though, of course, there is nothing in the _thing_ itself but what is perfectly natural and right." Charles was all attention. "My good sir," the tutor proceeded, "avoid parties; be sure to avoid party. You are young in your career among us. I always feel anxious about young men of talent; there is the greatest danger of the talent of the University being absorbed in party." Reding expressed a hope that nothing he had done had given cause to his tutor's remark. "No," replied Mr. Vincent, "no;" yet with some slight hesitation; "no, I don't know that it has. But I have thought some of your remarks and questions at lecture were like a person pushing things _too far_, and wishing to form a _system_." Charles was so much taken aback by the charge, that the unexplained mystery of the Long Vacation went out of his head. He said he was "very sorry," and "obliged;" and tried to recollect what he could have said to give ground to Mr. Vincent's remark. Not being able at the moment to recollect, he went on. "I assure you, sir, I know so little of parties in the place, that I hardly know their leaders. I have heard persons mentioned, but, if I tried, I think I should, in some cases, mismatch names and opinions." "I believe it," said Vincent; "but you are young; I am cautioning you against _tendencies_. You may suddenly find yourself absorbed before you know where you are." Charles thought this a good opportunity of asking some questions in detail, about points which puzzled him. He asked whether Dr. Brownside was considered a safe divine to follow. "I hold, d'ye see," answered Vincent, "that all errors are counterfeits of truth. Clever men say true things, Mr. Reding, true in their substance, but," sinking his voice to a whisper, "they go _too far_. It might even be shown that all sects are in one sense but parts of the Catholic Church. I don't say true parts, that is a further question; but they _embody_ great _principles_. The Quakers represent the principle of simplicity and evangelical poverty; they even have a dress of their own, like monks. The Independents represent the rights of the laity; the Wesleyans cherish the devotional principle; the Irvingites, the symbolical and mystical; the High Church party, the principle of obedience; the Liberals are the guardians of reason. No party, then, I conceive, is entirely right or entirely wrong. As to Dr. Brownside, there certainly have been various opinions entertained about his divinity; still, he is an able man, and I think you will gain _good_, gain _good_ from his teaching. But mind, I don't _recommend_ him; yet I respect him, and I consider that he says many things very well worth your attention. I would advise you, then, to accept the _good_ which his sermons offer, without committing yourself to the _bad_. That, depend upon it, Mr. Reding, is the golden though the obvious rule in these matters." Charles said, in answer, that Mr. Vincent was overrating his powers; that he had to learn before he could judge; and that he wished very much to know whether Vincent could recommend him any book, in which he might see at once _what_ the true Church-of-England doctrine was on a number of points which perplexed him. Mr. Vincent replied, he must be on his guard against dissipating his mind with such reading, at a time when his University duties had a definite claim upon him. He ought to avoid all controversies of the day, all authors of the day. He would advise him to read _no_ living authors. "Read dead authors alone," he continued; "dead authors are safe. Our great divines," and he stood upright, "were models; 'there were giants on the earth in those days,' as King George the Third had once said of them to Dr. Johnson. They had that depth, and power, and gravity, and fulness, and erudition; and they were so racy, always racy, and what might be called English. They had that richness, too, such a mine of thought, such a world of opinion, such activity of mind, such inexhaustible resource, such diversity, too. Then they were so eloquent; the majestic Hooker, the imaginative Taylor, the brilliant Hall, the learning of Barrow, the strong sense of South, the keen logic of Chillingworth, good, honest old Burnet," etc., etc. There did not seem much reason why he should stop at one moment more than another; at length, however, he did stop. It was prose, but it was pleasant prose to Charles; he knew just enough about these writers to feel interested in hearing them talked about, and to him Vincent seemed to be saying a good deal, when in fact he was saying very little. When he stopped, Charles said he believed that there were persons in the University who were promoting the study of these authors. Mr. Vincent looked grave. "It is true," he said; "but, my young friend, I have already hinted to you that indifferent things are perverted to the purposes of _party_. At this moment the names of some of our greatest divines are little better than a watchword by which the opinions of living individuals are signified." "Which opinions, I suppose," Charles answered, "are not to be found in those authors." "I'll not say that," said Mr. Vincent. "I have the greatest respect for the individuals in question, and I am not denying that they have done good to our Church by drawing attention in this lax day to the old Church-of-England divinity. But it is one thing to agree with these gentlemen; another," laying his hand on Charles's shoulder, "another to belong to their party. Do not make man your master; get good from all; think well of all persons, and you will be a wise man." Reding inquired, with some timidity, if this was not something like what Dr. Brownside had said in the University pulpit; but perhaps the latter advocated a toleration of opinions in a different sense? Mr. Vincent answered rather shortly, that he had not heard Dr. Brownside's sermon; but, for himself, he had been speaking only of persons in our own communion. "Our Church," he said, "admitted of great liberty of thought within her pale. Even our greatest divines differed from each other in many respects; nay, Bishop Taylor differed from himself. It was a great principle in the English Church. Her true children agree to differ. In truth," he continued, "there is that robust, masculine, noble independence in the English mind, which refuses to be tied down to artificial shapes, but is like, I will say, some great and beautiful production of nature,--a tree, which is rich in foliage and fantastic in limb, no sickly denizen of the hothouse, or helpless dependent of the garden wall, but in careless magnificence sheds its fruits upon the free earth, for the bird of the air and the beast of the field, and all sorts of cattle, to eat thereof and rejoice." When Charles came away, he tried to think what he had gained by his conversation with Mr. Vincent; not exactly what he had wanted, some practical rules to guide his mind and keep him steady; but still some useful hints. He had already been averse to parties, and offended at what he saw of individuals attached to them. Vincent had confirmed him in his resolution to keep aloof from them, and to attend to his duties in the place. He felt pleased to have had this talk with him; but what could he mean by suspecting a tendency in himself to push things too far, and thereby to implicate himself in party? He was obliged to resign himself to ignorance on the subject, and to be content with keeping a watch over himself in future. CHAPTER XI. No opportunity has occurred of informing the reader that, during the last week or two, Charles had accidentally been a good deal thrown across Willis, the _umbra_ of White at Bateman's breakfast-party. He had liked his looks on that occasion, when he was dumb; he did not like him so much when he heard him talk; still he could not help being interested in him, and not the least for this reason, that Willis seemed to have taken a great fancy to himself. He certainly did court Charles, and seemed anxious to stand well with him. Charles, however, did not like his mode of talking better than he did White's; and when he first saw his rooms, there was much in them which shocked both his good sense and his religious principles. A large ivory crucifix, in a glass case, was a conspicuous ornament between the windows; an engraving, representing the Blessed Trinity, as is usual in Catholic countries, hung over the fireplace, and a picture of the Madonna and St. Dominic was opposite to it. On the mantelpiece were a rosary, a thuribulum, and other tokens of Catholicism, of which Charles did not know the uses; a missal, ritual, and some Catholic tracts, lay on the table; and, as he happened to come on Willis unexpectedly, he found him sitting in a vestment more like a cassock than a reading-gown, and engaged upon some portion of the Breviary. Virgil and Sophocles, Herodotus and Cicero seemed, as impure pagans, to have hid themselves in corners, or flitted away, before the awful presence of the Ancient Church. Charles had taken upon himself to protest against some of these singularities, but without success. On the evening before his departure for the country he had occasion to go towards Folly Bridge to pay a bill, when he was startled, as he passed what he had ever taken for a dissenting chapel, to see Willis come out of it. He hardly could believe he saw correctly; he knew, indeed, that Willis had been detained in Oxford, as he had been himself; but what had compelled him to a visit so extraordinary as that which he had just made, Charles had no means of determining. "Willis!" he cried, as he stopped. Willis coloured, and tried to look easy. "Do come a few paces with me," said Charles. "What in the world has taken you there? Is it not a dissenting meeting?" "Dissenting meeting!" cried Willis, surprised and offended in his turn: "what on earth could make you think I would go to a dissenting meeting?" "Well, I beg your pardon," said Charles; "I recollect now: it's the exhibition room. However, _once_ it _was_ a chapel: that's my mistake. Isn't it what is called 'the Old Methodist Chapel?' I never was there; they showed there the _Dio-astro-doxon_, so I think they called it." Charles talked on, to cover his own mistake, for he was ashamed of the charge he had made. Willis did not know whether he was in jest or earnest. "Reding," he said, "don't go on; you offend me." "Well, what is it?" said Charles. "You know well enough," answered Willis, "though you wish to annoy me." "I don't indeed." "It's the Catholic church," said Willis. Reding was silent a moment; then he said, "Well, I don't think you have mended the matter; it _is_ a dissenting meeting, call it what you will, though not the kind of one I meant." "What can you mean?" asked Willis. "Rather, what mean _you_ by going to such places?" retorted Charles; "why, it is against your oath." "My oath! what oath?" "There's not an oath now; but there was an oath till lately," said Reding; "and we still make a very solemn engagement. Don't you recollect your matriculation at the Vice-Chancellor's, and what oaths and declarations you made?" "I don't know what I made: my tutor told me nothing about it. I signed a book or two." "You did more," said Reding. "I was told most carefully. You solemnly engaged to keep the statutes; and one statute is, not to go into any dissenting chapel or meeting whatever." "Catholics are not Dissenters," said Willis. "Oh, don't speak so," said Charles; "you know it's meant to include them. The statute wishes us to keep from all places of worship whatever but our own." "But it is an illegal declaration or vow," said Willis, "and so not binding." "Where did you find that get-off?" said Charles; "the priest put that into your head." "I don't know the priest; I never spoke a word to him," answered Willis. "Well, any how, it's not your own answer," said Reding; "and does not help you. I am no casuist; but if it is an illegal engagement you should not continue to enjoy the benefit of it." "What benefit?" "Your cap and gown; a university education; the chance of a scholarship or fellowship. Give up these, and then plead, if you will, and lawfully, that you are quit of your engagement; but don't sail under false colours: don't take the benefit and break the stipulation." "You take it too seriously; there are half a hundred statutes _you_ don't keep, any more than I. You are most inconsistent." "Well, if we don't keep them," said Charles, "I suppose it is in points where the authorities don't enforce them; for instance, they don't mean us to dress in brown, though the statutes order it." "But they _do_ mean to keep you from walking down High Street in beaver," answered Willis; "for the Proctors march up and down, and send you back, if they catch you." "But _this_ is a different matter," said Reding, changing his ground; "this is a matter of religion. It can't be right to go to strange places of worship or meetings." "Why," said Willis, "if we are one Church with the Roman Catholics, I can't make out for the life of me how it's wrong for us to go to them or them to us." "I'm no divine, I don't understand what is meant by one Church," said Charles; "but I know well that there's not a bishop, not a clergyman, not a sober churchman in the land but would give it against you. It's a sheer absurdity." "Don't talk in that way," answered Willis, "please don't. I feel all my heart drawn to the Catholic worship; our own service is so cold." "That's just what every stiff Dissenter says," answered Charles; "every poor cottager, too, who knows no better, and goes after the Methodists--after her dear Mr. Spoutaway or the preaching cobbler. _She_ says (I have heard them), 'Oh, sir, I suppose we ought to go where we get most good. Mr. So-and-so goes to my heart--he goes through me.'" Willis laughed; "Well, not a bad reason, as times go, _I_ think," said he: "poor souls, what better means of judging have they? how can you hope they will like 'the Scripture moveth us'? Really you are making too much of it. This is only the second time I have been there, and, I tell you in earnest, I find my mind filled with awe and devotion there; as I think you would too. I really am better for it; I cannot pray in church; there's a bad smell there, and the pews hide everything; I can't see through a deal board. But here, when I went in, I found all still, and calm, the space open, and, in the twilight, the Tabernacle just visible, pointed out by the lamp." Charles looked very uncomfortable. "Really, Willis," he said, "I don't know what to say to you. Heaven forbid that I should speak against the Roman Catholics; I know nothing about them. But _this_ I know, that you are not a Roman Catholic, and have no business there. If they have such sacred things among them as those you allude to, still these are not yours; you are an intruder. I know nothing about it; I don't like to give a judgment, I am sure. But it's a tampering with sacred things; running here and there, touching and tasting, taking up, putting down. I don't like it," he added, with vehemence; "it's taking liberties with God." "Oh, my dear Reding, please don't speak so very severely," said poor Willis; "now what have I done more than you would do yourself, were you in France or Italy? Do you mean to say you wouldn't enter the churches abroad?" "I will only decide about what is before me," answered Reding; "when I go abroad, then will be the time to think about your question. It is quite enough to know what we ought to do at the moment, and I am clear you have been doing wrong. How did you find your way there?" "White took me." "Then there is one man in the world more thoughtless than you: do many of the gownsmen go there?" "Not that I know of; one or two have gone from curiosity; there is no practice of going, at least this is what I am told." "Well," said Charles, "you must promise me you will not go again. Come, we won't part till you do." "That is too much," said Willis, gently; then, disengaging his arm from Reding's, he suddenly darted away from him, saying, "Good-bye, good-bye; to our next merry meeting--_au revoir_." There was no help for it. Charles walked slowly home, saying to himself: "What if, after all, the Roman Catholic Church is the true Church? I wish I knew what to believe; no one will tell me what to believe; I am so left to myself." Then he thought: "I suppose I know quite enough for practice--more than I _do_ practise; and I ought surely to be contented and thankful." CHAPTER XII. Charles was an affectionate son, and the Long Vacation passed very happily at home. He was up early, and read steadily till luncheon, and then he was at the service of his father, mother, and sisters for the rest of the day. He loved the calm, quiet country; he loved the monotonous flow of time, when each day is like the other; and, after the excitement of Oxford, the secluded parsonage was like a haven beyond the tossing of the waves. The whirl of opinions and perplexities which had encircled him at Oxford now were like the distant sound of the ocean--they reminded him of his present security. The undulating meadows, the green lanes, the open heath, the common with its wide-spreading dusky elms, the high timber which fringed the level path from village to village, ever and anon broken and thrown into groups, or losing itself in copses--even the gate, and the stile, and the turnpike-road had the charm, not of novelty, but of long familiar use; they had the poetry of many recollections. Nor was the dilapidated, deformed church, with its outside staircases, its unsightly galleries, its wide intruded windows, its uncouth pews, its low nunting table, its forlorn vestry, and its damp earthy smell, without its pleasant associations to the inner man; for there it was that for many a year, Sunday after Sunday, he had heard his dear father read and preach; there were the old monuments, with Latin inscriptions and strange devices, the black boards with white letters, the Resurgams and grinning skulls, the fire-buckets, the faded militia-colours, and, almost as much a fixture, the old clerk, with a Welsh wig over his ears, shouting the responses out of place--which had arrested his imagination, and awed him when a child. And then there was his home itself; its well-known rooms, its pleasant routine, its order, and its comfort--an old and true friend, the dearer to him because he had made new ones. "Where I shall be in time to come I know not," he said to himself; "I am but a boy; many things which I have not a dream of, which my imagination cannot compass, may come on me before I die--if I live; but here at least, and now, I am happy, and I will enjoy my happiness. Some say that school is the pleasantest time of one's life; this does not exclude college. I suppose care is what makes life so wearing. At present I have no care, no responsibility; I suppose I shall feel a little when I go up for my degree. Care is a terrible thing; I have had a little of it at times at school. What a strange thing to fancy, I shall be one day twenty-five or thirty! How the weeks are flying by! the Vacation will soon be over. Oh, I am so happy, it quite makes me afraid. Yet I shall have strength for my day." Sometimes, however, his thoughts took a sadder turn, and he anticipated the future more vividly than he enjoyed the present. Mr. Malcolm had come to see them, after an absence from the parsonage for several years: his visit was a great pleasure to Mr. Reding, and not much less to himself, to whom a green home and a family circle were agreeable sights, after his bachelor-life at college. He had been a great favourite with Charles and his sisters as children, though now his popularity with them for the most part rested on the memory of the past. When he told them amusing stories, or allowed them to climb his knee and take off his spectacles, he did all that was necessary to gain their childish hearts; more is necessary to conciliate the affection of young men and women; and thus it is not surprising that he lived in their minds principally by prescription. He neither knew this, nor would have thought much about it if he had; for, like many persons of advancing years, he made himself very much his own centre, did not care to enter into the minds of others, did not consult for them, or find his happiness in them. He was kind and friendly to the young people, as he would be kind to a canary-bird or a lap-dog; it was a sort of external love; and, though they got on capitally with him, they did not miss him when gone, nor would have been much troubled to know that he was never to come again. Charles drove him about the country, stamped his letters, secured him his newspapers from the neighbouring town, and listened to his stories about Oxford and Oxford men. He really liked him, and wished to please him; but, as to consulting him in any serious matter, or going to him for comfort in affliction, he would as soon have thought of betaking him to Dan the pedlar, or old Isaac who played the Sunday bassoon. "How have your peaches been this year, Malcolm?" said Mr. Reding one day after dinner to his guest. "You ought to know that we have no peaches in Oxford," answered Mr. Malcolm. "My memory plays me false, then: I had a vision of, at least, October peaches on one occasion, and fine ones too." "Ah, you mean at old Tom Spindle's, the jockey's," answered Mr. Malcolm; "it's true, he had a bit of a brick wall, and was proud of it. But peaches come when there is no one in Oxford to eat them; so either the tree, or at least the fruit, is a great rarity there. Oxford wasn't so empty once; you have old mulberry-trees there in record of better days." "At that time, too," said Charles, "I suppose, the more expensive fruits were not cultivated. Mulberries are the witness, not only of a full college, but of simple tastes." "Charles is secretly cutting at our hothouse here," said Mr. Reding; "as if our first father did not prefer fruits and flowers to beef and mutton." "No, indeed," said Charles, "I think peaches capital things; and as to flowers, I am even too fond of scents." "Charles has some theory, then, about scents, I'll be bound," said his father; "I never knew a boy who so placed his likings and dislikings on fancies. He began to eat olives directly he read the OEdipus of Sophocles; and, I verily believe, will soon give up oranges from his dislike to King William." "Every one does so," said Charles: "who would not be in the fashion? There's Aunt Kitty, she calls a bonnet, 'a sweet' one year, which makes her 'a perfect fright' the next." "You're right, papa, in this instance," said his mother; "I know he has some good reason, though I never can recollect it, why he smells a rose, or distils lavender. What is it, my dear Mary?" "'Relics ye are of Eden's bowers,'" said she. "Why, sir, that was precisely your own reason just now," said Charles to his father. "There's more than that," said Mrs. Reding, "if I knew what it was." "He thinks the scent more intellectual than the other senses," said Mary, smiling. "Such a boy for paradoxes!" said his mother. "Well, so it is in a certain way," said Charles, "but I can't explain. Sounds and scents are more ethereal, less material; they have no shape--like the angels." Mr. Malcolm laughed. "Well, I grant it, Charles," he said; "they are length without breadth!" "Did you ever hear the like?" said Mrs. Reding, laughing too; "don't encourage him, Mr. Malcolm; you are worse than he. Angels length without breadth!" "They pass from place to place, they come, they go," continued Mr. Malcolm. "They conjure up the past so vividly," said Charles. "But sounds surely more than scents," said Mr. Malcolm. "Pardon me; the reverse as _I_ think," answered Charles. "That _is_ a paradox, Charles," said Mr. Malcolm; "the smell of roast-beef never went further than to remind a man of dinner; but sounds are pathetic and inspiring." "Well, sir, but think of this," said Charles, "scents are complete in themselves, yet do not consist of parts. Think how very distinct the smell of a rose is from a pink, a pink from a sweet-pea, a sweet-pea from a stock, a stock from lilac, lilac from lavender, lavender from jasmine, jasmine from honeysuckle, honeysuckle from hawthorn, hawthorn from hyacinth, hyacinth"---- "Spare us," interrupted Mr. Malcolm; "you are going through the index of Loudon!" "And these are only the scents of flowers; how different flowers smell from fruits, fruits from spices, spices from roast-beef or pork-cutlets, and so on. Now, what I was coming to is this--these scents are perfectly distinct from each other, and _sui generis_; they never can be confused; yet each is communicated to the apprehension in an instant. Sights take up a great space, a tune is a succession of sounds; but scents are at once specific and complete, yet indivisible. Who can halve a scent? they need neither time nor space; thus they are immaterial or spiritual." "Charles hasn't been to Oxford for nothing," said his mother, laughing and looking at Mary; "this is what I call chopping logic!" "Well done, Charles,"

reading

How many times the word 'reading' appears in the text?

will choose time. I think the University goes down just when Oxford begins to be most beautiful. The walks and meadows are so fragrant and bright now, the hay half carried, and the short new grass appearing." "Reding ought to live here all through the Long," said Tenby: "does any one live through the Vacation, sir, in Oxford?" "Do you mean they die before the end of it, Mr. Tenby?" asked Vincent. "It can't be denied," he continued, "that many, like Mr. Reding, think it a most pleasant time. _I_ am fond of Oxford; but it is not my _habitat_ out of term-time." "Well, I think I should like to make it so," said Charles, "but, I suppose, undergraduates are not allowed." Mr. Vincent answered with more than necessary gravity, "No;" it rested with the Principal; but he conceived that he would not consent to it. Vincent added that certainly there _were_ parties who remained in Oxford through the Long Vacation. It was said mysteriously. Charles answered that, if it was against college rules, there was no help for it; else, were he reading for his degree, he should like nothing better than to pass the Long Vacation in Oxford, if he might judge by the pleasantness of the last ten days. "That is a compliment, Mr. Reding, to your company," said Vincent. At this moment the door opened, and in came the manciple with the dinner paper, which Mr. Vincent had formally to run his eye over. "Watkins," he said, giving it back to him, "I almost think to-day is one of the Fasts of the Church. Go and look, Watkins, and bring me word." The astonished manciple, who had never been sent on such a commission in his whole career before, hastened out of the room, to task his wits how best to fulfil it. The question seemed to strike the company as forcibly, for there was a sudden silence, which was succeeded by a shuffling of feet and a leave-taking; as if, though they had secured their ham and mutton at breakfast, they did not like to risk their dinner. Watkins returned sooner than could have been expected. He said that Mr. Vincent was right; to-day he had found was "the feast of the Apostles." "The Vigil of St. Peter, you mean, Watkins," said Mr. Vincent; "I thought so. Then let us have a plain beefsteak and a saddle of mutton; no Portugal onions, Watkins, or currant-jelly; and some simple pudding, Charlotte pudding, Watkins--that will do." Watkins vanished. By this time, Charles found himself alone with the college authority; who began to speak to him in a more confidential tone. "Mr. Reding," said he, "I did not like to question you before the others, but I conceive you had no particular _meaning_ in your praise of Oxford in the Long Vacation? In the mouths of some it would have been suspicious." Charles was all surprise. "To tell the truth, Mr. Reding, as things stand," he proceeded, "it is often a mark of _party_, this residence in the Vacation; though, of course, there is nothing in the _thing_ itself but what is perfectly natural and right." Charles was all attention. "My good sir," the tutor proceeded, "avoid parties; be sure to avoid party. You are young in your career among us. I always feel anxious about young men of talent; there is the greatest danger of the talent of the University being absorbed in party." Reding expressed a hope that nothing he had done had given cause to his tutor's remark. "No," replied Mr. Vincent, "no;" yet with some slight hesitation; "no, I don't know that it has. But I have thought some of your remarks and questions at lecture were like a person pushing things _too far_, and wishing to form a _system_." Charles was so much taken aback by the charge, that the unexplained mystery of the Long Vacation went out of his head. He said he was "very sorry," and "obliged;" and tried to recollect what he could have said to give ground to Mr. Vincent's remark. Not being able at the moment to recollect, he went on. "I assure you, sir, I know so little of parties in the place, that I hardly know their leaders. I have heard persons mentioned, but, if I tried, I think I should, in some cases, mismatch names and opinions." "I believe it," said Vincent; "but you are young; I am cautioning you against _tendencies_. You may suddenly find yourself absorbed before you know where you are." Charles thought this a good opportunity of asking some questions in detail, about points which puzzled him. He asked whether Dr. Brownside was considered a safe divine to follow. "I hold, d'ye see," answered Vincent, "that all errors are counterfeits of truth. Clever men say true things, Mr. Reding, true in their substance, but," sinking his voice to a whisper, "they go _too far_. It might even be shown that all sects are in one sense but parts of the Catholic Church. I don't say true parts, that is a further question; but they _embody_ great _principles_. The Quakers represent the principle of simplicity and evangelical poverty; they even have a dress of their own, like monks. The Independents represent the rights of the laity; the Wesleyans cherish the devotional principle; the Irvingites, the symbolical and mystical; the High Church party, the principle of obedience; the Liberals are the guardians of reason. No party, then, I conceive, is entirely right or entirely wrong. As to Dr. Brownside, there certainly have been various opinions entertained about his divinity; still, he is an able man, and I think you will gain _good_, gain _good_ from his teaching. But mind, I don't _recommend_ him; yet I respect him, and I consider that he says many things very well worth your attention. I would advise you, then, to accept the _good_ which his sermons offer, without committing yourself to the _bad_. That, depend upon it, Mr. Reding, is the golden though the obvious rule in these matters." Charles said, in answer, that Mr. Vincent was overrating his powers; that he had to learn before he could judge; and that he wished very much to know whether Vincent could recommend him any book, in which he might see at once _what_ the true Church-of-England doctrine was on a number of points which perplexed him. Mr. Vincent replied, he must be on his guard against dissipating his mind with such reading, at a time when his University duties had a definite claim upon him. He ought to avoid all controversies of the day, all authors of the day. He would advise him to read _no_ living authors. "Read dead authors alone," he continued; "dead authors are safe. Our great divines," and he stood upright, "were models; 'there were giants on the earth in those days,' as King George the Third had once said of them to Dr. Johnson. They had that depth, and power, and gravity, and fulness, and erudition; and they were so racy, always racy, and what might be called English. They had that richness, too, such a mine of thought, such a world of opinion, such activity of mind, such inexhaustible resource, such diversity, too. Then they were so eloquent; the majestic Hooker, the imaginative Taylor, the brilliant Hall, the learning of Barrow, the strong sense of South, the keen logic of Chillingworth, good, honest old Burnet," etc., etc. There did not seem much reason why he should stop at one moment more than another; at length, however, he did stop. It was prose, but it was pleasant prose to Charles; he knew just enough about these writers to feel interested in hearing them talked about, and to him Vincent seemed to be saying a good deal, when in fact he was saying very little. When he stopped, Charles said he believed that there were persons in the University who were promoting the study of these authors. Mr. Vincent looked grave. "It is true," he said; "but, my young friend, I have already hinted to you that indifferent things are perverted to the purposes of _party_. At this moment the names of some of our greatest divines are little better than a watchword by which the opinions of living individuals are signified." "Which opinions, I suppose," Charles answered, "are not to be found in those authors." "I'll not say that," said Mr. Vincent. "I have the greatest respect for the individuals in question, and I am not denying that they have done good to our Church by drawing attention in this lax day to the old Church-of-England divinity. But it is one thing to agree with these gentlemen; another," laying his hand on Charles's shoulder, "another to belong to their party. Do not make man your master; get good from all; think well of all persons, and you will be a wise man." Reding inquired, with some timidity, if this was not something like what Dr. Brownside had said in the University pulpit; but perhaps the latter advocated a toleration of opinions in a different sense? Mr. Vincent answered rather shortly, that he had not heard Dr. Brownside's sermon; but, for himself, he had been speaking only of persons in our own communion. "Our Church," he said, "admitted of great liberty of thought within her pale. Even our greatest divines differed from each other in many respects; nay, Bishop Taylor differed from himself. It was a great principle in the English Church. Her true children agree to differ. In truth," he continued, "there is that robust, masculine, noble independence in the English mind, which refuses to be tied down to artificial shapes, but is like, I will say, some great and beautiful production of nature,--a tree, which is rich in foliage and fantastic in limb, no sickly denizen of the hothouse, or helpless dependent of the garden wall, but in careless magnificence sheds its fruits upon the free earth, for the bird of the air and the beast of the field, and all sorts of cattle, to eat thereof and rejoice." When Charles came away, he tried to think what he had gained by his conversation with Mr. Vincent; not exactly what he had wanted, some practical rules to guide his mind and keep him steady; but still some useful hints. He had already been averse to parties, and offended at what he saw of individuals attached to them. Vincent had confirmed him in his resolution to keep aloof from them, and to attend to his duties in the place. He felt pleased to have had this talk with him; but what could he mean by suspecting a tendency in himself to push things too far, and thereby to implicate himself in party? He was obliged to resign himself to ignorance on the subject, and to be content with keeping a watch over himself in future. CHAPTER XI. No opportunity has occurred of informing the reader that, during the last week or two, Charles had accidentally been a good deal thrown across Willis, the _umbra_ of White at Bateman's breakfast-party. He had liked his looks on that occasion, when he was dumb; he did not like him so much when he heard him talk; still he could not help being interested in him, and not the least for this reason, that Willis seemed to have taken a great fancy to himself. He certainly did court Charles, and seemed anxious to stand well with him. Charles, however, did not like his mode of talking better than he did White's; and when he first saw his rooms, there was much in them which shocked both his good sense and his religious principles. A large ivory crucifix, in a glass case, was a conspicuous ornament between the windows; an engraving, representing the Blessed Trinity, as is usual in Catholic countries, hung over the fireplace, and a picture of the Madonna and St. Dominic was opposite to it. On the mantelpiece were a rosary, a thuribulum, and other tokens of Catholicism, of which Charles did not know the uses; a missal, ritual, and some Catholic tracts, lay on the table; and, as he happened to come on Willis unexpectedly, he found him sitting in a vestment more like a cassock than a reading-gown, and engaged upon some portion of the Breviary. Virgil and Sophocles, Herodotus and Cicero seemed, as impure pagans, to have hid themselves in corners, or flitted away, before the awful presence of the Ancient Church. Charles had taken upon himself to protest against some of these singularities, but without success. On the evening before his departure for the country he had occasion to go towards Folly Bridge to pay a bill, when he was startled, as he passed what he had ever taken for a dissenting chapel, to see Willis come out of it. He hardly could believe he saw correctly; he knew, indeed, that Willis had been detained in Oxford, as he had been himself; but what had compelled him to a visit so extraordinary as that which he had just made, Charles had no means of determining. "Willis!" he cried, as he stopped. Willis coloured, and tried to look easy. "Do come a few paces with me," said Charles. "What in the world has taken you there? Is it not a dissenting meeting?" "Dissenting meeting!" cried Willis, surprised and offended in his turn: "what on earth could make you think I would go to a dissenting meeting?" "Well, I beg your pardon," said Charles; "I recollect now: it's the exhibition room. However, _once_ it _was_ a chapel: that's my mistake. Isn't it what is called 'the Old Methodist Chapel?' I never was there; they showed there the _Dio-astro-doxon_, so I think they called it." Charles talked on, to cover his own mistake, for he was ashamed of the charge he had made. Willis did not know whether he was in jest or earnest. "Reding," he said, "don't go on; you offend me." "Well, what is it?" said Charles. "You know well enough," answered Willis, "though you wish to annoy me." "I don't indeed." "It's the Catholic church," said Willis. Reding was silent a moment; then he said, "Well, I don't think you have mended the matter; it _is_ a dissenting meeting, call it what you will, though not the kind of one I meant." "What can you mean?" asked Willis. "Rather, what mean _you_ by going to such places?" retorted Charles; "why, it is against your oath." "My oath! what oath?" "There's not an oath now; but there was an oath till lately," said Reding; "and we still make a very solemn engagement. Don't you recollect your matriculation at the Vice-Chancellor's, and what oaths and declarations you made?" "I don't know what I made: my tutor told me nothing about it. I signed a book or two." "You did more," said Reding. "I was told most carefully. You solemnly engaged to keep the statutes; and one statute is, not to go into any dissenting chapel or meeting whatever." "Catholics are not Dissenters," said Willis. "Oh, don't speak so," said Charles; "you know it's meant to include them. The statute wishes us to keep from all places of worship whatever but our own." "But it is an illegal declaration or vow," said Willis, "and so not binding." "Where did you find that get-off?" said Charles; "the priest put that into your head." "I don't know the priest; I never spoke a word to him," answered Willis. "Well, any how, it's not your own answer," said Reding; "and does not help you. I am no casuist; but if it is an illegal engagement you should not continue to enjoy the benefit of it." "What benefit?" "Your cap and gown; a university education; the chance of a scholarship or fellowship. Give up these, and then plead, if you will, and lawfully, that you are quit of your engagement; but don't sail under false colours: don't take the benefit and break the stipulation." "You take it too seriously; there are half a hundred statutes _you_ don't keep, any more than I. You are most inconsistent." "Well, if we don't keep them," said Charles, "I suppose it is in points where the authorities don't enforce them; for instance, they don't mean us to dress in brown, though the statutes order it." "But they _do_ mean to keep you from walking down High Street in beaver," answered Willis; "for the Proctors march up and down, and send you back, if they catch you." "But _this_ is a different matter," said Reding, changing his ground; "this is a matter of religion. It can't be right to go to strange places of worship or meetings." "Why," said Willis, "if we are one Church with the Roman Catholics, I can't make out for the life of me how it's wrong for us to go to them or them to us." "I'm no divine, I don't understand what is meant by one Church," said Charles; "but I know well that there's not a bishop, not a clergyman, not a sober churchman in the land but would give it against you. It's a sheer absurdity." "Don't talk in that way," answered Willis, "please don't. I feel all my heart drawn to the Catholic worship; our own service is so cold." "That's just what every stiff Dissenter says," answered Charles; "every poor cottager, too, who knows no better, and goes after the Methodists--after her dear Mr. Spoutaway or the preaching cobbler. _She_ says (I have heard them), 'Oh, sir, I suppose we ought to go where we get most good. Mr. So-and-so goes to my heart--he goes through me.'" Willis laughed; "Well, not a bad reason, as times go, _I_ think," said he: "poor souls, what better means of judging have they? how can you hope they will like 'the Scripture moveth us'? Really you are making too much of it. This is only the second time I have been there, and, I tell you in earnest, I find my mind filled with awe and devotion there; as I think you would too. I really am better for it; I cannot pray in church; there's a bad smell there, and the pews hide everything; I can't see through a deal board. But here, when I went in, I found all still, and calm, the space open, and, in the twilight, the Tabernacle just visible, pointed out by the lamp." Charles looked very uncomfortable. "Really, Willis," he said, "I don't know what to say to you. Heaven forbid that I should speak against the Roman Catholics; I know nothing about them. But _this_ I know, that you are not a Roman Catholic, and have no business there. If they have such sacred things among them as those you allude to, still these are not yours; you are an intruder. I know nothing about it; I don't like to give a judgment, I am sure. But it's a tampering with sacred things; running here and there, touching and tasting, taking up, putting down. I don't like it," he added, with vehemence; "it's taking liberties with God." "Oh, my dear Reding, please don't speak so very severely," said poor Willis; "now what have I done more than you would do yourself, were you in France or Italy? Do you mean to say you wouldn't enter the churches abroad?" "I will only decide about what is before me," answered Reding; "when I go abroad, then will be the time to think about your question. It is quite enough to know what we ought to do at the moment, and I am clear you have been doing wrong. How did you find your way there?" "White took me." "Then there is one man in the world more thoughtless than you: do many of the gownsmen go there?" "Not that I know of; one or two have gone from curiosity; there is no practice of going, at least this is what I am told." "Well," said Charles, "you must promise me you will not go again. Come, we won't part till you do." "That is too much," said Willis, gently; then, disengaging his arm from Reding's, he suddenly darted away from him, saying, "Good-bye, good-bye; to our next merry meeting--_au revoir_." There was no help for it. Charles walked slowly home, saying to himself: "What if, after all, the Roman Catholic Church is the true Church? I wish I knew what to believe; no one will tell me what to believe; I am so left to myself." Then he thought: "I suppose I know quite enough for practice--more than I _do_ practise; and I ought surely to be contented and thankful." CHAPTER XII. Charles was an affectionate son, and the Long Vacation passed very happily at home. He was up early, and read steadily till luncheon, and then he was at the service of his father, mother, and sisters for the rest of the day. He loved the calm, quiet country; he loved the monotonous flow of time, when each day is like the other; and, after the excitement of Oxford, the secluded parsonage was like a haven beyond the tossing of the waves. The whirl of opinions and perplexities which had encircled him at Oxford now were like the distant sound of the ocean--they reminded him of his present security. The undulating meadows, the green lanes, the open heath, the common with its wide-spreading dusky elms, the high timber which fringed the level path from village to village, ever and anon broken and thrown into groups, or losing itself in copses--even the gate, and the stile, and the turnpike-road had the charm, not of novelty, but of long familiar use; they had the poetry of many recollections. Nor was the dilapidated, deformed church, with its outside staircases, its unsightly galleries, its wide intruded windows, its uncouth pews, its low nunting table, its forlorn vestry, and its damp earthy smell, without its pleasant associations to the inner man; for there it was that for many a year, Sunday after Sunday, he had heard his dear father read and preach; there were the old monuments, with Latin inscriptions and strange devices, the black boards with white letters, the Resurgams and grinning skulls, the fire-buckets, the faded militia-colours, and, almost as much a fixture, the old clerk, with a Welsh wig over his ears, shouting the responses out of place--which had arrested his imagination, and awed him when a child. And then there was his home itself; its well-known rooms, its pleasant routine, its order, and its comfort--an old and true friend, the dearer to him because he had made new ones. "Where I shall be in time to come I know not," he said to himself; "I am but a boy; many things which I have not a dream of, which my imagination cannot compass, may come on me before I die--if I live; but here at least, and now, I am happy, and I will enjoy my happiness. Some say that school is the pleasantest time of one's life; this does not exclude college. I suppose care is what makes life so wearing. At present I have no care, no responsibility; I suppose I shall feel a little when I go up for my degree. Care is a terrible thing; I have had a little of it at times at school. What a strange thing to fancy, I shall be one day twenty-five or thirty! How the weeks are flying by! the Vacation will soon be over. Oh, I am so happy, it quite makes me afraid. Yet I shall have strength for my day." Sometimes, however, his thoughts took a sadder turn, and he anticipated the future more vividly than he enjoyed the present. Mr. Malcolm had come to see them, after an absence from the parsonage for several years: his visit was a great pleasure to Mr. Reding, and not much less to himself, to whom a green home and a family circle were agreeable sights, after his bachelor-life at college. He had been a great favourite with Charles and his sisters as children, though now his popularity with them for the most part rested on the memory of the past. When he told them amusing stories, or allowed them to climb his knee and take off his spectacles, he did all that was necessary to gain their childish hearts; more is necessary to conciliate the affection of young men and women; and thus it is not surprising that he lived in their minds principally by prescription. He neither knew this, nor would have thought much about it if he had; for, like many persons of advancing years, he made himself very much his own centre, did not care to enter into the minds of others, did not consult for them, or find his happiness in them. He was kind and friendly to the young people, as he would be kind to a canary-bird or a lap-dog; it was a sort of external love; and, though they got on capitally with him, they did not miss him when gone, nor would have been much troubled to know that he was never to come again. Charles drove him about the country, stamped his letters, secured him his newspapers from the neighbouring town, and listened to his stories about Oxford and Oxford men. He really liked him, and wished to please him; but, as to consulting him in any serious matter, or going to him for comfort in affliction, he would as soon have thought of betaking him to Dan the pedlar, or old Isaac who played the Sunday bassoon. "How have your peaches been this year, Malcolm?" said Mr. Reding one day after dinner to his guest. "You ought to know that we have no peaches in Oxford," answered Mr. Malcolm. "My memory plays me false, then: I had a vision of, at least, October peaches on one occasion, and fine ones too." "Ah, you mean at old Tom Spindle's, the jockey's," answered Mr. Malcolm; "it's true, he had a bit of a brick wall, and was proud of it. But peaches come when there is no one in Oxford to eat them; so either the tree, or at least the fruit, is a great rarity there. Oxford wasn't so empty once; you have old mulberry-trees there in record of better days." "At that time, too," said Charles, "I suppose, the more expensive fruits were not cultivated. Mulberries are the witness, not only of a full college, but of simple tastes." "Charles is secretly cutting at our hothouse here," said Mr. Reding; "as if our first father did not prefer fruits and flowers to beef and mutton." "No, indeed," said Charles, "I think peaches capital things; and as to flowers, I am even too fond of scents." "Charles has some theory, then, about scents, I'll be bound," said his father; "I never knew a boy who so placed his likings and dislikings on fancies. He began to eat olives directly he read the OEdipus of Sophocles; and, I verily believe, will soon give up oranges from his dislike to King William." "Every one does so," said Charles: "who would not be in the fashion? There's Aunt Kitty, she calls a bonnet, 'a sweet' one year, which makes her 'a perfect fright' the next." "You're right, papa, in this instance," said his mother; "I know he has some good reason, though I never can recollect it, why he smells a rose, or distils lavender. What is it, my dear Mary?" "'Relics ye are of Eden's bowers,'" said she. "Why, sir, that was precisely your own reason just now," said Charles to his father. "There's more than that," said Mrs. Reding, "if I knew what it was." "He thinks the scent more intellectual than the other senses," said Mary, smiling. "Such a boy for paradoxes!" said his mother. "Well, so it is in a certain way," said Charles, "but I can't explain. Sounds and scents are more ethereal, less material; they have no shape--like the angels." Mr. Malcolm laughed. "Well, I grant it, Charles," he said; "they are length without breadth!" "Did you ever hear the like?" said Mrs. Reding, laughing too; "don't encourage him, Mr. Malcolm; you are worse than he. Angels length without breadth!" "They pass from place to place, they come, they go," continued Mr. Malcolm. "They conjure up the past so vividly," said Charles. "But sounds surely more than scents," said Mr. Malcolm. "Pardon me; the reverse as _I_ think," answered Charles. "That _is_ a paradox, Charles," said Mr. Malcolm; "the smell of roast-beef never went further than to remind a man of dinner; but sounds are pathetic and inspiring." "Well, sir, but think of this," said Charles, "scents are complete in themselves, yet do not consist of parts. Think how very distinct the smell of a rose is from a pink, a pink from a sweet-pea, a sweet-pea from a stock, a stock from lilac, lilac from lavender, lavender from jasmine, jasmine from honeysuckle, honeysuckle from hawthorn, hawthorn from hyacinth, hyacinth"---- "Spare us," interrupted Mr. Malcolm; "you are going through the index of Loudon!" "And these are only the scents of flowers; how different flowers smell from fruits, fruits from spices, spices from roast-beef or pork-cutlets, and so on. Now, what I was coming to is this--these scents are perfectly distinct from each other, and _sui generis_; they never can be confused; yet each is communicated to the apprehension in an instant. Sights take up a great space, a tune is a succession of sounds; but scents are at once specific and complete, yet indivisible. Who can halve a scent? they need neither time nor space; thus they are immaterial or spiritual." "Charles hasn't been to Oxford for nothing," said his mother, laughing and looking at Mary; "this is what I call chopping logic!" "Well done, Charles,"

truth

How many times the word 'truth' appears in the text?

will choose time. I think the University goes down just when Oxford begins to be most beautiful. The walks and meadows are so fragrant and bright now, the hay half carried, and the short new grass appearing." "Reding ought to live here all through the Long," said Tenby: "does any one live through the Vacation, sir, in Oxford?" "Do you mean they die before the end of it, Mr. Tenby?" asked Vincent. "It can't be denied," he continued, "that many, like Mr. Reding, think it a most pleasant time. _I_ am fond of Oxford; but it is not my _habitat_ out of term-time." "Well, I think I should like to make it so," said Charles, "but, I suppose, undergraduates are not allowed." Mr. Vincent answered with more than necessary gravity, "No;" it rested with the Principal; but he conceived that he would not consent to it. Vincent added that certainly there _were_ parties who remained in Oxford through the Long Vacation. It was said mysteriously. Charles answered that, if it was against college rules, there was no help for it; else, were he reading for his degree, he should like nothing better than to pass the Long Vacation in Oxford, if he might judge by the pleasantness of the last ten days. "That is a compliment, Mr. Reding, to your company," said Vincent. At this moment the door opened, and in came the manciple with the dinner paper, which Mr. Vincent had formally to run his eye over. "Watkins," he said, giving it back to him, "I almost think to-day is one of the Fasts of the Church. Go and look, Watkins, and bring me word." The astonished manciple, who had never been sent on such a commission in his whole career before, hastened out of the room, to task his wits how best to fulfil it. The question seemed to strike the company as forcibly, for there was a sudden silence, which was succeeded by a shuffling of feet and a leave-taking; as if, though they had secured their ham and mutton at breakfast, they did not like to risk their dinner. Watkins returned sooner than could have been expected. He said that Mr. Vincent was right; to-day he had found was "the feast of the Apostles." "The Vigil of St. Peter, you mean, Watkins," said Mr. Vincent; "I thought so. Then let us have a plain beefsteak and a saddle of mutton; no Portugal onions, Watkins, or currant-jelly; and some simple pudding, Charlotte pudding, Watkins--that will do." Watkins vanished. By this time, Charles found himself alone with the college authority; who began to speak to him in a more confidential tone. "Mr. Reding," said he, "I did not like to question you before the others, but I conceive you had no particular _meaning_ in your praise of Oxford in the Long Vacation? In the mouths of some it would have been suspicious." Charles was all surprise. "To tell the truth, Mr. Reding, as things stand," he proceeded, "it is often a mark of _party_, this residence in the Vacation; though, of course, there is nothing in the _thing_ itself but what is perfectly natural and right." Charles was all attention. "My good sir," the tutor proceeded, "avoid parties; be sure to avoid party. You are young in your career among us. I always feel anxious about young men of talent; there is the greatest danger of the talent of the University being absorbed in party." Reding expressed a hope that nothing he had done had given cause to his tutor's remark. "No," replied Mr. Vincent, "no;" yet with some slight hesitation; "no, I don't know that it has. But I have thought some of your remarks and questions at lecture were like a person pushing things _too far_, and wishing to form a _system_." Charles was so much taken aback by the charge, that the unexplained mystery of the Long Vacation went out of his head. He said he was "very sorry," and "obliged;" and tried to recollect what he could have said to give ground to Mr. Vincent's remark. Not being able at the moment to recollect, he went on. "I assure you, sir, I know so little of parties in the place, that I hardly know their leaders. I have heard persons mentioned, but, if I tried, I think I should, in some cases, mismatch names and opinions." "I believe it," said Vincent; "but you are young; I am cautioning you against _tendencies_. You may suddenly find yourself absorbed before you know where you are." Charles thought this a good opportunity of asking some questions in detail, about points which puzzled him. He asked whether Dr. Brownside was considered a safe divine to follow. "I hold, d'ye see," answered Vincent, "that all errors are counterfeits of truth. Clever men say true things, Mr. Reding, true in their substance, but," sinking his voice to a whisper, "they go _too far_. It might even be shown that all sects are in one sense but parts of the Catholic Church. I don't say true parts, that is a further question; but they _embody_ great _principles_. The Quakers represent the principle of simplicity and evangelical poverty; they even have a dress of their own, like monks. The Independents represent the rights of the laity; the Wesleyans cherish the devotional principle; the Irvingites, the symbolical and mystical; the High Church party, the principle of obedience; the Liberals are the guardians of reason. No party, then, I conceive, is entirely right or entirely wrong. As to Dr. Brownside, there certainly have been various opinions entertained about his divinity; still, he is an able man, and I think you will gain _good_, gain _good_ from his teaching. But mind, I don't _recommend_ him; yet I respect him, and I consider that he says many things very well worth your attention. I would advise you, then, to accept the _good_ which his sermons offer, without committing yourself to the _bad_. That, depend upon it, Mr. Reding, is the golden though the obvious rule in these matters." Charles said, in answer, that Mr. Vincent was overrating his powers; that he had to learn before he could judge; and that he wished very much to know whether Vincent could recommend him any book, in which he might see at once _what_ the true Church-of-England doctrine was on a number of points which perplexed him. Mr. Vincent replied, he must be on his guard against dissipating his mind with such reading, at a time when his University duties had a definite claim upon him. He ought to avoid all controversies of the day, all authors of the day. He would advise him to read _no_ living authors. "Read dead authors alone," he continued; "dead authors are safe. Our great divines," and he stood upright, "were models; 'there were giants on the earth in those days,' as King George the Third had once said of them to Dr. Johnson. They had that depth, and power, and gravity, and fulness, and erudition; and they were so racy, always racy, and what might be called English. They had that richness, too, such a mine of thought, such a world of opinion, such activity of mind, such inexhaustible resource, such diversity, too. Then they were so eloquent; the majestic Hooker, the imaginative Taylor, the brilliant Hall, the learning of Barrow, the strong sense of South, the keen logic of Chillingworth, good, honest old Burnet," etc., etc. There did not seem much reason why he should stop at one moment more than another; at length, however, he did stop. It was prose, but it was pleasant prose to Charles; he knew just enough about these writers to feel interested in hearing them talked about, and to him Vincent seemed to be saying a good deal, when in fact he was saying very little. When he stopped, Charles said he believed that there were persons in the University who were promoting the study of these authors. Mr. Vincent looked grave. "It is true," he said; "but, my young friend, I have already hinted to you that indifferent things are perverted to the purposes of _party_. At this moment the names of some of our greatest divines are little better than a watchword by which the opinions of living individuals are signified." "Which opinions, I suppose," Charles answered, "are not to be found in those authors." "I'll not say that," said Mr. Vincent. "I have the greatest respect for the individuals in question, and I am not denying that they have done good to our Church by drawing attention in this lax day to the old Church-of-England divinity. But it is one thing to agree with these gentlemen; another," laying his hand on Charles's shoulder, "another to belong to their party. Do not make man your master; get good from all; think well of all persons, and you will be a wise man." Reding inquired, with some timidity, if this was not something like what Dr. Brownside had said in the University pulpit; but perhaps the latter advocated a toleration of opinions in a different sense? Mr. Vincent answered rather shortly, that he had not heard Dr. Brownside's sermon; but, for himself, he had been speaking only of persons in our own communion. "Our Church," he said, "admitted of great liberty of thought within her pale. Even our greatest divines differed from each other in many respects; nay, Bishop Taylor differed from himself. It was a great principle in the English Church. Her true children agree to differ. In truth," he continued, "there is that robust, masculine, noble independence in the English mind, which refuses to be tied down to artificial shapes, but is like, I will say, some great and beautiful production of nature,--a tree, which is rich in foliage and fantastic in limb, no sickly denizen of the hothouse, or helpless dependent of the garden wall, but in careless magnificence sheds its fruits upon the free earth, for the bird of the air and the beast of the field, and all sorts of cattle, to eat thereof and rejoice." When Charles came away, he tried to think what he had gained by his conversation with Mr. Vincent; not exactly what he had wanted, some practical rules to guide his mind and keep him steady; but still some useful hints. He had already been averse to parties, and offended at what he saw of individuals attached to them. Vincent had confirmed him in his resolution to keep aloof from them, and to attend to his duties in the place. He felt pleased to have had this talk with him; but what could he mean by suspecting a tendency in himself to push things too far, and thereby to implicate himself in party? He was obliged to resign himself to ignorance on the subject, and to be content with keeping a watch over himself in future. CHAPTER XI. No opportunity has occurred of informing the reader that, during the last week or two, Charles had accidentally been a good deal thrown across Willis, the _umbra_ of White at Bateman's breakfast-party. He had liked his looks on that occasion, when he was dumb; he did not like him so much when he heard him talk; still he could not help being interested in him, and not the least for this reason, that Willis seemed to have taken a great fancy to himself. He certainly did court Charles, and seemed anxious to stand well with him. Charles, however, did not like his mode of talking better than he did White's; and when he first saw his rooms, there was much in them which shocked both his good sense and his religious principles. A large ivory crucifix, in a glass case, was a conspicuous ornament between the windows; an engraving, representing the Blessed Trinity, as is usual in Catholic countries, hung over the fireplace, and a picture of the Madonna and St. Dominic was opposite to it. On the mantelpiece were a rosary, a thuribulum, and other tokens of Catholicism, of which Charles did not know the uses; a missal, ritual, and some Catholic tracts, lay on the table; and, as he happened to come on Willis unexpectedly, he found him sitting in a vestment more like a cassock than a reading-gown, and engaged upon some portion of the Breviary. Virgil and Sophocles, Herodotus and Cicero seemed, as impure pagans, to have hid themselves in corners, or flitted away, before the awful presence of the Ancient Church. Charles had taken upon himself to protest against some of these singularities, but without success. On the evening before his departure for the country he had occasion to go towards Folly Bridge to pay a bill, when he was startled, as he passed what he had ever taken for a dissenting chapel, to see Willis come out of it. He hardly could believe he saw correctly; he knew, indeed, that Willis had been detained in Oxford, as he had been himself; but what had compelled him to a visit so extraordinary as that which he had just made, Charles had no means of determining. "Willis!" he cried, as he stopped. Willis coloured, and tried to look easy. "Do come a few paces with me," said Charles. "What in the world has taken you there? Is it not a dissenting meeting?" "Dissenting meeting!" cried Willis, surprised and offended in his turn: "what on earth could make you think I would go to a dissenting meeting?" "Well, I beg your pardon," said Charles; "I recollect now: it's the exhibition room. However, _once_ it _was_ a chapel: that's my mistake. Isn't it what is called 'the Old Methodist Chapel?' I never was there; they showed there the _Dio-astro-doxon_, so I think they called it." Charles talked on, to cover his own mistake, for he was ashamed of the charge he had made. Willis did not know whether he was in jest or earnest. "Reding," he said, "don't go on; you offend me." "Well, what is it?" said Charles. "You know well enough," answered Willis, "though you wish to annoy me." "I don't indeed." "It's the Catholic church," said Willis. Reding was silent a moment; then he said, "Well, I don't think you have mended the matter; it _is_ a dissenting meeting, call it what you will, though not the kind of one I meant." "What can you mean?" asked Willis. "Rather, what mean _you_ by going to such places?" retorted Charles; "why, it is against your oath." "My oath! what oath?" "There's not an oath now; but there was an oath till lately," said Reding; "and we still make a very solemn engagement. Don't you recollect your matriculation at the Vice-Chancellor's, and what oaths and declarations you made?" "I don't know what I made: my tutor told me nothing about it. I signed a book or two." "You did more," said Reding. "I was told most carefully. You solemnly engaged to keep the statutes; and one statute is, not to go into any dissenting chapel or meeting whatever." "Catholics are not Dissenters," said Willis. "Oh, don't speak so," said Charles; "you know it's meant to include them. The statute wishes us to keep from all places of worship whatever but our own." "But it is an illegal declaration or vow," said Willis, "and so not binding." "Where did you find that get-off?" said Charles; "the priest put that into your head." "I don't know the priest; I never spoke a word to him," answered Willis. "Well, any how, it's not your own answer," said Reding; "and does not help you. I am no casuist; but if it is an illegal engagement you should not continue to enjoy the benefit of it." "What benefit?" "Your cap and gown; a university education; the chance of a scholarship or fellowship. Give up these, and then plead, if you will, and lawfully, that you are quit of your engagement; but don't sail under false colours: don't take the benefit and break the stipulation." "You take it too seriously; there are half a hundred statutes _you_ don't keep, any more than I. You are most inconsistent." "Well, if we don't keep them," said Charles, "I suppose it is in points where the authorities don't enforce them; for instance, they don't mean us to dress in brown, though the statutes order it." "But they _do_ mean to keep you from walking down High Street in beaver," answered Willis; "for the Proctors march up and down, and send you back, if they catch you." "But _this_ is a different matter," said Reding, changing his ground; "this is a matter of religion. It can't be right to go to strange places of worship or meetings." "Why," said Willis, "if we are one Church with the Roman Catholics, I can't make out for the life of me how it's wrong for us to go to them or them to us." "I'm no divine, I don't understand what is meant by one Church," said Charles; "but I know well that there's not a bishop, not a clergyman, not a sober churchman in the land but would give it against you. It's a sheer absurdity." "Don't talk in that way," answered Willis, "please don't. I feel all my heart drawn to the Catholic worship; our own service is so cold." "That's just what every stiff Dissenter says," answered Charles; "every poor cottager, too, who knows no better, and goes after the Methodists--after her dear Mr. Spoutaway or the preaching cobbler. _She_ says (I have heard them), 'Oh, sir, I suppose we ought to go where we get most good. Mr. So-and-so goes to my heart--he goes through me.'" Willis laughed; "Well, not a bad reason, as times go, _I_ think," said he: "poor souls, what better means of judging have they? how can you hope they will like 'the Scripture moveth us'? Really you are making too much of it. This is only the second time I have been there, and, I tell you in earnest, I find my mind filled with awe and devotion there; as I think you would too. I really am better for it; I cannot pray in church; there's a bad smell there, and the pews hide everything; I can't see through a deal board. But here, when I went in, I found all still, and calm, the space open, and, in the twilight, the Tabernacle just visible, pointed out by the lamp." Charles looked very uncomfortable. "Really, Willis," he said, "I don't know what to say to you. Heaven forbid that I should speak against the Roman Catholics; I know nothing about them. But _this_ I know, that you are not a Roman Catholic, and have no business there. If they have such sacred things among them as those you allude to, still these are not yours; you are an intruder. I know nothing about it; I don't like to give a judgment, I am sure. But it's a tampering with sacred things; running here and there, touching and tasting, taking up, putting down. I don't like it," he added, with vehemence; "it's taking liberties with God." "Oh, my dear Reding, please don't speak so very severely," said poor Willis; "now what have I done more than you would do yourself, were you in France or Italy? Do you mean to say you wouldn't enter the churches abroad?" "I will only decide about what is before me," answered Reding; "when I go abroad, then will be the time to think about your question. It is quite enough to know what we ought to do at the moment, and I am clear you have been doing wrong. How did you find your way there?" "White took me." "Then there is one man in the world more thoughtless than you: do many of the gownsmen go there?" "Not that I know of; one or two have gone from curiosity; there is no practice of going, at least this is what I am told." "Well," said Charles, "you must promise me you will not go again. Come, we won't part till you do." "That is too much," said Willis, gently; then, disengaging his arm from Reding's, he suddenly darted away from him, saying, "Good-bye, good-bye; to our next merry meeting--_au revoir_." There was no help for it. Charles walked slowly home, saying to himself: "What if, after all, the Roman Catholic Church is the true Church? I wish I knew what to believe; no one will tell me what to believe; I am so left to myself." Then he thought: "I suppose I know quite enough for practice--more than I _do_ practise; and I ought surely to be contented and thankful." CHAPTER XII. Charles was an affectionate son, and the Long Vacation passed very happily at home. He was up early, and read steadily till luncheon, and then he was at the service of his father, mother, and sisters for the rest of the day. He loved the calm, quiet country; he loved the monotonous flow of time, when each day is like the other; and, after the excitement of Oxford, the secluded parsonage was like a haven beyond the tossing of the waves. The whirl of opinions and perplexities which had encircled him at Oxford now were like the distant sound of the ocean--they reminded him of his present security. The undulating meadows, the green lanes, the open heath, the common with its wide-spreading dusky elms, the high timber which fringed the level path from village to village, ever and anon broken and thrown into groups, or losing itself in copses--even the gate, and the stile, and the turnpike-road had the charm, not of novelty, but of long familiar use; they had the poetry of many recollections. Nor was the dilapidated, deformed church, with its outside staircases, its unsightly galleries, its wide intruded windows, its uncouth pews, its low nunting table, its forlorn vestry, and its damp earthy smell, without its pleasant associations to the inner man; for there it was that for many a year, Sunday after Sunday, he had heard his dear father read and preach; there were the old monuments, with Latin inscriptions and strange devices, the black boards with white letters, the Resurgams and grinning skulls, the fire-buckets, the faded militia-colours, and, almost as much a fixture, the old clerk, with a Welsh wig over his ears, shouting the responses out of place--which had arrested his imagination, and awed him when a child. And then there was his home itself; its well-known rooms, its pleasant routine, its order, and its comfort--an old and true friend, the dearer to him because he had made new ones. "Where I shall be in time to come I know not," he said to himself; "I am but a boy; many things which I have not a dream of, which my imagination cannot compass, may come on me before I die--if I live; but here at least, and now, I am happy, and I will enjoy my happiness. Some say that school is the pleasantest time of one's life; this does not exclude college. I suppose care is what makes life so wearing. At present I have no care, no responsibility; I suppose I shall feel a little when I go up for my degree. Care is a terrible thing; I have had a little of it at times at school. What a strange thing to fancy, I shall be one day twenty-five or thirty! How the weeks are flying by! the Vacation will soon be over. Oh, I am so happy, it quite makes me afraid. Yet I shall have strength for my day." Sometimes, however, his thoughts took a sadder turn, and he anticipated the future more vividly than he enjoyed the present. Mr. Malcolm had come to see them, after an absence from the parsonage for several years: his visit was a great pleasure to Mr. Reding, and not much less to himself, to whom a green home and a family circle were agreeable sights, after his bachelor-life at college. He had been a great favourite with Charles and his sisters as children, though now his popularity with them for the most part rested on the memory of the past. When he told them amusing stories, or allowed them to climb his knee and take off his spectacles, he did all that was necessary to gain their childish hearts; more is necessary to conciliate the affection of young men and women; and thus it is not surprising that he lived in their minds principally by prescription. He neither knew this, nor would have thought much about it if he had; for, like many persons of advancing years, he made himself very much his own centre, did not care to enter into the minds of others, did not consult for them, or find his happiness in them. He was kind and friendly to the young people, as he would be kind to a canary-bird or a lap-dog; it was a sort of external love; and, though they got on capitally with him, they did not miss him when gone, nor would have been much troubled to know that he was never to come again. Charles drove him about the country, stamped his letters, secured him his newspapers from the neighbouring town, and listened to his stories about Oxford and Oxford men. He really liked him, and wished to please him; but, as to consulting him in any serious matter, or going to him for comfort in affliction, he would as soon have thought of betaking him to Dan the pedlar, or old Isaac who played the Sunday bassoon. "How have your peaches been this year, Malcolm?" said Mr. Reding one day after dinner to his guest. "You ought to know that we have no peaches in Oxford," answered Mr. Malcolm. "My memory plays me false, then: I had a vision of, at least, October peaches on one occasion, and fine ones too." "Ah, you mean at old Tom Spindle's, the jockey's," answered Mr. Malcolm; "it's true, he had a bit of a brick wall, and was proud of it. But peaches come when there is no one in Oxford to eat them; so either the tree, or at least the fruit, is a great rarity there. Oxford wasn't so empty once; you have old mulberry-trees there in record of better days." "At that time, too," said Charles, "I suppose, the more expensive fruits were not cultivated. Mulberries are the witness, not only of a full college, but of simple tastes." "Charles is secretly cutting at our hothouse here," said Mr. Reding; "as if our first father did not prefer fruits and flowers to beef and mutton." "No, indeed," said Charles, "I think peaches capital things; and as to flowers, I am even too fond of scents." "Charles has some theory, then, about scents, I'll be bound," said his father; "I never knew a boy who so placed his likings and dislikings on fancies. He began to eat olives directly he read the OEdipus of Sophocles; and, I verily believe, will soon give up oranges from his dislike to King William." "Every one does so," said Charles: "who would not be in the fashion? There's Aunt Kitty, she calls a bonnet, 'a sweet' one year, which makes her 'a perfect fright' the next." "You're right, papa, in this instance," said his mother; "I know he has some good reason, though I never can recollect it, why he smells a rose, or distils lavender. What is it, my dear Mary?" "'Relics ye are of Eden's bowers,'" said she. "Why, sir, that was precisely your own reason just now," said Charles to his father. "There's more than that," said Mrs. Reding, "if I knew what it was." "He thinks the scent more intellectual than the other senses," said Mary, smiling. "Such a boy for paradoxes!" said his mother. "Well, so it is in a certain way," said Charles, "but I can't explain. Sounds and scents are more ethereal, less material; they have no shape--like the angels." Mr. Malcolm laughed. "Well, I grant it, Charles," he said; "they are length without breadth!" "Did you ever hear the like?" said Mrs. Reding, laughing too; "don't encourage him, Mr. Malcolm; you are worse than he. Angels length without breadth!" "They pass from place to place, they come, they go," continued Mr. Malcolm. "They conjure up the past so vividly," said Charles. "But sounds surely more than scents," said Mr. Malcolm. "Pardon me; the reverse as _I_ think," answered Charles. "That _is_ a paradox, Charles," said Mr. Malcolm; "the smell of roast-beef never went further than to remind a man of dinner; but sounds are pathetic and inspiring." "Well, sir, but think of this," said Charles, "scents are complete in themselves, yet do not consist of parts. Think how very distinct the smell of a rose is from a pink, a pink from a sweet-pea, a sweet-pea from a stock, a stock from lilac, lilac from lavender, lavender from jasmine, jasmine from honeysuckle, honeysuckle from hawthorn, hawthorn from hyacinth, hyacinth"---- "Spare us," interrupted Mr. Malcolm; "you are going through the index of Loudon!" "And these are only the scents of flowers; how different flowers smell from fruits, fruits from spices, spices from roast-beef or pork-cutlets, and so on. Now, what I was coming to is this--these scents are perfectly distinct from each other, and _sui generis_; they never can be confused; yet each is communicated to the apprehension in an instant. Sights take up a great space, a tune is a succession of sounds; but scents are at once specific and complete, yet indivisible. Who can halve a scent? they need neither time nor space; thus they are immaterial or spiritual." "Charles hasn't been to Oxford for nothing," said his mother, laughing and looking at Mary; "this is what I call chopping logic!" "Well done, Charles,"

continued

How many times the word 'continued' appears in the text?

will choose time. I think the University goes down just when Oxford begins to be most beautiful. The walks and meadows are so fragrant and bright now, the hay half carried, and the short new grass appearing." "Reding ought to live here all through the Long," said Tenby: "does any one live through the Vacation, sir, in Oxford?" "Do you mean they die before the end of it, Mr. Tenby?" asked Vincent. "It can't be denied," he continued, "that many, like Mr. Reding, think it a most pleasant time. _I_ am fond of Oxford; but it is not my _habitat_ out of term-time." "Well, I think I should like to make it so," said Charles, "but, I suppose, undergraduates are not allowed." Mr. Vincent answered with more than necessary gravity, "No;" it rested with the Principal; but he conceived that he would not consent to it. Vincent added that certainly there _were_ parties who remained in Oxford through the Long Vacation. It was said mysteriously. Charles answered that, if it was against college rules, there was no help for it; else, were he reading for his degree, he should like nothing better than to pass the Long Vacation in Oxford, if he might judge by the pleasantness of the last ten days. "That is a compliment, Mr. Reding, to your company," said Vincent. At this moment the door opened, and in came the manciple with the dinner paper, which Mr. Vincent had formally to run his eye over. "Watkins," he said, giving it back to him, "I almost think to-day is one of the Fasts of the Church. Go and look, Watkins, and bring me word." The astonished manciple, who had never been sent on such a commission in his whole career before, hastened out of the room, to task his wits how best to fulfil it. The question seemed to strike the company as forcibly, for there was a sudden silence, which was succeeded by a shuffling of feet and a leave-taking; as if, though they had secured their ham and mutton at breakfast, they did not like to risk their dinner. Watkins returned sooner than could have been expected. He said that Mr. Vincent was right; to-day he had found was "the feast of the Apostles." "The Vigil of St. Peter, you mean, Watkins," said Mr. Vincent; "I thought so. Then let us have a plain beefsteak and a saddle of mutton; no Portugal onions, Watkins, or currant-jelly; and some simple pudding, Charlotte pudding, Watkins--that will do." Watkins vanished. By this time, Charles found himself alone with the college authority; who began to speak to him in a more confidential tone. "Mr. Reding," said he, "I did not like to question you before the others, but I conceive you had no particular _meaning_ in your praise of Oxford in the Long Vacation? In the mouths of some it would have been suspicious." Charles was all surprise. "To tell the truth, Mr. Reding, as things stand," he proceeded, "it is often a mark of _party_, this residence in the Vacation; though, of course, there is nothing in the _thing_ itself but what is perfectly natural and right." Charles was all attention. "My good sir," the tutor proceeded, "avoid parties; be sure to avoid party. You are young in your career among us. I always feel anxious about young men of talent; there is the greatest danger of the talent of the University being absorbed in party." Reding expressed a hope that nothing he had done had given cause to his tutor's remark. "No," replied Mr. Vincent, "no;" yet with some slight hesitation; "no, I don't know that it has. But I have thought some of your remarks and questions at lecture were like a person pushing things _too far_, and wishing to form a _system_." Charles was so much taken aback by the charge, that the unexplained mystery of the Long Vacation went out of his head. He said he was "very sorry," and "obliged;" and tried to recollect what he could have said to give ground to Mr. Vincent's remark. Not being able at the moment to recollect, he went on. "I assure you, sir, I know so little of parties in the place, that I hardly know their leaders. I have heard persons mentioned, but, if I tried, I think I should, in some cases, mismatch names and opinions." "I believe it," said Vincent; "but you are young; I am cautioning you against _tendencies_. You may suddenly find yourself absorbed before you know where you are." Charles thought this a good opportunity of asking some questions in detail, about points which puzzled him. He asked whether Dr. Brownside was considered a safe divine to follow. "I hold, d'ye see," answered Vincent, "that all errors are counterfeits of truth. Clever men say true things, Mr. Reding, true in their substance, but," sinking his voice to a whisper, "they go _too far_. It might even be shown that all sects are in one sense but parts of the Catholic Church. I don't say true parts, that is a further question; but they _embody_ great _principles_. The Quakers represent the principle of simplicity and evangelical poverty; they even have a dress of their own, like monks. The Independents represent the rights of the laity; the Wesleyans cherish the devotional principle; the Irvingites, the symbolical and mystical; the High Church party, the principle of obedience; the Liberals are the guardians of reason. No party, then, I conceive, is entirely right or entirely wrong. As to Dr. Brownside, there certainly have been various opinions entertained about his divinity; still, he is an able man, and I think you will gain _good_, gain _good_ from his teaching. But mind, I don't _recommend_ him; yet I respect him, and I consider that he says many things very well worth your attention. I would advise you, then, to accept the _good_ which his sermons offer, without committing yourself to the _bad_. That, depend upon it, Mr. Reding, is the golden though the obvious rule in these matters." Charles said, in answer, that Mr. Vincent was overrating his powers; that he had to learn before he could judge; and that he wished very much to know whether Vincent could recommend him any book, in which he might see at once _what_ the true Church-of-England doctrine was on a number of points which perplexed him. Mr. Vincent replied, he must be on his guard against dissipating his mind with such reading, at a time when his University duties had a definite claim upon him. He ought to avoid all controversies of the day, all authors of the day. He would advise him to read _no_ living authors. "Read dead authors alone," he continued; "dead authors are safe. Our great divines," and he stood upright, "were models; 'there were giants on the earth in those days,' as King George the Third had once said of them to Dr. Johnson. They had that depth, and power, and gravity, and fulness, and erudition; and they were so racy, always racy, and what might be called English. They had that richness, too, such a mine of thought, such a world of opinion, such activity of mind, such inexhaustible resource, such diversity, too. Then they were so eloquent; the majestic Hooker, the imaginative Taylor, the brilliant Hall, the learning of Barrow, the strong sense of South, the keen logic of Chillingworth, good, honest old Burnet," etc., etc. There did not seem much reason why he should stop at one moment more than another; at length, however, he did stop. It was prose, but it was pleasant prose to Charles; he knew just enough about these writers to feel interested in hearing them talked about, and to him Vincent seemed to be saying a good deal, when in fact he was saying very little. When he stopped, Charles said he believed that there were persons in the University who were promoting the study of these authors. Mr. Vincent looked grave. "It is true," he said; "but, my young friend, I have already hinted to you that indifferent things are perverted to the purposes of _party_. At this moment the names of some of our greatest divines are little better than a watchword by which the opinions of living individuals are signified." "Which opinions, I suppose," Charles answered, "are not to be found in those authors." "I'll not say that," said Mr. Vincent. "I have the greatest respect for the individuals in question, and I am not denying that they have done good to our Church by drawing attention in this lax day to the old Church-of-England divinity. But it is one thing to agree with these gentlemen; another," laying his hand on Charles's shoulder, "another to belong to their party. Do not make man your master; get good from all; think well of all persons, and you will be a wise man." Reding inquired, with some timidity, if this was not something like what Dr. Brownside had said in the University pulpit; but perhaps the latter advocated a toleration of opinions in a different sense? Mr. Vincent answered rather shortly, that he had not heard Dr. Brownside's sermon; but, for himself, he had been speaking only of persons in our own communion. "Our Church," he said, "admitted of great liberty of thought within her pale. Even our greatest divines differed from each other in many respects; nay, Bishop Taylor differed from himself. It was a great principle in the English Church. Her true children agree to differ. In truth," he continued, "there is that robust, masculine, noble independence in the English mind, which refuses to be tied down to artificial shapes, but is like, I will say, some great and beautiful production of nature,--a tree, which is rich in foliage and fantastic in limb, no sickly denizen of the hothouse, or helpless dependent of the garden wall, but in careless magnificence sheds its fruits upon the free earth, for the bird of the air and the beast of the field, and all sorts of cattle, to eat thereof and rejoice." When Charles came away, he tried to think what he had gained by his conversation with Mr. Vincent; not exactly what he had wanted, some practical rules to guide his mind and keep him steady; but still some useful hints. He had already been averse to parties, and offended at what he saw of individuals attached to them. Vincent had confirmed him in his resolution to keep aloof from them, and to attend to his duties in the place. He felt pleased to have had this talk with him; but what could he mean by suspecting a tendency in himself to push things too far, and thereby to implicate himself in party? He was obliged to resign himself to ignorance on the subject, and to be content with keeping a watch over himself in future. CHAPTER XI. No opportunity has occurred of informing the reader that, during the last week or two, Charles had accidentally been a good deal thrown across Willis, the _umbra_ of White at Bateman's breakfast-party. He had liked his looks on that occasion, when he was dumb; he did not like him so much when he heard him talk; still he could not help being interested in him, and not the least for this reason, that Willis seemed to have taken a great fancy to himself. He certainly did court Charles, and seemed anxious to stand well with him. Charles, however, did not like his mode of talking better than he did White's; and when he first saw his rooms, there was much in them which shocked both his good sense and his religious principles. A large ivory crucifix, in a glass case, was a conspicuous ornament between the windows; an engraving, representing the Blessed Trinity, as is usual in Catholic countries, hung over the fireplace, and a picture of the Madonna and St. Dominic was opposite to it. On the mantelpiece were a rosary, a thuribulum, and other tokens of Catholicism, of which Charles did not know the uses; a missal, ritual, and some Catholic tracts, lay on the table; and, as he happened to come on Willis unexpectedly, he found him sitting in a vestment more like a cassock than a reading-gown, and engaged upon some portion of the Breviary. Virgil and Sophocles, Herodotus and Cicero seemed, as impure pagans, to have hid themselves in corners, or flitted away, before the awful presence of the Ancient Church. Charles had taken upon himself to protest against some of these singularities, but without success. On the evening before his departure for the country he had occasion to go towards Folly Bridge to pay a bill, when he was startled, as he passed what he had ever taken for a dissenting chapel, to see Willis come out of it. He hardly could believe he saw correctly; he knew, indeed, that Willis had been detained in Oxford, as he had been himself; but what had compelled him to a visit so extraordinary as that which he had just made, Charles had no means of determining. "Willis!" he cried, as he stopped. Willis coloured, and tried to look easy. "Do come a few paces with me," said Charles. "What in the world has taken you there? Is it not a dissenting meeting?" "Dissenting meeting!" cried Willis, surprised and offended in his turn: "what on earth could make you think I would go to a dissenting meeting?" "Well, I beg your pardon," said Charles; "I recollect now: it's the exhibition room. However, _once_ it _was_ a chapel: that's my mistake. Isn't it what is called 'the Old Methodist Chapel?' I never was there; they showed there the _Dio-astro-doxon_, so I think they called it." Charles talked on, to cover his own mistake, for he was ashamed of the charge he had made. Willis did not know whether he was in jest or earnest. "Reding," he said, "don't go on; you offend me." "Well, what is it?" said Charles. "You know well enough," answered Willis, "though you wish to annoy me." "I don't indeed." "It's the Catholic church," said Willis. Reding was silent a moment; then he said, "Well, I don't think you have mended the matter; it _is_ a dissenting meeting, call it what you will, though not the kind of one I meant." "What can you mean?" asked Willis. "Rather, what mean _you_ by going to such places?" retorted Charles; "why, it is against your oath." "My oath! what oath?" "There's not an oath now; but there was an oath till lately," said Reding; "and we still make a very solemn engagement. Don't you recollect your matriculation at the Vice-Chancellor's, and what oaths and declarations you made?" "I don't know what I made: my tutor told me nothing about it. I signed a book or two." "You did more," said Reding. "I was told most carefully. You solemnly engaged to keep the statutes; and one statute is, not to go into any dissenting chapel or meeting whatever." "Catholics are not Dissenters," said Willis. "Oh, don't speak so," said Charles; "you know it's meant to include them. The statute wishes us to keep from all places of worship whatever but our own." "But it is an illegal declaration or vow," said Willis, "and so not binding." "Where did you find that get-off?" said Charles; "the priest put that into your head." "I don't know the priest; I never spoke a word to him," answered Willis. "Well, any how, it's not your own answer," said Reding; "and does not help you. I am no casuist; but if it is an illegal engagement you should not continue to enjoy the benefit of it." "What benefit?" "Your cap and gown; a university education; the chance of a scholarship or fellowship. Give up these, and then plead, if you will, and lawfully, that you are quit of your engagement; but don't sail under false colours: don't take the benefit and break the stipulation." "You take it too seriously; there are half a hundred statutes _you_ don't keep, any more than I. You are most inconsistent." "Well, if we don't keep them," said Charles, "I suppose it is in points where the authorities don't enforce them; for instance, they don't mean us to dress in brown, though the statutes order it." "But they _do_ mean to keep you from walking down High Street in beaver," answered Willis; "for the Proctors march up and down, and send you back, if they catch you." "But _this_ is a different matter," said Reding, changing his ground; "this is a matter of religion. It can't be right to go to strange places of worship or meetings." "Why," said Willis, "if we are one Church with the Roman Catholics, I can't make out for the life of me how it's wrong for us to go to them or them to us." "I'm no divine, I don't understand what is meant by one Church," said Charles; "but I know well that there's not a bishop, not a clergyman, not a sober churchman in the land but would give it against you. It's a sheer absurdity." "Don't talk in that way," answered Willis, "please don't. I feel all my heart drawn to the Catholic worship; our own service is so cold." "That's just what every stiff Dissenter says," answered Charles; "every poor cottager, too, who knows no better, and goes after the Methodists--after her dear Mr. Spoutaway or the preaching cobbler. _She_ says (I have heard them), 'Oh, sir, I suppose we ought to go where we get most good. Mr. So-and-so goes to my heart--he goes through me.'" Willis laughed; "Well, not a bad reason, as times go, _I_ think," said he: "poor souls, what better means of judging have they? how can you hope they will like 'the Scripture moveth us'? Really you are making too much of it. This is only the second time I have been there, and, I tell you in earnest, I find my mind filled with awe and devotion there; as I think you would too. I really am better for it; I cannot pray in church; there's a bad smell there, and the pews hide everything; I can't see through a deal board. But here, when I went in, I found all still, and calm, the space open, and, in the twilight, the Tabernacle just visible, pointed out by the lamp." Charles looked very uncomfortable. "Really, Willis," he said, "I don't know what to say to you. Heaven forbid that I should speak against the Roman Catholics; I know nothing about them. But _this_ I know, that you are not a Roman Catholic, and have no business there. If they have such sacred things among them as those you allude to, still these are not yours; you are an intruder. I know nothing about it; I don't like to give a judgment, I am sure. But it's a tampering with sacred things; running here and there, touching and tasting, taking up, putting down. I don't like it," he added, with vehemence; "it's taking liberties with God." "Oh, my dear Reding, please don't speak so very severely," said poor Willis; "now what have I done more than you would do yourself, were you in France or Italy? Do you mean to say you wouldn't enter the churches abroad?" "I will only decide about what is before me," answered Reding; "when I go abroad, then will be the time to think about your question. It is quite enough to know what we ought to do at the moment, and I am clear you have been doing wrong. How did you find your way there?" "White took me." "Then there is one man in the world more thoughtless than you: do many of the gownsmen go there?" "Not that I know of; one or two have gone from curiosity; there is no practice of going, at least this is what I am told." "Well," said Charles, "you must promise me you will not go again. Come, we won't part till you do." "That is too much," said Willis, gently; then, disengaging his arm from Reding's, he suddenly darted away from him, saying, "Good-bye, good-bye; to our next merry meeting--_au revoir_." There was no help for it. Charles walked slowly home, saying to himself: "What if, after all, the Roman Catholic Church is the true Church? I wish I knew what to believe; no one will tell me what to believe; I am so left to myself." Then he thought: "I suppose I know quite enough for practice--more than I _do_ practise; and I ought surely to be contented and thankful." CHAPTER XII. Charles was an affectionate son, and the Long Vacation passed very happily at home. He was up early, and read steadily till luncheon, and then he was at the service of his father, mother, and sisters for the rest of the day. He loved the calm, quiet country; he loved the monotonous flow of time, when each day is like the other; and, after the excitement of Oxford, the secluded parsonage was like a haven beyond the tossing of the waves. The whirl of opinions and perplexities which had encircled him at Oxford now were like the distant sound of the ocean--they reminded him of his present security. The undulating meadows, the green lanes, the open heath, the common with its wide-spreading dusky elms, the high timber which fringed the level path from village to village, ever and anon broken and thrown into groups, or losing itself in copses--even the gate, and the stile, and the turnpike-road had the charm, not of novelty, but of long familiar use; they had the poetry of many recollections. Nor was the dilapidated, deformed church, with its outside staircases, its unsightly galleries, its wide intruded windows, its uncouth pews, its low nunting table, its forlorn vestry, and its damp earthy smell, without its pleasant associations to the inner man; for there it was that for many a year, Sunday after Sunday, he had heard his dear father read and preach; there were the old monuments, with Latin inscriptions and strange devices, the black boards with white letters, the Resurgams and grinning skulls, the fire-buckets, the faded militia-colours, and, almost as much a fixture, the old clerk, with a Welsh wig over his ears, shouting the responses out of place--which had arrested his imagination, and awed him when a child. And then there was his home itself; its well-known rooms, its pleasant routine, its order, and its comfort--an old and true friend, the dearer to him because he had made new ones. "Where I shall be in time to come I know not," he said to himself; "I am but a boy; many things which I have not a dream of, which my imagination cannot compass, may come on me before I die--if I live; but here at least, and now, I am happy, and I will enjoy my happiness. Some say that school is the pleasantest time of one's life; this does not exclude college. I suppose care is what makes life so wearing. At present I have no care, no responsibility; I suppose I shall feel a little when I go up for my degree. Care is a terrible thing; I have had a little of it at times at school. What a strange thing to fancy, I shall be one day twenty-five or thirty! How the weeks are flying by! the Vacation will soon be over. Oh, I am so happy, it quite makes me afraid. Yet I shall have strength for my day." Sometimes, however, his thoughts took a sadder turn, and he anticipated the future more vividly than he enjoyed the present. Mr. Malcolm had come to see them, after an absence from the parsonage for several years: his visit was a great pleasure to Mr. Reding, and not much less to himself, to whom a green home and a family circle were agreeable sights, after his bachelor-life at college. He had been a great favourite with Charles and his sisters as children, though now his popularity with them for the most part rested on the memory of the past. When he told them amusing stories, or allowed them to climb his knee and take off his spectacles, he did all that was necessary to gain their childish hearts; more is necessary to conciliate the affection of young men and women; and thus it is not surprising that he lived in their minds principally by prescription. He neither knew this, nor would have thought much about it if he had; for, like many persons of advancing years, he made himself very much his own centre, did not care to enter into the minds of others, did not consult for them, or find his happiness in them. He was kind and friendly to the young people, as he would be kind to a canary-bird or a lap-dog; it was a sort of external love; and, though they got on capitally with him, they did not miss him when gone, nor would have been much troubled to know that he was never to come again. Charles drove him about the country, stamped his letters, secured him his newspapers from the neighbouring town, and listened to his stories about Oxford and Oxford men. He really liked him, and wished to please him; but, as to consulting him in any serious matter, or going to him for comfort in affliction, he would as soon have thought of betaking him to Dan the pedlar, or old Isaac who played the Sunday bassoon. "How have your peaches been this year, Malcolm?" said Mr. Reding one day after dinner to his guest. "You ought to know that we have no peaches in Oxford," answered Mr. Malcolm. "My memory plays me false, then: I had a vision of, at least, October peaches on one occasion, and fine ones too." "Ah, you mean at old Tom Spindle's, the jockey's," answered Mr. Malcolm; "it's true, he had a bit of a brick wall, and was proud of it. But peaches come when there is no one in Oxford to eat them; so either the tree, or at least the fruit, is a great rarity there. Oxford wasn't so empty once; you have old mulberry-trees there in record of better days." "At that time, too," said Charles, "I suppose, the more expensive fruits were not cultivated. Mulberries are the witness, not only of a full college, but of simple tastes." "Charles is secretly cutting at our hothouse here," said Mr. Reding; "as if our first father did not prefer fruits and flowers to beef and mutton." "No, indeed," said Charles, "I think peaches capital things; and as to flowers, I am even too fond of scents." "Charles has some theory, then, about scents, I'll be bound," said his father; "I never knew a boy who so placed his likings and dislikings on fancies. He began to eat olives directly he read the OEdipus of Sophocles; and, I verily believe, will soon give up oranges from his dislike to King William." "Every one does so," said Charles: "who would not be in the fashion? There's Aunt Kitty, she calls a bonnet, 'a sweet' one year, which makes her 'a perfect fright' the next." "You're right, papa, in this instance," said his mother; "I know he has some good reason, though I never can recollect it, why he smells a rose, or distils lavender. What is it, my dear Mary?" "'Relics ye are of Eden's bowers,'" said she. "Why, sir, that was precisely your own reason just now," said Charles to his father. "There's more than that," said Mrs. Reding, "if I knew what it was." "He thinks the scent more intellectual than the other senses," said Mary, smiling. "Such a boy for paradoxes!" said his mother. "Well, so it is in a certain way," said Charles, "but I can't explain. Sounds and scents are more ethereal, less material; they have no shape--like the angels." Mr. Malcolm laughed. "Well, I grant it, Charles," he said; "they are length without breadth!" "Did you ever hear the like?" said Mrs. Reding, laughing too; "don't encourage him, Mr. Malcolm; you are worse than he. Angels length without breadth!" "They pass from place to place, they come, they go," continued Mr. Malcolm. "They conjure up the past so vividly," said Charles. "But sounds surely more than scents," said Mr. Malcolm. "Pardon me; the reverse as _I_ think," answered Charles. "That _is_ a paradox, Charles," said Mr. Malcolm; "the smell of roast-beef never went further than to remind a man of dinner; but sounds are pathetic and inspiring." "Well, sir, but think of this," said Charles, "scents are complete in themselves, yet do not consist of parts. Think how very distinct the smell of a rose is from a pink, a pink from a sweet-pea, a sweet-pea from a stock, a stock from lilac, lilac from lavender, lavender from jasmine, jasmine from honeysuckle, honeysuckle from hawthorn, hawthorn from hyacinth, hyacinth"---- "Spare us," interrupted Mr. Malcolm; "you are going through the index of Loudon!" "And these are only the scents of flowers; how different flowers smell from fruits, fruits from spices, spices from roast-beef or pork-cutlets, and so on. Now, what I was coming to is this--these scents are perfectly distinct from each other, and _sui generis_; they never can be confused; yet each is communicated to the apprehension in an instant. Sights take up a great space, a tune is a succession of sounds; but scents are at once specific and complete, yet indivisible. Who can halve a scent? they need neither time nor space; thus they are immaterial or spiritual." "Charles hasn't been to Oxford for nothing," said his mother, laughing and looking at Mary; "this is what I call chopping logic!" "Well done, Charles,"

came

How many times the word 'came' appears in the text?

will choose time. I think the University goes down just when Oxford begins to be most beautiful. The walks and meadows are so fragrant and bright now, the hay half carried, and the short new grass appearing." "Reding ought to live here all through the Long," said Tenby: "does any one live through the Vacation, sir, in Oxford?" "Do you mean they die before the end of it, Mr. Tenby?" asked Vincent. "It can't be denied," he continued, "that many, like Mr. Reding, think it a most pleasant time. _I_ am fond of Oxford; but it is not my _habitat_ out of term-time." "Well, I think I should like to make it so," said Charles, "but, I suppose, undergraduates are not allowed." Mr. Vincent answered with more than necessary gravity, "No;" it rested with the Principal; but he conceived that he would not consent to it. Vincent added that certainly there _were_ parties who remained in Oxford through the Long Vacation. It was said mysteriously. Charles answered that, if it was against college rules, there was no help for it; else, were he reading for his degree, he should like nothing better than to pass the Long Vacation in Oxford, if he might judge by the pleasantness of the last ten days. "That is a compliment, Mr. Reding, to your company," said Vincent. At this moment the door opened, and in came the manciple with the dinner paper, which Mr. Vincent had formally to run his eye over. "Watkins," he said, giving it back to him, "I almost think to-day is one of the Fasts of the Church. Go and look, Watkins, and bring me word." The astonished manciple, who had never been sent on such a commission in his whole career before, hastened out of the room, to task his wits how best to fulfil it. The question seemed to strike the company as forcibly, for there was a sudden silence, which was succeeded by a shuffling of feet and a leave-taking; as if, though they had secured their ham and mutton at breakfast, they did not like to risk their dinner. Watkins returned sooner than could have been expected. He said that Mr. Vincent was right; to-day he had found was "the feast of the Apostles." "The Vigil of St. Peter, you mean, Watkins," said Mr. Vincent; "I thought so. Then let us have a plain beefsteak and a saddle of mutton; no Portugal onions, Watkins, or currant-jelly; and some simple pudding, Charlotte pudding, Watkins--that will do." Watkins vanished. By this time, Charles found himself alone with the college authority; who began to speak to him in a more confidential tone. "Mr. Reding," said he, "I did not like to question you before the others, but I conceive you had no particular _meaning_ in your praise of Oxford in the Long Vacation? In the mouths of some it would have been suspicious." Charles was all surprise. "To tell the truth, Mr. Reding, as things stand," he proceeded, "it is often a mark of _party_, this residence in the Vacation; though, of course, there is nothing in the _thing_ itself but what is perfectly natural and right." Charles was all attention. "My good sir," the tutor proceeded, "avoid parties; be sure to avoid party. You are young in your career among us. I always feel anxious about young men of talent; there is the greatest danger of the talent of the University being absorbed in party." Reding expressed a hope that nothing he had done had given cause to his tutor's remark. "No," replied Mr. Vincent, "no;" yet with some slight hesitation; "no, I don't know that it has. But I have thought some of your remarks and questions at lecture were like a person pushing things _too far_, and wishing to form a _system_." Charles was so much taken aback by the charge, that the unexplained mystery of the Long Vacation went out of his head. He said he was "very sorry," and "obliged;" and tried to recollect what he could have said to give ground to Mr. Vincent's remark. Not being able at the moment to recollect, he went on. "I assure you, sir, I know so little of parties in the place, that I hardly know their leaders. I have heard persons mentioned, but, if I tried, I think I should, in some cases, mismatch names and opinions." "I believe it," said Vincent; "but you are young; I am cautioning you against _tendencies_. You may suddenly find yourself absorbed before you know where you are." Charles thought this a good opportunity of asking some questions in detail, about points which puzzled him. He asked whether Dr. Brownside was considered a safe divine to follow. "I hold, d'ye see," answered Vincent, "that all errors are counterfeits of truth. Clever men say true things, Mr. Reding, true in their substance, but," sinking his voice to a whisper, "they go _too far_. It might even be shown that all sects are in one sense but parts of the Catholic Church. I don't say true parts, that is a further question; but they _embody_ great _principles_. The Quakers represent the principle of simplicity and evangelical poverty; they even have a dress of their own, like monks. The Independents represent the rights of the laity; the Wesleyans cherish the devotional principle; the Irvingites, the symbolical and mystical; the High Church party, the principle of obedience; the Liberals are the guardians of reason. No party, then, I conceive, is entirely right or entirely wrong. As to Dr. Brownside, there certainly have been various opinions entertained about his divinity; still, he is an able man, and I think you will gain _good_, gain _good_ from his teaching. But mind, I don't _recommend_ him; yet I respect him, and I consider that he says many things very well worth your attention. I would advise you, then, to accept the _good_ which his sermons offer, without committing yourself to the _bad_. That, depend upon it, Mr. Reding, is the golden though the obvious rule in these matters." Charles said, in answer, that Mr. Vincent was overrating his powers; that he had to learn before he could judge; and that he wished very much to know whether Vincent could recommend him any book, in which he might see at once _what_ the true Church-of-England doctrine was on a number of points which perplexed him. Mr. Vincent replied, he must be on his guard against dissipating his mind with such reading, at a time when his University duties had a definite claim upon him. He ought to avoid all controversies of the day, all authors of the day. He would advise him to read _no_ living authors. "Read dead authors alone," he continued; "dead authors are safe. Our great divines," and he stood upright, "were models; 'there were giants on the earth in those days,' as King George the Third had once said of them to Dr. Johnson. They had that depth, and power, and gravity, and fulness, and erudition; and they were so racy, always racy, and what might be called English. They had that richness, too, such a mine of thought, such a world of opinion, such activity of mind, such inexhaustible resource, such diversity, too. Then they were so eloquent; the majestic Hooker, the imaginative Taylor, the brilliant Hall, the learning of Barrow, the strong sense of South, the keen logic of Chillingworth, good, honest old Burnet," etc., etc. There did not seem much reason why he should stop at one moment more than another; at length, however, he did stop. It was prose, but it was pleasant prose to Charles; he knew just enough about these writers to feel interested in hearing them talked about, and to him Vincent seemed to be saying a good deal, when in fact he was saying very little. When he stopped, Charles said he believed that there were persons in the University who were promoting the study of these authors. Mr. Vincent looked grave. "It is true," he said; "but, my young friend, I have already hinted to you that indifferent things are perverted to the purposes of _party_. At this moment the names of some of our greatest divines are little better than a watchword by which the opinions of living individuals are signified." "Which opinions, I suppose," Charles answered, "are not to be found in those authors." "I'll not say that," said Mr. Vincent. "I have the greatest respect for the individuals in question, and I am not denying that they have done good to our Church by drawing attention in this lax day to the old Church-of-England divinity. But it is one thing to agree with these gentlemen; another," laying his hand on Charles's shoulder, "another to belong to their party. Do not make man your master; get good from all; think well of all persons, and you will be a wise man." Reding inquired, with some timidity, if this was not something like what Dr. Brownside had said in the University pulpit; but perhaps the latter advocated a toleration of opinions in a different sense? Mr. Vincent answered rather shortly, that he had not heard Dr. Brownside's sermon; but, for himself, he had been speaking only of persons in our own communion. "Our Church," he said, "admitted of great liberty of thought within her pale. Even our greatest divines differed from each other in many respects; nay, Bishop Taylor differed from himself. It was a great principle in the English Church. Her true children agree to differ. In truth," he continued, "there is that robust, masculine, noble independence in the English mind, which refuses to be tied down to artificial shapes, but is like, I will say, some great and beautiful production of nature,--a tree, which is rich in foliage and fantastic in limb, no sickly denizen of the hothouse, or helpless dependent of the garden wall, but in careless magnificence sheds its fruits upon the free earth, for the bird of the air and the beast of the field, and all sorts of cattle, to eat thereof and rejoice." When Charles came away, he tried to think what he had gained by his conversation with Mr. Vincent; not exactly what he had wanted, some practical rules to guide his mind and keep him steady; but still some useful hints. He had already been averse to parties, and offended at what he saw of individuals attached to them. Vincent had confirmed him in his resolution to keep aloof from them, and to attend to his duties in the place. He felt pleased to have had this talk with him; but what could he mean by suspecting a tendency in himself to push things too far, and thereby to implicate himself in party? He was obliged to resign himself to ignorance on the subject, and to be content with keeping a watch over himself in future. CHAPTER XI. No opportunity has occurred of informing the reader that, during the last week or two, Charles had accidentally been a good deal thrown across Willis, the _umbra_ of White at Bateman's breakfast-party. He had liked his looks on that occasion, when he was dumb; he did not like him so much when he heard him talk; still he could not help being interested in him, and not the least for this reason, that Willis seemed to have taken a great fancy to himself. He certainly did court Charles, and seemed anxious to stand well with him. Charles, however, did not like his mode of talking better than he did White's; and when he first saw his rooms, there was much in them which shocked both his good sense and his religious principles. A large ivory crucifix, in a glass case, was a conspicuous ornament between the windows; an engraving, representing the Blessed Trinity, as is usual in Catholic countries, hung over the fireplace, and a picture of the Madonna and St. Dominic was opposite to it. On the mantelpiece were a rosary, a thuribulum, and other tokens of Catholicism, of which Charles did not know the uses; a missal, ritual, and some Catholic tracts, lay on the table; and, as he happened to come on Willis unexpectedly, he found him sitting in a vestment more like a cassock than a reading-gown, and engaged upon some portion of the Breviary. Virgil and Sophocles, Herodotus and Cicero seemed, as impure pagans, to have hid themselves in corners, or flitted away, before the awful presence of the Ancient Church. Charles had taken upon himself to protest against some of these singularities, but without success. On the evening before his departure for the country he had occasion to go towards Folly Bridge to pay a bill, when he was startled, as he passed what he had ever taken for a dissenting chapel, to see Willis come out of it. He hardly could believe he saw correctly; he knew, indeed, that Willis had been detained in Oxford, as he had been himself; but what had compelled him to a visit so extraordinary as that which he had just made, Charles had no means of determining. "Willis!" he cried, as he stopped. Willis coloured, and tried to look easy. "Do come a few paces with me," said Charles. "What in the world has taken you there? Is it not a dissenting meeting?" "Dissenting meeting!" cried Willis, surprised and offended in his turn: "what on earth could make you think I would go to a dissenting meeting?" "Well, I beg your pardon," said Charles; "I recollect now: it's the exhibition room. However, _once_ it _was_ a chapel: that's my mistake. Isn't it what is called 'the Old Methodist Chapel?' I never was there; they showed there the _Dio-astro-doxon_, so I think they called it." Charles talked on, to cover his own mistake, for he was ashamed of the charge he had made. Willis did not know whether he was in jest or earnest. "Reding," he said, "don't go on; you offend me." "Well, what is it?" said Charles. "You know well enough," answered Willis, "though you wish to annoy me." "I don't indeed." "It's the Catholic church," said Willis. Reding was silent a moment; then he said, "Well, I don't think you have mended the matter; it _is_ a dissenting meeting, call it what you will, though not the kind of one I meant." "What can you mean?" asked Willis. "Rather, what mean _you_ by going to such places?" retorted Charles; "why, it is against your oath." "My oath! what oath?" "There's not an oath now; but there was an oath till lately," said Reding; "and we still make a very solemn engagement. Don't you recollect your matriculation at the Vice-Chancellor's, and what oaths and declarations you made?" "I don't know what I made: my tutor told me nothing about it. I signed a book or two." "You did more," said Reding. "I was told most carefully. You solemnly engaged to keep the statutes; and one statute is, not to go into any dissenting chapel or meeting whatever." "Catholics are not Dissenters," said Willis. "Oh, don't speak so," said Charles; "you know it's meant to include them. The statute wishes us to keep from all places of worship whatever but our own." "But it is an illegal declaration or vow," said Willis, "and so not binding." "Where did you find that get-off?" said Charles; "the priest put that into your head." "I don't know the priest; I never spoke a word to him," answered Willis. "Well, any how, it's not your own answer," said Reding; "and does not help you. I am no casuist; but if it is an illegal engagement you should not continue to enjoy the benefit of it." "What benefit?" "Your cap and gown; a university education; the chance of a scholarship or fellowship. Give up these, and then plead, if you will, and lawfully, that you are quit of your engagement; but don't sail under false colours: don't take the benefit and break the stipulation." "You take it too seriously; there are half a hundred statutes _you_ don't keep, any more than I. You are most inconsistent." "Well, if we don't keep them," said Charles, "I suppose it is in points where the authorities don't enforce them; for instance, they don't mean us to dress in brown, though the statutes order it." "But they _do_ mean to keep you from walking down High Street in beaver," answered Willis; "for the Proctors march up and down, and send you back, if they catch you." "But _this_ is a different matter," said Reding, changing his ground; "this is a matter of religion. It can't be right to go to strange places of worship or meetings." "Why," said Willis, "if we are one Church with the Roman Catholics, I can't make out for the life of me how it's wrong for us to go to them or them to us." "I'm no divine, I don't understand what is meant by one Church," said Charles; "but I know well that there's not a bishop, not a clergyman, not a sober churchman in the land but would give it against you. It's a sheer absurdity." "Don't talk in that way," answered Willis, "please don't. I feel all my heart drawn to the Catholic worship; our own service is so cold." "That's just what every stiff Dissenter says," answered Charles; "every poor cottager, too, who knows no better, and goes after the Methodists--after her dear Mr. Spoutaway or the preaching cobbler. _She_ says (I have heard them), 'Oh, sir, I suppose we ought to go where we get most good. Mr. So-and-so goes to my heart--he goes through me.'" Willis laughed; "Well, not a bad reason, as times go, _I_ think," said he: "poor souls, what better means of judging have they? how can you hope they will like 'the Scripture moveth us'? Really you are making too much of it. This is only the second time I have been there, and, I tell you in earnest, I find my mind filled with awe and devotion there; as I think you would too. I really am better for it; I cannot pray in church; there's a bad smell there, and the pews hide everything; I can't see through a deal board. But here, when I went in, I found all still, and calm, the space open, and, in the twilight, the Tabernacle just visible, pointed out by the lamp." Charles looked very uncomfortable. "Really, Willis," he said, "I don't know what to say to you. Heaven forbid that I should speak against the Roman Catholics; I know nothing about them. But _this_ I know, that you are not a Roman Catholic, and have no business there. If they have such sacred things among them as those you allude to, still these are not yours; you are an intruder. I know nothing about it; I don't like to give a judgment, I am sure. But it's a tampering with sacred things; running here and there, touching and tasting, taking up, putting down. I don't like it," he added, with vehemence; "it's taking liberties with God." "Oh, my dear Reding, please don't speak so very severely," said poor Willis; "now what have I done more than you would do yourself, were you in France or Italy? Do you mean to say you wouldn't enter the churches abroad?" "I will only decide about what is before me," answered Reding; "when I go abroad, then will be the time to think about your question. It is quite enough to know what we ought to do at the moment, and I am clear you have been doing wrong. How did you find your way there?" "White took me." "Then there is one man in the world more thoughtless than you: do many of the gownsmen go there?" "Not that I know of; one or two have gone from curiosity; there is no practice of going, at least this is what I am told." "Well," said Charles, "you must promise me you will not go again. Come, we won't part till you do." "That is too much," said Willis, gently; then, disengaging his arm from Reding's, he suddenly darted away from him, saying, "Good-bye, good-bye; to our next merry meeting--_au revoir_." There was no help for it. Charles walked slowly home, saying to himself: "What if, after all, the Roman Catholic Church is the true Church? I wish I knew what to believe; no one will tell me what to believe; I am so left to myself." Then he thought: "I suppose I know quite enough for practice--more than I _do_ practise; and I ought surely to be contented and thankful." CHAPTER XII. Charles was an affectionate son, and the Long Vacation passed very happily at home. He was up early, and read steadily till luncheon, and then he was at the service of his father, mother, and sisters for the rest of the day. He loved the calm, quiet country; he loved the monotonous flow of time, when each day is like the other; and, after the excitement of Oxford, the secluded parsonage was like a haven beyond the tossing of the waves. The whirl of opinions and perplexities which had encircled him at Oxford now were like the distant sound of the ocean--they reminded him of his present security. The undulating meadows, the green lanes, the open heath, the common with its wide-spreading dusky elms, the high timber which fringed the level path from village to village, ever and anon broken and thrown into groups, or losing itself in copses--even the gate, and the stile, and the turnpike-road had the charm, not of novelty, but of long familiar use; they had the poetry of many recollections. Nor was the dilapidated, deformed church, with its outside staircases, its unsightly galleries, its wide intruded windows, its uncouth pews, its low nunting table, its forlorn vestry, and its damp earthy smell, without its pleasant associations to the inner man; for there it was that for many a year, Sunday after Sunday, he had heard his dear father read and preach; there were the old monuments, with Latin inscriptions and strange devices, the black boards with white letters, the Resurgams and grinning skulls, the fire-buckets, the faded militia-colours, and, almost as much a fixture, the old clerk, with a Welsh wig over his ears, shouting the responses out of place--which had arrested his imagination, and awed him when a child. And then there was his home itself; its well-known rooms, its pleasant routine, its order, and its comfort--an old and true friend, the dearer to him because he had made new ones. "Where I shall be in time to come I know not," he said to himself; "I am but a boy; many things which I have not a dream of, which my imagination cannot compass, may come on me before I die--if I live; but here at least, and now, I am happy, and I will enjoy my happiness. Some say that school is the pleasantest time of one's life; this does not exclude college. I suppose care is what makes life so wearing. At present I have no care, no responsibility; I suppose I shall feel a little when I go up for my degree. Care is a terrible thing; I have had a little of it at times at school. What a strange thing to fancy, I shall be one day twenty-five or thirty! How the weeks are flying by! the Vacation will soon be over. Oh, I am so happy, it quite makes me afraid. Yet I shall have strength for my day." Sometimes, however, his thoughts took a sadder turn, and he anticipated the future more vividly than he enjoyed the present. Mr. Malcolm had come to see them, after an absence from the parsonage for several years: his visit was a great pleasure to Mr. Reding, and not much less to himself, to whom a green home and a family circle were agreeable sights, after his bachelor-life at college. He had been a great favourite with Charles and his sisters as children, though now his popularity with them for the most part rested on the memory of the past. When he told them amusing stories, or allowed them to climb his knee and take off his spectacles, he did all that was necessary to gain their childish hearts; more is necessary to conciliate the affection of young men and women; and thus it is not surprising that he lived in their minds principally by prescription. He neither knew this, nor would have thought much about it if he had; for, like many persons of advancing years, he made himself very much his own centre, did not care to enter into the minds of others, did not consult for them, or find his happiness in them. He was kind and friendly to the young people, as he would be kind to a canary-bird or a lap-dog; it was a sort of external love; and, though they got on capitally with him, they did not miss him when gone, nor would have been much troubled to know that he was never to come again. Charles drove him about the country, stamped his letters, secured him his newspapers from the neighbouring town, and listened to his stories about Oxford and Oxford men. He really liked him, and wished to please him; but, as to consulting him in any serious matter, or going to him for comfort in affliction, he would as soon have thought of betaking him to Dan the pedlar, or old Isaac who played the Sunday bassoon. "How have your peaches been this year, Malcolm?" said Mr. Reding one day after dinner to his guest. "You ought to know that we have no peaches in Oxford," answered Mr. Malcolm. "My memory plays me false, then: I had a vision of, at least, October peaches on one occasion, and fine ones too." "Ah, you mean at old Tom Spindle's, the jockey's," answered Mr. Malcolm; "it's true, he had a bit of a brick wall, and was proud of it. But peaches come when there is no one in Oxford to eat them; so either the tree, or at least the fruit, is a great rarity there. Oxford wasn't so empty once; you have old mulberry-trees there in record of better days." "At that time, too," said Charles, "I suppose, the more expensive fruits were not cultivated. Mulberries are the witness, not only of a full college, but of simple tastes." "Charles is secretly cutting at our hothouse here," said Mr. Reding; "as if our first father did not prefer fruits and flowers to beef and mutton." "No, indeed," said Charles, "I think peaches capital things; and as to flowers, I am even too fond of scents." "Charles has some theory, then, about scents, I'll be bound," said his father; "I never knew a boy who so placed his likings and dislikings on fancies. He began to eat olives directly he read the OEdipus of Sophocles; and, I verily believe, will soon give up oranges from his dislike to King William." "Every one does so," said Charles: "who would not be in the fashion? There's Aunt Kitty, she calls a bonnet, 'a sweet' one year, which makes her 'a perfect fright' the next." "You're right, papa, in this instance," said his mother; "I know he has some good reason, though I never can recollect it, why he smells a rose, or distils lavender. What is it, my dear Mary?" "'Relics ye are of Eden's bowers,'" said she. "Why, sir, that was precisely your own reason just now," said Charles to his father. "There's more than that," said Mrs. Reding, "if I knew what it was." "He thinks the scent more intellectual than the other senses," said Mary, smiling. "Such a boy for paradoxes!" said his mother. "Well, so it is in a certain way," said Charles, "but I can't explain. Sounds and scents are more ethereal, less material; they have no shape--like the angels." Mr. Malcolm laughed. "Well, I grant it, Charles," he said; "they are length without breadth!" "Did you ever hear the like?" said Mrs. Reding, laughing too; "don't encourage him, Mr. Malcolm; you are worse than he. Angels length without breadth!" "They pass from place to place, they come, they go," continued Mr. Malcolm. "They conjure up the past so vividly," said Charles. "But sounds surely more than scents," said Mr. Malcolm. "Pardon me; the reverse as _I_ think," answered Charles. "That _is_ a paradox, Charles," said Mr. Malcolm; "the smell of roast-beef never went further than to remind a man of dinner; but sounds are pathetic and inspiring." "Well, sir, but think of this," said Charles, "scents are complete in themselves, yet do not consist of parts. Think how very distinct the smell of a rose is from a pink, a pink from a sweet-pea, a sweet-pea from a stock, a stock from lilac, lilac from lavender, lavender from jasmine, jasmine from honeysuckle, honeysuckle from hawthorn, hawthorn from hyacinth, hyacinth"---- "Spare us," interrupted Mr. Malcolm; "you are going through the index of Loudon!" "And these are only the scents of flowers; how different flowers smell from fruits, fruits from spices, spices from roast-beef or pork-cutlets, and so on. Now, what I was coming to is this--these scents are perfectly distinct from each other, and _sui generis_; they never can be confused; yet each is communicated to the apprehension in an instant. Sights take up a great space, a tune is a succession of sounds; but scents are at once specific and complete, yet indivisible. Who can halve a scent? they need neither time nor space; thus they are immaterial or spiritual." "Charles hasn't been to Oxford for nothing," said his mother, laughing and looking at Mary; "this is what I call chopping logic!" "Well done, Charles,"

hung

How many times the word 'hung' appears in the text?

will choose time. I think the University goes down just when Oxford begins to be most beautiful. The walks and meadows are so fragrant and bright now, the hay half carried, and the short new grass appearing." "Reding ought to live here all through the Long," said Tenby: "does any one live through the Vacation, sir, in Oxford?" "Do you mean they die before the end of it, Mr. Tenby?" asked Vincent. "It can't be denied," he continued, "that many, like Mr. Reding, think it a most pleasant time. _I_ am fond of Oxford; but it is not my _habitat_ out of term-time." "Well, I think I should like to make it so," said Charles, "but, I suppose, undergraduates are not allowed." Mr. Vincent answered with more than necessary gravity, "No;" it rested with the Principal; but he conceived that he would not consent to it. Vincent added that certainly there _were_ parties who remained in Oxford through the Long Vacation. It was said mysteriously. Charles answered that, if it was against college rules, there was no help for it; else, were he reading for his degree, he should like nothing better than to pass the Long Vacation in Oxford, if he might judge by the pleasantness of the last ten days. "That is a compliment, Mr. Reding, to your company," said Vincent. At this moment the door opened, and in came the manciple with the dinner paper, which Mr. Vincent had formally to run his eye over. "Watkins," he said, giving it back to him, "I almost think to-day is one of the Fasts of the Church. Go and look, Watkins, and bring me word." The astonished manciple, who had never been sent on such a commission in his whole career before, hastened out of the room, to task his wits how best to fulfil it. The question seemed to strike the company as forcibly, for there was a sudden silence, which was succeeded by a shuffling of feet and a leave-taking; as if, though they had secured their ham and mutton at breakfast, they did not like to risk their dinner. Watkins returned sooner than could have been expected. He said that Mr. Vincent was right; to-day he had found was "the feast of the Apostles." "The Vigil of St. Peter, you mean, Watkins," said Mr. Vincent; "I thought so. Then let us have a plain beefsteak and a saddle of mutton; no Portugal onions, Watkins, or currant-jelly; and some simple pudding, Charlotte pudding, Watkins--that will do." Watkins vanished. By this time, Charles found himself alone with the college authority; who began to speak to him in a more confidential tone. "Mr. Reding," said he, "I did not like to question you before the others, but I conceive you had no particular _meaning_ in your praise of Oxford in the Long Vacation? In the mouths of some it would have been suspicious." Charles was all surprise. "To tell the truth, Mr. Reding, as things stand," he proceeded, "it is often a mark of _party_, this residence in the Vacation; though, of course, there is nothing in the _thing_ itself but what is perfectly natural and right." Charles was all attention. "My good sir," the tutor proceeded, "avoid parties; be sure to avoid party. You are young in your career among us. I always feel anxious about young men of talent; there is the greatest danger of the talent of the University being absorbed in party." Reding expressed a hope that nothing he had done had given cause to his tutor's remark. "No," replied Mr. Vincent, "no;" yet with some slight hesitation; "no, I don't know that it has. But I have thought some of your remarks and questions at lecture were like a person pushing things _too far_, and wishing to form a _system_." Charles was so much taken aback by the charge, that the unexplained mystery of the Long Vacation went out of his head. He said he was "very sorry," and "obliged;" and tried to recollect what he could have said to give ground to Mr. Vincent's remark. Not being able at the moment to recollect, he went on. "I assure you, sir, I know so little of parties in the place, that I hardly know their leaders. I have heard persons mentioned, but, if I tried, I think I should, in some cases, mismatch names and opinions." "I believe it," said Vincent; "but you are young; I am cautioning you against _tendencies_. You may suddenly find yourself absorbed before you know where you are." Charles thought this a good opportunity of asking some questions in detail, about points which puzzled him. He asked whether Dr. Brownside was considered a safe divine to follow. "I hold, d'ye see," answered Vincent, "that all errors are counterfeits of truth. Clever men say true things, Mr. Reding, true in their substance, but," sinking his voice to a whisper, "they go _too far_. It might even be shown that all sects are in one sense but parts of the Catholic Church. I don't say true parts, that is a further question; but they _embody_ great _principles_. The Quakers represent the principle of simplicity and evangelical poverty; they even have a dress of their own, like monks. The Independents represent the rights of the laity; the Wesleyans cherish the devotional principle; the Irvingites, the symbolical and mystical; the High Church party, the principle of obedience; the Liberals are the guardians of reason. No party, then, I conceive, is entirely right or entirely wrong. As to Dr. Brownside, there certainly have been various opinions entertained about his divinity; still, he is an able man, and I think you will gain _good_, gain _good_ from his teaching. But mind, I don't _recommend_ him; yet I respect him, and I consider that he says many things very well worth your attention. I would advise you, then, to accept the _good_ which his sermons offer, without committing yourself to the _bad_. That, depend upon it, Mr. Reding, is the golden though the obvious rule in these matters." Charles said, in answer, that Mr. Vincent was overrating his powers; that he had to learn before he could judge; and that he wished very much to know whether Vincent could recommend him any book, in which he might see at once _what_ the true Church-of-England doctrine was on a number of points which perplexed him. Mr. Vincent replied, he must be on his guard against dissipating his mind with such reading, at a time when his University duties had a definite claim upon him. He ought to avoid all controversies of the day, all authors of the day. He would advise him to read _no_ living authors. "Read dead authors alone," he continued; "dead authors are safe. Our great divines," and he stood upright, "were models; 'there were giants on the earth in those days,' as King George the Third had once said of them to Dr. Johnson. They had that depth, and power, and gravity, and fulness, and erudition; and they were so racy, always racy, and what might be called English. They had that richness, too, such a mine of thought, such a world of opinion, such activity of mind, such inexhaustible resource, such diversity, too. Then they were so eloquent; the majestic Hooker, the imaginative Taylor, the brilliant Hall, the learning of Barrow, the strong sense of South, the keen logic of Chillingworth, good, honest old Burnet," etc., etc. There did not seem much reason why he should stop at one moment more than another; at length, however, he did stop. It was prose, but it was pleasant prose to Charles; he knew just enough about these writers to feel interested in hearing them talked about, and to him Vincent seemed to be saying a good deal, when in fact he was saying very little. When he stopped, Charles said he believed that there were persons in the University who were promoting the study of these authors. Mr. Vincent looked grave. "It is true," he said; "but, my young friend, I have already hinted to you that indifferent things are perverted to the purposes of _party_. At this moment the names of some of our greatest divines are little better than a watchword by which the opinions of living individuals are signified." "Which opinions, I suppose," Charles answered, "are not to be found in those authors." "I'll not say that," said Mr. Vincent. "I have the greatest respect for the individuals in question, and I am not denying that they have done good to our Church by drawing attention in this lax day to the old Church-of-England divinity. But it is one thing to agree with these gentlemen; another," laying his hand on Charles's shoulder, "another to belong to their party. Do not make man your master; get good from all; think well of all persons, and you will be a wise man." Reding inquired, with some timidity, if this was not something like what Dr. Brownside had said in the University pulpit; but perhaps the latter advocated a toleration of opinions in a different sense? Mr. Vincent answered rather shortly, that he had not heard Dr. Brownside's sermon; but, for himself, he had been speaking only of persons in our own communion. "Our Church," he said, "admitted of great liberty of thought within her pale. Even our greatest divines differed from each other in many respects; nay, Bishop Taylor differed from himself. It was a great principle in the English Church. Her true children agree to differ. In truth," he continued, "there is that robust, masculine, noble independence in the English mind, which refuses to be tied down to artificial shapes, but is like, I will say, some great and beautiful production of nature,--a tree, which is rich in foliage and fantastic in limb, no sickly denizen of the hothouse, or helpless dependent of the garden wall, but in careless magnificence sheds its fruits upon the free earth, for the bird of the air and the beast of the field, and all sorts of cattle, to eat thereof and rejoice." When Charles came away, he tried to think what he had gained by his conversation with Mr. Vincent; not exactly what he had wanted, some practical rules to guide his mind and keep him steady; but still some useful hints. He had already been averse to parties, and offended at what he saw of individuals attached to them. Vincent had confirmed him in his resolution to keep aloof from them, and to attend to his duties in the place. He felt pleased to have had this talk with him; but what could he mean by suspecting a tendency in himself to push things too far, and thereby to implicate himself in party? He was obliged to resign himself to ignorance on the subject, and to be content with keeping a watch over himself in future. CHAPTER XI. No opportunity has occurred of informing the reader that, during the last week or two, Charles had accidentally been a good deal thrown across Willis, the _umbra_ of White at Bateman's breakfast-party. He had liked his looks on that occasion, when he was dumb; he did not like him so much when he heard him talk; still he could not help being interested in him, and not the least for this reason, that Willis seemed to have taken a great fancy to himself. He certainly did court Charles, and seemed anxious to stand well with him. Charles, however, did not like his mode of talking better than he did White's; and when he first saw his rooms, there was much in them which shocked both his good sense and his religious principles. A large ivory crucifix, in a glass case, was a conspicuous ornament between the windows; an engraving, representing the Blessed Trinity, as is usual in Catholic countries, hung over the fireplace, and a picture of the Madonna and St. Dominic was opposite to it. On the mantelpiece were a rosary, a thuribulum, and other tokens of Catholicism, of which Charles did not know the uses; a missal, ritual, and some Catholic tracts, lay on the table; and, as he happened to come on Willis unexpectedly, he found him sitting in a vestment more like a cassock than a reading-gown, and engaged upon some portion of the Breviary. Virgil and Sophocles, Herodotus and Cicero seemed, as impure pagans, to have hid themselves in corners, or flitted away, before the awful presence of the Ancient Church. Charles had taken upon himself to protest against some of these singularities, but without success. On the evening before his departure for the country he had occasion to go towards Folly Bridge to pay a bill, when he was startled, as he passed what he had ever taken for a dissenting chapel, to see Willis come out of it. He hardly could believe he saw correctly; he knew, indeed, that Willis had been detained in Oxford, as he had been himself; but what had compelled him to a visit so extraordinary as that which he had just made, Charles had no means of determining. "Willis!" he cried, as he stopped. Willis coloured, and tried to look easy. "Do come a few paces with me," said Charles. "What in the world has taken you there? Is it not a dissenting meeting?" "Dissenting meeting!" cried Willis, surprised and offended in his turn: "what on earth could make you think I would go to a dissenting meeting?" "Well, I beg your pardon," said Charles; "I recollect now: it's the exhibition room. However, _once_ it _was_ a chapel: that's my mistake. Isn't it what is called 'the Old Methodist Chapel?' I never was there; they showed there the _Dio-astro-doxon_, so I think they called it." Charles talked on, to cover his own mistake, for he was ashamed of the charge he had made. Willis did not know whether he was in jest or earnest. "Reding," he said, "don't go on; you offend me." "Well, what is it?" said Charles. "You know well enough," answered Willis, "though you wish to annoy me." "I don't indeed." "It's the Catholic church," said Willis. Reding was silent a moment; then he said, "Well, I don't think you have mended the matter; it _is_ a dissenting meeting, call it what you will, though not the kind of one I meant." "What can you mean?" asked Willis. "Rather, what mean _you_ by going to such places?" retorted Charles; "why, it is against your oath." "My oath! what oath?" "There's not an oath now; but there was an oath till lately," said Reding; "and we still make a very solemn engagement. Don't you recollect your matriculation at the Vice-Chancellor's, and what oaths and declarations you made?" "I don't know what I made: my tutor told me nothing about it. I signed a book or two." "You did more," said Reding. "I was told most carefully. You solemnly engaged to keep the statutes; and one statute is, not to go into any dissenting chapel or meeting whatever." "Catholics are not Dissenters," said Willis. "Oh, don't speak so," said Charles; "you know it's meant to include them. The statute wishes us to keep from all places of worship whatever but our own." "But it is an illegal declaration or vow," said Willis, "and so not binding." "Where did you find that get-off?" said Charles; "the priest put that into your head." "I don't know the priest; I never spoke a word to him," answered Willis. "Well, any how, it's not your own answer," said Reding; "and does not help you. I am no casuist; but if it is an illegal engagement you should not continue to enjoy the benefit of it." "What benefit?" "Your cap and gown; a university education; the chance of a scholarship or fellowship. Give up these, and then plead, if you will, and lawfully, that you are quit of your engagement; but don't sail under false colours: don't take the benefit and break the stipulation." "You take it too seriously; there are half a hundred statutes _you_ don't keep, any more than I. You are most inconsistent." "Well, if we don't keep them," said Charles, "I suppose it is in points where the authorities don't enforce them; for instance, they don't mean us to dress in brown, though the statutes order it." "But they _do_ mean to keep you from walking down High Street in beaver," answered Willis; "for the Proctors march up and down, and send you back, if they catch you." "But _this_ is a different matter," said Reding, changing his ground; "this is a matter of religion. It can't be right to go to strange places of worship or meetings." "Why," said Willis, "if we are one Church with the Roman Catholics, I can't make out for the life of me how it's wrong for us to go to them or them to us." "I'm no divine, I don't understand what is meant by one Church," said Charles; "but I know well that there's not a bishop, not a clergyman, not a sober churchman in the land but would give it against you. It's a sheer absurdity." "Don't talk in that way," answered Willis, "please don't. I feel all my heart drawn to the Catholic worship; our own service is so cold." "That's just what every stiff Dissenter says," answered Charles; "every poor cottager, too, who knows no better, and goes after the Methodists--after her dear Mr. Spoutaway or the preaching cobbler. _She_ says (I have heard them), 'Oh, sir, I suppose we ought to go where we get most good. Mr. So-and-so goes to my heart--he goes through me.'" Willis laughed; "Well, not a bad reason, as times go, _I_ think," said he: "poor souls, what better means of judging have they? how can you hope they will like 'the Scripture moveth us'? Really you are making too much of it. This is only the second time I have been there, and, I tell you in earnest, I find my mind filled with awe and devotion there; as I think you would too. I really am better for it; I cannot pray in church; there's a bad smell there, and the pews hide everything; I can't see through a deal board. But here, when I went in, I found all still, and calm, the space open, and, in the twilight, the Tabernacle just visible, pointed out by the lamp." Charles looked very uncomfortable. "Really, Willis," he said, "I don't know what to say to you. Heaven forbid that I should speak against the Roman Catholics; I know nothing about them. But _this_ I know, that you are not a Roman Catholic, and have no business there. If they have such sacred things among them as those you allude to, still these are not yours; you are an intruder. I know nothing about it; I don't like to give a judgment, I am sure. But it's a tampering with sacred things; running here and there, touching and tasting, taking up, putting down. I don't like it," he added, with vehemence; "it's taking liberties with God." "Oh, my dear Reding, please don't speak so very severely," said poor Willis; "now what have I done more than you would do yourself, were you in France or Italy? Do you mean to say you wouldn't enter the churches abroad?" "I will only decide about what is before me," answered Reding; "when I go abroad, then will be the time to think about your question. It is quite enough to know what we ought to do at the moment, and I am clear you have been doing wrong. How did you find your way there?" "White took me." "Then there is one man in the world more thoughtless than you: do many of the gownsmen go there?" "Not that I know of; one or two have gone from curiosity; there is no practice of going, at least this is what I am told." "Well," said Charles, "you must promise me you will not go again. Come, we won't part till you do." "That is too much," said Willis, gently; then, disengaging his arm from Reding's, he suddenly darted away from him, saying, "Good-bye, good-bye; to our next merry meeting--_au revoir_." There was no help for it. Charles walked slowly home, saying to himself: "What if, after all, the Roman Catholic Church is the true Church? I wish I knew what to believe; no one will tell me what to believe; I am so left to myself." Then he thought: "I suppose I know quite enough for practice--more than I _do_ practise; and I ought surely to be contented and thankful." CHAPTER XII. Charles was an affectionate son, and the Long Vacation passed very happily at home. He was up early, and read steadily till luncheon, and then he was at the service of his father, mother, and sisters for the rest of the day. He loved the calm, quiet country; he loved the monotonous flow of time, when each day is like the other; and, after the excitement of Oxford, the secluded parsonage was like a haven beyond the tossing of the waves. The whirl of opinions and perplexities which had encircled him at Oxford now were like the distant sound of the ocean--they reminded him of his present security. The undulating meadows, the green lanes, the open heath, the common with its wide-spreading dusky elms, the high timber which fringed the level path from village to village, ever and anon broken and thrown into groups, or losing itself in copses--even the gate, and the stile, and the turnpike-road had the charm, not of novelty, but of long familiar use; they had the poetry of many recollections. Nor was the dilapidated, deformed church, with its outside staircases, its unsightly galleries, its wide intruded windows, its uncouth pews, its low nunting table, its forlorn vestry, and its damp earthy smell, without its pleasant associations to the inner man; for there it was that for many a year, Sunday after Sunday, he had heard his dear father read and preach; there were the old monuments, with Latin inscriptions and strange devices, the black boards with white letters, the Resurgams and grinning skulls, the fire-buckets, the faded militia-colours, and, almost as much a fixture, the old clerk, with a Welsh wig over his ears, shouting the responses out of place--which had arrested his imagination, and awed him when a child. And then there was his home itself; its well-known rooms, its pleasant routine, its order, and its comfort--an old and true friend, the dearer to him because he had made new ones. "Where I shall be in time to come I know not," he said to himself; "I am but a boy; many things which I have not a dream of, which my imagination cannot compass, may come on me before I die--if I live; but here at least, and now, I am happy, and I will enjoy my happiness. Some say that school is the pleasantest time of one's life; this does not exclude college. I suppose care is what makes life so wearing. At present I have no care, no responsibility; I suppose I shall feel a little when I go up for my degree. Care is a terrible thing; I have had a little of it at times at school. What a strange thing to fancy, I shall be one day twenty-five or thirty! How the weeks are flying by! the Vacation will soon be over. Oh, I am so happy, it quite makes me afraid. Yet I shall have strength for my day." Sometimes, however, his thoughts took a sadder turn, and he anticipated the future more vividly than he enjoyed the present. Mr. Malcolm had come to see them, after an absence from the parsonage for several years: his visit was a great pleasure to Mr. Reding, and not much less to himself, to whom a green home and a family circle were agreeable sights, after his bachelor-life at college. He had been a great favourite with Charles and his sisters as children, though now his popularity with them for the most part rested on the memory of the past. When he told them amusing stories, or allowed them to climb his knee and take off his spectacles, he did all that was necessary to gain their childish hearts; more is necessary to conciliate the affection of young men and women; and thus it is not surprising that he lived in their minds principally by prescription. He neither knew this, nor would have thought much about it if he had; for, like many persons of advancing years, he made himself very much his own centre, did not care to enter into the minds of others, did not consult for them, or find his happiness in them. He was kind and friendly to the young people, as he would be kind to a canary-bird or a lap-dog; it was a sort of external love; and, though they got on capitally with him, they did not miss him when gone, nor would have been much troubled to know that he was never to come again. Charles drove him about the country, stamped his letters, secured him his newspapers from the neighbouring town, and listened to his stories about Oxford and Oxford men. He really liked him, and wished to please him; but, as to consulting him in any serious matter, or going to him for comfort in affliction, he would as soon have thought of betaking him to Dan the pedlar, or old Isaac who played the Sunday bassoon. "How have your peaches been this year, Malcolm?" said Mr. Reding one day after dinner to his guest. "You ought to know that we have no peaches in Oxford," answered Mr. Malcolm. "My memory plays me false, then: I had a vision of, at least, October peaches on one occasion, and fine ones too." "Ah, you mean at old Tom Spindle's, the jockey's," answered Mr. Malcolm; "it's true, he had a bit of a brick wall, and was proud of it. But peaches come when there is no one in Oxford to eat them; so either the tree, or at least the fruit, is a great rarity there. Oxford wasn't so empty once; you have old mulberry-trees there in record of better days." "At that time, too," said Charles, "I suppose, the more expensive fruits were not cultivated. Mulberries are the witness, not only of a full college, but of simple tastes." "Charles is secretly cutting at our hothouse here," said Mr. Reding; "as if our first father did not prefer fruits and flowers to beef and mutton." "No, indeed," said Charles, "I think peaches capital things; and as to flowers, I am even too fond of scents." "Charles has some theory, then, about scents, I'll be bound," said his father; "I never knew a boy who so placed his likings and dislikings on fancies. He began to eat olives directly he read the OEdipus of Sophocles; and, I verily believe, will soon give up oranges from his dislike to King William." "Every one does so," said Charles: "who would not be in the fashion? There's Aunt Kitty, she calls a bonnet, 'a sweet' one year, which makes her 'a perfect fright' the next." "You're right, papa, in this instance," said his mother; "I know he has some good reason, though I never can recollect it, why he smells a rose, or distils lavender. What is it, my dear Mary?" "'Relics ye are of Eden's bowers,'" said she. "Why, sir, that was precisely your own reason just now," said Charles to his father. "There's more than that," said Mrs. Reding, "if I knew what it was." "He thinks the scent more intellectual than the other senses," said Mary, smiling. "Such a boy for paradoxes!" said his mother. "Well, so it is in a certain way," said Charles, "but I can't explain. Sounds and scents are more ethereal, less material; they have no shape--like the angels." Mr. Malcolm laughed. "Well, I grant it, Charles," he said; "they are length without breadth!" "Did you ever hear the like?" said Mrs. Reding, laughing too; "don't encourage him, Mr. Malcolm; you are worse than he. Angels length without breadth!" "They pass from place to place, they come, they go," continued Mr. Malcolm. "They conjure up the past so vividly," said Charles. "But sounds surely more than scents," said Mr. Malcolm. "Pardon me; the reverse as _I_ think," answered Charles. "That _is_ a paradox, Charles," said Mr. Malcolm; "the smell of roast-beef never went further than to remind a man of dinner; but sounds are pathetic and inspiring." "Well, sir, but think of this," said Charles, "scents are complete in themselves, yet do not consist of parts. Think how very distinct the smell of a rose is from a pink, a pink from a sweet-pea, a sweet-pea from a stock, a stock from lilac, lilac from lavender, lavender from jasmine, jasmine from honeysuckle, honeysuckle from hawthorn, hawthorn from hyacinth, hyacinth"---- "Spare us," interrupted Mr. Malcolm; "you are going through the index of Loudon!" "And these are only the scents of flowers; how different flowers smell from fruits, fruits from spices, spices from roast-beef or pork-cutlets, and so on. Now, what I was coming to is this--these scents are perfectly distinct from each other, and _sui generis_; they never can be confused; yet each is communicated to the apprehension in an instant. Sights take up a great space, a tune is a succession of sounds; but scents are at once specific and complete, yet indivisible. Who can halve a scent? they need neither time nor space; thus they are immaterial or spiritual." "Charles hasn't been to Oxford for nothing," said his mother, laughing and looking at Mary; "this is what I call chopping logic!" "Well done, Charles,"

accompanied

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will choose time. I think the University goes down just when Oxford begins to be most beautiful. The walks and meadows are so fragrant and bright now, the hay half carried, and the short new grass appearing." "Reding ought to live here all through the Long," said Tenby: "does any one live through the Vacation, sir, in Oxford?" "Do you mean they die before the end of it, Mr. Tenby?" asked Vincent. "It can't be denied," he continued, "that many, like Mr. Reding, think it a most pleasant time. _I_ am fond of Oxford; but it is not my _habitat_ out of term-time." "Well, I think I should like to make it so," said Charles, "but, I suppose, undergraduates are not allowed." Mr. Vincent answered with more than necessary gravity, "No;" it rested with the Principal; but he conceived that he would not consent to it. Vincent added that certainly there _were_ parties who remained in Oxford through the Long Vacation. It was said mysteriously. Charles answered that, if it was against college rules, there was no help for it; else, were he reading for his degree, he should like nothing better than to pass the Long Vacation in Oxford, if he might judge by the pleasantness of the last ten days. "That is a compliment, Mr. Reding, to your company," said Vincent. At this moment the door opened, and in came the manciple with the dinner paper, which Mr. Vincent had formally to run his eye over. "Watkins," he said, giving it back to him, "I almost think to-day is one of the Fasts of the Church. Go and look, Watkins, and bring me word." The astonished manciple, who had never been sent on such a commission in his whole career before, hastened out of the room, to task his wits how best to fulfil it. The question seemed to strike the company as forcibly, for there was a sudden silence, which was succeeded by a shuffling of feet and a leave-taking; as if, though they had secured their ham and mutton at breakfast, they did not like to risk their dinner. Watkins returned sooner than could have been expected. He said that Mr. Vincent was right; to-day he had found was "the feast of the Apostles." "The Vigil of St. Peter, you mean, Watkins," said Mr. Vincent; "I thought so. Then let us have a plain beefsteak and a saddle of mutton; no Portugal onions, Watkins, or currant-jelly; and some simple pudding, Charlotte pudding, Watkins--that will do." Watkins vanished. By this time, Charles found himself alone with the college authority; who began to speak to him in a more confidential tone. "Mr. Reding," said he, "I did not like to question you before the others, but I conceive you had no particular _meaning_ in your praise of Oxford in the Long Vacation? In the mouths of some it would have been suspicious." Charles was all surprise. "To tell the truth, Mr. Reding, as things stand," he proceeded, "it is often a mark of _party_, this residence in the Vacation; though, of course, there is nothing in the _thing_ itself but what is perfectly natural and right." Charles was all attention. "My good sir," the tutor proceeded, "avoid parties; be sure to avoid party. You are young in your career among us. I always feel anxious about young men of talent; there is the greatest danger of the talent of the University being absorbed in party." Reding expressed a hope that nothing he had done had given cause to his tutor's remark. "No," replied Mr. Vincent, "no;" yet with some slight hesitation; "no, I don't know that it has. But I have thought some of your remarks and questions at lecture were like a person pushing things _too far_, and wishing to form a _system_." Charles was so much taken aback by the charge, that the unexplained mystery of the Long Vacation went out of his head. He said he was "very sorry," and "obliged;" and tried to recollect what he could have said to give ground to Mr. Vincent's remark. Not being able at the moment to recollect, he went on. "I assure you, sir, I know so little of parties in the place, that I hardly know their leaders. I have heard persons mentioned, but, if I tried, I think I should, in some cases, mismatch names and opinions." "I believe it," said Vincent; "but you are young; I am cautioning you against _tendencies_. You may suddenly find yourself absorbed before you know where you are." Charles thought this a good opportunity of asking some questions in detail, about points which puzzled him. He asked whether Dr. Brownside was considered a safe divine to follow. "I hold, d'ye see," answered Vincent, "that all errors are counterfeits of truth. Clever men say true things, Mr. Reding, true in their substance, but," sinking his voice to a whisper, "they go _too far_. It might even be shown that all sects are in one sense but parts of the Catholic Church. I don't say true parts, that is a further question; but they _embody_ great _principles_. The Quakers represent the principle of simplicity and evangelical poverty; they even have a dress of their own, like monks. The Independents represent the rights of the laity; the Wesleyans cherish the devotional principle; the Irvingites, the symbolical and mystical; the High Church party, the principle of obedience; the Liberals are the guardians of reason. No party, then, I conceive, is entirely right or entirely wrong. As to Dr. Brownside, there certainly have been various opinions entertained about his divinity; still, he is an able man, and I think you will gain _good_, gain _good_ from his teaching. But mind, I don't _recommend_ him; yet I respect him, and I consider that he says many things very well worth your attention. I would advise you, then, to accept the _good_ which his sermons offer, without committing yourself to the _bad_. That, depend upon it, Mr. Reding, is the golden though the obvious rule in these matters." Charles said, in answer, that Mr. Vincent was overrating his powers; that he had to learn before he could judge; and that he wished very much to know whether Vincent could recommend him any book, in which he might see at once _what_ the true Church-of-England doctrine was on a number of points which perplexed him. Mr. Vincent replied, he must be on his guard against dissipating his mind with such reading, at a time when his University duties had a definite claim upon him. He ought to avoid all controversies of the day, all authors of the day. He would advise him to read _no_ living authors. "Read dead authors alone," he continued; "dead authors are safe. Our great divines," and he stood upright, "were models; 'there were giants on the earth in those days,' as King George the Third had once said of them to Dr. Johnson. They had that depth, and power, and gravity, and fulness, and erudition; and they were so racy, always racy, and what might be called English. They had that richness, too, such a mine of thought, such a world of opinion, such activity of mind, such inexhaustible resource, such diversity, too. Then they were so eloquent; the majestic Hooker, the imaginative Taylor, the brilliant Hall, the learning of Barrow, the strong sense of South, the keen logic of Chillingworth, good, honest old Burnet," etc., etc. There did not seem much reason why he should stop at one moment more than another; at length, however, he did stop. It was prose, but it was pleasant prose to Charles; he knew just enough about these writers to feel interested in hearing them talked about, and to him Vincent seemed to be saying a good deal, when in fact he was saying very little. When he stopped, Charles said he believed that there were persons in the University who were promoting the study of these authors. Mr. Vincent looked grave. "It is true," he said; "but, my young friend, I have already hinted to you that indifferent things are perverted to the purposes of _party_. At this moment the names of some of our greatest divines are little better than a watchword by which the opinions of living individuals are signified." "Which opinions, I suppose," Charles answered, "are not to be found in those authors." "I'll not say that," said Mr. Vincent. "I have the greatest respect for the individuals in question, and I am not denying that they have done good to our Church by drawing attention in this lax day to the old Church-of-England divinity. But it is one thing to agree with these gentlemen; another," laying his hand on Charles's shoulder, "another to belong to their party. Do not make man your master; get good from all; think well of all persons, and you will be a wise man." Reding inquired, with some timidity, if this was not something like what Dr. Brownside had said in the University pulpit; but perhaps the latter advocated a toleration of opinions in a different sense? Mr. Vincent answered rather shortly, that he had not heard Dr. Brownside's sermon; but, for himself, he had been speaking only of persons in our own communion. "Our Church," he said, "admitted of great liberty of thought within her pale. Even our greatest divines differed from each other in many respects; nay, Bishop Taylor differed from himself. It was a great principle in the English Church. Her true children agree to differ. In truth," he continued, "there is that robust, masculine, noble independence in the English mind, which refuses to be tied down to artificial shapes, but is like, I will say, some great and beautiful production of nature,--a tree, which is rich in foliage and fantastic in limb, no sickly denizen of the hothouse, or helpless dependent of the garden wall, but in careless magnificence sheds its fruits upon the free earth, for the bird of the air and the beast of the field, and all sorts of cattle, to eat thereof and rejoice." When Charles came away, he tried to think what he had gained by his conversation with Mr. Vincent; not exactly what he had wanted, some practical rules to guide his mind and keep him steady; but still some useful hints. He had already been averse to parties, and offended at what he saw of individuals attached to them. Vincent had confirmed him in his resolution to keep aloof from them, and to attend to his duties in the place. He felt pleased to have had this talk with him; but what could he mean by suspecting a tendency in himself to push things too far, and thereby to implicate himself in party? He was obliged to resign himself to ignorance on the subject, and to be content with keeping a watch over himself in future. CHAPTER XI. No opportunity has occurred of informing the reader that, during the last week or two, Charles had accidentally been a good deal thrown across Willis, the _umbra_ of White at Bateman's breakfast-party. He had liked his looks on that occasion, when he was dumb; he did not like him so much when he heard him talk; still he could not help being interested in him, and not the least for this reason, that Willis seemed to have taken a great fancy to himself. He certainly did court Charles, and seemed anxious to stand well with him. Charles, however, did not like his mode of talking better than he did White's; and when he first saw his rooms, there was much in them which shocked both his good sense and his religious principles. A large ivory crucifix, in a glass case, was a conspicuous ornament between the windows; an engraving, representing the Blessed Trinity, as is usual in Catholic countries, hung over the fireplace, and a picture of the Madonna and St. Dominic was opposite to it. On the mantelpiece were a rosary, a thuribulum, and other tokens of Catholicism, of which Charles did not know the uses; a missal, ritual, and some Catholic tracts, lay on the table; and, as he happened to come on Willis unexpectedly, he found him sitting in a vestment more like a cassock than a reading-gown, and engaged upon some portion of the Breviary. Virgil and Sophocles, Herodotus and Cicero seemed, as impure pagans, to have hid themselves in corners, or flitted away, before the awful presence of the Ancient Church. Charles had taken upon himself to protest against some of these singularities, but without success. On the evening before his departure for the country he had occasion to go towards Folly Bridge to pay a bill, when he was startled, as he passed what he had ever taken for a dissenting chapel, to see Willis come out of it. He hardly could believe he saw correctly; he knew, indeed, that Willis had been detained in Oxford, as he had been himself; but what had compelled him to a visit so extraordinary as that which he had just made, Charles had no means of determining. "Willis!" he cried, as he stopped. Willis coloured, and tried to look easy. "Do come a few paces with me," said Charles. "What in the world has taken you there? Is it not a dissenting meeting?" "Dissenting meeting!" cried Willis, surprised and offended in his turn: "what on earth could make you think I would go to a dissenting meeting?" "Well, I beg your pardon," said Charles; "I recollect now: it's the exhibition room. However, _once_ it _was_ a chapel: that's my mistake. Isn't it what is called 'the Old Methodist Chapel?' I never was there; they showed there the _Dio-astro-doxon_, so I think they called it." Charles talked on, to cover his own mistake, for he was ashamed of the charge he had made. Willis did not know whether he was in jest or earnest. "Reding," he said, "don't go on; you offend me." "Well, what is it?" said Charles. "You know well enough," answered Willis, "though you wish to annoy me." "I don't indeed." "It's the Catholic church," said Willis. Reding was silent a moment; then he said, "Well, I don't think you have mended the matter; it _is_ a dissenting meeting, call it what you will, though not the kind of one I meant." "What can you mean?" asked Willis. "Rather, what mean _you_ by going to such places?" retorted Charles; "why, it is against your oath." "My oath! what oath?" "There's not an oath now; but there was an oath till lately," said Reding; "and we still make a very solemn engagement. Don't you recollect your matriculation at the Vice-Chancellor's, and what oaths and declarations you made?" "I don't know what I made: my tutor told me nothing about it. I signed a book or two." "You did more," said Reding. "I was told most carefully. You solemnly engaged to keep the statutes; and one statute is, not to go into any dissenting chapel or meeting whatever." "Catholics are not Dissenters," said Willis. "Oh, don't speak so," said Charles; "you know it's meant to include them. The statute wishes us to keep from all places of worship whatever but our own." "But it is an illegal declaration or vow," said Willis, "and so not binding." "Where did you find that get-off?" said Charles; "the priest put that into your head." "I don't know the priest; I never spoke a word to him," answered Willis. "Well, any how, it's not your own answer," said Reding; "and does not help you. I am no casuist; but if it is an illegal engagement you should not continue to enjoy the benefit of it." "What benefit?" "Your cap and gown; a university education; the chance of a scholarship or fellowship. Give up these, and then plead, if you will, and lawfully, that you are quit of your engagement; but don't sail under false colours: don't take the benefit and break the stipulation." "You take it too seriously; there are half a hundred statutes _you_ don't keep, any more than I. You are most inconsistent." "Well, if we don't keep them," said Charles, "I suppose it is in points where the authorities don't enforce them; for instance, they don't mean us to dress in brown, though the statutes order it." "But they _do_ mean to keep you from walking down High Street in beaver," answered Willis; "for the Proctors march up and down, and send you back, if they catch you." "But _this_ is a different matter," said Reding, changing his ground; "this is a matter of religion. It can't be right to go to strange places of worship or meetings." "Why," said Willis, "if we are one Church with the Roman Catholics, I can't make out for the life of me how it's wrong for us to go to them or them to us." "I'm no divine, I don't understand what is meant by one Church," said Charles; "but I know well that there's not a bishop, not a clergyman, not a sober churchman in the land but would give it against you. It's a sheer absurdity." "Don't talk in that way," answered Willis, "please don't. I feel all my heart drawn to the Catholic worship; our own service is so cold." "That's just what every stiff Dissenter says," answered Charles; "every poor cottager, too, who knows no better, and goes after the Methodists--after her dear Mr. Spoutaway or the preaching cobbler. _She_ says (I have heard them), 'Oh, sir, I suppose we ought to go where we get most good. Mr. So-and-so goes to my heart--he goes through me.'" Willis laughed; "Well, not a bad reason, as times go, _I_ think," said he: "poor souls, what better means of judging have they? how can you hope they will like 'the Scripture moveth us'? Really you are making too much of it. This is only the second time I have been there, and, I tell you in earnest, I find my mind filled with awe and devotion there; as I think you would too. I really am better for it; I cannot pray in church; there's a bad smell there, and the pews hide everything; I can't see through a deal board. But here, when I went in, I found all still, and calm, the space open, and, in the twilight, the Tabernacle just visible, pointed out by the lamp." Charles looked very uncomfortable. "Really, Willis," he said, "I don't know what to say to you. Heaven forbid that I should speak against the Roman Catholics; I know nothing about them. But _this_ I know, that you are not a Roman Catholic, and have no business there. If they have such sacred things among them as those you allude to, still these are not yours; you are an intruder. I know nothing about it; I don't like to give a judgment, I am sure. But it's a tampering with sacred things; running here and there, touching and tasting, taking up, putting down. I don't like it," he added, with vehemence; "it's taking liberties with God." "Oh, my dear Reding, please don't speak so very severely," said poor Willis; "now what have I done more than you would do yourself, were you in France or Italy? Do you mean to say you wouldn't enter the churches abroad?" "I will only decide about what is before me," answered Reding; "when I go abroad, then will be the time to think about your question. It is quite enough to know what we ought to do at the moment, and I am clear you have been doing wrong. How did you find your way there?" "White took me." "Then there is one man in the world more thoughtless than you: do many of the gownsmen go there?" "Not that I know of; one or two have gone from curiosity; there is no practice of going, at least this is what I am told." "Well," said Charles, "you must promise me you will not go again. Come, we won't part till you do." "That is too much," said Willis, gently; then, disengaging his arm from Reding's, he suddenly darted away from him, saying, "Good-bye, good-bye; to our next merry meeting--_au revoir_." There was no help for it. Charles walked slowly home, saying to himself: "What if, after all, the Roman Catholic Church is the true Church? I wish I knew what to believe; no one will tell me what to believe; I am so left to myself." Then he thought: "I suppose I know quite enough for practice--more than I _do_ practise; and I ought surely to be contented and thankful." CHAPTER XII. Charles was an affectionate son, and the Long Vacation passed very happily at home. He was up early, and read steadily till luncheon, and then he was at the service of his father, mother, and sisters for the rest of the day. He loved the calm, quiet country; he loved the monotonous flow of time, when each day is like the other; and, after the excitement of Oxford, the secluded parsonage was like a haven beyond the tossing of the waves. The whirl of opinions and perplexities which had encircled him at Oxford now were like the distant sound of the ocean--they reminded him of his present security. The undulating meadows, the green lanes, the open heath, the common with its wide-spreading dusky elms, the high timber which fringed the level path from village to village, ever and anon broken and thrown into groups, or losing itself in copses--even the gate, and the stile, and the turnpike-road had the charm, not of novelty, but of long familiar use; they had the poetry of many recollections. Nor was the dilapidated, deformed church, with its outside staircases, its unsightly galleries, its wide intruded windows, its uncouth pews, its low nunting table, its forlorn vestry, and its damp earthy smell, without its pleasant associations to the inner man; for there it was that for many a year, Sunday after Sunday, he had heard his dear father read and preach; there were the old monuments, with Latin inscriptions and strange devices, the black boards with white letters, the Resurgams and grinning skulls, the fire-buckets, the faded militia-colours, and, almost as much a fixture, the old clerk, with a Welsh wig over his ears, shouting the responses out of place--which had arrested his imagination, and awed him when a child. And then there was his home itself; its well-known rooms, its pleasant routine, its order, and its comfort--an old and true friend, the dearer to him because he had made new ones. "Where I shall be in time to come I know not," he said to himself; "I am but a boy; many things which I have not a dream of, which my imagination cannot compass, may come on me before I die--if I live; but here at least, and now, I am happy, and I will enjoy my happiness. Some say that school is the pleasantest time of one's life; this does not exclude college. I suppose care is what makes life so wearing. At present I have no care, no responsibility; I suppose I shall feel a little when I go up for my degree. Care is a terrible thing; I have had a little of it at times at school. What a strange thing to fancy, I shall be one day twenty-five or thirty! How the weeks are flying by! the Vacation will soon be over. Oh, I am so happy, it quite makes me afraid. Yet I shall have strength for my day." Sometimes, however, his thoughts took a sadder turn, and he anticipated the future more vividly than he enjoyed the present. Mr. Malcolm had come to see them, after an absence from the parsonage for several years: his visit was a great pleasure to Mr. Reding, and not much less to himself, to whom a green home and a family circle were agreeable sights, after his bachelor-life at college. He had been a great favourite with Charles and his sisters as children, though now his popularity with them for the most part rested on the memory of the past. When he told them amusing stories, or allowed them to climb his knee and take off his spectacles, he did all that was necessary to gain their childish hearts; more is necessary to conciliate the affection of young men and women; and thus it is not surprising that he lived in their minds principally by prescription. He neither knew this, nor would have thought much about it if he had; for, like many persons of advancing years, he made himself very much his own centre, did not care to enter into the minds of others, did not consult for them, or find his happiness in them. He was kind and friendly to the young people, as he would be kind to a canary-bird or a lap-dog; it was a sort of external love; and, though they got on capitally with him, they did not miss him when gone, nor would have been much troubled to know that he was never to come again. Charles drove him about the country, stamped his letters, secured him his newspapers from the neighbouring town, and listened to his stories about Oxford and Oxford men. He really liked him, and wished to please him; but, as to consulting him in any serious matter, or going to him for comfort in affliction, he would as soon have thought of betaking him to Dan the pedlar, or old Isaac who played the Sunday bassoon. "How have your peaches been this year, Malcolm?" said Mr. Reding one day after dinner to his guest. "You ought to know that we have no peaches in Oxford," answered Mr. Malcolm. "My memory plays me false, then: I had a vision of, at least, October peaches on one occasion, and fine ones too." "Ah, you mean at old Tom Spindle's, the jockey's," answered Mr. Malcolm; "it's true, he had a bit of a brick wall, and was proud of it. But peaches come when there is no one in Oxford to eat them; so either the tree, or at least the fruit, is a great rarity there. Oxford wasn't so empty once; you have old mulberry-trees there in record of better days." "At that time, too," said Charles, "I suppose, the more expensive fruits were not cultivated. Mulberries are the witness, not only of a full college, but of simple tastes." "Charles is secretly cutting at our hothouse here," said Mr. Reding; "as if our first father did not prefer fruits and flowers to beef and mutton." "No, indeed," said Charles, "I think peaches capital things; and as to flowers, I am even too fond of scents." "Charles has some theory, then, about scents, I'll be bound," said his father; "I never knew a boy who so placed his likings and dislikings on fancies. He began to eat olives directly he read the OEdipus of Sophocles; and, I verily believe, will soon give up oranges from his dislike to King William." "Every one does so," said Charles: "who would not be in the fashion? There's Aunt Kitty, she calls a bonnet, 'a sweet' one year, which makes her 'a perfect fright' the next." "You're right, papa, in this instance," said his mother; "I know he has some good reason, though I never can recollect it, why he smells a rose, or distils lavender. What is it, my dear Mary?" "'Relics ye are of Eden's bowers,'" said she. "Why, sir, that was precisely your own reason just now," said Charles to his father. "There's more than that," said Mrs. Reding, "if I knew what it was." "He thinks the scent more intellectual than the other senses," said Mary, smiling. "Such a boy for paradoxes!" said his mother. "Well, so it is in a certain way," said Charles, "but I can't explain. Sounds and scents are more ethereal, less material; they have no shape--like the angels." Mr. Malcolm laughed. "Well, I grant it, Charles," he said; "they are length without breadth!" "Did you ever hear the like?" said Mrs. Reding, laughing too; "don't encourage him, Mr. Malcolm; you are worse than he. Angels length without breadth!" "They pass from place to place, they come, they go," continued Mr. Malcolm. "They conjure up the past so vividly," said Charles. "But sounds surely more than scents," said Mr. Malcolm. "Pardon me; the reverse as _I_ think," answered Charles. "That _is_ a paradox, Charles," said Mr. Malcolm; "the smell of roast-beef never went further than to remind a man of dinner; but sounds are pathetic and inspiring." "Well, sir, but think of this," said Charles, "scents are complete in themselves, yet do not consist of parts. Think how very distinct the smell of a rose is from a pink, a pink from a sweet-pea, a sweet-pea from a stock, a stock from lilac, lilac from lavender, lavender from jasmine, jasmine from honeysuckle, honeysuckle from hawthorn, hawthorn from hyacinth, hyacinth"---- "Spare us," interrupted Mr. Malcolm; "you are going through the index of Loudon!" "And these are only the scents of flowers; how different flowers smell from fruits, fruits from spices, spices from roast-beef or pork-cutlets, and so on. Now, what I was coming to is this--these scents are perfectly distinct from each other, and _sui generis_; they never can be confused; yet each is communicated to the apprehension in an instant. Sights take up a great space, a tune is a succession of sounds; but scents are at once specific and complete, yet indivisible. Who can halve a scent? they need neither time nor space; thus they are immaterial or spiritual." "Charles hasn't been to Oxford for nothing," said his mother, laughing and looking at Mary; "this is what I call chopping logic!" "Well done, Charles,"

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will choose time. I think the University goes down just when Oxford begins to be most beautiful. The walks and meadows are so fragrant and bright now, the hay half carried, and the short new grass appearing." "Reding ought to live here all through the Long," said Tenby: "does any one live through the Vacation, sir, in Oxford?" "Do you mean they die before the end of it, Mr. Tenby?" asked Vincent. "It can't be denied," he continued, "that many, like Mr. Reding, think it a most pleasant time. _I_ am fond of Oxford; but it is not my _habitat_ out of term-time." "Well, I think I should like to make it so," said Charles, "but, I suppose, undergraduates are not allowed." Mr. Vincent answered with more than necessary gravity, "No;" it rested with the Principal; but he conceived that he would not consent to it. Vincent added that certainly there _were_ parties who remained in Oxford through the Long Vacation. It was said mysteriously. Charles answered that, if it was against college rules, there was no help for it; else, were he reading for his degree, he should like nothing better than to pass the Long Vacation in Oxford, if he might judge by the pleasantness of the last ten days. "That is a compliment, Mr. Reding, to your company," said Vincent. At this moment the door opened, and in came the manciple with the dinner paper, which Mr. Vincent had formally to run his eye over. "Watkins," he said, giving it back to him, "I almost think to-day is one of the Fasts of the Church. Go and look, Watkins, and bring me word." The astonished manciple, who had never been sent on such a commission in his whole career before, hastened out of the room, to task his wits how best to fulfil it. The question seemed to strike the company as forcibly, for there was a sudden silence, which was succeeded by a shuffling of feet and a leave-taking; as if, though they had secured their ham and mutton at breakfast, they did not like to risk their dinner. Watkins returned sooner than could have been expected. He said that Mr. Vincent was right; to-day he had found was "the feast of the Apostles." "The Vigil of St. Peter, you mean, Watkins," said Mr. Vincent; "I thought so. Then let us have a plain beefsteak and a saddle of mutton; no Portugal onions, Watkins, or currant-jelly; and some simple pudding, Charlotte pudding, Watkins--that will do." Watkins vanished. By this time, Charles found himself alone with the college authority; who began to speak to him in a more confidential tone. "Mr. Reding," said he, "I did not like to question you before the others, but I conceive you had no particular _meaning_ in your praise of Oxford in the Long Vacation? In the mouths of some it would have been suspicious." Charles was all surprise. "To tell the truth, Mr. Reding, as things stand," he proceeded, "it is often a mark of _party_, this residence in the Vacation; though, of course, there is nothing in the _thing_ itself but what is perfectly natural and right." Charles was all attention. "My good sir," the tutor proceeded, "avoid parties; be sure to avoid party. You are young in your career among us. I always feel anxious about young men of talent; there is the greatest danger of the talent of the University being absorbed in party." Reding expressed a hope that nothing he had done had given cause to his tutor's remark. "No," replied Mr. Vincent, "no;" yet with some slight hesitation; "no, I don't know that it has. But I have thought some of your remarks and questions at lecture were like a person pushing things _too far_, and wishing to form a _system_." Charles was so much taken aback by the charge, that the unexplained mystery of the Long Vacation went out of his head. He said he was "very sorry," and "obliged;" and tried to recollect what he could have said to give ground to Mr. Vincent's remark. Not being able at the moment to recollect, he went on. "I assure you, sir, I know so little of parties in the place, that I hardly know their leaders. I have heard persons mentioned, but, if I tried, I think I should, in some cases, mismatch names and opinions." "I believe it," said Vincent; "but you are young; I am cautioning you against _tendencies_. You may suddenly find yourself absorbed before you know where you are." Charles thought this a good opportunity of asking some questions in detail, about points which puzzled him. He asked whether Dr. Brownside was considered a safe divine to follow. "I hold, d'ye see," answered Vincent, "that all errors are counterfeits of truth. Clever men say true things, Mr. Reding, true in their substance, but," sinking his voice to a whisper, "they go _too far_. It might even be shown that all sects are in one sense but parts of the Catholic Church. I don't say true parts, that is a further question; but they _embody_ great _principles_. The Quakers represent the principle of simplicity and evangelical poverty; they even have a dress of their own, like monks. The Independents represent the rights of the laity; the Wesleyans cherish the devotional principle; the Irvingites, the symbolical and mystical; the High Church party, the principle of obedience; the Liberals are the guardians of reason. No party, then, I conceive, is entirely right or entirely wrong. As to Dr. Brownside, there certainly have been various opinions entertained about his divinity; still, he is an able man, and I think you will gain _good_, gain _good_ from his teaching. But mind, I don't _recommend_ him; yet I respect him, and I consider that he says many things very well worth your attention. I would advise you, then, to accept the _good_ which his sermons offer, without committing yourself to the _bad_. That, depend upon it, Mr. Reding, is the golden though the obvious rule in these matters." Charles said, in answer, that Mr. Vincent was overrating his powers; that he had to learn before he could judge; and that he wished very much to know whether Vincent could recommend him any book, in which he might see at once _what_ the true Church-of-England doctrine was on a number of points which perplexed him. Mr. Vincent replied, he must be on his guard against dissipating his mind with such reading, at a time when his University duties had a definite claim upon him. He ought to avoid all controversies of the day, all authors of the day. He would advise him to read _no_ living authors. "Read dead authors alone," he continued; "dead authors are safe. Our great divines," and he stood upright, "were models; 'there were giants on the earth in those days,' as King George the Third had once said of them to Dr. Johnson. They had that depth, and power, and gravity, and fulness, and erudition; and they were so racy, always racy, and what might be called English. They had that richness, too, such a mine of thought, such a world of opinion, such activity of mind, such inexhaustible resource, such diversity, too. Then they were so eloquent; the majestic Hooker, the imaginative Taylor, the brilliant Hall, the learning of Barrow, the strong sense of South, the keen logic of Chillingworth, good, honest old Burnet," etc., etc. There did not seem much reason why he should stop at one moment more than another; at length, however, he did stop. It was prose, but it was pleasant prose to Charles; he knew just enough about these writers to feel interested in hearing them talked about, and to him Vincent seemed to be saying a good deal, when in fact he was saying very little. When he stopped, Charles said he believed that there were persons in the University who were promoting the study of these authors. Mr. Vincent looked grave. "It is true," he said; "but, my young friend, I have already hinted to you that indifferent things are perverted to the purposes of _party_. At this moment the names of some of our greatest divines are little better than a watchword by which the opinions of living individuals are signified." "Which opinions, I suppose," Charles answered, "are not to be found in those authors." "I'll not say that," said Mr. Vincent. "I have the greatest respect for the individuals in question, and I am not denying that they have done good to our Church by drawing attention in this lax day to the old Church-of-England divinity. But it is one thing to agree with these gentlemen; another," laying his hand on Charles's shoulder, "another to belong to their party. Do not make man your master; get good from all; think well of all persons, and you will be a wise man." Reding inquired, with some timidity, if this was not something like what Dr. Brownside had said in the University pulpit; but perhaps the latter advocated a toleration of opinions in a different sense? Mr. Vincent answered rather shortly, that he had not heard Dr. Brownside's sermon; but, for himself, he had been speaking only of persons in our own communion. "Our Church," he said, "admitted of great liberty of thought within her pale. Even our greatest divines differed from each other in many respects; nay, Bishop Taylor differed from himself. It was a great principle in the English Church. Her true children agree to differ. In truth," he continued, "there is that robust, masculine, noble independence in the English mind, which refuses to be tied down to artificial shapes, but is like, I will say, some great and beautiful production of nature,--a tree, which is rich in foliage and fantastic in limb, no sickly denizen of the hothouse, or helpless dependent of the garden wall, but in careless magnificence sheds its fruits upon the free earth, for the bird of the air and the beast of the field, and all sorts of cattle, to eat thereof and rejoice." When Charles came away, he tried to think what he had gained by his conversation with Mr. Vincent; not exactly what he had wanted, some practical rules to guide his mind and keep him steady; but still some useful hints. He had already been averse to parties, and offended at what he saw of individuals attached to them. Vincent had confirmed him in his resolution to keep aloof from them, and to attend to his duties in the place. He felt pleased to have had this talk with him; but what could he mean by suspecting a tendency in himself to push things too far, and thereby to implicate himself in party? He was obliged to resign himself to ignorance on the subject, and to be content with keeping a watch over himself in future. CHAPTER XI. No opportunity has occurred of informing the reader that, during the last week or two, Charles had accidentally been a good deal thrown across Willis, the _umbra_ of White at Bateman's breakfast-party. He had liked his looks on that occasion, when he was dumb; he did not like him so much when he heard him talk; still he could not help being interested in him, and not the least for this reason, that Willis seemed to have taken a great fancy to himself. He certainly did court Charles, and seemed anxious to stand well with him. Charles, however, did not like his mode of talking better than he did White's; and when he first saw his rooms, there was much in them which shocked both his good sense and his religious principles. A large ivory crucifix, in a glass case, was a conspicuous ornament between the windows; an engraving, representing the Blessed Trinity, as is usual in Catholic countries, hung over the fireplace, and a picture of the Madonna and St. Dominic was opposite to it. On the mantelpiece were a rosary, a thuribulum, and other tokens of Catholicism, of which Charles did not know the uses; a missal, ritual, and some Catholic tracts, lay on the table; and, as he happened to come on Willis unexpectedly, he found him sitting in a vestment more like a cassock than a reading-gown, and engaged upon some portion of the Breviary. Virgil and Sophocles, Herodotus and Cicero seemed, as impure pagans, to have hid themselves in corners, or flitted away, before the awful presence of the Ancient Church. Charles had taken upon himself to protest against some of these singularities, but without success. On the evening before his departure for the country he had occasion to go towards Folly Bridge to pay a bill, when he was startled, as he passed what he had ever taken for a dissenting chapel, to see Willis come out of it. He hardly could believe he saw correctly; he knew, indeed, that Willis had been detained in Oxford, as he had been himself; but what had compelled him to a visit so extraordinary as that which he had just made, Charles had no means of determining. "Willis!" he cried, as he stopped. Willis coloured, and tried to look easy. "Do come a few paces with me," said Charles. "What in the world has taken you there? Is it not a dissenting meeting?" "Dissenting meeting!" cried Willis, surprised and offended in his turn: "what on earth could make you think I would go to a dissenting meeting?" "Well, I beg your pardon," said Charles; "I recollect now: it's the exhibition room. However, _once_ it _was_ a chapel: that's my mistake. Isn't it what is called 'the Old Methodist Chapel?' I never was there; they showed there the _Dio-astro-doxon_, so I think they called it." Charles talked on, to cover his own mistake, for he was ashamed of the charge he had made. Willis did not know whether he was in jest or earnest. "Reding," he said, "don't go on; you offend me." "Well, what is it?" said Charles. "You know well enough," answered Willis, "though you wish to annoy me." "I don't indeed." "It's the Catholic church," said Willis. Reding was silent a moment; then he said, "Well, I don't think you have mended the matter; it _is_ a dissenting meeting, call it what you will, though not the kind of one I meant." "What can you mean?" asked Willis. "Rather, what mean _you_ by going to such places?" retorted Charles; "why, it is against your oath." "My oath! what oath?" "There's not an oath now; but there was an oath till lately," said Reding; "and we still make a very solemn engagement. Don't you recollect your matriculation at the Vice-Chancellor's, and what oaths and declarations you made?" "I don't know what I made: my tutor told me nothing about it. I signed a book or two." "You did more," said Reding. "I was told most carefully. You solemnly engaged to keep the statutes; and one statute is, not to go into any dissenting chapel or meeting whatever." "Catholics are not Dissenters," said Willis. "Oh, don't speak so," said Charles; "you know it's meant to include them. The statute wishes us to keep from all places of worship whatever but our own." "But it is an illegal declaration or vow," said Willis, "and so not binding." "Where did you find that get-off?" said Charles; "the priest put that into your head." "I don't know the priest; I never spoke a word to him," answered Willis. "Well, any how, it's not your own answer," said Reding; "and does not help you. I am no casuist; but if it is an illegal engagement you should not continue to enjoy the benefit of it." "What benefit?" "Your cap and gown; a university education; the chance of a scholarship or fellowship. Give up these, and then plead, if you will, and lawfully, that you are quit of your engagement; but don't sail under false colours: don't take the benefit and break the stipulation." "You take it too seriously; there are half a hundred statutes _you_ don't keep, any more than I. You are most inconsistent." "Well, if we don't keep them," said Charles, "I suppose it is in points where the authorities don't enforce them; for instance, they don't mean us to dress in brown, though the statutes order it." "But they _do_ mean to keep you from walking down High Street in beaver," answered Willis; "for the Proctors march up and down, and send you back, if they catch you." "But _this_ is a different matter," said Reding, changing his ground; "this is a matter of religion. It can't be right to go to strange places of worship or meetings." "Why," said Willis, "if we are one Church with the Roman Catholics, I can't make out for the life of me how it's wrong for us to go to them or them to us." "I'm no divine, I don't understand what is meant by one Church," said Charles; "but I know well that there's not a bishop, not a clergyman, not a sober churchman in the land but would give it against you. It's a sheer absurdity." "Don't talk in that way," answered Willis, "please don't. I feel all my heart drawn to the Catholic worship; our own service is so cold." "That's just what every stiff Dissenter says," answered Charles; "every poor cottager, too, who knows no better, and goes after the Methodists--after her dear Mr. Spoutaway or the preaching cobbler. _She_ says (I have heard them), 'Oh, sir, I suppose we ought to go where we get most good. Mr. So-and-so goes to my heart--he goes through me.'" Willis laughed; "Well, not a bad reason, as times go, _I_ think," said he: "poor souls, what better means of judging have they? how can you hope they will like 'the Scripture moveth us'? Really you are making too much of it. This is only the second time I have been there, and, I tell you in earnest, I find my mind filled with awe and devotion there; as I think you would too. I really am better for it; I cannot pray in church; there's a bad smell there, and the pews hide everything; I can't see through a deal board. But here, when I went in, I found all still, and calm, the space open, and, in the twilight, the Tabernacle just visible, pointed out by the lamp." Charles looked very uncomfortable. "Really, Willis," he said, "I don't know what to say to you. Heaven forbid that I should speak against the Roman Catholics; I know nothing about them. But _this_ I know, that you are not a Roman Catholic, and have no business there. If they have such sacred things among them as those you allude to, still these are not yours; you are an intruder. I know nothing about it; I don't like to give a judgment, I am sure. But it's a tampering with sacred things; running here and there, touching and tasting, taking up, putting down. I don't like it," he added, with vehemence; "it's taking liberties with God." "Oh, my dear Reding, please don't speak so very severely," said poor Willis; "now what have I done more than you would do yourself, were you in France or Italy? Do you mean to say you wouldn't enter the churches abroad?" "I will only decide about what is before me," answered Reding; "when I go abroad, then will be the time to think about your question. It is quite enough to know what we ought to do at the moment, and I am clear you have been doing wrong. How did you find your way there?" "White took me." "Then there is one man in the world more thoughtless than you: do many of the gownsmen go there?" "Not that I know of; one or two have gone from curiosity; there is no practice of going, at least this is what I am told." "Well," said Charles, "you must promise me you will not go again. Come, we won't part till you do." "That is too much," said Willis, gently; then, disengaging his arm from Reding's, he suddenly darted away from him, saying, "Good-bye, good-bye; to our next merry meeting--_au revoir_." There was no help for it. Charles walked slowly home, saying to himself: "What if, after all, the Roman Catholic Church is the true Church? I wish I knew what to believe; no one will tell me what to believe; I am so left to myself." Then he thought: "I suppose I know quite enough for practice--more than I _do_ practise; and I ought surely to be contented and thankful." CHAPTER XII. Charles was an affectionate son, and the Long Vacation passed very happily at home. He was up early, and read steadily till luncheon, and then he was at the service of his father, mother, and sisters for the rest of the day. He loved the calm, quiet country; he loved the monotonous flow of time, when each day is like the other; and, after the excitement of Oxford, the secluded parsonage was like a haven beyond the tossing of the waves. The whirl of opinions and perplexities which had encircled him at Oxford now were like the distant sound of the ocean--they reminded him of his present security. The undulating meadows, the green lanes, the open heath, the common with its wide-spreading dusky elms, the high timber which fringed the level path from village to village, ever and anon broken and thrown into groups, or losing itself in copses--even the gate, and the stile, and the turnpike-road had the charm, not of novelty, but of long familiar use; they had the poetry of many recollections. Nor was the dilapidated, deformed church, with its outside staircases, its unsightly galleries, its wide intruded windows, its uncouth pews, its low nunting table, its forlorn vestry, and its damp earthy smell, without its pleasant associations to the inner man; for there it was that for many a year, Sunday after Sunday, he had heard his dear father read and preach; there were the old monuments, with Latin inscriptions and strange devices, the black boards with white letters, the Resurgams and grinning skulls, the fire-buckets, the faded militia-colours, and, almost as much a fixture, the old clerk, with a Welsh wig over his ears, shouting the responses out of place--which had arrested his imagination, and awed him when a child. And then there was his home itself; its well-known rooms, its pleasant routine, its order, and its comfort--an old and true friend, the dearer to him because he had made new ones. "Where I shall be in time to come I know not," he said to himself; "I am but a boy; many things which I have not a dream of, which my imagination cannot compass, may come on me before I die--if I live; but here at least, and now, I am happy, and I will enjoy my happiness. Some say that school is the pleasantest time of one's life; this does not exclude college. I suppose care is what makes life so wearing. At present I have no care, no responsibility; I suppose I shall feel a little when I go up for my degree. Care is a terrible thing; I have had a little of it at times at school. What a strange thing to fancy, I shall be one day twenty-five or thirty! How the weeks are flying by! the Vacation will soon be over. Oh, I am so happy, it quite makes me afraid. Yet I shall have strength for my day." Sometimes, however, his thoughts took a sadder turn, and he anticipated the future more vividly than he enjoyed the present. Mr. Malcolm had come to see them, after an absence from the parsonage for several years: his visit was a great pleasure to Mr. Reding, and not much less to himself, to whom a green home and a family circle were agreeable sights, after his bachelor-life at college. He had been a great favourite with Charles and his sisters as children, though now his popularity with them for the most part rested on the memory of the past. When he told them amusing stories, or allowed them to climb his knee and take off his spectacles, he did all that was necessary to gain their childish hearts; more is necessary to conciliate the affection of young men and women; and thus it is not surprising that he lived in their minds principally by prescription. He neither knew this, nor would have thought much about it if he had; for, like many persons of advancing years, he made himself very much his own centre, did not care to enter into the minds of others, did not consult for them, or find his happiness in them. He was kind and friendly to the young people, as he would be kind to a canary-bird or a lap-dog; it was a sort of external love; and, though they got on capitally with him, they did not miss him when gone, nor would have been much troubled to know that he was never to come again. Charles drove him about the country, stamped his letters, secured him his newspapers from the neighbouring town, and listened to his stories about Oxford and Oxford men. He really liked him, and wished to please him; but, as to consulting him in any serious matter, or going to him for comfort in affliction, he would as soon have thought of betaking him to Dan the pedlar, or old Isaac who played the Sunday bassoon. "How have your peaches been this year, Malcolm?" said Mr. Reding one day after dinner to his guest. "You ought to know that we have no peaches in Oxford," answered Mr. Malcolm. "My memory plays me false, then: I had a vision of, at least, October peaches on one occasion, and fine ones too." "Ah, you mean at old Tom Spindle's, the jockey's," answered Mr. Malcolm; "it's true, he had a bit of a brick wall, and was proud of it. But peaches come when there is no one in Oxford to eat them; so either the tree, or at least the fruit, is a great rarity there. Oxford wasn't so empty once; you have old mulberry-trees there in record of better days." "At that time, too," said Charles, "I suppose, the more expensive fruits were not cultivated. Mulberries are the witness, not only of a full college, but of simple tastes." "Charles is secretly cutting at our hothouse here," said Mr. Reding; "as if our first father did not prefer fruits and flowers to beef and mutton." "No, indeed," said Charles, "I think peaches capital things; and as to flowers, I am even too fond of scents." "Charles has some theory, then, about scents, I'll be bound," said his father; "I never knew a boy who so placed his likings and dislikings on fancies. He began to eat olives directly he read the OEdipus of Sophocles; and, I verily believe, will soon give up oranges from his dislike to King William." "Every one does so," said Charles: "who would not be in the fashion? There's Aunt Kitty, she calls a bonnet, 'a sweet' one year, which makes her 'a perfect fright' the next." "You're right, papa, in this instance," said his mother; "I know he has some good reason, though I never can recollect it, why he smells a rose, or distils lavender. What is it, my dear Mary?" "'Relics ye are of Eden's bowers,'" said she. "Why, sir, that was precisely your own reason just now," said Charles to his father. "There's more than that," said Mrs. Reding, "if I knew what it was." "He thinks the scent more intellectual than the other senses," said Mary, smiling. "Such a boy for paradoxes!" said his mother. "Well, so it is in a certain way," said Charles, "but I can't explain. Sounds and scents are more ethereal, less material; they have no shape--like the angels." Mr. Malcolm laughed. "Well, I grant it, Charles," he said; "they are length without breadth!" "Did you ever hear the like?" said Mrs. Reding, laughing too; "don't encourage him, Mr. Malcolm; you are worse than he. Angels length without breadth!" "They pass from place to place, they come, they go," continued Mr. Malcolm. "They conjure up the past so vividly," said Charles. "But sounds surely more than scents," said Mr. Malcolm. "Pardon me; the reverse as _I_ think," answered Charles. "That _is_ a paradox, Charles," said Mr. Malcolm; "the smell of roast-beef never went further than to remind a man of dinner; but sounds are pathetic and inspiring." "Well, sir, but think of this," said Charles, "scents are complete in themselves, yet do not consist of parts. Think how very distinct the smell of a rose is from a pink, a pink from a sweet-pea, a sweet-pea from a stock, a stock from lilac, lilac from lavender, lavender from jasmine, jasmine from honeysuckle, honeysuckle from hawthorn, hawthorn from hyacinth, hyacinth"---- "Spare us," interrupted Mr. Malcolm; "you are going through the index of Loudon!" "And these are only the scents of flowers; how different flowers smell from fruits, fruits from spices, spices from roast-beef or pork-cutlets, and so on. Now, what I was coming to is this--these scents are perfectly distinct from each other, and _sui generis_; they never can be confused; yet each is communicated to the apprehension in an instant. Sights take up a great space, a tune is a succession of sounds; but scents are at once specific and complete, yet indivisible. Who can halve a scent? they need neither time nor space; thus they are immaterial or spiritual." "Charles hasn't been to Oxford for nothing," said his mother, laughing and looking at Mary; "this is what I call chopping logic!" "Well done, Charles,"

earth

How many times the word 'earth' appears in the text?

will choose time. I think the University goes down just when Oxford begins to be most beautiful. The walks and meadows are so fragrant and bright now, the hay half carried, and the short new grass appearing." "Reding ought to live here all through the Long," said Tenby: "does any one live through the Vacation, sir, in Oxford?" "Do you mean they die before the end of it, Mr. Tenby?" asked Vincent. "It can't be denied," he continued, "that many, like Mr. Reding, think it a most pleasant time. _I_ am fond of Oxford; but it is not my _habitat_ out of term-time." "Well, I think I should like to make it so," said Charles, "but, I suppose, undergraduates are not allowed." Mr. Vincent answered with more than necessary gravity, "No;" it rested with the Principal; but he conceived that he would not consent to it. Vincent added that certainly there _were_ parties who remained in Oxford through the Long Vacation. It was said mysteriously. Charles answered that, if it was against college rules, there was no help for it; else, were he reading for his degree, he should like nothing better than to pass the Long Vacation in Oxford, if he might judge by the pleasantness of the last ten days. "That is a compliment, Mr. Reding, to your company," said Vincent. At this moment the door opened, and in came the manciple with the dinner paper, which Mr. Vincent had formally to run his eye over. "Watkins," he said, giving it back to him, "I almost think to-day is one of the Fasts of the Church. Go and look, Watkins, and bring me word." The astonished manciple, who had never been sent on such a commission in his whole career before, hastened out of the room, to task his wits how best to fulfil it. The question seemed to strike the company as forcibly, for there was a sudden silence, which was succeeded by a shuffling of feet and a leave-taking; as if, though they had secured their ham and mutton at breakfast, they did not like to risk their dinner. Watkins returned sooner than could have been expected. He said that Mr. Vincent was right; to-day he had found was "the feast of the Apostles." "The Vigil of St. Peter, you mean, Watkins," said Mr. Vincent; "I thought so. Then let us have a plain beefsteak and a saddle of mutton; no Portugal onions, Watkins, or currant-jelly; and some simple pudding, Charlotte pudding, Watkins--that will do." Watkins vanished. By this time, Charles found himself alone with the college authority; who began to speak to him in a more confidential tone. "Mr. Reding," said he, "I did not like to question you before the others, but I conceive you had no particular _meaning_ in your praise of Oxford in the Long Vacation? In the mouths of some it would have been suspicious." Charles was all surprise. "To tell the truth, Mr. Reding, as things stand," he proceeded, "it is often a mark of _party_, this residence in the Vacation; though, of course, there is nothing in the _thing_ itself but what is perfectly natural and right." Charles was all attention. "My good sir," the tutor proceeded, "avoid parties; be sure to avoid party. You are young in your career among us. I always feel anxious about young men of talent; there is the greatest danger of the talent of the University being absorbed in party." Reding expressed a hope that nothing he had done had given cause to his tutor's remark. "No," replied Mr. Vincent, "no;" yet with some slight hesitation; "no, I don't know that it has. But I have thought some of your remarks and questions at lecture were like a person pushing things _too far_, and wishing to form a _system_." Charles was so much taken aback by the charge, that the unexplained mystery of the Long Vacation went out of his head. He said he was "very sorry," and "obliged;" and tried to recollect what he could have said to give ground to Mr. Vincent's remark. Not being able at the moment to recollect, he went on. "I assure you, sir, I know so little of parties in the place, that I hardly know their leaders. I have heard persons mentioned, but, if I tried, I think I should, in some cases, mismatch names and opinions." "I believe it," said Vincent; "but you are young; I am cautioning you against _tendencies_. You may suddenly find yourself absorbed before you know where you are." Charles thought this a good opportunity of asking some questions in detail, about points which puzzled him. He asked whether Dr. Brownside was considered a safe divine to follow. "I hold, d'ye see," answered Vincent, "that all errors are counterfeits of truth. Clever men say true things, Mr. Reding, true in their substance, but," sinking his voice to a whisper, "they go _too far_. It might even be shown that all sects are in one sense but parts of the Catholic Church. I don't say true parts, that is a further question; but they _embody_ great _principles_. The Quakers represent the principle of simplicity and evangelical poverty; they even have a dress of their own, like monks. The Independents represent the rights of the laity; the Wesleyans cherish the devotional principle; the Irvingites, the symbolical and mystical; the High Church party, the principle of obedience; the Liberals are the guardians of reason. No party, then, I conceive, is entirely right or entirely wrong. As to Dr. Brownside, there certainly have been various opinions entertained about his divinity; still, he is an able man, and I think you will gain _good_, gain _good_ from his teaching. But mind, I don't _recommend_ him; yet I respect him, and I consider that he says many things very well worth your attention. I would advise you, then, to accept the _good_ which his sermons offer, without committing yourself to the _bad_. That, depend upon it, Mr. Reding, is the golden though the obvious rule in these matters." Charles said, in answer, that Mr. Vincent was overrating his powers; that he had to learn before he could judge; and that he wished very much to know whether Vincent could recommend him any book, in which he might see at once _what_ the true Church-of-England doctrine was on a number of points which perplexed him. Mr. Vincent replied, he must be on his guard against dissipating his mind with such reading, at a time when his University duties had a definite claim upon him. He ought to avoid all controversies of the day, all authors of the day. He would advise him to read _no_ living authors. "Read dead authors alone," he continued; "dead authors are safe. Our great divines," and he stood upright, "were models; 'there were giants on the earth in those days,' as King George the Third had once said of them to Dr. Johnson. They had that depth, and power, and gravity, and fulness, and erudition; and they were so racy, always racy, and what might be called English. They had that richness, too, such a mine of thought, such a world of opinion, such activity of mind, such inexhaustible resource, such diversity, too. Then they were so eloquent; the majestic Hooker, the imaginative Taylor, the brilliant Hall, the learning of Barrow, the strong sense of South, the keen logic of Chillingworth, good, honest old Burnet," etc., etc. There did not seem much reason why he should stop at one moment more than another; at length, however, he did stop. It was prose, but it was pleasant prose to Charles; he knew just enough about these writers to feel interested in hearing them talked about, and to him Vincent seemed to be saying a good deal, when in fact he was saying very little. When he stopped, Charles said he believed that there were persons in the University who were promoting the study of these authors. Mr. Vincent looked grave. "It is true," he said; "but, my young friend, I have already hinted to you that indifferent things are perverted to the purposes of _party_. At this moment the names of some of our greatest divines are little better than a watchword by which the opinions of living individuals are signified." "Which opinions, I suppose," Charles answered, "are not to be found in those authors." "I'll not say that," said Mr. Vincent. "I have the greatest respect for the individuals in question, and I am not denying that they have done good to our Church by drawing attention in this lax day to the old Church-of-England divinity. But it is one thing to agree with these gentlemen; another," laying his hand on Charles's shoulder, "another to belong to their party. Do not make man your master; get good from all; think well of all persons, and you will be a wise man." Reding inquired, with some timidity, if this was not something like what Dr. Brownside had said in the University pulpit; but perhaps the latter advocated a toleration of opinions in a different sense? Mr. Vincent answered rather shortly, that he had not heard Dr. Brownside's sermon; but, for himself, he had been speaking only of persons in our own communion. "Our Church," he said, "admitted of great liberty of thought within her pale. Even our greatest divines differed from each other in many respects; nay, Bishop Taylor differed from himself. It was a great principle in the English Church. Her true children agree to differ. In truth," he continued, "there is that robust, masculine, noble independence in the English mind, which refuses to be tied down to artificial shapes, but is like, I will say, some great and beautiful production of nature,--a tree, which is rich in foliage and fantastic in limb, no sickly denizen of the hothouse, or helpless dependent of the garden wall, but in careless magnificence sheds its fruits upon the free earth, for the bird of the air and the beast of the field, and all sorts of cattle, to eat thereof and rejoice." When Charles came away, he tried to think what he had gained by his conversation with Mr. Vincent; not exactly what he had wanted, some practical rules to guide his mind and keep him steady; but still some useful hints. He had already been averse to parties, and offended at what he saw of individuals attached to them. Vincent had confirmed him in his resolution to keep aloof from them, and to attend to his duties in the place. He felt pleased to have had this talk with him; but what could he mean by suspecting a tendency in himself to push things too far, and thereby to implicate himself in party? He was obliged to resign himself to ignorance on the subject, and to be content with keeping a watch over himself in future. CHAPTER XI. No opportunity has occurred of informing the reader that, during the last week or two, Charles had accidentally been a good deal thrown across Willis, the _umbra_ of White at Bateman's breakfast-party. He had liked his looks on that occasion, when he was dumb; he did not like him so much when he heard him talk; still he could not help being interested in him, and not the least for this reason, that Willis seemed to have taken a great fancy to himself. He certainly did court Charles, and seemed anxious to stand well with him. Charles, however, did not like his mode of talking better than he did White's; and when he first saw his rooms, there was much in them which shocked both his good sense and his religious principles. A large ivory crucifix, in a glass case, was a conspicuous ornament between the windows; an engraving, representing the Blessed Trinity, as is usual in Catholic countries, hung over the fireplace, and a picture of the Madonna and St. Dominic was opposite to it. On the mantelpiece were a rosary, a thuribulum, and other tokens of Catholicism, of which Charles did not know the uses; a missal, ritual, and some Catholic tracts, lay on the table; and, as he happened to come on Willis unexpectedly, he found him sitting in a vestment more like a cassock than a reading-gown, and engaged upon some portion of the Breviary. Virgil and Sophocles, Herodotus and Cicero seemed, as impure pagans, to have hid themselves in corners, or flitted away, before the awful presence of the Ancient Church. Charles had taken upon himself to protest against some of these singularities, but without success. On the evening before his departure for the country he had occasion to go towards Folly Bridge to pay a bill, when he was startled, as he passed what he had ever taken for a dissenting chapel, to see Willis come out of it. He hardly could believe he saw correctly; he knew, indeed, that Willis had been detained in Oxford, as he had been himself; but what had compelled him to a visit so extraordinary as that which he had just made, Charles had no means of determining. "Willis!" he cried, as he stopped. Willis coloured, and tried to look easy. "Do come a few paces with me," said Charles. "What in the world has taken you there? Is it not a dissenting meeting?" "Dissenting meeting!" cried Willis, surprised and offended in his turn: "what on earth could make you think I would go to a dissenting meeting?" "Well, I beg your pardon," said Charles; "I recollect now: it's the exhibition room. However, _once_ it _was_ a chapel: that's my mistake. Isn't it what is called 'the Old Methodist Chapel?' I never was there; they showed there the _Dio-astro-doxon_, so I think they called it." Charles talked on, to cover his own mistake, for he was ashamed of the charge he had made. Willis did not know whether he was in jest or earnest. "Reding," he said, "don't go on; you offend me." "Well, what is it?" said Charles. "You know well enough," answered Willis, "though you wish to annoy me." "I don't indeed." "It's the Catholic church," said Willis. Reding was silent a moment; then he said, "Well, I don't think you have mended the matter; it _is_ a dissenting meeting, call it what you will, though not the kind of one I meant." "What can you mean?" asked Willis. "Rather, what mean _you_ by going to such places?" retorted Charles; "why, it is against your oath." "My oath! what oath?" "There's not an oath now; but there was an oath till lately," said Reding; "and we still make a very solemn engagement. Don't you recollect your matriculation at the Vice-Chancellor's, and what oaths and declarations you made?" "I don't know what I made: my tutor told me nothing about it. I signed a book or two." "You did more," said Reding. "I was told most carefully. You solemnly engaged to keep the statutes; and one statute is, not to go into any dissenting chapel or meeting whatever." "Catholics are not Dissenters," said Willis. "Oh, don't speak so," said Charles; "you know it's meant to include them. The statute wishes us to keep from all places of worship whatever but our own." "But it is an illegal declaration or vow," said Willis, "and so not binding." "Where did you find that get-off?" said Charles; "the priest put that into your head." "I don't know the priest; I never spoke a word to him," answered Willis. "Well, any how, it's not your own answer," said Reding; "and does not help you. I am no casuist; but if it is an illegal engagement you should not continue to enjoy the benefit of it." "What benefit?" "Your cap and gown; a university education; the chance of a scholarship or fellowship. Give up these, and then plead, if you will, and lawfully, that you are quit of your engagement; but don't sail under false colours: don't take the benefit and break the stipulation." "You take it too seriously; there are half a hundred statutes _you_ don't keep, any more than I. You are most inconsistent." "Well, if we don't keep them," said Charles, "I suppose it is in points where the authorities don't enforce them; for instance, they don't mean us to dress in brown, though the statutes order it." "But they _do_ mean to keep you from walking down High Street in beaver," answered Willis; "for the Proctors march up and down, and send you back, if they catch you." "But _this_ is a different matter," said Reding, changing his ground; "this is a matter of religion. It can't be right to go to strange places of worship or meetings." "Why," said Willis, "if we are one Church with the Roman Catholics, I can't make out for the life of me how it's wrong for us to go to them or them to us." "I'm no divine, I don't understand what is meant by one Church," said Charles; "but I know well that there's not a bishop, not a clergyman, not a sober churchman in the land but would give it against you. It's a sheer absurdity." "Don't talk in that way," answered Willis, "please don't. I feel all my heart drawn to the Catholic worship; our own service is so cold." "That's just what every stiff Dissenter says," answered Charles; "every poor cottager, too, who knows no better, and goes after the Methodists--after her dear Mr. Spoutaway or the preaching cobbler. _She_ says (I have heard them), 'Oh, sir, I suppose we ought to go where we get most good. Mr. So-and-so goes to my heart--he goes through me.'" Willis laughed; "Well, not a bad reason, as times go, _I_ think," said he: "poor souls, what better means of judging have they? how can you hope they will like 'the Scripture moveth us'? Really you are making too much of it. This is only the second time I have been there, and, I tell you in earnest, I find my mind filled with awe and devotion there; as I think you would too. I really am better for it; I cannot pray in church; there's a bad smell there, and the pews hide everything; I can't see through a deal board. But here, when I went in, I found all still, and calm, the space open, and, in the twilight, the Tabernacle just visible, pointed out by the lamp." Charles looked very uncomfortable. "Really, Willis," he said, "I don't know what to say to you. Heaven forbid that I should speak against the Roman Catholics; I know nothing about them. But _this_ I know, that you are not a Roman Catholic, and have no business there. If they have such sacred things among them as those you allude to, still these are not yours; you are an intruder. I know nothing about it; I don't like to give a judgment, I am sure. But it's a tampering with sacred things; running here and there, touching and tasting, taking up, putting down. I don't like it," he added, with vehemence; "it's taking liberties with God." "Oh, my dear Reding, please don't speak so very severely," said poor Willis; "now what have I done more than you would do yourself, were you in France or Italy? Do you mean to say you wouldn't enter the churches abroad?" "I will only decide about what is before me," answered Reding; "when I go abroad, then will be the time to think about your question. It is quite enough to know what we ought to do at the moment, and I am clear you have been doing wrong. How did you find your way there?" "White took me." "Then there is one man in the world more thoughtless than you: do many of the gownsmen go there?" "Not that I know of; one or two have gone from curiosity; there is no practice of going, at least this is what I am told." "Well," said Charles, "you must promise me you will not go again. Come, we won't part till you do." "That is too much," said Willis, gently; then, disengaging his arm from Reding's, he suddenly darted away from him, saying, "Good-bye, good-bye; to our next merry meeting--_au revoir_." There was no help for it. Charles walked slowly home, saying to himself: "What if, after all, the Roman Catholic Church is the true Church? I wish I knew what to believe; no one will tell me what to believe; I am so left to myself." Then he thought: "I suppose I know quite enough for practice--more than I _do_ practise; and I ought surely to be contented and thankful." CHAPTER XII. Charles was an affectionate son, and the Long Vacation passed very happily at home. He was up early, and read steadily till luncheon, and then he was at the service of his father, mother, and sisters for the rest of the day. He loved the calm, quiet country; he loved the monotonous flow of time, when each day is like the other; and, after the excitement of Oxford, the secluded parsonage was like a haven beyond the tossing of the waves. The whirl of opinions and perplexities which had encircled him at Oxford now were like the distant sound of the ocean--they reminded him of his present security. The undulating meadows, the green lanes, the open heath, the common with its wide-spreading dusky elms, the high timber which fringed the level path from village to village, ever and anon broken and thrown into groups, or losing itself in copses--even the gate, and the stile, and the turnpike-road had the charm, not of novelty, but of long familiar use; they had the poetry of many recollections. Nor was the dilapidated, deformed church, with its outside staircases, its unsightly galleries, its wide intruded windows, its uncouth pews, its low nunting table, its forlorn vestry, and its damp earthy smell, without its pleasant associations to the inner man; for there it was that for many a year, Sunday after Sunday, he had heard his dear father read and preach; there were the old monuments, with Latin inscriptions and strange devices, the black boards with white letters, the Resurgams and grinning skulls, the fire-buckets, the faded militia-colours, and, almost as much a fixture, the old clerk, with a Welsh wig over his ears, shouting the responses out of place--which had arrested his imagination, and awed him when a child. And then there was his home itself; its well-known rooms, its pleasant routine, its order, and its comfort--an old and true friend, the dearer to him because he had made new ones. "Where I shall be in time to come I know not," he said to himself; "I am but a boy; many things which I have not a dream of, which my imagination cannot compass, may come on me before I die--if I live; but here at least, and now, I am happy, and I will enjoy my happiness. Some say that school is the pleasantest time of one's life; this does not exclude college. I suppose care is what makes life so wearing. At present I have no care, no responsibility; I suppose I shall feel a little when I go up for my degree. Care is a terrible thing; I have had a little of it at times at school. What a strange thing to fancy, I shall be one day twenty-five or thirty! How the weeks are flying by! the Vacation will soon be over. Oh, I am so happy, it quite makes me afraid. Yet I shall have strength for my day." Sometimes, however, his thoughts took a sadder turn, and he anticipated the future more vividly than he enjoyed the present. Mr. Malcolm had come to see them, after an absence from the parsonage for several years: his visit was a great pleasure to Mr. Reding, and not much less to himself, to whom a green home and a family circle were agreeable sights, after his bachelor-life at college. He had been a great favourite with Charles and his sisters as children, though now his popularity with them for the most part rested on the memory of the past. When he told them amusing stories, or allowed them to climb his knee and take off his spectacles, he did all that was necessary to gain their childish hearts; more is necessary to conciliate the affection of young men and women; and thus it is not surprising that he lived in their minds principally by prescription. He neither knew this, nor would have thought much about it if he had; for, like many persons of advancing years, he made himself very much his own centre, did not care to enter into the minds of others, did not consult for them, or find his happiness in them. He was kind and friendly to the young people, as he would be kind to a canary-bird or a lap-dog; it was a sort of external love; and, though they got on capitally with him, they did not miss him when gone, nor would have been much troubled to know that he was never to come again. Charles drove him about the country, stamped his letters, secured him his newspapers from the neighbouring town, and listened to his stories about Oxford and Oxford men. He really liked him, and wished to please him; but, as to consulting him in any serious matter, or going to him for comfort in affliction, he would as soon have thought of betaking him to Dan the pedlar, or old Isaac who played the Sunday bassoon. "How have your peaches been this year, Malcolm?" said Mr. Reding one day after dinner to his guest. "You ought to know that we have no peaches in Oxford," answered Mr. Malcolm. "My memory plays me false, then: I had a vision of, at least, October peaches on one occasion, and fine ones too." "Ah, you mean at old Tom Spindle's, the jockey's," answered Mr. Malcolm; "it's true, he had a bit of a brick wall, and was proud of it. But peaches come when there is no one in Oxford to eat them; so either the tree, or at least the fruit, is a great rarity there. Oxford wasn't so empty once; you have old mulberry-trees there in record of better days." "At that time, too," said Charles, "I suppose, the more expensive fruits were not cultivated. Mulberries are the witness, not only of a full college, but of simple tastes." "Charles is secretly cutting at our hothouse here," said Mr. Reding; "as if our first father did not prefer fruits and flowers to beef and mutton." "No, indeed," said Charles, "I think peaches capital things; and as to flowers, I am even too fond of scents." "Charles has some theory, then, about scents, I'll be bound," said his father; "I never knew a boy who so placed his likings and dislikings on fancies. He began to eat olives directly he read the OEdipus of Sophocles; and, I verily believe, will soon give up oranges from his dislike to King William." "Every one does so," said Charles: "who would not be in the fashion? There's Aunt Kitty, she calls a bonnet, 'a sweet' one year, which makes her 'a perfect fright' the next." "You're right, papa, in this instance," said his mother; "I know he has some good reason, though I never can recollect it, why he smells a rose, or distils lavender. What is it, my dear Mary?" "'Relics ye are of Eden's bowers,'" said she. "Why, sir, that was precisely your own reason just now," said Charles to his father. "There's more than that," said Mrs. Reding, "if I knew what it was." "He thinks the scent more intellectual than the other senses," said Mary, smiling. "Such a boy for paradoxes!" said his mother. "Well, so it is in a certain way," said Charles, "but I can't explain. Sounds and scents are more ethereal, less material; they have no shape--like the angels." Mr. Malcolm laughed. "Well, I grant it, Charles," he said; "they are length without breadth!" "Did you ever hear the like?" said Mrs. Reding, laughing too; "don't encourage him, Mr. Malcolm; you are worse than he. Angels length without breadth!" "They pass from place to place, they come, they go," continued Mr. Malcolm. "They conjure up the past so vividly," said Charles. "But sounds surely more than scents," said Mr. Malcolm. "Pardon me; the reverse as _I_ think," answered Charles. "That _is_ a paradox, Charles," said Mr. Malcolm; "the smell of roast-beef never went further than to remind a man of dinner; but sounds are pathetic and inspiring." "Well, sir, but think of this," said Charles, "scents are complete in themselves, yet do not consist of parts. Think how very distinct the smell of a rose is from a pink, a pink from a sweet-pea, a sweet-pea from a stock, a stock from lilac, lilac from lavender, lavender from jasmine, jasmine from honeysuckle, honeysuckle from hawthorn, hawthorn from hyacinth, hyacinth"---- "Spare us," interrupted Mr. Malcolm; "you are going through the index of Loudon!" "And these are only the scents of flowers; how different flowers smell from fruits, fruits from spices, spices from roast-beef or pork-cutlets, and so on. Now, what I was coming to is this--these scents are perfectly distinct from each other, and _sui generis_; they never can be confused; yet each is communicated to the apprehension in an instant. Sights take up a great space, a tune is a succession of sounds; but scents are at once specific and complete, yet indivisible. Who can halve a scent? they need neither time nor space; thus they are immaterial or spiritual." "Charles hasn't been to Oxford for nothing," said his mother, laughing and looking at Mary; "this is what I call chopping logic!" "Well done, Charles,"

christ

How many times the word 'christ' appears in the text?

will choose time. I think the University goes down just when Oxford begins to be most beautiful. The walks and meadows are so fragrant and bright now, the hay half carried, and the short new grass appearing." "Reding ought to live here all through the Long," said Tenby: "does any one live through the Vacation, sir, in Oxford?" "Do you mean they die before the end of it, Mr. Tenby?" asked Vincent. "It can't be denied," he continued, "that many, like Mr. Reding, think it a most pleasant time. _I_ am fond of Oxford; but it is not my _habitat_ out of term-time." "Well, I think I should like to make it so," said Charles, "but, I suppose, undergraduates are not allowed." Mr. Vincent answered with more than necessary gravity, "No;" it rested with the Principal; but he conceived that he would not consent to it. Vincent added that certainly there _were_ parties who remained in Oxford through the Long Vacation. It was said mysteriously. Charles answered that, if it was against college rules, there was no help for it; else, were he reading for his degree, he should like nothing better than to pass the Long Vacation in Oxford, if he might judge by the pleasantness of the last ten days. "That is a compliment, Mr. Reding, to your company," said Vincent. At this moment the door opened, and in came the manciple with the dinner paper, which Mr. Vincent had formally to run his eye over. "Watkins," he said, giving it back to him, "I almost think to-day is one of the Fasts of the Church. Go and look, Watkins, and bring me word." The astonished manciple, who had never been sent on such a commission in his whole career before, hastened out of the room, to task his wits how best to fulfil it. The question seemed to strike the company as forcibly, for there was a sudden silence, which was succeeded by a shuffling of feet and a leave-taking; as if, though they had secured their ham and mutton at breakfast, they did not like to risk their dinner. Watkins returned sooner than could have been expected. He said that Mr. Vincent was right; to-day he had found was "the feast of the Apostles." "The Vigil of St. Peter, you mean, Watkins," said Mr. Vincent; "I thought so. Then let us have a plain beefsteak and a saddle of mutton; no Portugal onions, Watkins, or currant-jelly; and some simple pudding, Charlotte pudding, Watkins--that will do." Watkins vanished. By this time, Charles found himself alone with the college authority; who began to speak to him in a more confidential tone. "Mr. Reding," said he, "I did not like to question you before the others, but I conceive you had no particular _meaning_ in your praise of Oxford in the Long Vacation? In the mouths of some it would have been suspicious." Charles was all surprise. "To tell the truth, Mr. Reding, as things stand," he proceeded, "it is often a mark of _party_, this residence in the Vacation; though, of course, there is nothing in the _thing_ itself but what is perfectly natural and right." Charles was all attention. "My good sir," the tutor proceeded, "avoid parties; be sure to avoid party. You are young in your career among us. I always feel anxious about young men of talent; there is the greatest danger of the talent of the University being absorbed in party." Reding expressed a hope that nothing he had done had given cause to his tutor's remark. "No," replied Mr. Vincent, "no;" yet with some slight hesitation; "no, I don't know that it has. But I have thought some of your remarks and questions at lecture were like a person pushing things _too far_, and wishing to form a _system_." Charles was so much taken aback by the charge, that the unexplained mystery of the Long Vacation went out of his head. He said he was "very sorry," and "obliged;" and tried to recollect what he could have said to give ground to Mr. Vincent's remark. Not being able at the moment to recollect, he went on. "I assure you, sir, I know so little of parties in the place, that I hardly know their leaders. I have heard persons mentioned, but, if I tried, I think I should, in some cases, mismatch names and opinions." "I believe it," said Vincent; "but you are young; I am cautioning you against _tendencies_. You may suddenly find yourself absorbed before you know where you are." Charles thought this a good opportunity of asking some questions in detail, about points which puzzled him. He asked whether Dr. Brownside was considered a safe divine to follow. "I hold, d'ye see," answered Vincent, "that all errors are counterfeits of truth. Clever men say true things, Mr. Reding, true in their substance, but," sinking his voice to a whisper, "they go _too far_. It might even be shown that all sects are in one sense but parts of the Catholic Church. I don't say true parts, that is a further question; but they _embody_ great _principles_. The Quakers represent the principle of simplicity and evangelical poverty; they even have a dress of their own, like monks. The Independents represent the rights of the laity; the Wesleyans cherish the devotional principle; the Irvingites, the symbolical and mystical; the High Church party, the principle of obedience; the Liberals are the guardians of reason. No party, then, I conceive, is entirely right or entirely wrong. As to Dr. Brownside, there certainly have been various opinions entertained about his divinity; still, he is an able man, and I think you will gain _good_, gain _good_ from his teaching. But mind, I don't _recommend_ him; yet I respect him, and I consider that he says many things very well worth your attention. I would advise you, then, to accept the _good_ which his sermons offer, without committing yourself to the _bad_. That, depend upon it, Mr. Reding, is the golden though the obvious rule in these matters." Charles said, in answer, that Mr. Vincent was overrating his powers; that he had to learn before he could judge; and that he wished very much to know whether Vincent could recommend him any book, in which he might see at once _what_ the true Church-of-England doctrine was on a number of points which perplexed him. Mr. Vincent replied, he must be on his guard against dissipating his mind with such reading, at a time when his University duties had a definite claim upon him. He ought to avoid all controversies of the day, all authors of the day. He would advise him to read _no_ living authors. "Read dead authors alone," he continued; "dead authors are safe. Our great divines," and he stood upright, "were models; 'there were giants on the earth in those days,' as King George the Third had once said of them to Dr. Johnson. They had that depth, and power, and gravity, and fulness, and erudition; and they were so racy, always racy, and what might be called English. They had that richness, too, such a mine of thought, such a world of opinion, such activity of mind, such inexhaustible resource, such diversity, too. Then they were so eloquent; the majestic Hooker, the imaginative Taylor, the brilliant Hall, the learning of Barrow, the strong sense of South, the keen logic of Chillingworth, good, honest old Burnet," etc., etc. There did not seem much reason why he should stop at one moment more than another; at length, however, he did stop. It was prose, but it was pleasant prose to Charles; he knew just enough about these writers to feel interested in hearing them talked about, and to him Vincent seemed to be saying a good deal, when in fact he was saying very little. When he stopped, Charles said he believed that there were persons in the University who were promoting the study of these authors. Mr. Vincent looked grave. "It is true," he said; "but, my young friend, I have already hinted to you that indifferent things are perverted to the purposes of _party_. At this moment the names of some of our greatest divines are little better than a watchword by which the opinions of living individuals are signified." "Which opinions, I suppose," Charles answered, "are not to be found in those authors." "I'll not say that," said Mr. Vincent. "I have the greatest respect for the individuals in question, and I am not denying that they have done good to our Church by drawing attention in this lax day to the old Church-of-England divinity. But it is one thing to agree with these gentlemen; another," laying his hand on Charles's shoulder, "another to belong to their party. Do not make man your master; get good from all; think well of all persons, and you will be a wise man." Reding inquired, with some timidity, if this was not something like what Dr. Brownside had said in the University pulpit; but perhaps the latter advocated a toleration of opinions in a different sense? Mr. Vincent answered rather shortly, that he had not heard Dr. Brownside's sermon; but, for himself, he had been speaking only of persons in our own communion. "Our Church," he said, "admitted of great liberty of thought within her pale. Even our greatest divines differed from each other in many respects; nay, Bishop Taylor differed from himself. It was a great principle in the English Church. Her true children agree to differ. In truth," he continued, "there is that robust, masculine, noble independence in the English mind, which refuses to be tied down to artificial shapes, but is like, I will say, some great and beautiful production of nature,--a tree, which is rich in foliage and fantastic in limb, no sickly denizen of the hothouse, or helpless dependent of the garden wall, but in careless magnificence sheds its fruits upon the free earth, for the bird of the air and the beast of the field, and all sorts of cattle, to eat thereof and rejoice." When Charles came away, he tried to think what he had gained by his conversation with Mr. Vincent; not exactly what he had wanted, some practical rules to guide his mind and keep him steady; but still some useful hints. He had already been averse to parties, and offended at what he saw of individuals attached to them. Vincent had confirmed him in his resolution to keep aloof from them, and to attend to his duties in the place. He felt pleased to have had this talk with him; but what could he mean by suspecting a tendency in himself to push things too far, and thereby to implicate himself in party? He was obliged to resign himself to ignorance on the subject, and to be content with keeping a watch over himself in future. CHAPTER XI. No opportunity has occurred of informing the reader that, during the last week or two, Charles had accidentally been a good deal thrown across Willis, the _umbra_ of White at Bateman's breakfast-party. He had liked his looks on that occasion, when he was dumb; he did not like him so much when he heard him talk; still he could not help being interested in him, and not the least for this reason, that Willis seemed to have taken a great fancy to himself. He certainly did court Charles, and seemed anxious to stand well with him. Charles, however, did not like his mode of talking better than he did White's; and when he first saw his rooms, there was much in them which shocked both his good sense and his religious principles. A large ivory crucifix, in a glass case, was a conspicuous ornament between the windows; an engraving, representing the Blessed Trinity, as is usual in Catholic countries, hung over the fireplace, and a picture of the Madonna and St. Dominic was opposite to it. On the mantelpiece were a rosary, a thuribulum, and other tokens of Catholicism, of which Charles did not know the uses; a missal, ritual, and some Catholic tracts, lay on the table; and, as he happened to come on Willis unexpectedly, he found him sitting in a vestment more like a cassock than a reading-gown, and engaged upon some portion of the Breviary. Virgil and Sophocles, Herodotus and Cicero seemed, as impure pagans, to have hid themselves in corners, or flitted away, before the awful presence of the Ancient Church. Charles had taken upon himself to protest against some of these singularities, but without success. On the evening before his departure for the country he had occasion to go towards Folly Bridge to pay a bill, when he was startled, as he passed what he had ever taken for a dissenting chapel, to see Willis come out of it. He hardly could believe he saw correctly; he knew, indeed, that Willis had been detained in Oxford, as he had been himself; but what had compelled him to a visit so extraordinary as that which he had just made, Charles had no means of determining. "Willis!" he cried, as he stopped. Willis coloured, and tried to look easy. "Do come a few paces with me," said Charles. "What in the world has taken you there? Is it not a dissenting meeting?" "Dissenting meeting!" cried Willis, surprised and offended in his turn: "what on earth could make you think I would go to a dissenting meeting?" "Well, I beg your pardon," said Charles; "I recollect now: it's the exhibition room. However, _once_ it _was_ a chapel: that's my mistake. Isn't it what is called 'the Old Methodist Chapel?' I never was there; they showed there the _Dio-astro-doxon_, so I think they called it." Charles talked on, to cover his own mistake, for he was ashamed of the charge he had made. Willis did not know whether he was in jest or earnest. "Reding," he said, "don't go on; you offend me." "Well, what is it?" said Charles. "You know well enough," answered Willis, "though you wish to annoy me." "I don't indeed." "It's the Catholic church," said Willis. Reding was silent a moment; then he said, "Well, I don't think you have mended the matter; it _is_ a dissenting meeting, call it what you will, though not the kind of one I meant." "What can you mean?" asked Willis. "Rather, what mean _you_ by going to such places?" retorted Charles; "why, it is against your oath." "My oath! what oath?" "There's not an oath now; but there was an oath till lately," said Reding; "and we still make a very solemn engagement. Don't you recollect your matriculation at the Vice-Chancellor's, and what oaths and declarations you made?" "I don't know what I made: my tutor told me nothing about it. I signed a book or two." "You did more," said Reding. "I was told most carefully. You solemnly engaged to keep the statutes; and one statute is, not to go into any dissenting chapel or meeting whatever." "Catholics are not Dissenters," said Willis. "Oh, don't speak so," said Charles; "you know it's meant to include them. The statute wishes us to keep from all places of worship whatever but our own." "But it is an illegal declaration or vow," said Willis, "and so not binding." "Where did you find that get-off?" said Charles; "the priest put that into your head." "I don't know the priest; I never spoke a word to him," answered Willis. "Well, any how, it's not your own answer," said Reding; "and does not help you. I am no casuist; but if it is an illegal engagement you should not continue to enjoy the benefit of it." "What benefit?" "Your cap and gown; a university education; the chance of a scholarship or fellowship. Give up these, and then plead, if you will, and lawfully, that you are quit of your engagement; but don't sail under false colours: don't take the benefit and break the stipulation." "You take it too seriously; there are half a hundred statutes _you_ don't keep, any more than I. You are most inconsistent." "Well, if we don't keep them," said Charles, "I suppose it is in points where the authorities don't enforce them; for instance, they don't mean us to dress in brown, though the statutes order it." "But they _do_ mean to keep you from walking down High Street in beaver," answered Willis; "for the Proctors march up and down, and send you back, if they catch you." "But _this_ is a different matter," said Reding, changing his ground; "this is a matter of religion. It can't be right to go to strange places of worship or meetings." "Why," said Willis, "if we are one Church with the Roman Catholics, I can't make out for the life of me how it's wrong for us to go to them or them to us." "I'm no divine, I don't understand what is meant by one Church," said Charles; "but I know well that there's not a bishop, not a clergyman, not a sober churchman in the land but would give it against you. It's a sheer absurdity." "Don't talk in that way," answered Willis, "please don't. I feel all my heart drawn to the Catholic worship; our own service is so cold." "That's just what every stiff Dissenter says," answered Charles; "every poor cottager, too, who knows no better, and goes after the Methodists--after her dear Mr. Spoutaway or the preaching cobbler. _She_ says (I have heard them), 'Oh, sir, I suppose we ought to go where we get most good. Mr. So-and-so goes to my heart--he goes through me.'" Willis laughed; "Well, not a bad reason, as times go, _I_ think," said he: "poor souls, what better means of judging have they? how can you hope they will like 'the Scripture moveth us'? Really you are making too much of it. This is only the second time I have been there, and, I tell you in earnest, I find my mind filled with awe and devotion there; as I think you would too. I really am better for it; I cannot pray in church; there's a bad smell there, and the pews hide everything; I can't see through a deal board. But here, when I went in, I found all still, and calm, the space open, and, in the twilight, the Tabernacle just visible, pointed out by the lamp." Charles looked very uncomfortable. "Really, Willis," he said, "I don't know what to say to you. Heaven forbid that I should speak against the Roman Catholics; I know nothing about them. But _this_ I know, that you are not a Roman Catholic, and have no business there. If they have such sacred things among them as those you allude to, still these are not yours; you are an intruder. I know nothing about it; I don't like to give a judgment, I am sure. But it's a tampering with sacred things; running here and there, touching and tasting, taking up, putting down. I don't like it," he added, with vehemence; "it's taking liberties with God." "Oh, my dear Reding, please don't speak so very severely," said poor Willis; "now what have I done more than you would do yourself, were you in France or Italy? Do you mean to say you wouldn't enter the churches abroad?" "I will only decide about what is before me," answered Reding; "when I go abroad, then will be the time to think about your question. It is quite enough to know what we ought to do at the moment, and I am clear you have been doing wrong. How did you find your way there?" "White took me." "Then there is one man in the world more thoughtless than you: do many of the gownsmen go there?" "Not that I know of; one or two have gone from curiosity; there is no practice of going, at least this is what I am told." "Well," said Charles, "you must promise me you will not go again. Come, we won't part till you do." "That is too much," said Willis, gently; then, disengaging his arm from Reding's, he suddenly darted away from him, saying, "Good-bye, good-bye; to our next merry meeting--_au revoir_." There was no help for it. Charles walked slowly home, saying to himself: "What if, after all, the Roman Catholic Church is the true Church? I wish I knew what to believe; no one will tell me what to believe; I am so left to myself." Then he thought: "I suppose I know quite enough for practice--more than I _do_ practise; and I ought surely to be contented and thankful." CHAPTER XII. Charles was an affectionate son, and the Long Vacation passed very happily at home. He was up early, and read steadily till luncheon, and then he was at the service of his father, mother, and sisters for the rest of the day. He loved the calm, quiet country; he loved the monotonous flow of time, when each day is like the other; and, after the excitement of Oxford, the secluded parsonage was like a haven beyond the tossing of the waves. The whirl of opinions and perplexities which had encircled him at Oxford now were like the distant sound of the ocean--they reminded him of his present security. The undulating meadows, the green lanes, the open heath, the common with its wide-spreading dusky elms, the high timber which fringed the level path from village to village, ever and anon broken and thrown into groups, or losing itself in copses--even the gate, and the stile, and the turnpike-road had the charm, not of novelty, but of long familiar use; they had the poetry of many recollections. Nor was the dilapidated, deformed church, with its outside staircases, its unsightly galleries, its wide intruded windows, its uncouth pews, its low nunting table, its forlorn vestry, and its damp earthy smell, without its pleasant associations to the inner man; for there it was that for many a year, Sunday after Sunday, he had heard his dear father read and preach; there were the old monuments, with Latin inscriptions and strange devices, the black boards with white letters, the Resurgams and grinning skulls, the fire-buckets, the faded militia-colours, and, almost as much a fixture, the old clerk, with a Welsh wig over his ears, shouting the responses out of place--which had arrested his imagination, and awed him when a child. And then there was his home itself; its well-known rooms, its pleasant routine, its order, and its comfort--an old and true friend, the dearer to him because he had made new ones. "Where I shall be in time to come I know not," he said to himself; "I am but a boy; many things which I have not a dream of, which my imagination cannot compass, may come on me before I die--if I live; but here at least, and now, I am happy, and I will enjoy my happiness. Some say that school is the pleasantest time of one's life; this does not exclude college. I suppose care is what makes life so wearing. At present I have no care, no responsibility; I suppose I shall feel a little when I go up for my degree. Care is a terrible thing; I have had a little of it at times at school. What a strange thing to fancy, I shall be one day twenty-five or thirty! How the weeks are flying by! the Vacation will soon be over. Oh, I am so happy, it quite makes me afraid. Yet I shall have strength for my day." Sometimes, however, his thoughts took a sadder turn, and he anticipated the future more vividly than he enjoyed the present. Mr. Malcolm had come to see them, after an absence from the parsonage for several years: his visit was a great pleasure to Mr. Reding, and not much less to himself, to whom a green home and a family circle were agreeable sights, after his bachelor-life at college. He had been a great favourite with Charles and his sisters as children, though now his popularity with them for the most part rested on the memory of the past. When he told them amusing stories, or allowed them to climb his knee and take off his spectacles, he did all that was necessary to gain their childish hearts; more is necessary to conciliate the affection of young men and women; and thus it is not surprising that he lived in their minds principally by prescription. He neither knew this, nor would have thought much about it if he had; for, like many persons of advancing years, he made himself very much his own centre, did not care to enter into the minds of others, did not consult for them, or find his happiness in them. He was kind and friendly to the young people, as he would be kind to a canary-bird or a lap-dog; it was a sort of external love; and, though they got on capitally with him, they did not miss him when gone, nor would have been much troubled to know that he was never to come again. Charles drove him about the country, stamped his letters, secured him his newspapers from the neighbouring town, and listened to his stories about Oxford and Oxford men. He really liked him, and wished to please him; but, as to consulting him in any serious matter, or going to him for comfort in affliction, he would as soon have thought of betaking him to Dan the pedlar, or old Isaac who played the Sunday bassoon. "How have your peaches been this year, Malcolm?" said Mr. Reding one day after dinner to his guest. "You ought to know that we have no peaches in Oxford," answered Mr. Malcolm. "My memory plays me false, then: I had a vision of, at least, October peaches on one occasion, and fine ones too." "Ah, you mean at old Tom Spindle's, the jockey's," answered Mr. Malcolm; "it's true, he had a bit of a brick wall, and was proud of it. But peaches come when there is no one in Oxford to eat them; so either the tree, or at least the fruit, is a great rarity there. Oxford wasn't so empty once; you have old mulberry-trees there in record of better days." "At that time, too," said Charles, "I suppose, the more expensive fruits were not cultivated. Mulberries are the witness, not only of a full college, but of simple tastes." "Charles is secretly cutting at our hothouse here," said Mr. Reding; "as if our first father did not prefer fruits and flowers to beef and mutton." "No, indeed," said Charles, "I think peaches capital things; and as to flowers, I am even too fond of scents." "Charles has some theory, then, about scents, I'll be bound," said his father; "I never knew a boy who so placed his likings and dislikings on fancies. He began to eat olives directly he read the OEdipus of Sophocles; and, I verily believe, will soon give up oranges from his dislike to King William." "Every one does so," said Charles: "who would not be in the fashion? There's Aunt Kitty, she calls a bonnet, 'a sweet' one year, which makes her 'a perfect fright' the next." "You're right, papa, in this instance," said his mother; "I know he has some good reason, though I never can recollect it, why he smells a rose, or distils lavender. What is it, my dear Mary?" "'Relics ye are of Eden's bowers,'" said she. "Why, sir, that was precisely your own reason just now," said Charles to his father. "There's more than that," said Mrs. Reding, "if I knew what it was." "He thinks the scent more intellectual than the other senses," said Mary, smiling. "Such a boy for paradoxes!" said his mother. "Well, so it is in a certain way," said Charles, "but I can't explain. Sounds and scents are more ethereal, less material; they have no shape--like the angels." Mr. Malcolm laughed. "Well, I grant it, Charles," he said; "they are length without breadth!" "Did you ever hear the like?" said Mrs. Reding, laughing too; "don't encourage him, Mr. Malcolm; you are worse than he. Angels length without breadth!" "They pass from place to place, they come, they go," continued Mr. Malcolm. "They conjure up the past so vividly," said Charles. "But sounds surely more than scents," said Mr. Malcolm. "Pardon me; the reverse as _I_ think," answered Charles. "That _is_ a paradox, Charles," said Mr. Malcolm; "the smell of roast-beef never went further than to remind a man of dinner; but sounds are pathetic and inspiring." "Well, sir, but think of this," said Charles, "scents are complete in themselves, yet do not consist of parts. Think how very distinct the smell of a rose is from a pink, a pink from a sweet-pea, a sweet-pea from a stock, a stock from lilac, lilac from lavender, lavender from jasmine, jasmine from honeysuckle, honeysuckle from hawthorn, hawthorn from hyacinth, hyacinth"---- "Spare us," interrupted Mr. Malcolm; "you are going through the index of Loudon!" "And these are only the scents of flowers; how different flowers smell from fruits, fruits from spices, spices from roast-beef or pork-cutlets, and so on. Now, what I was coming to is this--these scents are perfectly distinct from each other, and _sui generis_; they never can be confused; yet each is communicated to the apprehension in an instant. Sights take up a great space, a tune is a succession of sounds; but scents are at once specific and complete, yet indivisible. Who can halve a scent? they need neither time nor space; thus they are immaterial or spiritual." "Charles hasn't been to Oxford for nothing," said his mother, laughing and looking at Mary; "this is what I call chopping logic!" "Well done, Charles,"

cried

How many times the word 'cried' appears in the text?

will choose time. I think the University goes down just when Oxford begins to be most beautiful. The walks and meadows are so fragrant and bright now, the hay half carried, and the short new grass appearing." "Reding ought to live here all through the Long," said Tenby: "does any one live through the Vacation, sir, in Oxford?" "Do you mean they die before the end of it, Mr. Tenby?" asked Vincent. "It can't be denied," he continued, "that many, like Mr. Reding, think it a most pleasant time. _I_ am fond of Oxford; but it is not my _habitat_ out of term-time." "Well, I think I should like to make it so," said Charles, "but, I suppose, undergraduates are not allowed." Mr. Vincent answered with more than necessary gravity, "No;" it rested with the Principal; but he conceived that he would not consent to it. Vincent added that certainly there _were_ parties who remained in Oxford through the Long Vacation. It was said mysteriously. Charles answered that, if it was against college rules, there was no help for it; else, were he reading for his degree, he should like nothing better than to pass the Long Vacation in Oxford, if he might judge by the pleasantness of the last ten days. "That is a compliment, Mr. Reding, to your company," said Vincent. At this moment the door opened, and in came the manciple with the dinner paper, which Mr. Vincent had formally to run his eye over. "Watkins," he said, giving it back to him, "I almost think to-day is one of the Fasts of the Church. Go and look, Watkins, and bring me word." The astonished manciple, who had never been sent on such a commission in his whole career before, hastened out of the room, to task his wits how best to fulfil it. The question seemed to strike the company as forcibly, for there was a sudden silence, which was succeeded by a shuffling of feet and a leave-taking; as if, though they had secured their ham and mutton at breakfast, they did not like to risk their dinner. Watkins returned sooner than could have been expected. He said that Mr. Vincent was right; to-day he had found was "the feast of the Apostles." "The Vigil of St. Peter, you mean, Watkins," said Mr. Vincent; "I thought so. Then let us have a plain beefsteak and a saddle of mutton; no Portugal onions, Watkins, or currant-jelly; and some simple pudding, Charlotte pudding, Watkins--that will do." Watkins vanished. By this time, Charles found himself alone with the college authority; who began to speak to him in a more confidential tone. "Mr. Reding," said he, "I did not like to question you before the others, but I conceive you had no particular _meaning_ in your praise of Oxford in the Long Vacation? In the mouths of some it would have been suspicious." Charles was all surprise. "To tell the truth, Mr. Reding, as things stand," he proceeded, "it is often a mark of _party_, this residence in the Vacation; though, of course, there is nothing in the _thing_ itself but what is perfectly natural and right." Charles was all attention. "My good sir," the tutor proceeded, "avoid parties; be sure to avoid party. You are young in your career among us. I always feel anxious about young men of talent; there is the greatest danger of the talent of the University being absorbed in party." Reding expressed a hope that nothing he had done had given cause to his tutor's remark. "No," replied Mr. Vincent, "no;" yet with some slight hesitation; "no, I don't know that it has. But I have thought some of your remarks and questions at lecture were like a person pushing things _too far_, and wishing to form a _system_." Charles was so much taken aback by the charge, that the unexplained mystery of the Long Vacation went out of his head. He said he was "very sorry," and "obliged;" and tried to recollect what he could have said to give ground to Mr. Vincent's remark. Not being able at the moment to recollect, he went on. "I assure you, sir, I know so little of parties in the place, that I hardly know their leaders. I have heard persons mentioned, but, if I tried, I think I should, in some cases, mismatch names and opinions." "I believe it," said Vincent; "but you are young; I am cautioning you against _tendencies_. You may suddenly find yourself absorbed before you know where you are." Charles thought this a good opportunity of asking some questions in detail, about points which puzzled him. He asked whether Dr. Brownside was considered a safe divine to follow. "I hold, d'ye see," answered Vincent, "that all errors are counterfeits of truth. Clever men say true things, Mr. Reding, true in their substance, but," sinking his voice to a whisper, "they go _too far_. It might even be shown that all sects are in one sense but parts of the Catholic Church. I don't say true parts, that is a further question; but they _embody_ great _principles_. The Quakers represent the principle of simplicity and evangelical poverty; they even have a dress of their own, like monks. The Independents represent the rights of the laity; the Wesleyans cherish the devotional principle; the Irvingites, the symbolical and mystical; the High Church party, the principle of obedience; the Liberals are the guardians of reason. No party, then, I conceive, is entirely right or entirely wrong. As to Dr. Brownside, there certainly have been various opinions entertained about his divinity; still, he is an able man, and I think you will gain _good_, gain _good_ from his teaching. But mind, I don't _recommend_ him; yet I respect him, and I consider that he says many things very well worth your attention. I would advise you, then, to accept the _good_ which his sermons offer, without committing yourself to the _bad_. That, depend upon it, Mr. Reding, is the golden though the obvious rule in these matters." Charles said, in answer, that Mr. Vincent was overrating his powers; that he had to learn before he could judge; and that he wished very much to know whether Vincent could recommend him any book, in which he might see at once _what_ the true Church-of-England doctrine was on a number of points which perplexed him. Mr. Vincent replied, he must be on his guard against dissipating his mind with such reading, at a time when his University duties had a definite claim upon him. He ought to avoid all controversies of the day, all authors of the day. He would advise him to read _no_ living authors. "Read dead authors alone," he continued; "dead authors are safe. Our great divines," and he stood upright, "were models; 'there were giants on the earth in those days,' as King George the Third had once said of them to Dr. Johnson. They had that depth, and power, and gravity, and fulness, and erudition; and they were so racy, always racy, and what might be called English. They had that richness, too, such a mine of thought, such a world of opinion, such activity of mind, such inexhaustible resource, such diversity, too. Then they were so eloquent; the majestic Hooker, the imaginative Taylor, the brilliant Hall, the learning of Barrow, the strong sense of South, the keen logic of Chillingworth, good, honest old Burnet," etc., etc. There did not seem much reason why he should stop at one moment more than another; at length, however, he did stop. It was prose, but it was pleasant prose to Charles; he knew just enough about these writers to feel interested in hearing them talked about, and to him Vincent seemed to be saying a good deal, when in fact he was saying very little. When he stopped, Charles said he believed that there were persons in the University who were promoting the study of these authors. Mr. Vincent looked grave. "It is true," he said; "but, my young friend, I have already hinted to you that indifferent things are perverted to the purposes of _party_. At this moment the names of some of our greatest divines are little better than a watchword by which the opinions of living individuals are signified." "Which opinions, I suppose," Charles answered, "are not to be found in those authors." "I'll not say that," said Mr. Vincent. "I have the greatest respect for the individuals in question, and I am not denying that they have done good to our Church by drawing attention in this lax day to the old Church-of-England divinity. But it is one thing to agree with these gentlemen; another," laying his hand on Charles's shoulder, "another to belong to their party. Do not make man your master; get good from all; think well of all persons, and you will be a wise man." Reding inquired, with some timidity, if this was not something like what Dr. Brownside had said in the University pulpit; but perhaps the latter advocated a toleration of opinions in a different sense? Mr. Vincent answered rather shortly, that he had not heard Dr. Brownside's sermon; but, for himself, he had been speaking only of persons in our own communion. "Our Church," he said, "admitted of great liberty of thought within her pale. Even our greatest divines differed from each other in many respects; nay, Bishop Taylor differed from himself. It was a great principle in the English Church. Her true children agree to differ. In truth," he continued, "there is that robust, masculine, noble independence in the English mind, which refuses to be tied down to artificial shapes, but is like, I will say, some great and beautiful production of nature,--a tree, which is rich in foliage and fantastic in limb, no sickly denizen of the hothouse, or helpless dependent of the garden wall, but in careless magnificence sheds its fruits upon the free earth, for the bird of the air and the beast of the field, and all sorts of cattle, to eat thereof and rejoice." When Charles came away, he tried to think what he had gained by his conversation with Mr. Vincent; not exactly what he had wanted, some practical rules to guide his mind and keep him steady; but still some useful hints. He had already been averse to parties, and offended at what he saw of individuals attached to them. Vincent had confirmed him in his resolution to keep aloof from them, and to attend to his duties in the place. He felt pleased to have had this talk with him; but what could he mean by suspecting a tendency in himself to push things too far, and thereby to implicate himself in party? He was obliged to resign himself to ignorance on the subject, and to be content with keeping a watch over himself in future. CHAPTER XI. No opportunity has occurred of informing the reader that, during the last week or two, Charles had accidentally been a good deal thrown across Willis, the _umbra_ of White at Bateman's breakfast-party. He had liked his looks on that occasion, when he was dumb; he did not like him so much when he heard him talk; still he could not help being interested in him, and not the least for this reason, that Willis seemed to have taken a great fancy to himself. He certainly did court Charles, and seemed anxious to stand well with him. Charles, however, did not like his mode of talking better than he did White's; and when he first saw his rooms, there was much in them which shocked both his good sense and his religious principles. A large ivory crucifix, in a glass case, was a conspicuous ornament between the windows; an engraving, representing the Blessed Trinity, as is usual in Catholic countries, hung over the fireplace, and a picture of the Madonna and St. Dominic was opposite to it. On the mantelpiece were a rosary, a thuribulum, and other tokens of Catholicism, of which Charles did not know the uses; a missal, ritual, and some Catholic tracts, lay on the table; and, as he happened to come on Willis unexpectedly, he found him sitting in a vestment more like a cassock than a reading-gown, and engaged upon some portion of the Breviary. Virgil and Sophocles, Herodotus and Cicero seemed, as impure pagans, to have hid themselves in corners, or flitted away, before the awful presence of the Ancient Church. Charles had taken upon himself to protest against some of these singularities, but without success. On the evening before his departure for the country he had occasion to go towards Folly Bridge to pay a bill, when he was startled, as he passed what he had ever taken for a dissenting chapel, to see Willis come out of it. He hardly could believe he saw correctly; he knew, indeed, that Willis had been detained in Oxford, as he had been himself; but what had compelled him to a visit so extraordinary as that which he had just made, Charles had no means of determining. "Willis!" he cried, as he stopped. Willis coloured, and tried to look easy. "Do come a few paces with me," said Charles. "What in the world has taken you there? Is it not a dissenting meeting?" "Dissenting meeting!" cried Willis, surprised and offended in his turn: "what on earth could make you think I would go to a dissenting meeting?" "Well, I beg your pardon," said Charles; "I recollect now: it's the exhibition room. However, _once_ it _was_ a chapel: that's my mistake. Isn't it what is called 'the Old Methodist Chapel?' I never was there; they showed there the _Dio-astro-doxon_, so I think they called it." Charles talked on, to cover his own mistake, for he was ashamed of the charge he had made. Willis did not know whether he was in jest or earnest. "Reding," he said, "don't go on; you offend me." "Well, what is it?" said Charles. "You know well enough," answered Willis, "though you wish to annoy me." "I don't indeed." "It's the Catholic church," said Willis. Reding was silent a moment; then he said, "Well, I don't think you have mended the matter; it _is_ a dissenting meeting, call it what you will, though not the kind of one I meant." "What can you mean?" asked Willis. "Rather, what mean _you_ by going to such places?" retorted Charles; "why, it is against your oath." "My oath! what oath?" "There's not an oath now; but there was an oath till lately," said Reding; "and we still make a very solemn engagement. Don't you recollect your matriculation at the Vice-Chancellor's, and what oaths and declarations you made?" "I don't know what I made: my tutor told me nothing about it. I signed a book or two." "You did more," said Reding. "I was told most carefully. You solemnly engaged to keep the statutes; and one statute is, not to go into any dissenting chapel or meeting whatever." "Catholics are not Dissenters," said Willis. "Oh, don't speak so," said Charles; "you know it's meant to include them. The statute wishes us to keep from all places of worship whatever but our own." "But it is an illegal declaration or vow," said Willis, "and so not binding." "Where did you find that get-off?" said Charles; "the priest put that into your head." "I don't know the priest; I never spoke a word to him," answered Willis. "Well, any how, it's not your own answer," said Reding; "and does not help you. I am no casuist; but if it is an illegal engagement you should not continue to enjoy the benefit of it." "What benefit?" "Your cap and gown; a university education; the chance of a scholarship or fellowship. Give up these, and then plead, if you will, and lawfully, that you are quit of your engagement; but don't sail under false colours: don't take the benefit and break the stipulation." "You take it too seriously; there are half a hundred statutes _you_ don't keep, any more than I. You are most inconsistent." "Well, if we don't keep them," said Charles, "I suppose it is in points where the authorities don't enforce them; for instance, they don't mean us to dress in brown, though the statutes order it." "But they _do_ mean to keep you from walking down High Street in beaver," answered Willis; "for the Proctors march up and down, and send you back, if they catch you." "But _this_ is a different matter," said Reding, changing his ground; "this is a matter of religion. It can't be right to go to strange places of worship or meetings." "Why," said Willis, "if we are one Church with the Roman Catholics, I can't make out for the life of me how it's wrong for us to go to them or them to us." "I'm no divine, I don't understand what is meant by one Church," said Charles; "but I know well that there's not a bishop, not a clergyman, not a sober churchman in the land but would give it against you. It's a sheer absurdity." "Don't talk in that way," answered Willis, "please don't. I feel all my heart drawn to the Catholic worship; our own service is so cold." "That's just what every stiff Dissenter says," answered Charles; "every poor cottager, too, who knows no better, and goes after the Methodists--after her dear Mr. Spoutaway or the preaching cobbler. _She_ says (I have heard them), 'Oh, sir, I suppose we ought to go where we get most good. Mr. So-and-so goes to my heart--he goes through me.'" Willis laughed; "Well, not a bad reason, as times go, _I_ think," said he: "poor souls, what better means of judging have they? how can you hope they will like 'the Scripture moveth us'? Really you are making too much of it. This is only the second time I have been there, and, I tell you in earnest, I find my mind filled with awe and devotion there; as I think you would too. I really am better for it; I cannot pray in church; there's a bad smell there, and the pews hide everything; I can't see through a deal board. But here, when I went in, I found all still, and calm, the space open, and, in the twilight, the Tabernacle just visible, pointed out by the lamp." Charles looked very uncomfortable. "Really, Willis," he said, "I don't know what to say to you. Heaven forbid that I should speak against the Roman Catholics; I know nothing about them. But _this_ I know, that you are not a Roman Catholic, and have no business there. If they have such sacred things among them as those you allude to, still these are not yours; you are an intruder. I know nothing about it; I don't like to give a judgment, I am sure. But it's a tampering with sacred things; running here and there, touching and tasting, taking up, putting down. I don't like it," he added, with vehemence; "it's taking liberties with God." "Oh, my dear Reding, please don't speak so very severely," said poor Willis; "now what have I done more than you would do yourself, were you in France or Italy? Do you mean to say you wouldn't enter the churches abroad?" "I will only decide about what is before me," answered Reding; "when I go abroad, then will be the time to think about your question. It is quite enough to know what we ought to do at the moment, and I am clear you have been doing wrong. How did you find your way there?" "White took me." "Then there is one man in the world more thoughtless than you: do many of the gownsmen go there?" "Not that I know of; one or two have gone from curiosity; there is no practice of going, at least this is what I am told." "Well," said Charles, "you must promise me you will not go again. Come, we won't part till you do." "That is too much," said Willis, gently; then, disengaging his arm from Reding's, he suddenly darted away from him, saying, "Good-bye, good-bye; to our next merry meeting--_au revoir_." There was no help for it. Charles walked slowly home, saying to himself: "What if, after all, the Roman Catholic Church is the true Church? I wish I knew what to believe; no one will tell me what to believe; I am so left to myself." Then he thought: "I suppose I know quite enough for practice--more than I _do_ practise; and I ought surely to be contented and thankful." CHAPTER XII. Charles was an affectionate son, and the Long Vacation passed very happily at home. He was up early, and read steadily till luncheon, and then he was at the service of his father, mother, and sisters for the rest of the day. He loved the calm, quiet country; he loved the monotonous flow of time, when each day is like the other; and, after the excitement of Oxford, the secluded parsonage was like a haven beyond the tossing of the waves. The whirl of opinions and perplexities which had encircled him at Oxford now were like the distant sound of the ocean--they reminded him of his present security. The undulating meadows, the green lanes, the open heath, the common with its wide-spreading dusky elms, the high timber which fringed the level path from village to village, ever and anon broken and thrown into groups, or losing itself in copses--even the gate, and the stile, and the turnpike-road had the charm, not of novelty, but of long familiar use; they had the poetry of many recollections. Nor was the dilapidated, deformed church, with its outside staircases, its unsightly galleries, its wide intruded windows, its uncouth pews, its low nunting table, its forlorn vestry, and its damp earthy smell, without its pleasant associations to the inner man; for there it was that for many a year, Sunday after Sunday, he had heard his dear father read and preach; there were the old monuments, with Latin inscriptions and strange devices, the black boards with white letters, the Resurgams and grinning skulls, the fire-buckets, the faded militia-colours, and, almost as much a fixture, the old clerk, with a Welsh wig over his ears, shouting the responses out of place--which had arrested his imagination, and awed him when a child. And then there was his home itself; its well-known rooms, its pleasant routine, its order, and its comfort--an old and true friend, the dearer to him because he had made new ones. "Where I shall be in time to come I know not," he said to himself; "I am but a boy; many things which I have not a dream of, which my imagination cannot compass, may come on me before I die--if I live; but here at least, and now, I am happy, and I will enjoy my happiness. Some say that school is the pleasantest time of one's life; this does not exclude college. I suppose care is what makes life so wearing. At present I have no care, no responsibility; I suppose I shall feel a little when I go up for my degree. Care is a terrible thing; I have had a little of it at times at school. What a strange thing to fancy, I shall be one day twenty-five or thirty! How the weeks are flying by! the Vacation will soon be over. Oh, I am so happy, it quite makes me afraid. Yet I shall have strength for my day." Sometimes, however, his thoughts took a sadder turn, and he anticipated the future more vividly than he enjoyed the present. Mr. Malcolm had come to see them, after an absence from the parsonage for several years: his visit was a great pleasure to Mr. Reding, and not much less to himself, to whom a green home and a family circle were agreeable sights, after his bachelor-life at college. He had been a great favourite with Charles and his sisters as children, though now his popularity with them for the most part rested on the memory of the past. When he told them amusing stories, or allowed them to climb his knee and take off his spectacles, he did all that was necessary to gain their childish hearts; more is necessary to conciliate the affection of young men and women; and thus it is not surprising that he lived in their minds principally by prescription. He neither knew this, nor would have thought much about it if he had; for, like many persons of advancing years, he made himself very much his own centre, did not care to enter into the minds of others, did not consult for them, or find his happiness in them. He was kind and friendly to the young people, as he would be kind to a canary-bird or a lap-dog; it was a sort of external love; and, though they got on capitally with him, they did not miss him when gone, nor would have been much troubled to know that he was never to come again. Charles drove him about the country, stamped his letters, secured him his newspapers from the neighbouring town, and listened to his stories about Oxford and Oxford men. He really liked him, and wished to please him; but, as to consulting him in any serious matter, or going to him for comfort in affliction, he would as soon have thought of betaking him to Dan the pedlar, or old Isaac who played the Sunday bassoon. "How have your peaches been this year, Malcolm?" said Mr. Reding one day after dinner to his guest. "You ought to know that we have no peaches in Oxford," answered Mr. Malcolm. "My memory plays me false, then: I had a vision of, at least, October peaches on one occasion, and fine ones too." "Ah, you mean at old Tom Spindle's, the jockey's," answered Mr. Malcolm; "it's true, he had a bit of a brick wall, and was proud of it. But peaches come when there is no one in Oxford to eat them; so either the tree, or at least the fruit, is a great rarity there. Oxford wasn't so empty once; you have old mulberry-trees there in record of better days." "At that time, too," said Charles, "I suppose, the more expensive fruits were not cultivated. Mulberries are the witness, not only of a full college, but of simple tastes." "Charles is secretly cutting at our hothouse here," said Mr. Reding; "as if our first father did not prefer fruits and flowers to beef and mutton." "No, indeed," said Charles, "I think peaches capital things; and as to flowers, I am even too fond of scents." "Charles has some theory, then, about scents, I'll be bound," said his father; "I never knew a boy who so placed his likings and dislikings on fancies. He began to eat olives directly he read the OEdipus of Sophocles; and, I verily believe, will soon give up oranges from his dislike to King William." "Every one does so," said Charles: "who would not be in the fashion? There's Aunt Kitty, she calls a bonnet, 'a sweet' one year, which makes her 'a perfect fright' the next." "You're right, papa, in this instance," said his mother; "I know he has some good reason, though I never can recollect it, why he smells a rose, or distils lavender. What is it, my dear Mary?" "'Relics ye are of Eden's bowers,'" said she. "Why, sir, that was precisely your own reason just now," said Charles to his father. "There's more than that," said Mrs. Reding, "if I knew what it was." "He thinks the scent more intellectual than the other senses," said Mary, smiling. "Such a boy for paradoxes!" said his mother. "Well, so it is in a certain way," said Charles, "but I can't explain. Sounds and scents are more ethereal, less material; they have no shape--like the angels." Mr. Malcolm laughed. "Well, I grant it, Charles," he said; "they are length without breadth!" "Did you ever hear the like?" said Mrs. Reding, laughing too; "don't encourage him, Mr. Malcolm; you are worse than he. Angels length without breadth!" "They pass from place to place, they come, they go," continued Mr. Malcolm. "They conjure up the past so vividly," said Charles. "But sounds surely more than scents," said Mr. Malcolm. "Pardon me; the reverse as _I_ think," answered Charles. "That _is_ a paradox, Charles," said Mr. Malcolm; "the smell of roast-beef never went further than to remind a man of dinner; but sounds are pathetic and inspiring." "Well, sir, but think of this," said Charles, "scents are complete in themselves, yet do not consist of parts. Think how very distinct the smell of a rose is from a pink, a pink from a sweet-pea, a sweet-pea from a stock, a stock from lilac, lilac from lavender, lavender from jasmine, jasmine from honeysuckle, honeysuckle from hawthorn, hawthorn from hyacinth, hyacinth"---- "Spare us," interrupted Mr. Malcolm; "you are going through the index of Loudon!" "And these are only the scents of flowers; how different flowers smell from fruits, fruits from spices, spices from roast-beef or pork-cutlets, and so on. Now, what I was coming to is this--these scents are perfectly distinct from each other, and _sui generis_; they never can be confused; yet each is communicated to the apprehension in an instant. Sights take up a great space, a tune is a succession of sounds; but scents are at once specific and complete, yet indivisible. Who can halve a scent? they need neither time nor space; thus they are immaterial or spiritual." "Charles hasn't been to Oxford for nothing," said his mother, laughing and looking at Mary; "this is what I call chopping logic!" "Well done, Charles,"

true

How many times the word 'true' appears in the text?

will choose time. I think the University goes down just when Oxford begins to be most beautiful. The walks and meadows are so fragrant and bright now, the hay half carried, and the short new grass appearing." "Reding ought to live here all through the Long," said Tenby: "does any one live through the Vacation, sir, in Oxford?" "Do you mean they die before the end of it, Mr. Tenby?" asked Vincent. "It can't be denied," he continued, "that many, like Mr. Reding, think it a most pleasant time. _I_ am fond of Oxford; but it is not my _habitat_ out of term-time." "Well, I think I should like to make it so," said Charles, "but, I suppose, undergraduates are not allowed." Mr. Vincent answered with more than necessary gravity, "No;" it rested with the Principal; but he conceived that he would not consent to it. Vincent added that certainly there _were_ parties who remained in Oxford through the Long Vacation. It was said mysteriously. Charles answered that, if it was against college rules, there was no help for it; else, were he reading for his degree, he should like nothing better than to pass the Long Vacation in Oxford, if he might judge by the pleasantness of the last ten days. "That is a compliment, Mr. Reding, to your company," said Vincent. At this moment the door opened, and in came the manciple with the dinner paper, which Mr. Vincent had formally to run his eye over. "Watkins," he said, giving it back to him, "I almost think to-day is one of the Fasts of the Church. Go and look, Watkins, and bring me word." The astonished manciple, who had never been sent on such a commission in his whole career before, hastened out of the room, to task his wits how best to fulfil it. The question seemed to strike the company as forcibly, for there was a sudden silence, which was succeeded by a shuffling of feet and a leave-taking; as if, though they had secured their ham and mutton at breakfast, they did not like to risk their dinner. Watkins returned sooner than could have been expected. He said that Mr. Vincent was right; to-day he had found was "the feast of the Apostles." "The Vigil of St. Peter, you mean, Watkins," said Mr. Vincent; "I thought so. Then let us have a plain beefsteak and a saddle of mutton; no Portugal onions, Watkins, or currant-jelly; and some simple pudding, Charlotte pudding, Watkins--that will do." Watkins vanished. By this time, Charles found himself alone with the college authority; who began to speak to him in a more confidential tone. "Mr. Reding," said he, "I did not like to question you before the others, but I conceive you had no particular _meaning_ in your praise of Oxford in the Long Vacation? In the mouths of some it would have been suspicious." Charles was all surprise. "To tell the truth, Mr. Reding, as things stand," he proceeded, "it is often a mark of _party_, this residence in the Vacation; though, of course, there is nothing in the _thing_ itself but what is perfectly natural and right." Charles was all attention. "My good sir," the tutor proceeded, "avoid parties; be sure to avoid party. You are young in your career among us. I always feel anxious about young men of talent; there is the greatest danger of the talent of the University being absorbed in party." Reding expressed a hope that nothing he had done had given cause to his tutor's remark. "No," replied Mr. Vincent, "no;" yet with some slight hesitation; "no, I don't know that it has. But I have thought some of your remarks and questions at lecture were like a person pushing things _too far_, and wishing to form a _system_." Charles was so much taken aback by the charge, that the unexplained mystery of the Long Vacation went out of his head. He said he was "very sorry," and "obliged;" and tried to recollect what he could have said to give ground to Mr. Vincent's remark. Not being able at the moment to recollect, he went on. "I assure you, sir, I know so little of parties in the place, that I hardly know their leaders. I have heard persons mentioned, but, if I tried, I think I should, in some cases, mismatch names and opinions." "I believe it," said Vincent; "but you are young; I am cautioning you against _tendencies_. You may suddenly find yourself absorbed before you know where you are." Charles thought this a good opportunity of asking some questions in detail, about points which puzzled him. He asked whether Dr. Brownside was considered a safe divine to follow. "I hold, d'ye see," answered Vincent, "that all errors are counterfeits of truth. Clever men say true things, Mr. Reding, true in their substance, but," sinking his voice to a whisper, "they go _too far_. It might even be shown that all sects are in one sense but parts of the Catholic Church. I don't say true parts, that is a further question; but they _embody_ great _principles_. The Quakers represent the principle of simplicity and evangelical poverty; they even have a dress of their own, like monks. The Independents represent the rights of the laity; the Wesleyans cherish the devotional principle; the Irvingites, the symbolical and mystical; the High Church party, the principle of obedience; the Liberals are the guardians of reason. No party, then, I conceive, is entirely right or entirely wrong. As to Dr. Brownside, there certainly have been various opinions entertained about his divinity; still, he is an able man, and I think you will gain _good_, gain _good_ from his teaching. But mind, I don't _recommend_ him; yet I respect him, and I consider that he says many things very well worth your attention. I would advise you, then, to accept the _good_ which his sermons offer, without committing yourself to the _bad_. That, depend upon it, Mr. Reding, is the golden though the obvious rule in these matters." Charles said, in answer, that Mr. Vincent was overrating his powers; that he had to learn before he could judge; and that he wished very much to know whether Vincent could recommend him any book, in which he might see at once _what_ the true Church-of-England doctrine was on a number of points which perplexed him. Mr. Vincent replied, he must be on his guard against dissipating his mind with such reading, at a time when his University duties had a definite claim upon him. He ought to avoid all controversies of the day, all authors of the day. He would advise him to read _no_ living authors. "Read dead authors alone," he continued; "dead authors are safe. Our great divines," and he stood upright, "were models; 'there were giants on the earth in those days,' as King George the Third had once said of them to Dr. Johnson. They had that depth, and power, and gravity, and fulness, and erudition; and they were so racy, always racy, and what might be called English. They had that richness, too, such a mine of thought, such a world of opinion, such activity of mind, such inexhaustible resource, such diversity, too. Then they were so eloquent; the majestic Hooker, the imaginative Taylor, the brilliant Hall, the learning of Barrow, the strong sense of South, the keen logic of Chillingworth, good, honest old Burnet," etc., etc. There did not seem much reason why he should stop at one moment more than another; at length, however, he did stop. It was prose, but it was pleasant prose to Charles; he knew just enough about these writers to feel interested in hearing them talked about, and to him Vincent seemed to be saying a good deal, when in fact he was saying very little. When he stopped, Charles said he believed that there were persons in the University who were promoting the study of these authors. Mr. Vincent looked grave. "It is true," he said; "but, my young friend, I have already hinted to you that indifferent things are perverted to the purposes of _party_. At this moment the names of some of our greatest divines are little better than a watchword by which the opinions of living individuals are signified." "Which opinions, I suppose," Charles answered, "are not to be found in those authors." "I'll not say that," said Mr. Vincent. "I have the greatest respect for the individuals in question, and I am not denying that they have done good to our Church by drawing attention in this lax day to the old Church-of-England divinity. But it is one thing to agree with these gentlemen; another," laying his hand on Charles's shoulder, "another to belong to their party. Do not make man your master; get good from all; think well of all persons, and you will be a wise man." Reding inquired, with some timidity, if this was not something like what Dr. Brownside had said in the University pulpit; but perhaps the latter advocated a toleration of opinions in a different sense? Mr. Vincent answered rather shortly, that he had not heard Dr. Brownside's sermon; but, for himself, he had been speaking only of persons in our own communion. "Our Church," he said, "admitted of great liberty of thought within her pale. Even our greatest divines differed from each other in many respects; nay, Bishop Taylor differed from himself. It was a great principle in the English Church. Her true children agree to differ. In truth," he continued, "there is that robust, masculine, noble independence in the English mind, which refuses to be tied down to artificial shapes, but is like, I will say, some great and beautiful production of nature,--a tree, which is rich in foliage and fantastic in limb, no sickly denizen of the hothouse, or helpless dependent of the garden wall, but in careless magnificence sheds its fruits upon the free earth, for the bird of the air and the beast of the field, and all sorts of cattle, to eat thereof and rejoice." When Charles came away, he tried to think what he had gained by his conversation with Mr. Vincent; not exactly what he had wanted, some practical rules to guide his mind and keep him steady; but still some useful hints. He had already been averse to parties, and offended at what he saw of individuals attached to them. Vincent had confirmed him in his resolution to keep aloof from them, and to attend to his duties in the place. He felt pleased to have had this talk with him; but what could he mean by suspecting a tendency in himself to push things too far, and thereby to implicate himself in party? He was obliged to resign himself to ignorance on the subject, and to be content with keeping a watch over himself in future. CHAPTER XI. No opportunity has occurred of informing the reader that, during the last week or two, Charles had accidentally been a good deal thrown across Willis, the _umbra_ of White at Bateman's breakfast-party. He had liked his looks on that occasion, when he was dumb; he did not like him so much when he heard him talk; still he could not help being interested in him, and not the least for this reason, that Willis seemed to have taken a great fancy to himself. He certainly did court Charles, and seemed anxious to stand well with him. Charles, however, did not like his mode of talking better than he did White's; and when he first saw his rooms, there was much in them which shocked both his good sense and his religious principles. A large ivory crucifix, in a glass case, was a conspicuous ornament between the windows; an engraving, representing the Blessed Trinity, as is usual in Catholic countries, hung over the fireplace, and a picture of the Madonna and St. Dominic was opposite to it. On the mantelpiece were a rosary, a thuribulum, and other tokens of Catholicism, of which Charles did not know the uses; a missal, ritual, and some Catholic tracts, lay on the table; and, as he happened to come on Willis unexpectedly, he found him sitting in a vestment more like a cassock than a reading-gown, and engaged upon some portion of the Breviary. Virgil and Sophocles, Herodotus and Cicero seemed, as impure pagans, to have hid themselves in corners, or flitted away, before the awful presence of the Ancient Church. Charles had taken upon himself to protest against some of these singularities, but without success. On the evening before his departure for the country he had occasion to go towards Folly Bridge to pay a bill, when he was startled, as he passed what he had ever taken for a dissenting chapel, to see Willis come out of it. He hardly could believe he saw correctly; he knew, indeed, that Willis had been detained in Oxford, as he had been himself; but what had compelled him to a visit so extraordinary as that which he had just made, Charles had no means of determining. "Willis!" he cried, as he stopped. Willis coloured, and tried to look easy. "Do come a few paces with me," said Charles. "What in the world has taken you there? Is it not a dissenting meeting?" "Dissenting meeting!" cried Willis, surprised and offended in his turn: "what on earth could make you think I would go to a dissenting meeting?" "Well, I beg your pardon," said Charles; "I recollect now: it's the exhibition room. However, _once_ it _was_ a chapel: that's my mistake. Isn't it what is called 'the Old Methodist Chapel?' I never was there; they showed there the _Dio-astro-doxon_, so I think they called it." Charles talked on, to cover his own mistake, for he was ashamed of the charge he had made. Willis did not know whether he was in jest or earnest. "Reding," he said, "don't go on; you offend me." "Well, what is it?" said Charles. "You know well enough," answered Willis, "though you wish to annoy me." "I don't indeed." "It's the Catholic church," said Willis. Reding was silent a moment; then he said, "Well, I don't think you have mended the matter; it _is_ a dissenting meeting, call it what you will, though not the kind of one I meant." "What can you mean?" asked Willis. "Rather, what mean _you_ by going to such places?" retorted Charles; "why, it is against your oath." "My oath! what oath?" "There's not an oath now; but there was an oath till lately," said Reding; "and we still make a very solemn engagement. Don't you recollect your matriculation at the Vice-Chancellor's, and what oaths and declarations you made?" "I don't know what I made: my tutor told me nothing about it. I signed a book or two." "You did more," said Reding. "I was told most carefully. You solemnly engaged to keep the statutes; and one statute is, not to go into any dissenting chapel or meeting whatever." "Catholics are not Dissenters," said Willis. "Oh, don't speak so," said Charles; "you know it's meant to include them. The statute wishes us to keep from all places of worship whatever but our own." "But it is an illegal declaration or vow," said Willis, "and so not binding." "Where did you find that get-off?" said Charles; "the priest put that into your head." "I don't know the priest; I never spoke a word to him," answered Willis. "Well, any how, it's not your own answer," said Reding; "and does not help you. I am no casuist; but if it is an illegal engagement you should not continue to enjoy the benefit of it." "What benefit?" "Your cap and gown; a university education; the chance of a scholarship or fellowship. Give up these, and then plead, if you will, and lawfully, that you are quit of your engagement; but don't sail under false colours: don't take the benefit and break the stipulation." "You take it too seriously; there are half a hundred statutes _you_ don't keep, any more than I. You are most inconsistent." "Well, if we don't keep them," said Charles, "I suppose it is in points where the authorities don't enforce them; for instance, they don't mean us to dress in brown, though the statutes order it." "But they _do_ mean to keep you from walking down High Street in beaver," answered Willis; "for the Proctors march up and down, and send you back, if they catch you." "But _this_ is a different matter," said Reding, changing his ground; "this is a matter of religion. It can't be right to go to strange places of worship or meetings." "Why," said Willis, "if we are one Church with the Roman Catholics, I can't make out for the life of me how it's wrong for us to go to them or them to us." "I'm no divine, I don't understand what is meant by one Church," said Charles; "but I know well that there's not a bishop, not a clergyman, not a sober churchman in the land but would give it against you. It's a sheer absurdity." "Don't talk in that way," answered Willis, "please don't. I feel all my heart drawn to the Catholic worship; our own service is so cold." "That's just what every stiff Dissenter says," answered Charles; "every poor cottager, too, who knows no better, and goes after the Methodists--after her dear Mr. Spoutaway or the preaching cobbler. _She_ says (I have heard them), 'Oh, sir, I suppose we ought to go where we get most good. Mr. So-and-so goes to my heart--he goes through me.'" Willis laughed; "Well, not a bad reason, as times go, _I_ think," said he: "poor souls, what better means of judging have they? how can you hope they will like 'the Scripture moveth us'? Really you are making too much of it. This is only the second time I have been there, and, I tell you in earnest, I find my mind filled with awe and devotion there; as I think you would too. I really am better for it; I cannot pray in church; there's a bad smell there, and the pews hide everything; I can't see through a deal board. But here, when I went in, I found all still, and calm, the space open, and, in the twilight, the Tabernacle just visible, pointed out by the lamp." Charles looked very uncomfortable. "Really, Willis," he said, "I don't know what to say to you. Heaven forbid that I should speak against the Roman Catholics; I know nothing about them. But _this_ I know, that you are not a Roman Catholic, and have no business there. If they have such sacred things among them as those you allude to, still these are not yours; you are an intruder. I know nothing about it; I don't like to give a judgment, I am sure. But it's a tampering with sacred things; running here and there, touching and tasting, taking up, putting down. I don't like it," he added, with vehemence; "it's taking liberties with God." "Oh, my dear Reding, please don't speak so very severely," said poor Willis; "now what have I done more than you would do yourself, were you in France or Italy? Do you mean to say you wouldn't enter the churches abroad?" "I will only decide about what is before me," answered Reding; "when I go abroad, then will be the time to think about your question. It is quite enough to know what we ought to do at the moment, and I am clear you have been doing wrong. How did you find your way there?" "White took me." "Then there is one man in the world more thoughtless than you: do many of the gownsmen go there?" "Not that I know of; one or two have gone from curiosity; there is no practice of going, at least this is what I am told." "Well," said Charles, "you must promise me you will not go again. Come, we won't part till you do." "That is too much," said Willis, gently; then, disengaging his arm from Reding's, he suddenly darted away from him, saying, "Good-bye, good-bye; to our next merry meeting--_au revoir_." There was no help for it. Charles walked slowly home, saying to himself: "What if, after all, the Roman Catholic Church is the true Church? I wish I knew what to believe; no one will tell me what to believe; I am so left to myself." Then he thought: "I suppose I know quite enough for practice--more than I _do_ practise; and I ought surely to be contented and thankful." CHAPTER XII. Charles was an affectionate son, and the Long Vacation passed very happily at home. He was up early, and read steadily till luncheon, and then he was at the service of his father, mother, and sisters for the rest of the day. He loved the calm, quiet country; he loved the monotonous flow of time, when each day is like the other; and, after the excitement of Oxford, the secluded parsonage was like a haven beyond the tossing of the waves. The whirl of opinions and perplexities which had encircled him at Oxford now were like the distant sound of the ocean--they reminded him of his present security. The undulating meadows, the green lanes, the open heath, the common with its wide-spreading dusky elms, the high timber which fringed the level path from village to village, ever and anon broken and thrown into groups, or losing itself in copses--even the gate, and the stile, and the turnpike-road had the charm, not of novelty, but of long familiar use; they had the poetry of many recollections. Nor was the dilapidated, deformed church, with its outside staircases, its unsightly galleries, its wide intruded windows, its uncouth pews, its low nunting table, its forlorn vestry, and its damp earthy smell, without its pleasant associations to the inner man; for there it was that for many a year, Sunday after Sunday, he had heard his dear father read and preach; there were the old monuments, with Latin inscriptions and strange devices, the black boards with white letters, the Resurgams and grinning skulls, the fire-buckets, the faded militia-colours, and, almost as much a fixture, the old clerk, with a Welsh wig over his ears, shouting the responses out of place--which had arrested his imagination, and awed him when a child. And then there was his home itself; its well-known rooms, its pleasant routine, its order, and its comfort--an old and true friend, the dearer to him because he had made new ones. "Where I shall be in time to come I know not," he said to himself; "I am but a boy; many things which I have not a dream of, which my imagination cannot compass, may come on me before I die--if I live; but here at least, and now, I am happy, and I will enjoy my happiness. Some say that school is the pleasantest time of one's life; this does not exclude college. I suppose care is what makes life so wearing. At present I have no care, no responsibility; I suppose I shall feel a little when I go up for my degree. Care is a terrible thing; I have had a little of it at times at school. What a strange thing to fancy, I shall be one day twenty-five or thirty! How the weeks are flying by! the Vacation will soon be over. Oh, I am so happy, it quite makes me afraid. Yet I shall have strength for my day." Sometimes, however, his thoughts took a sadder turn, and he anticipated the future more vividly than he enjoyed the present. Mr. Malcolm had come to see them, after an absence from the parsonage for several years: his visit was a great pleasure to Mr. Reding, and not much less to himself, to whom a green home and a family circle were agreeable sights, after his bachelor-life at college. He had been a great favourite with Charles and his sisters as children, though now his popularity with them for the most part rested on the memory of the past. When he told them amusing stories, or allowed them to climb his knee and take off his spectacles, he did all that was necessary to gain their childish hearts; more is necessary to conciliate the affection of young men and women; and thus it is not surprising that he lived in their minds principally by prescription. He neither knew this, nor would have thought much about it if he had; for, like many persons of advancing years, he made himself very much his own centre, did not care to enter into the minds of others, did not consult for them, or find his happiness in them. He was kind and friendly to the young people, as he would be kind to a canary-bird or a lap-dog; it was a sort of external love; and, though they got on capitally with him, they did not miss him when gone, nor would have been much troubled to know that he was never to come again. Charles drove him about the country, stamped his letters, secured him his newspapers from the neighbouring town, and listened to his stories about Oxford and Oxford men. He really liked him, and wished to please him; but, as to consulting him in any serious matter, or going to him for comfort in affliction, he would as soon have thought of betaking him to Dan the pedlar, or old Isaac who played the Sunday bassoon. "How have your peaches been this year, Malcolm?" said Mr. Reding one day after dinner to his guest. "You ought to know that we have no peaches in Oxford," answered Mr. Malcolm. "My memory plays me false, then: I had a vision of, at least, October peaches on one occasion, and fine ones too." "Ah, you mean at old Tom Spindle's, the jockey's," answered Mr. Malcolm; "it's true, he had a bit of a brick wall, and was proud of it. But peaches come when there is no one in Oxford to eat them; so either the tree, or at least the fruit, is a great rarity there. Oxford wasn't so empty once; you have old mulberry-trees there in record of better days." "At that time, too," said Charles, "I suppose, the more expensive fruits were not cultivated. Mulberries are the witness, not only of a full college, but of simple tastes." "Charles is secretly cutting at our hothouse here," said Mr. Reding; "as if our first father did not prefer fruits and flowers to beef and mutton." "No, indeed," said Charles, "I think peaches capital things; and as to flowers, I am even too fond of scents." "Charles has some theory, then, about scents, I'll be bound," said his father; "I never knew a boy who so placed his likings and dislikings on fancies. He began to eat olives directly he read the OEdipus of Sophocles; and, I verily believe, will soon give up oranges from his dislike to King William." "Every one does so," said Charles: "who would not be in the fashion? There's Aunt Kitty, she calls a bonnet, 'a sweet' one year, which makes her 'a perfect fright' the next." "You're right, papa, in this instance," said his mother; "I know he has some good reason, though I never can recollect it, why he smells a rose, or distils lavender. What is it, my dear Mary?" "'Relics ye are of Eden's bowers,'" said she. "Why, sir, that was precisely your own reason just now," said Charles to his father. "There's more than that," said Mrs. Reding, "if I knew what it was." "He thinks the scent more intellectual than the other senses," said Mary, smiling. "Such a boy for paradoxes!" said his mother. "Well, so it is in a certain way," said Charles, "but I can't explain. Sounds and scents are more ethereal, less material; they have no shape--like the angels." Mr. Malcolm laughed. "Well, I grant it, Charles," he said; "they are length without breadth!" "Did you ever hear the like?" said Mrs. Reding, laughing too; "don't encourage him, Mr. Malcolm; you are worse than he. Angels length without breadth!" "They pass from place to place, they come, they go," continued Mr. Malcolm. "They conjure up the past so vividly," said Charles. "But sounds surely more than scents," said Mr. Malcolm. "Pardon me; the reverse as _I_ think," answered Charles. "That _is_ a paradox, Charles," said Mr. Malcolm; "the smell of roast-beef never went further than to remind a man of dinner; but sounds are pathetic and inspiring." "Well, sir, but think of this," said Charles, "scents are complete in themselves, yet do not consist of parts. Think how very distinct the smell of a rose is from a pink, a pink from a sweet-pea, a sweet-pea from a stock, a stock from lilac, lilac from lavender, lavender from jasmine, jasmine from honeysuckle, honeysuckle from hawthorn, hawthorn from hyacinth, hyacinth"---- "Spare us," interrupted Mr. Malcolm; "you are going through the index of Loudon!" "And these are only the scents of flowers; how different flowers smell from fruits, fruits from spices, spices from roast-beef or pork-cutlets, and so on. Now, what I was coming to is this--these scents are perfectly distinct from each other, and _sui generis_; they never can be confused; yet each is communicated to the apprehension in an instant. Sights take up a great space, a tune is a succession of sounds; but scents are at once specific and complete, yet indivisible. Who can halve a scent? they need neither time nor space; thus they are immaterial or spiritual." "Charles hasn't been to Oxford for nothing," said his mother, laughing and looking at Mary; "this is what I call chopping logic!" "Well done, Charles,"

binding

How many times the word 'binding' appears in the text?

will choose time. I think the University goes down just when Oxford begins to be most beautiful. The walks and meadows are so fragrant and bright now, the hay half carried, and the short new grass appearing." "Reding ought to live here all through the Long," said Tenby: "does any one live through the Vacation, sir, in Oxford?" "Do you mean they die before the end of it, Mr. Tenby?" asked Vincent. "It can't be denied," he continued, "that many, like Mr. Reding, think it a most pleasant time. _I_ am fond of Oxford; but it is not my _habitat_ out of term-time." "Well, I think I should like to make it so," said Charles, "but, I suppose, undergraduates are not allowed." Mr. Vincent answered with more than necessary gravity, "No;" it rested with the Principal; but he conceived that he would not consent to it. Vincent added that certainly there _were_ parties who remained in Oxford through the Long Vacation. It was said mysteriously. Charles answered that, if it was against college rules, there was no help for it; else, were he reading for his degree, he should like nothing better than to pass the Long Vacation in Oxford, if he might judge by the pleasantness of the last ten days. "That is a compliment, Mr. Reding, to your company," said Vincent. At this moment the door opened, and in came the manciple with the dinner paper, which Mr. Vincent had formally to run his eye over. "Watkins," he said, giving it back to him, "I almost think to-day is one of the Fasts of the Church. Go and look, Watkins, and bring me word." The astonished manciple, who had never been sent on such a commission in his whole career before, hastened out of the room, to task his wits how best to fulfil it. The question seemed to strike the company as forcibly, for there was a sudden silence, which was succeeded by a shuffling of feet and a leave-taking; as if, though they had secured their ham and mutton at breakfast, they did not like to risk their dinner. Watkins returned sooner than could have been expected. He said that Mr. Vincent was right; to-day he had found was "the feast of the Apostles." "The Vigil of St. Peter, you mean, Watkins," said Mr. Vincent; "I thought so. Then let us have a plain beefsteak and a saddle of mutton; no Portugal onions, Watkins, or currant-jelly; and some simple pudding, Charlotte pudding, Watkins--that will do." Watkins vanished. By this time, Charles found himself alone with the college authority; who began to speak to him in a more confidential tone. "Mr. Reding," said he, "I did not like to question you before the others, but I conceive you had no particular _meaning_ in your praise of Oxford in the Long Vacation? In the mouths of some it would have been suspicious." Charles was all surprise. "To tell the truth, Mr. Reding, as things stand," he proceeded, "it is often a mark of _party_, this residence in the Vacation; though, of course, there is nothing in the _thing_ itself but what is perfectly natural and right." Charles was all attention. "My good sir," the tutor proceeded, "avoid parties; be sure to avoid party. You are young in your career among us. I always feel anxious about young men of talent; there is the greatest danger of the talent of the University being absorbed in party." Reding expressed a hope that nothing he had done had given cause to his tutor's remark. "No," replied Mr. Vincent, "no;" yet with some slight hesitation; "no, I don't know that it has. But I have thought some of your remarks and questions at lecture were like a person pushing things _too far_, and wishing to form a _system_." Charles was so much taken aback by the charge, that the unexplained mystery of the Long Vacation went out of his head. He said he was "very sorry," and "obliged;" and tried to recollect what he could have said to give ground to Mr. Vincent's remark. Not being able at the moment to recollect, he went on. "I assure you, sir, I know so little of parties in the place, that I hardly know their leaders. I have heard persons mentioned, but, if I tried, I think I should, in some cases, mismatch names and opinions." "I believe it," said Vincent; "but you are young; I am cautioning you against _tendencies_. You may suddenly find yourself absorbed before you know where you are." Charles thought this a good opportunity of asking some questions in detail, about points which puzzled him. He asked whether Dr. Brownside was considered a safe divine to follow. "I hold, d'ye see," answered Vincent, "that all errors are counterfeits of truth. Clever men say true things, Mr. Reding, true in their substance, but," sinking his voice to a whisper, "they go _too far_. It might even be shown that all sects are in one sense but parts of the Catholic Church. I don't say true parts, that is a further question; but they _embody_ great _principles_. The Quakers represent the principle of simplicity and evangelical poverty; they even have a dress of their own, like monks. The Independents represent the rights of the laity; the Wesleyans cherish the devotional principle; the Irvingites, the symbolical and mystical; the High Church party, the principle of obedience; the Liberals are the guardians of reason. No party, then, I conceive, is entirely right or entirely wrong. As to Dr. Brownside, there certainly have been various opinions entertained about his divinity; still, he is an able man, and I think you will gain _good_, gain _good_ from his teaching. But mind, I don't _recommend_ him; yet I respect him, and I consider that he says many things very well worth your attention. I would advise you, then, to accept the _good_ which his sermons offer, without committing yourself to the _bad_. That, depend upon it, Mr. Reding, is the golden though the obvious rule in these matters." Charles said, in answer, that Mr. Vincent was overrating his powers; that he had to learn before he could judge; and that he wished very much to know whether Vincent could recommend him any book, in which he might see at once _what_ the true Church-of-England doctrine was on a number of points which perplexed him. Mr. Vincent replied, he must be on his guard against dissipating his mind with such reading, at a time when his University duties had a definite claim upon him. He ought to avoid all controversies of the day, all authors of the day. He would advise him to read _no_ living authors. "Read dead authors alone," he continued; "dead authors are safe. Our great divines," and he stood upright, "were models; 'there were giants on the earth in those days,' as King George the Third had once said of them to Dr. Johnson. They had that depth, and power, and gravity, and fulness, and erudition; and they were so racy, always racy, and what might be called English. They had that richness, too, such a mine of thought, such a world of opinion, such activity of mind, such inexhaustible resource, such diversity, too. Then they were so eloquent; the majestic Hooker, the imaginative Taylor, the brilliant Hall, the learning of Barrow, the strong sense of South, the keen logic of Chillingworth, good, honest old Burnet," etc., etc. There did not seem much reason why he should stop at one moment more than another; at length, however, he did stop. It was prose, but it was pleasant prose to Charles; he knew just enough about these writers to feel interested in hearing them talked about, and to him Vincent seemed to be saying a good deal, when in fact he was saying very little. When he stopped, Charles said he believed that there were persons in the University who were promoting the study of these authors. Mr. Vincent looked grave. "It is true," he said; "but, my young friend, I have already hinted to you that indifferent things are perverted to the purposes of _party_. At this moment the names of some of our greatest divines are little better than a watchword by which the opinions of living individuals are signified." "Which opinions, I suppose," Charles answered, "are not to be found in those authors." "I'll not say that," said Mr. Vincent. "I have the greatest respect for the individuals in question, and I am not denying that they have done good to our Church by drawing attention in this lax day to the old Church-of-England divinity. But it is one thing to agree with these gentlemen; another," laying his hand on Charles's shoulder, "another to belong to their party. Do not make man your master; get good from all; think well of all persons, and you will be a wise man." Reding inquired, with some timidity, if this was not something like what Dr. Brownside had said in the University pulpit; but perhaps the latter advocated a toleration of opinions in a different sense? Mr. Vincent answered rather shortly, that he had not heard Dr. Brownside's sermon; but, for himself, he had been speaking only of persons in our own communion. "Our Church," he said, "admitted of great liberty of thought within her pale. Even our greatest divines differed from each other in many respects; nay, Bishop Taylor differed from himself. It was a great principle in the English Church. Her true children agree to differ. In truth," he continued, "there is that robust, masculine, noble independence in the English mind, which refuses to be tied down to artificial shapes, but is like, I will say, some great and beautiful production of nature,--a tree, which is rich in foliage and fantastic in limb, no sickly denizen of the hothouse, or helpless dependent of the garden wall, but in careless magnificence sheds its fruits upon the free earth, for the bird of the air and the beast of the field, and all sorts of cattle, to eat thereof and rejoice." When Charles came away, he tried to think what he had gained by his conversation with Mr. Vincent; not exactly what he had wanted, some practical rules to guide his mind and keep him steady; but still some useful hints. He had already been averse to parties, and offended at what he saw of individuals attached to them. Vincent had confirmed him in his resolution to keep aloof from them, and to attend to his duties in the place. He felt pleased to have had this talk with him; but what could he mean by suspecting a tendency in himself to push things too far, and thereby to implicate himself in party? He was obliged to resign himself to ignorance on the subject, and to be content with keeping a watch over himself in future. CHAPTER XI. No opportunity has occurred of informing the reader that, during the last week or two, Charles had accidentally been a good deal thrown across Willis, the _umbra_ of White at Bateman's breakfast-party. He had liked his looks on that occasion, when he was dumb; he did not like him so much when he heard him talk; still he could not help being interested in him, and not the least for this reason, that Willis seemed to have taken a great fancy to himself. He certainly did court Charles, and seemed anxious to stand well with him. Charles, however, did not like his mode of talking better than he did White's; and when he first saw his rooms, there was much in them which shocked both his good sense and his religious principles. A large ivory crucifix, in a glass case, was a conspicuous ornament between the windows; an engraving, representing the Blessed Trinity, as is usual in Catholic countries, hung over the fireplace, and a picture of the Madonna and St. Dominic was opposite to it. On the mantelpiece were a rosary, a thuribulum, and other tokens of Catholicism, of which Charles did not know the uses; a missal, ritual, and some Catholic tracts, lay on the table; and, as he happened to come on Willis unexpectedly, he found him sitting in a vestment more like a cassock than a reading-gown, and engaged upon some portion of the Breviary. Virgil and Sophocles, Herodotus and Cicero seemed, as impure pagans, to have hid themselves in corners, or flitted away, before the awful presence of the Ancient Church. Charles had taken upon himself to protest against some of these singularities, but without success. On the evening before his departure for the country he had occasion to go towards Folly Bridge to pay a bill, when he was startled, as he passed what he had ever taken for a dissenting chapel, to see Willis come out of it. He hardly could believe he saw correctly; he knew, indeed, that Willis had been detained in Oxford, as he had been himself; but what had compelled him to a visit so extraordinary as that which he had just made, Charles had no means of determining. "Willis!" he cried, as he stopped. Willis coloured, and tried to look easy. "Do come a few paces with me," said Charles. "What in the world has taken you there? Is it not a dissenting meeting?" "Dissenting meeting!" cried Willis, surprised and offended in his turn: "what on earth could make you think I would go to a dissenting meeting?" "Well, I beg your pardon," said Charles; "I recollect now: it's the exhibition room. However, _once_ it _was_ a chapel: that's my mistake. Isn't it what is called 'the Old Methodist Chapel?' I never was there; they showed there the _Dio-astro-doxon_, so I think they called it." Charles talked on, to cover his own mistake, for he was ashamed of the charge he had made. Willis did not know whether he was in jest or earnest. "Reding," he said, "don't go on; you offend me." "Well, what is it?" said Charles. "You know well enough," answered Willis, "though you wish to annoy me." "I don't indeed." "It's the Catholic church," said Willis. Reding was silent a moment; then he said, "Well, I don't think you have mended the matter; it _is_ a dissenting meeting, call it what you will, though not the kind of one I meant." "What can you mean?" asked Willis. "Rather, what mean _you_ by going to such places?" retorted Charles; "why, it is against your oath." "My oath! what oath?" "There's not an oath now; but there was an oath till lately," said Reding; "and we still make a very solemn engagement. Don't you recollect your matriculation at the Vice-Chancellor's, and what oaths and declarations you made?" "I don't know what I made: my tutor told me nothing about it. I signed a book or two." "You did more," said Reding. "I was told most carefully. You solemnly engaged to keep the statutes; and one statute is, not to go into any dissenting chapel or meeting whatever." "Catholics are not Dissenters," said Willis. "Oh, don't speak so," said Charles; "you know it's meant to include them. The statute wishes us to keep from all places of worship whatever but our own." "But it is an illegal declaration or vow," said Willis, "and so not binding." "Where did you find that get-off?" said Charles; "the priest put that into your head." "I don't know the priest; I never spoke a word to him," answered Willis. "Well, any how, it's not your own answer," said Reding; "and does not help you. I am no casuist; but if it is an illegal engagement you should not continue to enjoy the benefit of it." "What benefit?" "Your cap and gown; a university education; the chance of a scholarship or fellowship. Give up these, and then plead, if you will, and lawfully, that you are quit of your engagement; but don't sail under false colours: don't take the benefit and break the stipulation." "You take it too seriously; there are half a hundred statutes _you_ don't keep, any more than I. You are most inconsistent." "Well, if we don't keep them," said Charles, "I suppose it is in points where the authorities don't enforce them; for instance, they don't mean us to dress in brown, though the statutes order it." "But they _do_ mean to keep you from walking down High Street in beaver," answered Willis; "for the Proctors march up and down, and send you back, if they catch you." "But _this_ is a different matter," said Reding, changing his ground; "this is a matter of religion. It can't be right to go to strange places of worship or meetings." "Why," said Willis, "if we are one Church with the Roman Catholics, I can't make out for the life of me how it's wrong for us to go to them or them to us." "I'm no divine, I don't understand what is meant by one Church," said Charles; "but I know well that there's not a bishop, not a clergyman, not a sober churchman in the land but would give it against you. It's a sheer absurdity." "Don't talk in that way," answered Willis, "please don't. I feel all my heart drawn to the Catholic worship; our own service is so cold." "That's just what every stiff Dissenter says," answered Charles; "every poor cottager, too, who knows no better, and goes after the Methodists--after her dear Mr. Spoutaway or the preaching cobbler. _She_ says (I have heard them), 'Oh, sir, I suppose we ought to go where we get most good. Mr. So-and-so goes to my heart--he goes through me.'" Willis laughed; "Well, not a bad reason, as times go, _I_ think," said he: "poor souls, what better means of judging have they? how can you hope they will like 'the Scripture moveth us'? Really you are making too much of it. This is only the second time I have been there, and, I tell you in earnest, I find my mind filled with awe and devotion there; as I think you would too. I really am better for it; I cannot pray in church; there's a bad smell there, and the pews hide everything; I can't see through a deal board. But here, when I went in, I found all still, and calm, the space open, and, in the twilight, the Tabernacle just visible, pointed out by the lamp." Charles looked very uncomfortable. "Really, Willis," he said, "I don't know what to say to you. Heaven forbid that I should speak against the Roman Catholics; I know nothing about them. But _this_ I know, that you are not a Roman Catholic, and have no business there. If they have such sacred things among them as those you allude to, still these are not yours; you are an intruder. I know nothing about it; I don't like to give a judgment, I am sure. But it's a tampering with sacred things; running here and there, touching and tasting, taking up, putting down. I don't like it," he added, with vehemence; "it's taking liberties with God." "Oh, my dear Reding, please don't speak so very severely," said poor Willis; "now what have I done more than you would do yourself, were you in France or Italy? Do you mean to say you wouldn't enter the churches abroad?" "I will only decide about what is before me," answered Reding; "when I go abroad, then will be the time to think about your question. It is quite enough to know what we ought to do at the moment, and I am clear you have been doing wrong. How did you find your way there?" "White took me." "Then there is one man in the world more thoughtless than you: do many of the gownsmen go there?" "Not that I know of; one or two have gone from curiosity; there is no practice of going, at least this is what I am told." "Well," said Charles, "you must promise me you will not go again. Come, we won't part till you do." "That is too much," said Willis, gently; then, disengaging his arm from Reding's, he suddenly darted away from him, saying, "Good-bye, good-bye; to our next merry meeting--_au revoir_." There was no help for it. Charles walked slowly home, saying to himself: "What if, after all, the Roman Catholic Church is the true Church? I wish I knew what to believe; no one will tell me what to believe; I am so left to myself." Then he thought: "I suppose I know quite enough for practice--more than I _do_ practise; and I ought surely to be contented and thankful." CHAPTER XII. Charles was an affectionate son, and the Long Vacation passed very happily at home. He was up early, and read steadily till luncheon, and then he was at the service of his father, mother, and sisters for the rest of the day. He loved the calm, quiet country; he loved the monotonous flow of time, when each day is like the other; and, after the excitement of Oxford, the secluded parsonage was like a haven beyond the tossing of the waves. The whirl of opinions and perplexities which had encircled him at Oxford now were like the distant sound of the ocean--they reminded him of his present security. The undulating meadows, the green lanes, the open heath, the common with its wide-spreading dusky elms, the high timber which fringed the level path from village to village, ever and anon broken and thrown into groups, or losing itself in copses--even the gate, and the stile, and the turnpike-road had the charm, not of novelty, but of long familiar use; they had the poetry of many recollections. Nor was the dilapidated, deformed church, with its outside staircases, its unsightly galleries, its wide intruded windows, its uncouth pews, its low nunting table, its forlorn vestry, and its damp earthy smell, without its pleasant associations to the inner man; for there it was that for many a year, Sunday after Sunday, he had heard his dear father read and preach; there were the old monuments, with Latin inscriptions and strange devices, the black boards with white letters, the Resurgams and grinning skulls, the fire-buckets, the faded militia-colours, and, almost as much a fixture, the old clerk, with a Welsh wig over his ears, shouting the responses out of place--which had arrested his imagination, and awed him when a child. And then there was his home itself; its well-known rooms, its pleasant routine, its order, and its comfort--an old and true friend, the dearer to him because he had made new ones. "Where I shall be in time to come I know not," he said to himself; "I am but a boy; many things which I have not a dream of, which my imagination cannot compass, may come on me before I die--if I live; but here at least, and now, I am happy, and I will enjoy my happiness. Some say that school is the pleasantest time of one's life; this does not exclude college. I suppose care is what makes life so wearing. At present I have no care, no responsibility; I suppose I shall feel a little when I go up for my degree. Care is a terrible thing; I have had a little of it at times at school. What a strange thing to fancy, I shall be one day twenty-five or thirty! How the weeks are flying by! the Vacation will soon be over. Oh, I am so happy, it quite makes me afraid. Yet I shall have strength for my day." Sometimes, however, his thoughts took a sadder turn, and he anticipated the future more vividly than he enjoyed the present. Mr. Malcolm had come to see them, after an absence from the parsonage for several years: his visit was a great pleasure to Mr. Reding, and not much less to himself, to whom a green home and a family circle were agreeable sights, after his bachelor-life at college. He had been a great favourite with Charles and his sisters as children, though now his popularity with them for the most part rested on the memory of the past. When he told them amusing stories, or allowed them to climb his knee and take off his spectacles, he did all that was necessary to gain their childish hearts; more is necessary to conciliate the affection of young men and women; and thus it is not surprising that he lived in their minds principally by prescription. He neither knew this, nor would have thought much about it if he had; for, like many persons of advancing years, he made himself very much his own centre, did not care to enter into the minds of others, did not consult for them, or find his happiness in them. He was kind and friendly to the young people, as he would be kind to a canary-bird or a lap-dog; it was a sort of external love; and, though they got on capitally with him, they did not miss him when gone, nor would have been much troubled to know that he was never to come again. Charles drove him about the country, stamped his letters, secured him his newspapers from the neighbouring town, and listened to his stories about Oxford and Oxford men. He really liked him, and wished to please him; but, as to consulting him in any serious matter, or going to him for comfort in affliction, he would as soon have thought of betaking him to Dan the pedlar, or old Isaac who played the Sunday bassoon. "How have your peaches been this year, Malcolm?" said Mr. Reding one day after dinner to his guest. "You ought to know that we have no peaches in Oxford," answered Mr. Malcolm. "My memory plays me false, then: I had a vision of, at least, October peaches on one occasion, and fine ones too." "Ah, you mean at old Tom Spindle's, the jockey's," answered Mr. Malcolm; "it's true, he had a bit of a brick wall, and was proud of it. But peaches come when there is no one in Oxford to eat them; so either the tree, or at least the fruit, is a great rarity there. Oxford wasn't so empty once; you have old mulberry-trees there in record of better days." "At that time, too," said Charles, "I suppose, the more expensive fruits were not cultivated. Mulberries are the witness, not only of a full college, but of simple tastes." "Charles is secretly cutting at our hothouse here," said Mr. Reding; "as if our first father did not prefer fruits and flowers to beef and mutton." "No, indeed," said Charles, "I think peaches capital things; and as to flowers, I am even too fond of scents." "Charles has some theory, then, about scents, I'll be bound," said his father; "I never knew a boy who so placed his likings and dislikings on fancies. He began to eat olives directly he read the OEdipus of Sophocles; and, I verily believe, will soon give up oranges from his dislike to King William." "Every one does so," said Charles: "who would not be in the fashion? There's Aunt Kitty, she calls a bonnet, 'a sweet' one year, which makes her 'a perfect fright' the next." "You're right, papa, in this instance," said his mother; "I know he has some good reason, though I never can recollect it, why he smells a rose, or distils lavender. What is it, my dear Mary?" "'Relics ye are of Eden's bowers,'" said she. "Why, sir, that was precisely your own reason just now," said Charles to his father. "There's more than that," said Mrs. Reding, "if I knew what it was." "He thinks the scent more intellectual than the other senses," said Mary, smiling. "Such a boy for paradoxes!" said his mother. "Well, so it is in a certain way," said Charles, "but I can't explain. Sounds and scents are more ethereal, less material; they have no shape--like the angels." Mr. Malcolm laughed. "Well, I grant it, Charles," he said; "they are length without breadth!" "Did you ever hear the like?" said Mrs. Reding, laughing too; "don't encourage him, Mr. Malcolm; you are worse than he. Angels length without breadth!" "They pass from place to place, they come, they go," continued Mr. Malcolm. "They conjure up the past so vividly," said Charles. "But sounds surely more than scents," said Mr. Malcolm. "Pardon me; the reverse as _I_ think," answered Charles. "That _is_ a paradox, Charles," said Mr. Malcolm; "the smell of roast-beef never went further than to remind a man of dinner; but sounds are pathetic and inspiring." "Well, sir, but think of this," said Charles, "scents are complete in themselves, yet do not consist of parts. Think how very distinct the smell of a rose is from a pink, a pink from a sweet-pea, a sweet-pea from a stock, a stock from lilac, lilac from lavender, lavender from jasmine, jasmine from honeysuckle, honeysuckle from hawthorn, hawthorn from hyacinth, hyacinth"---- "Spare us," interrupted Mr. Malcolm; "you are going through the index of Loudon!" "And these are only the scents of flowers; how different flowers smell from fruits, fruits from spices, spices from roast-beef or pork-cutlets, and so on. Now, what I was coming to is this--these scents are perfectly distinct from each other, and _sui generis_; they never can be confused; yet each is communicated to the apprehension in an instant. Sights take up a great space, a tune is a succession of sounds; but scents are at once specific and complete, yet indivisible. Who can halve a scent? they need neither time nor space; thus they are immaterial or spiritual." "Charles hasn't been to Oxford for nothing," said his mother, laughing and looking at Mary; "this is what I call chopping logic!" "Well done, Charles,"

crumpled

How many times the word 'crumpled' appears in the text?

will choose time. I think the University goes down just when Oxford begins to be most beautiful. The walks and meadows are so fragrant and bright now, the hay half carried, and the short new grass appearing." "Reding ought to live here all through the Long," said Tenby: "does any one live through the Vacation, sir, in Oxford?" "Do you mean they die before the end of it, Mr. Tenby?" asked Vincent. "It can't be denied," he continued, "that many, like Mr. Reding, think it a most pleasant time. _I_ am fond of Oxford; but it is not my _habitat_ out of term-time." "Well, I think I should like to make it so," said Charles, "but, I suppose, undergraduates are not allowed." Mr. Vincent answered with more than necessary gravity, "No;" it rested with the Principal; but he conceived that he would not consent to it. Vincent added that certainly there _were_ parties who remained in Oxford through the Long Vacation. It was said mysteriously. Charles answered that, if it was against college rules, there was no help for it; else, were he reading for his degree, he should like nothing better than to pass the Long Vacation in Oxford, if he might judge by the pleasantness of the last ten days. "That is a compliment, Mr. Reding, to your company," said Vincent. At this moment the door opened, and in came the manciple with the dinner paper, which Mr. Vincent had formally to run his eye over. "Watkins," he said, giving it back to him, "I almost think to-day is one of the Fasts of the Church. Go and look, Watkins, and bring me word." The astonished manciple, who had never been sent on such a commission in his whole career before, hastened out of the room, to task his wits how best to fulfil it. The question seemed to strike the company as forcibly, for there was a sudden silence, which was succeeded by a shuffling of feet and a leave-taking; as if, though they had secured their ham and mutton at breakfast, they did not like to risk their dinner. Watkins returned sooner than could have been expected. He said that Mr. Vincent was right; to-day he had found was "the feast of the Apostles." "The Vigil of St. Peter, you mean, Watkins," said Mr. Vincent; "I thought so. Then let us have a plain beefsteak and a saddle of mutton; no Portugal onions, Watkins, or currant-jelly; and some simple pudding, Charlotte pudding, Watkins--that will do." Watkins vanished. By this time, Charles found himself alone with the college authority; who began to speak to him in a more confidential tone. "Mr. Reding," said he, "I did not like to question you before the others, but I conceive you had no particular _meaning_ in your praise of Oxford in the Long Vacation? In the mouths of some it would have been suspicious." Charles was all surprise. "To tell the truth, Mr. Reding, as things stand," he proceeded, "it is often a mark of _party_, this residence in the Vacation; though, of course, there is nothing in the _thing_ itself but what is perfectly natural and right." Charles was all attention. "My good sir," the tutor proceeded, "avoid parties; be sure to avoid party. You are young in your career among us. I always feel anxious about young men of talent; there is the greatest danger of the talent of the University being absorbed in party." Reding expressed a hope that nothing he had done had given cause to his tutor's remark. "No," replied Mr. Vincent, "no;" yet with some slight hesitation; "no, I don't know that it has. But I have thought some of your remarks and questions at lecture were like a person pushing things _too far_, and wishing to form a _system_." Charles was so much taken aback by the charge, that the unexplained mystery of the Long Vacation went out of his head. He said he was "very sorry," and "obliged;" and tried to recollect what he could have said to give ground to Mr. Vincent's remark. Not being able at the moment to recollect, he went on. "I assure you, sir, I know so little of parties in the place, that I hardly know their leaders. I have heard persons mentioned, but, if I tried, I think I should, in some cases, mismatch names and opinions." "I believe it," said Vincent; "but you are young; I am cautioning you against _tendencies_. You may suddenly find yourself absorbed before you know where you are." Charles thought this a good opportunity of asking some questions in detail, about points which puzzled him. He asked whether Dr. Brownside was considered a safe divine to follow. "I hold, d'ye see," answered Vincent, "that all errors are counterfeits of truth. Clever men say true things, Mr. Reding, true in their substance, but," sinking his voice to a whisper, "they go _too far_. It might even be shown that all sects are in one sense but parts of the Catholic Church. I don't say true parts, that is a further question; but they _embody_ great _principles_. The Quakers represent the principle of simplicity and evangelical poverty; they even have a dress of their own, like monks. The Independents represent the rights of the laity; the Wesleyans cherish the devotional principle; the Irvingites, the symbolical and mystical; the High Church party, the principle of obedience; the Liberals are the guardians of reason. No party, then, I conceive, is entirely right or entirely wrong. As to Dr. Brownside, there certainly have been various opinions entertained about his divinity; still, he is an able man, and I think you will gain _good_, gain _good_ from his teaching. But mind, I don't _recommend_ him; yet I respect him, and I consider that he says many things very well worth your attention. I would advise you, then, to accept the _good_ which his sermons offer, without committing yourself to the _bad_. That, depend upon it, Mr. Reding, is the golden though the obvious rule in these matters." Charles said, in answer, that Mr. Vincent was overrating his powers; that he had to learn before he could judge; and that he wished very much to know whether Vincent could recommend him any book, in which he might see at once _what_ the true Church-of-England doctrine was on a number of points which perplexed him. Mr. Vincent replied, he must be on his guard against dissipating his mind with such reading, at a time when his University duties had a definite claim upon him. He ought to avoid all controversies of the day, all authors of the day. He would advise him to read _no_ living authors. "Read dead authors alone," he continued; "dead authors are safe. Our great divines," and he stood upright, "were models; 'there were giants on the earth in those days,' as King George the Third had once said of them to Dr. Johnson. They had that depth, and power, and gravity, and fulness, and erudition; and they were so racy, always racy, and what might be called English. They had that richness, too, such a mine of thought, such a world of opinion, such activity of mind, such inexhaustible resource, such diversity, too. Then they were so eloquent; the majestic Hooker, the imaginative Taylor, the brilliant Hall, the learning of Barrow, the strong sense of South, the keen logic of Chillingworth, good, honest old Burnet," etc., etc. There did not seem much reason why he should stop at one moment more than another; at length, however, he did stop. It was prose, but it was pleasant prose to Charles; he knew just enough about these writers to feel interested in hearing them talked about, and to him Vincent seemed to be saying a good deal, when in fact he was saying very little. When he stopped, Charles said he believed that there were persons in the University who were promoting the study of these authors. Mr. Vincent looked grave. "It is true," he said; "but, my young friend, I have already hinted to you that indifferent things are perverted to the purposes of _party_. At this moment the names of some of our greatest divines are little better than a watchword by which the opinions of living individuals are signified." "Which opinions, I suppose," Charles answered, "are not to be found in those authors." "I'll not say that," said Mr. Vincent. "I have the greatest respect for the individuals in question, and I am not denying that they have done good to our Church by drawing attention in this lax day to the old Church-of-England divinity. But it is one thing to agree with these gentlemen; another," laying his hand on Charles's shoulder, "another to belong to their party. Do not make man your master; get good from all; think well of all persons, and you will be a wise man." Reding inquired, with some timidity, if this was not something like what Dr. Brownside had said in the University pulpit; but perhaps the latter advocated a toleration of opinions in a different sense? Mr. Vincent answered rather shortly, that he had not heard Dr. Brownside's sermon; but, for himself, he had been speaking only of persons in our own communion. "Our Church," he said, "admitted of great liberty of thought within her pale. Even our greatest divines differed from each other in many respects; nay, Bishop Taylor differed from himself. It was a great principle in the English Church. Her true children agree to differ. In truth," he continued, "there is that robust, masculine, noble independence in the English mind, which refuses to be tied down to artificial shapes, but is like, I will say, some great and beautiful production of nature,--a tree, which is rich in foliage and fantastic in limb, no sickly denizen of the hothouse, or helpless dependent of the garden wall, but in careless magnificence sheds its fruits upon the free earth, for the bird of the air and the beast of the field, and all sorts of cattle, to eat thereof and rejoice." When Charles came away, he tried to think what he had gained by his conversation with Mr. Vincent; not exactly what he had wanted, some practical rules to guide his mind and keep him steady; but still some useful hints. He had already been averse to parties, and offended at what he saw of individuals attached to them. Vincent had confirmed him in his resolution to keep aloof from them, and to attend to his duties in the place. He felt pleased to have had this talk with him; but what could he mean by suspecting a tendency in himself to push things too far, and thereby to implicate himself in party? He was obliged to resign himself to ignorance on the subject, and to be content with keeping a watch over himself in future. CHAPTER XI. No opportunity has occurred of informing the reader that, during the last week or two, Charles had accidentally been a good deal thrown across Willis, the _umbra_ of White at Bateman's breakfast-party. He had liked his looks on that occasion, when he was dumb; he did not like him so much when he heard him talk; still he could not help being interested in him, and not the least for this reason, that Willis seemed to have taken a great fancy to himself. He certainly did court Charles, and seemed anxious to stand well with him. Charles, however, did not like his mode of talking better than he did White's; and when he first saw his rooms, there was much in them which shocked both his good sense and his religious principles. A large ivory crucifix, in a glass case, was a conspicuous ornament between the windows; an engraving, representing the Blessed Trinity, as is usual in Catholic countries, hung over the fireplace, and a picture of the Madonna and St. Dominic was opposite to it. On the mantelpiece were a rosary, a thuribulum, and other tokens of Catholicism, of which Charles did not know the uses; a missal, ritual, and some Catholic tracts, lay on the table; and, as he happened to come on Willis unexpectedly, he found him sitting in a vestment more like a cassock than a reading-gown, and engaged upon some portion of the Breviary. Virgil and Sophocles, Herodotus and Cicero seemed, as impure pagans, to have hid themselves in corners, or flitted away, before the awful presence of the Ancient Church. Charles had taken upon himself to protest against some of these singularities, but without success. On the evening before his departure for the country he had occasion to go towards Folly Bridge to pay a bill, when he was startled, as he passed what he had ever taken for a dissenting chapel, to see Willis come out of it. He hardly could believe he saw correctly; he knew, indeed, that Willis had been detained in Oxford, as he had been himself; but what had compelled him to a visit so extraordinary as that which he had just made, Charles had no means of determining. "Willis!" he cried, as he stopped. Willis coloured, and tried to look easy. "Do come a few paces with me," said Charles. "What in the world has taken you there? Is it not a dissenting meeting?" "Dissenting meeting!" cried Willis, surprised and offended in his turn: "what on earth could make you think I would go to a dissenting meeting?" "Well, I beg your pardon," said Charles; "I recollect now: it's the exhibition room. However, _once_ it _was_ a chapel: that's my mistake. Isn't it what is called 'the Old Methodist Chapel?' I never was there; they showed there the _Dio-astro-doxon_, so I think they called it." Charles talked on, to cover his own mistake, for he was ashamed of the charge he had made. Willis did not know whether he was in jest or earnest. "Reding," he said, "don't go on; you offend me." "Well, what is it?" said Charles. "You know well enough," answered Willis, "though you wish to annoy me." "I don't indeed." "It's the Catholic church," said Willis. Reding was silent a moment; then he said, "Well, I don't think you have mended the matter; it _is_ a dissenting meeting, call it what you will, though not the kind of one I meant." "What can you mean?" asked Willis. "Rather, what mean _you_ by going to such places?" retorted Charles; "why, it is against your oath." "My oath! what oath?" "There's not an oath now; but there was an oath till lately," said Reding; "and we still make a very solemn engagement. Don't you recollect your matriculation at the Vice-Chancellor's, and what oaths and declarations you made?" "I don't know what I made: my tutor told me nothing about it. I signed a book or two." "You did more," said Reding. "I was told most carefully. You solemnly engaged to keep the statutes; and one statute is, not to go into any dissenting chapel or meeting whatever." "Catholics are not Dissenters," said Willis. "Oh, don't speak so," said Charles; "you know it's meant to include them. The statute wishes us to keep from all places of worship whatever but our own." "But it is an illegal declaration or vow," said Willis, "and so not binding." "Where did you find that get-off?" said Charles; "the priest put that into your head." "I don't know the priest; I never spoke a word to him," answered Willis. "Well, any how, it's not your own answer," said Reding; "and does not help you. I am no casuist; but if it is an illegal engagement you should not continue to enjoy the benefit of it." "What benefit?" "Your cap and gown; a university education; the chance of a scholarship or fellowship. Give up these, and then plead, if you will, and lawfully, that you are quit of your engagement; but don't sail under false colours: don't take the benefit and break the stipulation." "You take it too seriously; there are half a hundred statutes _you_ don't keep, any more than I. You are most inconsistent." "Well, if we don't keep them," said Charles, "I suppose it is in points where the authorities don't enforce them; for instance, they don't mean us to dress in brown, though the statutes order it." "But they _do_ mean to keep you from walking down High Street in beaver," answered Willis; "for the Proctors march up and down, and send you back, if they catch you." "But _this_ is a different matter," said Reding, changing his ground; "this is a matter of religion. It can't be right to go to strange places of worship or meetings." "Why," said Willis, "if we are one Church with the Roman Catholics, I can't make out for the life of me how it's wrong for us to go to them or them to us." "I'm no divine, I don't understand what is meant by one Church," said Charles; "but I know well that there's not a bishop, not a clergyman, not a sober churchman in the land but would give it against you. It's a sheer absurdity." "Don't talk in that way," answered Willis, "please don't. I feel all my heart drawn to the Catholic worship; our own service is so cold." "That's just what every stiff Dissenter says," answered Charles; "every poor cottager, too, who knows no better, and goes after the Methodists--after her dear Mr. Spoutaway or the preaching cobbler. _She_ says (I have heard them), 'Oh, sir, I suppose we ought to go where we get most good. Mr. So-and-so goes to my heart--he goes through me.'" Willis laughed; "Well, not a bad reason, as times go, _I_ think," said he: "poor souls, what better means of judging have they? how can you hope they will like 'the Scripture moveth us'? Really you are making too much of it. This is only the second time I have been there, and, I tell you in earnest, I find my mind filled with awe and devotion there; as I think you would too. I really am better for it; I cannot pray in church; there's a bad smell there, and the pews hide everything; I can't see through a deal board. But here, when I went in, I found all still, and calm, the space open, and, in the twilight, the Tabernacle just visible, pointed out by the lamp." Charles looked very uncomfortable. "Really, Willis," he said, "I don't know what to say to you. Heaven forbid that I should speak against the Roman Catholics; I know nothing about them. But _this_ I know, that you are not a Roman Catholic, and have no business there. If they have such sacred things among them as those you allude to, still these are not yours; you are an intruder. I know nothing about it; I don't like to give a judgment, I am sure. But it's a tampering with sacred things; running here and there, touching and tasting, taking up, putting down. I don't like it," he added, with vehemence; "it's taking liberties with God." "Oh, my dear Reding, please don't speak so very severely," said poor Willis; "now what have I done more than you would do yourself, were you in France or Italy? Do you mean to say you wouldn't enter the churches abroad?" "I will only decide about what is before me," answered Reding; "when I go abroad, then will be the time to think about your question. It is quite enough to know what we ought to do at the moment, and I am clear you have been doing wrong. How did you find your way there?" "White took me." "Then there is one man in the world more thoughtless than you: do many of the gownsmen go there?" "Not that I know of; one or two have gone from curiosity; there is no practice of going, at least this is what I am told." "Well," said Charles, "you must promise me you will not go again. Come, we won't part till you do." "That is too much," said Willis, gently; then, disengaging his arm from Reding's, he suddenly darted away from him, saying, "Good-bye, good-bye; to our next merry meeting--_au revoir_." There was no help for it. Charles walked slowly home, saying to himself: "What if, after all, the Roman Catholic Church is the true Church? I wish I knew what to believe; no one will tell me what to believe; I am so left to myself." Then he thought: "I suppose I know quite enough for practice--more than I _do_ practise; and I ought surely to be contented and thankful." CHAPTER XII. Charles was an affectionate son, and the Long Vacation passed very happily at home. He was up early, and read steadily till luncheon, and then he was at the service of his father, mother, and sisters for the rest of the day. He loved the calm, quiet country; he loved the monotonous flow of time, when each day is like the other; and, after the excitement of Oxford, the secluded parsonage was like a haven beyond the tossing of the waves. The whirl of opinions and perplexities which had encircled him at Oxford now were like the distant sound of the ocean--they reminded him of his present security. The undulating meadows, the green lanes, the open heath, the common with its wide-spreading dusky elms, the high timber which fringed the level path from village to village, ever and anon broken and thrown into groups, or losing itself in copses--even the gate, and the stile, and the turnpike-road had the charm, not of novelty, but of long familiar use; they had the poetry of many recollections. Nor was the dilapidated, deformed church, with its outside staircases, its unsightly galleries, its wide intruded windows, its uncouth pews, its low nunting table, its forlorn vestry, and its damp earthy smell, without its pleasant associations to the inner man; for there it was that for many a year, Sunday after Sunday, he had heard his dear father read and preach; there were the old monuments, with Latin inscriptions and strange devices, the black boards with white letters, the Resurgams and grinning skulls, the fire-buckets, the faded militia-colours, and, almost as much a fixture, the old clerk, with a Welsh wig over his ears, shouting the responses out of place--which had arrested his imagination, and awed him when a child. And then there was his home itself; its well-known rooms, its pleasant routine, its order, and its comfort--an old and true friend, the dearer to him because he had made new ones. "Where I shall be in time to come I know not," he said to himself; "I am but a boy; many things which I have not a dream of, which my imagination cannot compass, may come on me before I die--if I live; but here at least, and now, I am happy, and I will enjoy my happiness. Some say that school is the pleasantest time of one's life; this does not exclude college. I suppose care is what makes life so wearing. At present I have no care, no responsibility; I suppose I shall feel a little when I go up for my degree. Care is a terrible thing; I have had a little of it at times at school. What a strange thing to fancy, I shall be one day twenty-five or thirty! How the weeks are flying by! the Vacation will soon be over. Oh, I am so happy, it quite makes me afraid. Yet I shall have strength for my day." Sometimes, however, his thoughts took a sadder turn, and he anticipated the future more vividly than he enjoyed the present. Mr. Malcolm had come to see them, after an absence from the parsonage for several years: his visit was a great pleasure to Mr. Reding, and not much less to himself, to whom a green home and a family circle were agreeable sights, after his bachelor-life at college. He had been a great favourite with Charles and his sisters as children, though now his popularity with them for the most part rested on the memory of the past. When he told them amusing stories, or allowed them to climb his knee and take off his spectacles, he did all that was necessary to gain their childish hearts; more is necessary to conciliate the affection of young men and women; and thus it is not surprising that he lived in their minds principally by prescription. He neither knew this, nor would have thought much about it if he had; for, like many persons of advancing years, he made himself very much his own centre, did not care to enter into the minds of others, did not consult for them, or find his happiness in them. He was kind and friendly to the young people, as he would be kind to a canary-bird or a lap-dog; it was a sort of external love; and, though they got on capitally with him, they did not miss him when gone, nor would have been much troubled to know that he was never to come again. Charles drove him about the country, stamped his letters, secured him his newspapers from the neighbouring town, and listened to his stories about Oxford and Oxford men. He really liked him, and wished to please him; but, as to consulting him in any serious matter, or going to him for comfort in affliction, he would as soon have thought of betaking him to Dan the pedlar, or old Isaac who played the Sunday bassoon. "How have your peaches been this year, Malcolm?" said Mr. Reding one day after dinner to his guest. "You ought to know that we have no peaches in Oxford," answered Mr. Malcolm. "My memory plays me false, then: I had a vision of, at least, October peaches on one occasion, and fine ones too." "Ah, you mean at old Tom Spindle's, the jockey's," answered Mr. Malcolm; "it's true, he had a bit of a brick wall, and was proud of it. But peaches come when there is no one in Oxford to eat them; so either the tree, or at least the fruit, is a great rarity there. Oxford wasn't so empty once; you have old mulberry-trees there in record of better days." "At that time, too," said Charles, "I suppose, the more expensive fruits were not cultivated. Mulberries are the witness, not only of a full college, but of simple tastes." "Charles is secretly cutting at our hothouse here," said Mr. Reding; "as if our first father did not prefer fruits and flowers to beef and mutton." "No, indeed," said Charles, "I think peaches capital things; and as to flowers, I am even too fond of scents." "Charles has some theory, then, about scents, I'll be bound," said his father; "I never knew a boy who so placed his likings and dislikings on fancies. He began to eat olives directly he read the OEdipus of Sophocles; and, I verily believe, will soon give up oranges from his dislike to King William." "Every one does so," said Charles: "who would not be in the fashion? There's Aunt Kitty, she calls a bonnet, 'a sweet' one year, which makes her 'a perfect fright' the next." "You're right, papa, in this instance," said his mother; "I know he has some good reason, though I never can recollect it, why he smells a rose, or distils lavender. What is it, my dear Mary?" "'Relics ye are of Eden's bowers,'" said she. "Why, sir, that was precisely your own reason just now," said Charles to his father. "There's more than that," said Mrs. Reding, "if I knew what it was." "He thinks the scent more intellectual than the other senses," said Mary, smiling. "Such a boy for paradoxes!" said his mother. "Well, so it is in a certain way," said Charles, "but I can't explain. Sounds and scents are more ethereal, less material; they have no shape--like the angels." Mr. Malcolm laughed. "Well, I grant it, Charles," he said; "they are length without breadth!" "Did you ever hear the like?" said Mrs. Reding, laughing too; "don't encourage him, Mr. Malcolm; you are worse than he. Angels length without breadth!" "They pass from place to place, they come, they go," continued Mr. Malcolm. "They conjure up the past so vividly," said Charles. "But sounds surely more than scents," said Mr. Malcolm. "Pardon me; the reverse as _I_ think," answered Charles. "That _is_ a paradox, Charles," said Mr. Malcolm; "the smell of roast-beef never went further than to remind a man of dinner; but sounds are pathetic and inspiring." "Well, sir, but think of this," said Charles, "scents are complete in themselves, yet do not consist of parts. Think how very distinct the smell of a rose is from a pink, a pink from a sweet-pea, a sweet-pea from a stock, a stock from lilac, lilac from lavender, lavender from jasmine, jasmine from honeysuckle, honeysuckle from hawthorn, hawthorn from hyacinth, hyacinth"---- "Spare us," interrupted Mr. Malcolm; "you are going through the index of Loudon!" "And these are only the scents of flowers; how different flowers smell from fruits, fruits from spices, spices from roast-beef or pork-cutlets, and so on. Now, what I was coming to is this--these scents are perfectly distinct from each other, and _sui generis_; they never can be confused; yet each is communicated to the apprehension in an instant. Sights take up a great space, a tune is a succession of sounds; but scents are at once specific and complete, yet indivisible. Who can halve a scent? they need neither time nor space; thus they are immaterial or spiritual." "Charles hasn't been to Oxford for nothing," said his mother, laughing and looking at Mary; "this is what I call chopping logic!" "Well done, Charles,"

broke

How many times the word 'broke' appears in the text?

will choose time. I think the University goes down just when Oxford begins to be most beautiful. The walks and meadows are so fragrant and bright now, the hay half carried, and the short new grass appearing." "Reding ought to live here all through the Long," said Tenby: "does any one live through the Vacation, sir, in Oxford?" "Do you mean they die before the end of it, Mr. Tenby?" asked Vincent. "It can't be denied," he continued, "that many, like Mr. Reding, think it a most pleasant time. _I_ am fond of Oxford; but it is not my _habitat_ out of term-time." "Well, I think I should like to make it so," said Charles, "but, I suppose, undergraduates are not allowed." Mr. Vincent answered with more than necessary gravity, "No;" it rested with the Principal; but he conceived that he would not consent to it. Vincent added that certainly there _were_ parties who remained in Oxford through the Long Vacation. It was said mysteriously. Charles answered that, if it was against college rules, there was no help for it; else, were he reading for his degree, he should like nothing better than to pass the Long Vacation in Oxford, if he might judge by the pleasantness of the last ten days. "That is a compliment, Mr. Reding, to your company," said Vincent. At this moment the door opened, and in came the manciple with the dinner paper, which Mr. Vincent had formally to run his eye over. "Watkins," he said, giving it back to him, "I almost think to-day is one of the Fasts of the Church. Go and look, Watkins, and bring me word." The astonished manciple, who had never been sent on such a commission in his whole career before, hastened out of the room, to task his wits how best to fulfil it. The question seemed to strike the company as forcibly, for there was a sudden silence, which was succeeded by a shuffling of feet and a leave-taking; as if, though they had secured their ham and mutton at breakfast, they did not like to risk their dinner. Watkins returned sooner than could have been expected. He said that Mr. Vincent was right; to-day he had found was "the feast of the Apostles." "The Vigil of St. Peter, you mean, Watkins," said Mr. Vincent; "I thought so. Then let us have a plain beefsteak and a saddle of mutton; no Portugal onions, Watkins, or currant-jelly; and some simple pudding, Charlotte pudding, Watkins--that will do." Watkins vanished. By this time, Charles found himself alone with the college authority; who began to speak to him in a more confidential tone. "Mr. Reding," said he, "I did not like to question you before the others, but I conceive you had no particular _meaning_ in your praise of Oxford in the Long Vacation? In the mouths of some it would have been suspicious." Charles was all surprise. "To tell the truth, Mr. Reding, as things stand," he proceeded, "it is often a mark of _party_, this residence in the Vacation; though, of course, there is nothing in the _thing_ itself but what is perfectly natural and right." Charles was all attention. "My good sir," the tutor proceeded, "avoid parties; be sure to avoid party. You are young in your career among us. I always feel anxious about young men of talent; there is the greatest danger of the talent of the University being absorbed in party." Reding expressed a hope that nothing he had done had given cause to his tutor's remark. "No," replied Mr. Vincent, "no;" yet with some slight hesitation; "no, I don't know that it has. But I have thought some of your remarks and questions at lecture were like a person pushing things _too far_, and wishing to form a _system_." Charles was so much taken aback by the charge, that the unexplained mystery of the Long Vacation went out of his head. He said he was "very sorry," and "obliged;" and tried to recollect what he could have said to give ground to Mr. Vincent's remark. Not being able at the moment to recollect, he went on. "I assure you, sir, I know so little of parties in the place, that I hardly know their leaders. I have heard persons mentioned, but, if I tried, I think I should, in some cases, mismatch names and opinions." "I believe it," said Vincent; "but you are young; I am cautioning you against _tendencies_. You may suddenly find yourself absorbed before you know where you are." Charles thought this a good opportunity of asking some questions in detail, about points which puzzled him. He asked whether Dr. Brownside was considered a safe divine to follow. "I hold, d'ye see," answered Vincent, "that all errors are counterfeits of truth. Clever men say true things, Mr. Reding, true in their substance, but," sinking his voice to a whisper, "they go _too far_. It might even be shown that all sects are in one sense but parts of the Catholic Church. I don't say true parts, that is a further question; but they _embody_ great _principles_. The Quakers represent the principle of simplicity and evangelical poverty; they even have a dress of their own, like monks. The Independents represent the rights of the laity; the Wesleyans cherish the devotional principle; the Irvingites, the symbolical and mystical; the High Church party, the principle of obedience; the Liberals are the guardians of reason. No party, then, I conceive, is entirely right or entirely wrong. As to Dr. Brownside, there certainly have been various opinions entertained about his divinity; still, he is an able man, and I think you will gain _good_, gain _good_ from his teaching. But mind, I don't _recommend_ him; yet I respect him, and I consider that he says many things very well worth your attention. I would advise you, then, to accept the _good_ which his sermons offer, without committing yourself to the _bad_. That, depend upon it, Mr. Reding, is the golden though the obvious rule in these matters." Charles said, in answer, that Mr. Vincent was overrating his powers; that he had to learn before he could judge; and that he wished very much to know whether Vincent could recommend him any book, in which he might see at once _what_ the true Church-of-England doctrine was on a number of points which perplexed him. Mr. Vincent replied, he must be on his guard against dissipating his mind with such reading, at a time when his University duties had a definite claim upon him. He ought to avoid all controversies of the day, all authors of the day. He would advise him to read _no_ living authors. "Read dead authors alone," he continued; "dead authors are safe. Our great divines," and he stood upright, "were models; 'there were giants on the earth in those days,' as King George the Third had once said of them to Dr. Johnson. They had that depth, and power, and gravity, and fulness, and erudition; and they were so racy, always racy, and what might be called English. They had that richness, too, such a mine of thought, such a world of opinion, such activity of mind, such inexhaustible resource, such diversity, too. Then they were so eloquent; the majestic Hooker, the imaginative Taylor, the brilliant Hall, the learning of Barrow, the strong sense of South, the keen logic of Chillingworth, good, honest old Burnet," etc., etc. There did not seem much reason why he should stop at one moment more than another; at length, however, he did stop. It was prose, but it was pleasant prose to Charles; he knew just enough about these writers to feel interested in hearing them talked about, and to him Vincent seemed to be saying a good deal, when in fact he was saying very little. When he stopped, Charles said he believed that there were persons in the University who were promoting the study of these authors. Mr. Vincent looked grave. "It is true," he said; "but, my young friend, I have already hinted to you that indifferent things are perverted to the purposes of _party_. At this moment the names of some of our greatest divines are little better than a watchword by which the opinions of living individuals are signified." "Which opinions, I suppose," Charles answered, "are not to be found in those authors." "I'll not say that," said Mr. Vincent. "I have the greatest respect for the individuals in question, and I am not denying that they have done good to our Church by drawing attention in this lax day to the old Church-of-England divinity. But it is one thing to agree with these gentlemen; another," laying his hand on Charles's shoulder, "another to belong to their party. Do not make man your master; get good from all; think well of all persons, and you will be a wise man." Reding inquired, with some timidity, if this was not something like what Dr. Brownside had said in the University pulpit; but perhaps the latter advocated a toleration of opinions in a different sense? Mr. Vincent answered rather shortly, that he had not heard Dr. Brownside's sermon; but, for himself, he had been speaking only of persons in our own communion. "Our Church," he said, "admitted of great liberty of thought within her pale. Even our greatest divines differed from each other in many respects; nay, Bishop Taylor differed from himself. It was a great principle in the English Church. Her true children agree to differ. In truth," he continued, "there is that robust, masculine, noble independence in the English mind, which refuses to be tied down to artificial shapes, but is like, I will say, some great and beautiful production of nature,--a tree, which is rich in foliage and fantastic in limb, no sickly denizen of the hothouse, or helpless dependent of the garden wall, but in careless magnificence sheds its fruits upon the free earth, for the bird of the air and the beast of the field, and all sorts of cattle, to eat thereof and rejoice." When Charles came away, he tried to think what he had gained by his conversation with Mr. Vincent; not exactly what he had wanted, some practical rules to guide his mind and keep him steady; but still some useful hints. He had already been averse to parties, and offended at what he saw of individuals attached to them. Vincent had confirmed him in his resolution to keep aloof from them, and to attend to his duties in the place. He felt pleased to have had this talk with him; but what could he mean by suspecting a tendency in himself to push things too far, and thereby to implicate himself in party? He was obliged to resign himself to ignorance on the subject, and to be content with keeping a watch over himself in future. CHAPTER XI. No opportunity has occurred of informing the reader that, during the last week or two, Charles had accidentally been a good deal thrown across Willis, the _umbra_ of White at Bateman's breakfast-party. He had liked his looks on that occasion, when he was dumb; he did not like him so much when he heard him talk; still he could not help being interested in him, and not the least for this reason, that Willis seemed to have taken a great fancy to himself. He certainly did court Charles, and seemed anxious to stand well with him. Charles, however, did not like his mode of talking better than he did White's; and when he first saw his rooms, there was much in them which shocked both his good sense and his religious principles. A large ivory crucifix, in a glass case, was a conspicuous ornament between the windows; an engraving, representing the Blessed Trinity, as is usual in Catholic countries, hung over the fireplace, and a picture of the Madonna and St. Dominic was opposite to it. On the mantelpiece were a rosary, a thuribulum, and other tokens of Catholicism, of which Charles did not know the uses; a missal, ritual, and some Catholic tracts, lay on the table; and, as he happened to come on Willis unexpectedly, he found him sitting in a vestment more like a cassock than a reading-gown, and engaged upon some portion of the Breviary. Virgil and Sophocles, Herodotus and Cicero seemed, as impure pagans, to have hid themselves in corners, or flitted away, before the awful presence of the Ancient Church. Charles had taken upon himself to protest against some of these singularities, but without success. On the evening before his departure for the country he had occasion to go towards Folly Bridge to pay a bill, when he was startled, as he passed what he had ever taken for a dissenting chapel, to see Willis come out of it. He hardly could believe he saw correctly; he knew, indeed, that Willis had been detained in Oxford, as he had been himself; but what had compelled him to a visit so extraordinary as that which he had just made, Charles had no means of determining. "Willis!" he cried, as he stopped. Willis coloured, and tried to look easy. "Do come a few paces with me," said Charles. "What in the world has taken you there? Is it not a dissenting meeting?" "Dissenting meeting!" cried Willis, surprised and offended in his turn: "what on earth could make you think I would go to a dissenting meeting?" "Well, I beg your pardon," said Charles; "I recollect now: it's the exhibition room. However, _once_ it _was_ a chapel: that's my mistake. Isn't it what is called 'the Old Methodist Chapel?' I never was there; they showed there the _Dio-astro-doxon_, so I think they called it." Charles talked on, to cover his own mistake, for he was ashamed of the charge he had made. Willis did not know whether he was in jest or earnest. "Reding," he said, "don't go on; you offend me." "Well, what is it?" said Charles. "You know well enough," answered Willis, "though you wish to annoy me." "I don't indeed." "It's the Catholic church," said Willis. Reding was silent a moment; then he said, "Well, I don't think you have mended the matter; it _is_ a dissenting meeting, call it what you will, though not the kind of one I meant." "What can you mean?" asked Willis. "Rather, what mean _you_ by going to such places?" retorted Charles; "why, it is against your oath." "My oath! what oath?" "There's not an oath now; but there was an oath till lately," said Reding; "and we still make a very solemn engagement. Don't you recollect your matriculation at the Vice-Chancellor's, and what oaths and declarations you made?" "I don't know what I made: my tutor told me nothing about it. I signed a book or two." "You did more," said Reding. "I was told most carefully. You solemnly engaged to keep the statutes; and one statute is, not to go into any dissenting chapel or meeting whatever." "Catholics are not Dissenters," said Willis. "Oh, don't speak so," said Charles; "you know it's meant to include them. The statute wishes us to keep from all places of worship whatever but our own." "But it is an illegal declaration or vow," said Willis, "and so not binding." "Where did you find that get-off?" said Charles; "the priest put that into your head." "I don't know the priest; I never spoke a word to him," answered Willis. "Well, any how, it's not your own answer," said Reding; "and does not help you. I am no casuist; but if it is an illegal engagement you should not continue to enjoy the benefit of it." "What benefit?" "Your cap and gown; a university education; the chance of a scholarship or fellowship. Give up these, and then plead, if you will, and lawfully, that you are quit of your engagement; but don't sail under false colours: don't take the benefit and break the stipulation." "You take it too seriously; there are half a hundred statutes _you_ don't keep, any more than I. You are most inconsistent." "Well, if we don't keep them," said Charles, "I suppose it is in points where the authorities don't enforce them; for instance, they don't mean us to dress in brown, though the statutes order it." "But they _do_ mean to keep you from walking down High Street in beaver," answered Willis; "for the Proctors march up and down, and send you back, if they catch you." "But _this_ is a different matter," said Reding, changing his ground; "this is a matter of religion. It can't be right to go to strange places of worship or meetings." "Why," said Willis, "if we are one Church with the Roman Catholics, I can't make out for the life of me how it's wrong for us to go to them or them to us." "I'm no divine, I don't understand what is meant by one Church," said Charles; "but I know well that there's not a bishop, not a clergyman, not a sober churchman in the land but would give it against you. It's a sheer absurdity." "Don't talk in that way," answered Willis, "please don't. I feel all my heart drawn to the Catholic worship; our own service is so cold." "That's just what every stiff Dissenter says," answered Charles; "every poor cottager, too, who knows no better, and goes after the Methodists--after her dear Mr. Spoutaway or the preaching cobbler. _She_ says (I have heard them), 'Oh, sir, I suppose we ought to go where we get most good. Mr. So-and-so goes to my heart--he goes through me.'" Willis laughed; "Well, not a bad reason, as times go, _I_ think," said he: "poor souls, what better means of judging have they? how can you hope they will like 'the Scripture moveth us'? Really you are making too much of it. This is only the second time I have been there, and, I tell you in earnest, I find my mind filled with awe and devotion there; as I think you would too. I really am better for it; I cannot pray in church; there's a bad smell there, and the pews hide everything; I can't see through a deal board. But here, when I went in, I found all still, and calm, the space open, and, in the twilight, the Tabernacle just visible, pointed out by the lamp." Charles looked very uncomfortable. "Really, Willis," he said, "I don't know what to say to you. Heaven forbid that I should speak against the Roman Catholics; I know nothing about them. But _this_ I know, that you are not a Roman Catholic, and have no business there. If they have such sacred things among them as those you allude to, still these are not yours; you are an intruder. I know nothing about it; I don't like to give a judgment, I am sure. But it's a tampering with sacred things; running here and there, touching and tasting, taking up, putting down. I don't like it," he added, with vehemence; "it's taking liberties with God." "Oh, my dear Reding, please don't speak so very severely," said poor Willis; "now what have I done more than you would do yourself, were you in France or Italy? Do you mean to say you wouldn't enter the churches abroad?" "I will only decide about what is before me," answered Reding; "when I go abroad, then will be the time to think about your question. It is quite enough to know what we ought to do at the moment, and I am clear you have been doing wrong. How did you find your way there?" "White took me." "Then there is one man in the world more thoughtless than you: do many of the gownsmen go there?" "Not that I know of; one or two have gone from curiosity; there is no practice of going, at least this is what I am told." "Well," said Charles, "you must promise me you will not go again. Come, we won't part till you do." "That is too much," said Willis, gently; then, disengaging his arm from Reding's, he suddenly darted away from him, saying, "Good-bye, good-bye; to our next merry meeting--_au revoir_." There was no help for it. Charles walked slowly home, saying to himself: "What if, after all, the Roman Catholic Church is the true Church? I wish I knew what to believe; no one will tell me what to believe; I am so left to myself." Then he thought: "I suppose I know quite enough for practice--more than I _do_ practise; and I ought surely to be contented and thankful." CHAPTER XII. Charles was an affectionate son, and the Long Vacation passed very happily at home. He was up early, and read steadily till luncheon, and then he was at the service of his father, mother, and sisters for the rest of the day. He loved the calm, quiet country; he loved the monotonous flow of time, when each day is like the other; and, after the excitement of Oxford, the secluded parsonage was like a haven beyond the tossing of the waves. The whirl of opinions and perplexities which had encircled him at Oxford now were like the distant sound of the ocean--they reminded him of his present security. The undulating meadows, the green lanes, the open heath, the common with its wide-spreading dusky elms, the high timber which fringed the level path from village to village, ever and anon broken and thrown into groups, or losing itself in copses--even the gate, and the stile, and the turnpike-road had the charm, not of novelty, but of long familiar use; they had the poetry of many recollections. Nor was the dilapidated, deformed church, with its outside staircases, its unsightly galleries, its wide intruded windows, its uncouth pews, its low nunting table, its forlorn vestry, and its damp earthy smell, without its pleasant associations to the inner man; for there it was that for many a year, Sunday after Sunday, he had heard his dear father read and preach; there were the old monuments, with Latin inscriptions and strange devices, the black boards with white letters, the Resurgams and grinning skulls, the fire-buckets, the faded militia-colours, and, almost as much a fixture, the old clerk, with a Welsh wig over his ears, shouting the responses out of place--which had arrested his imagination, and awed him when a child. And then there was his home itself; its well-known rooms, its pleasant routine, its order, and its comfort--an old and true friend, the dearer to him because he had made new ones. "Where I shall be in time to come I know not," he said to himself; "I am but a boy; many things which I have not a dream of, which my imagination cannot compass, may come on me before I die--if I live; but here at least, and now, I am happy, and I will enjoy my happiness. Some say that school is the pleasantest time of one's life; this does not exclude college. I suppose care is what makes life so wearing. At present I have no care, no responsibility; I suppose I shall feel a little when I go up for my degree. Care is a terrible thing; I have had a little of it at times at school. What a strange thing to fancy, I shall be one day twenty-five or thirty! How the weeks are flying by! the Vacation will soon be over. Oh, I am so happy, it quite makes me afraid. Yet I shall have strength for my day." Sometimes, however, his thoughts took a sadder turn, and he anticipated the future more vividly than he enjoyed the present. Mr. Malcolm had come to see them, after an absence from the parsonage for several years: his visit was a great pleasure to Mr. Reding, and not much less to himself, to whom a green home and a family circle were agreeable sights, after his bachelor-life at college. He had been a great favourite with Charles and his sisters as children, though now his popularity with them for the most part rested on the memory of the past. When he told them amusing stories, or allowed them to climb his knee and take off his spectacles, he did all that was necessary to gain their childish hearts; more is necessary to conciliate the affection of young men and women; and thus it is not surprising that he lived in their minds principally by prescription. He neither knew this, nor would have thought much about it if he had; for, like many persons of advancing years, he made himself very much his own centre, did not care to enter into the minds of others, did not consult for them, or find his happiness in them. He was kind and friendly to the young people, as he would be kind to a canary-bird or a lap-dog; it was a sort of external love; and, though they got on capitally with him, they did not miss him when gone, nor would have been much troubled to know that he was never to come again. Charles drove him about the country, stamped his letters, secured him his newspapers from the neighbouring town, and listened to his stories about Oxford and Oxford men. He really liked him, and wished to please him; but, as to consulting him in any serious matter, or going to him for comfort in affliction, he would as soon have thought of betaking him to Dan the pedlar, or old Isaac who played the Sunday bassoon. "How have your peaches been this year, Malcolm?" said Mr. Reding one day after dinner to his guest. "You ought to know that we have no peaches in Oxford," answered Mr. Malcolm. "My memory plays me false, then: I had a vision of, at least, October peaches on one occasion, and fine ones too." "Ah, you mean at old Tom Spindle's, the jockey's," answered Mr. Malcolm; "it's true, he had a bit of a brick wall, and was proud of it. But peaches come when there is no one in Oxford to eat them; so either the tree, or at least the fruit, is a great rarity there. Oxford wasn't so empty once; you have old mulberry-trees there in record of better days." "At that time, too," said Charles, "I suppose, the more expensive fruits were not cultivated. Mulberries are the witness, not only of a full college, but of simple tastes." "Charles is secretly cutting at our hothouse here," said Mr. Reding; "as if our first father did not prefer fruits and flowers to beef and mutton." "No, indeed," said Charles, "I think peaches capital things; and as to flowers, I am even too fond of scents." "Charles has some theory, then, about scents, I'll be bound," said his father; "I never knew a boy who so placed his likings and dislikings on fancies. He began to eat olives directly he read the OEdipus of Sophocles; and, I verily believe, will soon give up oranges from his dislike to King William." "Every one does so," said Charles: "who would not be in the fashion? There's Aunt Kitty, she calls a bonnet, 'a sweet' one year, which makes her 'a perfect fright' the next." "You're right, papa, in this instance," said his mother; "I know he has some good reason, though I never can recollect it, why he smells a rose, or distils lavender. What is it, my dear Mary?" "'Relics ye are of Eden's bowers,'" said she. "Why, sir, that was precisely your own reason just now," said Charles to his father. "There's more than that," said Mrs. Reding, "if I knew what it was." "He thinks the scent more intellectual than the other senses," said Mary, smiling. "Such a boy for paradoxes!" said his mother. "Well, so it is in a certain way," said Charles, "but I can't explain. Sounds and scents are more ethereal, less material; they have no shape--like the angels." Mr. Malcolm laughed. "Well, I grant it, Charles," he said; "they are length without breadth!" "Did you ever hear the like?" said Mrs. Reding, laughing too; "don't encourage him, Mr. Malcolm; you are worse than he. Angels length without breadth!" "They pass from place to place, they come, they go," continued Mr. Malcolm. "They conjure up the past so vividly," said Charles. "But sounds surely more than scents," said Mr. Malcolm. "Pardon me; the reverse as _I_ think," answered Charles. "That _is_ a paradox, Charles," said Mr. Malcolm; "the smell of roast-beef never went further than to remind a man of dinner; but sounds are pathetic and inspiring." "Well, sir, but think of this," said Charles, "scents are complete in themselves, yet do not consist of parts. Think how very distinct the smell of a rose is from a pink, a pink from a sweet-pea, a sweet-pea from a stock, a stock from lilac, lilac from lavender, lavender from jasmine, jasmine from honeysuckle, honeysuckle from hawthorn, hawthorn from hyacinth, hyacinth"---- "Spare us," interrupted Mr. Malcolm; "you are going through the index of Loudon!" "And these are only the scents of flowers; how different flowers smell from fruits, fruits from spices, spices from roast-beef or pork-cutlets, and so on. Now, what I was coming to is this--these scents are perfectly distinct from each other, and _sui generis_; they never can be confused; yet each is communicated to the apprehension in an instant. Sights take up a great space, a tune is a succession of sounds; but scents are at once specific and complete, yet indivisible. Who can halve a scent? they need neither time nor space; thus they are immaterial or spiritual." "Charles hasn't been to Oxford for nothing," said his mother, laughing and looking at Mary; "this is what I call chopping logic!" "Well done, Charles,"

light

How many times the word 'light' appears in the text?

will choose time. I think the University goes down just when Oxford begins to be most beautiful. The walks and meadows are so fragrant and bright now, the hay half carried, and the short new grass appearing." "Reding ought to live here all through the Long," said Tenby: "does any one live through the Vacation, sir, in Oxford?" "Do you mean they die before the end of it, Mr. Tenby?" asked Vincent. "It can't be denied," he continued, "that many, like Mr. Reding, think it a most pleasant time. _I_ am fond of Oxford; but it is not my _habitat_ out of term-time." "Well, I think I should like to make it so," said Charles, "but, I suppose, undergraduates are not allowed." Mr. Vincent answered with more than necessary gravity, "No;" it rested with the Principal; but he conceived that he would not consent to it. Vincent added that certainly there _were_ parties who remained in Oxford through the Long Vacation. It was said mysteriously. Charles answered that, if it was against college rules, there was no help for it; else, were he reading for his degree, he should like nothing better than to pass the Long Vacation in Oxford, if he might judge by the pleasantness of the last ten days. "That is a compliment, Mr. Reding, to your company," said Vincent. At this moment the door opened, and in came the manciple with the dinner paper, which Mr. Vincent had formally to run his eye over. "Watkins," he said, giving it back to him, "I almost think to-day is one of the Fasts of the Church. Go and look, Watkins, and bring me word." The astonished manciple, who had never been sent on such a commission in his whole career before, hastened out of the room, to task his wits how best to fulfil it. The question seemed to strike the company as forcibly, for there was a sudden silence, which was succeeded by a shuffling of feet and a leave-taking; as if, though they had secured their ham and mutton at breakfast, they did not like to risk their dinner. Watkins returned sooner than could have been expected. He said that Mr. Vincent was right; to-day he had found was "the feast of the Apostles." "The Vigil of St. Peter, you mean, Watkins," said Mr. Vincent; "I thought so. Then let us have a plain beefsteak and a saddle of mutton; no Portugal onions, Watkins, or currant-jelly; and some simple pudding, Charlotte pudding, Watkins--that will do." Watkins vanished. By this time, Charles found himself alone with the college authority; who began to speak to him in a more confidential tone. "Mr. Reding," said he, "I did not like to question you before the others, but I conceive you had no particular _meaning_ in your praise of Oxford in the Long Vacation? In the mouths of some it would have been suspicious." Charles was all surprise. "To tell the truth, Mr. Reding, as things stand," he proceeded, "it is often a mark of _party_, this residence in the Vacation; though, of course, there is nothing in the _thing_ itself but what is perfectly natural and right." Charles was all attention. "My good sir," the tutor proceeded, "avoid parties; be sure to avoid party. You are young in your career among us. I always feel anxious about young men of talent; there is the greatest danger of the talent of the University being absorbed in party." Reding expressed a hope that nothing he had done had given cause to his tutor's remark. "No," replied Mr. Vincent, "no;" yet with some slight hesitation; "no, I don't know that it has. But I have thought some of your remarks and questions at lecture were like a person pushing things _too far_, and wishing to form a _system_." Charles was so much taken aback by the charge, that the unexplained mystery of the Long Vacation went out of his head. He said he was "very sorry," and "obliged;" and tried to recollect what he could have said to give ground to Mr. Vincent's remark. Not being able at the moment to recollect, he went on. "I assure you, sir, I know so little of parties in the place, that I hardly know their leaders. I have heard persons mentioned, but, if I tried, I think I should, in some cases, mismatch names and opinions." "I believe it," said Vincent; "but you are young; I am cautioning you against _tendencies_. You may suddenly find yourself absorbed before you know where you are." Charles thought this a good opportunity of asking some questions in detail, about points which puzzled him. He asked whether Dr. Brownside was considered a safe divine to follow. "I hold, d'ye see," answered Vincent, "that all errors are counterfeits of truth. Clever men say true things, Mr. Reding, true in their substance, but," sinking his voice to a whisper, "they go _too far_. It might even be shown that all sects are in one sense but parts of the Catholic Church. I don't say true parts, that is a further question; but they _embody_ great _principles_. The Quakers represent the principle of simplicity and evangelical poverty; they even have a dress of their own, like monks. The Independents represent the rights of the laity; the Wesleyans cherish the devotional principle; the Irvingites, the symbolical and mystical; the High Church party, the principle of obedience; the Liberals are the guardians of reason. No party, then, I conceive, is entirely right or entirely wrong. As to Dr. Brownside, there certainly have been various opinions entertained about his divinity; still, he is an able man, and I think you will gain _good_, gain _good_ from his teaching. But mind, I don't _recommend_ him; yet I respect him, and I consider that he says many things very well worth your attention. I would advise you, then, to accept the _good_ which his sermons offer, without committing yourself to the _bad_. That, depend upon it, Mr. Reding, is the golden though the obvious rule in these matters." Charles said, in answer, that Mr. Vincent was overrating his powers; that he had to learn before he could judge; and that he wished very much to know whether Vincent could recommend him any book, in which he might see at once _what_ the true Church-of-England doctrine was on a number of points which perplexed him. Mr. Vincent replied, he must be on his guard against dissipating his mind with such reading, at a time when his University duties had a definite claim upon him. He ought to avoid all controversies of the day, all authors of the day. He would advise him to read _no_ living authors. "Read dead authors alone," he continued; "dead authors are safe. Our great divines," and he stood upright, "were models; 'there were giants on the earth in those days,' as King George the Third had once said of them to Dr. Johnson. They had that depth, and power, and gravity, and fulness, and erudition; and they were so racy, always racy, and what might be called English. They had that richness, too, such a mine of thought, such a world of opinion, such activity of mind, such inexhaustible resource, such diversity, too. Then they were so eloquent; the majestic Hooker, the imaginative Taylor, the brilliant Hall, the learning of Barrow, the strong sense of South, the keen logic of Chillingworth, good, honest old Burnet," etc., etc. There did not seem much reason why he should stop at one moment more than another; at length, however, he did stop. It was prose, but it was pleasant prose to Charles; he knew just enough about these writers to feel interested in hearing them talked about, and to him Vincent seemed to be saying a good deal, when in fact he was saying very little. When he stopped, Charles said he believed that there were persons in the University who were promoting the study of these authors. Mr. Vincent looked grave. "It is true," he said; "but, my young friend, I have already hinted to you that indifferent things are perverted to the purposes of _party_. At this moment the names of some of our greatest divines are little better than a watchword by which the opinions of living individuals are signified." "Which opinions, I suppose," Charles answered, "are not to be found in those authors." "I'll not say that," said Mr. Vincent. "I have the greatest respect for the individuals in question, and I am not denying that they have done good to our Church by drawing attention in this lax day to the old Church-of-England divinity. But it is one thing to agree with these gentlemen; another," laying his hand on Charles's shoulder, "another to belong to their party. Do not make man your master; get good from all; think well of all persons, and you will be a wise man." Reding inquired, with some timidity, if this was not something like what Dr. Brownside had said in the University pulpit; but perhaps the latter advocated a toleration of opinions in a different sense? Mr. Vincent answered rather shortly, that he had not heard Dr. Brownside's sermon; but, for himself, he had been speaking only of persons in our own communion. "Our Church," he said, "admitted of great liberty of thought within her pale. Even our greatest divines differed from each other in many respects; nay, Bishop Taylor differed from himself. It was a great principle in the English Church. Her true children agree to differ. In truth," he continued, "there is that robust, masculine, noble independence in the English mind, which refuses to be tied down to artificial shapes, but is like, I will say, some great and beautiful production of nature,--a tree, which is rich in foliage and fantastic in limb, no sickly denizen of the hothouse, or helpless dependent of the garden wall, but in careless magnificence sheds its fruits upon the free earth, for the bird of the air and the beast of the field, and all sorts of cattle, to eat thereof and rejoice." When Charles came away, he tried to think what he had gained by his conversation with Mr. Vincent; not exactly what he had wanted, some practical rules to guide his mind and keep him steady; but still some useful hints. He had already been averse to parties, and offended at what he saw of individuals attached to them. Vincent had confirmed him in his resolution to keep aloof from them, and to attend to his duties in the place. He felt pleased to have had this talk with him; but what could he mean by suspecting a tendency in himself to push things too far, and thereby to implicate himself in party? He was obliged to resign himself to ignorance on the subject, and to be content with keeping a watch over himself in future. CHAPTER XI. No opportunity has occurred of informing the reader that, during the last week or two, Charles had accidentally been a good deal thrown across Willis, the _umbra_ of White at Bateman's breakfast-party. He had liked his looks on that occasion, when he was dumb; he did not like him so much when he heard him talk; still he could not help being interested in him, and not the least for this reason, that Willis seemed to have taken a great fancy to himself. He certainly did court Charles, and seemed anxious to stand well with him. Charles, however, did not like his mode of talking better than he did White's; and when he first saw his rooms, there was much in them which shocked both his good sense and his religious principles. A large ivory crucifix, in a glass case, was a conspicuous ornament between the windows; an engraving, representing the Blessed Trinity, as is usual in Catholic countries, hung over the fireplace, and a picture of the Madonna and St. Dominic was opposite to it. On the mantelpiece were a rosary, a thuribulum, and other tokens of Catholicism, of which Charles did not know the uses; a missal, ritual, and some Catholic tracts, lay on the table; and, as he happened to come on Willis unexpectedly, he found him sitting in a vestment more like a cassock than a reading-gown, and engaged upon some portion of the Breviary. Virgil and Sophocles, Herodotus and Cicero seemed, as impure pagans, to have hid themselves in corners, or flitted away, before the awful presence of the Ancient Church. Charles had taken upon himself to protest against some of these singularities, but without success. On the evening before his departure for the country he had occasion to go towards Folly Bridge to pay a bill, when he was startled, as he passed what he had ever taken for a dissenting chapel, to see Willis come out of it. He hardly could believe he saw correctly; he knew, indeed, that Willis had been detained in Oxford, as he had been himself; but what had compelled him to a visit so extraordinary as that which he had just made, Charles had no means of determining. "Willis!" he cried, as he stopped. Willis coloured, and tried to look easy. "Do come a few paces with me," said Charles. "What in the world has taken you there? Is it not a dissenting meeting?" "Dissenting meeting!" cried Willis, surprised and offended in his turn: "what on earth could make you think I would go to a dissenting meeting?" "Well, I beg your pardon," said Charles; "I recollect now: it's the exhibition room. However, _once_ it _was_ a chapel: that's my mistake. Isn't it what is called 'the Old Methodist Chapel?' I never was there; they showed there the _Dio-astro-doxon_, so I think they called it." Charles talked on, to cover his own mistake, for he was ashamed of the charge he had made. Willis did not know whether he was in jest or earnest. "Reding," he said, "don't go on; you offend me." "Well, what is it?" said Charles. "You know well enough," answered Willis, "though you wish to annoy me." "I don't indeed." "It's the Catholic church," said Willis. Reding was silent a moment; then he said, "Well, I don't think you have mended the matter; it _is_ a dissenting meeting, call it what you will, though not the kind of one I meant." "What can you mean?" asked Willis. "Rather, what mean _you_ by going to such places?" retorted Charles; "why, it is against your oath." "My oath! what oath?" "There's not an oath now; but there was an oath till lately," said Reding; "and we still make a very solemn engagement. Don't you recollect your matriculation at the Vice-Chancellor's, and what oaths and declarations you made?" "I don't know what I made: my tutor told me nothing about it. I signed a book or two." "You did more," said Reding. "I was told most carefully. You solemnly engaged to keep the statutes; and one statute is, not to go into any dissenting chapel or meeting whatever." "Catholics are not Dissenters," said Willis. "Oh, don't speak so," said Charles; "you know it's meant to include them. The statute wishes us to keep from all places of worship whatever but our own." "But it is an illegal declaration or vow," said Willis, "and so not binding." "Where did you find that get-off?" said Charles; "the priest put that into your head." "I don't know the priest; I never spoke a word to him," answered Willis. "Well, any how, it's not your own answer," said Reding; "and does not help you. I am no casuist; but if it is an illegal engagement you should not continue to enjoy the benefit of it." "What benefit?" "Your cap and gown; a university education; the chance of a scholarship or fellowship. Give up these, and then plead, if you will, and lawfully, that you are quit of your engagement; but don't sail under false colours: don't take the benefit and break the stipulation." "You take it too seriously; there are half a hundred statutes _you_ don't keep, any more than I. You are most inconsistent." "Well, if we don't keep them," said Charles, "I suppose it is in points where the authorities don't enforce them; for instance, they don't mean us to dress in brown, though the statutes order it." "But they _do_ mean to keep you from walking down High Street in beaver," answered Willis; "for the Proctors march up and down, and send you back, if they catch you." "But _this_ is a different matter," said Reding, changing his ground; "this is a matter of religion. It can't be right to go to strange places of worship or meetings." "Why," said Willis, "if we are one Church with the Roman Catholics, I can't make out for the life of me how it's wrong for us to go to them or them to us." "I'm no divine, I don't understand what is meant by one Church," said Charles; "but I know well that there's not a bishop, not a clergyman, not a sober churchman in the land but would give it against you. It's a sheer absurdity." "Don't talk in that way," answered Willis, "please don't. I feel all my heart drawn to the Catholic worship; our own service is so cold." "That's just what every stiff Dissenter says," answered Charles; "every poor cottager, too, who knows no better, and goes after the Methodists--after her dear Mr. Spoutaway or the preaching cobbler. _She_ says (I have heard them), 'Oh, sir, I suppose we ought to go where we get most good. Mr. So-and-so goes to my heart--he goes through me.'" Willis laughed; "Well, not a bad reason, as times go, _I_ think," said he: "poor souls, what better means of judging have they? how can you hope they will like 'the Scripture moveth us'? Really you are making too much of it. This is only the second time I have been there, and, I tell you in earnest, I find my mind filled with awe and devotion there; as I think you would too. I really am better for it; I cannot pray in church; there's a bad smell there, and the pews hide everything; I can't see through a deal board. But here, when I went in, I found all still, and calm, the space open, and, in the twilight, the Tabernacle just visible, pointed out by the lamp." Charles looked very uncomfortable. "Really, Willis," he said, "I don't know what to say to you. Heaven forbid that I should speak against the Roman Catholics; I know nothing about them. But _this_ I know, that you are not a Roman Catholic, and have no business there. If they have such sacred things among them as those you allude to, still these are not yours; you are an intruder. I know nothing about it; I don't like to give a judgment, I am sure. But it's a tampering with sacred things; running here and there, touching and tasting, taking up, putting down. I don't like it," he added, with vehemence; "it's taking liberties with God." "Oh, my dear Reding, please don't speak so very severely," said poor Willis; "now what have I done more than you would do yourself, were you in France or Italy? Do you mean to say you wouldn't enter the churches abroad?" "I will only decide about what is before me," answered Reding; "when I go abroad, then will be the time to think about your question. It is quite enough to know what we ought to do at the moment, and I am clear you have been doing wrong. How did you find your way there?" "White took me." "Then there is one man in the world more thoughtless than you: do many of the gownsmen go there?" "Not that I know of; one or two have gone from curiosity; there is no practice of going, at least this is what I am told." "Well," said Charles, "you must promise me you will not go again. Come, we won't part till you do." "That is too much," said Willis, gently; then, disengaging his arm from Reding's, he suddenly darted away from him, saying, "Good-bye, good-bye; to our next merry meeting--_au revoir_." There was no help for it. Charles walked slowly home, saying to himself: "What if, after all, the Roman Catholic Church is the true Church? I wish I knew what to believe; no one will tell me what to believe; I am so left to myself." Then he thought: "I suppose I know quite enough for practice--more than I _do_ practise; and I ought surely to be contented and thankful." CHAPTER XII. Charles was an affectionate son, and the Long Vacation passed very happily at home. He was up early, and read steadily till luncheon, and then he was at the service of his father, mother, and sisters for the rest of the day. He loved the calm, quiet country; he loved the monotonous flow of time, when each day is like the other; and, after the excitement of Oxford, the secluded parsonage was like a haven beyond the tossing of the waves. The whirl of opinions and perplexities which had encircled him at Oxford now were like the distant sound of the ocean--they reminded him of his present security. The undulating meadows, the green lanes, the open heath, the common with its wide-spreading dusky elms, the high timber which fringed the level path from village to village, ever and anon broken and thrown into groups, or losing itself in copses--even the gate, and the stile, and the turnpike-road had the charm, not of novelty, but of long familiar use; they had the poetry of many recollections. Nor was the dilapidated, deformed church, with its outside staircases, its unsightly galleries, its wide intruded windows, its uncouth pews, its low nunting table, its forlorn vestry, and its damp earthy smell, without its pleasant associations to the inner man; for there it was that for many a year, Sunday after Sunday, he had heard his dear father read and preach; there were the old monuments, with Latin inscriptions and strange devices, the black boards with white letters, the Resurgams and grinning skulls, the fire-buckets, the faded militia-colours, and, almost as much a fixture, the old clerk, with a Welsh wig over his ears, shouting the responses out of place--which had arrested his imagination, and awed him when a child. And then there was his home itself; its well-known rooms, its pleasant routine, its order, and its comfort--an old and true friend, the dearer to him because he had made new ones. "Where I shall be in time to come I know not," he said to himself; "I am but a boy; many things which I have not a dream of, which my imagination cannot compass, may come on me before I die--if I live; but here at least, and now, I am happy, and I will enjoy my happiness. Some say that school is the pleasantest time of one's life; this does not exclude college. I suppose care is what makes life so wearing. At present I have no care, no responsibility; I suppose I shall feel a little when I go up for my degree. Care is a terrible thing; I have had a little of it at times at school. What a strange thing to fancy, I shall be one day twenty-five or thirty! How the weeks are flying by! the Vacation will soon be over. Oh, I am so happy, it quite makes me afraid. Yet I shall have strength for my day." Sometimes, however, his thoughts took a sadder turn, and he anticipated the future more vividly than he enjoyed the present. Mr. Malcolm had come to see them, after an absence from the parsonage for several years: his visit was a great pleasure to Mr. Reding, and not much less to himself, to whom a green home and a family circle were agreeable sights, after his bachelor-life at college. He had been a great favourite with Charles and his sisters as children, though now his popularity with them for the most part rested on the memory of the past. When he told them amusing stories, or allowed them to climb his knee and take off his spectacles, he did all that was necessary to gain their childish hearts; more is necessary to conciliate the affection of young men and women; and thus it is not surprising that he lived in their minds principally by prescription. He neither knew this, nor would have thought much about it if he had; for, like many persons of advancing years, he made himself very much his own centre, did not care to enter into the minds of others, did not consult for them, or find his happiness in them. He was kind and friendly to the young people, as he would be kind to a canary-bird or a lap-dog; it was a sort of external love; and, though they got on capitally with him, they did not miss him when gone, nor would have been much troubled to know that he was never to come again. Charles drove him about the country, stamped his letters, secured him his newspapers from the neighbouring town, and listened to his stories about Oxford and Oxford men. He really liked him, and wished to please him; but, as to consulting him in any serious matter, or going to him for comfort in affliction, he would as soon have thought of betaking him to Dan the pedlar, or old Isaac who played the Sunday bassoon. "How have your peaches been this year, Malcolm?" said Mr. Reding one day after dinner to his guest. "You ought to know that we have no peaches in Oxford," answered Mr. Malcolm. "My memory plays me false, then: I had a vision of, at least, October peaches on one occasion, and fine ones too." "Ah, you mean at old Tom Spindle's, the jockey's," answered Mr. Malcolm; "it's true, he had a bit of a brick wall, and was proud of it. But peaches come when there is no one in Oxford to eat them; so either the tree, or at least the fruit, is a great rarity there. Oxford wasn't so empty once; you have old mulberry-trees there in record of better days." "At that time, too," said Charles, "I suppose, the more expensive fruits were not cultivated. Mulberries are the witness, not only of a full college, but of simple tastes." "Charles is secretly cutting at our hothouse here," said Mr. Reding; "as if our first father did not prefer fruits and flowers to beef and mutton." "No, indeed," said Charles, "I think peaches capital things; and as to flowers, I am even too fond of scents." "Charles has some theory, then, about scents, I'll be bound," said his father; "I never knew a boy who so placed his likings and dislikings on fancies. He began to eat olives directly he read the OEdipus of Sophocles; and, I verily believe, will soon give up oranges from his dislike to King William." "Every one does so," said Charles: "who would not be in the fashion? There's Aunt Kitty, she calls a bonnet, 'a sweet' one year, which makes her 'a perfect fright' the next." "You're right, papa, in this instance," said his mother; "I know he has some good reason, though I never can recollect it, why he smells a rose, or distils lavender. What is it, my dear Mary?" "'Relics ye are of Eden's bowers,'" said she. "Why, sir, that was precisely your own reason just now," said Charles to his father. "There's more than that," said Mrs. Reding, "if I knew what it was." "He thinks the scent more intellectual than the other senses," said Mary, smiling. "Such a boy for paradoxes!" said his mother. "Well, so it is in a certain way," said Charles, "but I can't explain. Sounds and scents are more ethereal, less material; they have no shape--like the angels." Mr. Malcolm laughed. "Well, I grant it, Charles," he said; "they are length without breadth!" "Did you ever hear the like?" said Mrs. Reding, laughing too; "don't encourage him, Mr. Malcolm; you are worse than he. Angels length without breadth!" "They pass from place to place, they come, they go," continued Mr. Malcolm. "They conjure up the past so vividly," said Charles. "But sounds surely more than scents," said Mr. Malcolm. "Pardon me; the reverse as _I_ think," answered Charles. "That _is_ a paradox, Charles," said Mr. Malcolm; "the smell of roast-beef never went further than to remind a man of dinner; but sounds are pathetic and inspiring." "Well, sir, but think of this," said Charles, "scents are complete in themselves, yet do not consist of parts. Think how very distinct the smell of a rose is from a pink, a pink from a sweet-pea, a sweet-pea from a stock, a stock from lilac, lilac from lavender, lavender from jasmine, jasmine from honeysuckle, honeysuckle from hawthorn, hawthorn from hyacinth, hyacinth"---- "Spare us," interrupted Mr. Malcolm; "you are going through the index of Loudon!" "And these are only the scents of flowers; how different flowers smell from fruits, fruits from spices, spices from roast-beef or pork-cutlets, and so on. Now, what I was coming to is this--these scents are perfectly distinct from each other, and _sui generis_; they never can be confused; yet each is communicated to the apprehension in an instant. Sights take up a great space, a tune is a succession of sounds; but scents are at once specific and complete, yet indivisible. Who can halve a scent? they need neither time nor space; thus they are immaterial or spiritual." "Charles hasn't been to Oxford for nothing," said his mother, laughing and looking at Mary; "this is what I call chopping logic!" "Well done, Charles,"

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How many times the word 'certainly' appears in the text?

will choose time. I think the University goes down just when Oxford begins to be most beautiful. The walks and meadows are so fragrant and bright now, the hay half carried, and the short new grass appearing." "Reding ought to live here all through the Long," said Tenby: "does any one live through the Vacation, sir, in Oxford?" "Do you mean they die before the end of it, Mr. Tenby?" asked Vincent. "It can't be denied," he continued, "that many, like Mr. Reding, think it a most pleasant time. _I_ am fond of Oxford; but it is not my _habitat_ out of term-time." "Well, I think I should like to make it so," said Charles, "but, I suppose, undergraduates are not allowed." Mr. Vincent answered with more than necessary gravity, "No;" it rested with the Principal; but he conceived that he would not consent to it. Vincent added that certainly there _were_ parties who remained in Oxford through the Long Vacation. It was said mysteriously. Charles answered that, if it was against college rules, there was no help for it; else, were he reading for his degree, he should like nothing better than to pass the Long Vacation in Oxford, if he might judge by the pleasantness of the last ten days. "That is a compliment, Mr. Reding, to your company," said Vincent. At this moment the door opened, and in came the manciple with the dinner paper, which Mr. Vincent had formally to run his eye over. "Watkins," he said, giving it back to him, "I almost think to-day is one of the Fasts of the Church. Go and look, Watkins, and bring me word." The astonished manciple, who had never been sent on such a commission in his whole career before, hastened out of the room, to task his wits how best to fulfil it. The question seemed to strike the company as forcibly, for there was a sudden silence, which was succeeded by a shuffling of feet and a leave-taking; as if, though they had secured their ham and mutton at breakfast, they did not like to risk their dinner. Watkins returned sooner than could have been expected. He said that Mr. Vincent was right; to-day he had found was "the feast of the Apostles." "The Vigil of St. Peter, you mean, Watkins," said Mr. Vincent; "I thought so. Then let us have a plain beefsteak and a saddle of mutton; no Portugal onions, Watkins, or currant-jelly; and some simple pudding, Charlotte pudding, Watkins--that will do." Watkins vanished. By this time, Charles found himself alone with the college authority; who began to speak to him in a more confidential tone. "Mr. Reding," said he, "I did not like to question you before the others, but I conceive you had no particular _meaning_ in your praise of Oxford in the Long Vacation? In the mouths of some it would have been suspicious." Charles was all surprise. "To tell the truth, Mr. Reding, as things stand," he proceeded, "it is often a mark of _party_, this residence in the Vacation; though, of course, there is nothing in the _thing_ itself but what is perfectly natural and right." Charles was all attention. "My good sir," the tutor proceeded, "avoid parties; be sure to avoid party. You are young in your career among us. I always feel anxious about young men of talent; there is the greatest danger of the talent of the University being absorbed in party." Reding expressed a hope that nothing he had done had given cause to his tutor's remark. "No," replied Mr. Vincent, "no;" yet with some slight hesitation; "no, I don't know that it has. But I have thought some of your remarks and questions at lecture were like a person pushing things _too far_, and wishing to form a _system_." Charles was so much taken aback by the charge, that the unexplained mystery of the Long Vacation went out of his head. He said he was "very sorry," and "obliged;" and tried to recollect what he could have said to give ground to Mr. Vincent's remark. Not being able at the moment to recollect, he went on. "I assure you, sir, I know so little of parties in the place, that I hardly know their leaders. I have heard persons mentioned, but, if I tried, I think I should, in some cases, mismatch names and opinions." "I believe it," said Vincent; "but you are young; I am cautioning you against _tendencies_. You may suddenly find yourself absorbed before you know where you are." Charles thought this a good opportunity of asking some questions in detail, about points which puzzled him. He asked whether Dr. Brownside was considered a safe divine to follow. "I hold, d'ye see," answered Vincent, "that all errors are counterfeits of truth. Clever men say true things, Mr. Reding, true in their substance, but," sinking his voice to a whisper, "they go _too far_. It might even be shown that all sects are in one sense but parts of the Catholic Church. I don't say true parts, that is a further question; but they _embody_ great _principles_. The Quakers represent the principle of simplicity and evangelical poverty; they even have a dress of their own, like monks. The Independents represent the rights of the laity; the Wesleyans cherish the devotional principle; the Irvingites, the symbolical and mystical; the High Church party, the principle of obedience; the Liberals are the guardians of reason. No party, then, I conceive, is entirely right or entirely wrong. As to Dr. Brownside, there certainly have been various opinions entertained about his divinity; still, he is an able man, and I think you will gain _good_, gain _good_ from his teaching. But mind, I don't _recommend_ him; yet I respect him, and I consider that he says many things very well worth your attention. I would advise you, then, to accept the _good_ which his sermons offer, without committing yourself to the _bad_. That, depend upon it, Mr. Reding, is the golden though the obvious rule in these matters." Charles said, in answer, that Mr. Vincent was overrating his powers; that he had to learn before he could judge; and that he wished very much to know whether Vincent could recommend him any book, in which he might see at once _what_ the true Church-of-England doctrine was on a number of points which perplexed him. Mr. Vincent replied, he must be on his guard against dissipating his mind with such reading, at a time when his University duties had a definite claim upon him. He ought to avoid all controversies of the day, all authors of the day. He would advise him to read _no_ living authors. "Read dead authors alone," he continued; "dead authors are safe. Our great divines," and he stood upright, "were models; 'there were giants on the earth in those days,' as King George the Third had once said of them to Dr. Johnson. They had that depth, and power, and gravity, and fulness, and erudition; and they were so racy, always racy, and what might be called English. They had that richness, too, such a mine of thought, such a world of opinion, such activity of mind, such inexhaustible resource, such diversity, too. Then they were so eloquent; the majestic Hooker, the imaginative Taylor, the brilliant Hall, the learning of Barrow, the strong sense of South, the keen logic of Chillingworth, good, honest old Burnet," etc., etc. There did not seem much reason why he should stop at one moment more than another; at length, however, he did stop. It was prose, but it was pleasant prose to Charles; he knew just enough about these writers to feel interested in hearing them talked about, and to him Vincent seemed to be saying a good deal, when in fact he was saying very little. When he stopped, Charles said he believed that there were persons in the University who were promoting the study of these authors. Mr. Vincent looked grave. "It is true," he said; "but, my young friend, I have already hinted to you that indifferent things are perverted to the purposes of _party_. At this moment the names of some of our greatest divines are little better than a watchword by which the opinions of living individuals are signified." "Which opinions, I suppose," Charles answered, "are not to be found in those authors." "I'll not say that," said Mr. Vincent. "I have the greatest respect for the individuals in question, and I am not denying that they have done good to our Church by drawing attention in this lax day to the old Church-of-England divinity. But it is one thing to agree with these gentlemen; another," laying his hand on Charles's shoulder, "another to belong to their party. Do not make man your master; get good from all; think well of all persons, and you will be a wise man." Reding inquired, with some timidity, if this was not something like what Dr. Brownside had said in the University pulpit; but perhaps the latter advocated a toleration of opinions in a different sense? Mr. Vincent answered rather shortly, that he had not heard Dr. Brownside's sermon; but, for himself, he had been speaking only of persons in our own communion. "Our Church," he said, "admitted of great liberty of thought within her pale. Even our greatest divines differed from each other in many respects; nay, Bishop Taylor differed from himself. It was a great principle in the English Church. Her true children agree to differ. In truth," he continued, "there is that robust, masculine, noble independence in the English mind, which refuses to be tied down to artificial shapes, but is like, I will say, some great and beautiful production of nature,--a tree, which is rich in foliage and fantastic in limb, no sickly denizen of the hothouse, or helpless dependent of the garden wall, but in careless magnificence sheds its fruits upon the free earth, for the bird of the air and the beast of the field, and all sorts of cattle, to eat thereof and rejoice." When Charles came away, he tried to think what he had gained by his conversation with Mr. Vincent; not exactly what he had wanted, some practical rules to guide his mind and keep him steady; but still some useful hints. He had already been averse to parties, and offended at what he saw of individuals attached to them. Vincent had confirmed him in his resolution to keep aloof from them, and to attend to his duties in the place. He felt pleased to have had this talk with him; but what could he mean by suspecting a tendency in himself to push things too far, and thereby to implicate himself in party? He was obliged to resign himself to ignorance on the subject, and to be content with keeping a watch over himself in future. CHAPTER XI. No opportunity has occurred of informing the reader that, during the last week or two, Charles had accidentally been a good deal thrown across Willis, the _umbra_ of White at Bateman's breakfast-party. He had liked his looks on that occasion, when he was dumb; he did not like him so much when he heard him talk; still he could not help being interested in him, and not the least for this reason, that Willis seemed to have taken a great fancy to himself. He certainly did court Charles, and seemed anxious to stand well with him. Charles, however, did not like his mode of talking better than he did White's; and when he first saw his rooms, there was much in them which shocked both his good sense and his religious principles. A large ivory crucifix, in a glass case, was a conspicuous ornament between the windows; an engraving, representing the Blessed Trinity, as is usual in Catholic countries, hung over the fireplace, and a picture of the Madonna and St. Dominic was opposite to it. On the mantelpiece were a rosary, a thuribulum, and other tokens of Catholicism, of which Charles did not know the uses; a missal, ritual, and some Catholic tracts, lay on the table; and, as he happened to come on Willis unexpectedly, he found him sitting in a vestment more like a cassock than a reading-gown, and engaged upon some portion of the Breviary. Virgil and Sophocles, Herodotus and Cicero seemed, as impure pagans, to have hid themselves in corners, or flitted away, before the awful presence of the Ancient Church. Charles had taken upon himself to protest against some of these singularities, but without success. On the evening before his departure for the country he had occasion to go towards Folly Bridge to pay a bill, when he was startled, as he passed what he had ever taken for a dissenting chapel, to see Willis come out of it. He hardly could believe he saw correctly; he knew, indeed, that Willis had been detained in Oxford, as he had been himself; but what had compelled him to a visit so extraordinary as that which he had just made, Charles had no means of determining. "Willis!" he cried, as he stopped. Willis coloured, and tried to look easy. "Do come a few paces with me," said Charles. "What in the world has taken you there? Is it not a dissenting meeting?" "Dissenting meeting!" cried Willis, surprised and offended in his turn: "what on earth could make you think I would go to a dissenting meeting?" "Well, I beg your pardon," said Charles; "I recollect now: it's the exhibition room. However, _once_ it _was_ a chapel: that's my mistake. Isn't it what is called 'the Old Methodist Chapel?' I never was there; they showed there the _Dio-astro-doxon_, so I think they called it." Charles talked on, to cover his own mistake, for he was ashamed of the charge he had made. Willis did not know whether he was in jest or earnest. "Reding," he said, "don't go on; you offend me." "Well, what is it?" said Charles. "You know well enough," answered Willis, "though you wish to annoy me." "I don't indeed." "It's the Catholic church," said Willis. Reding was silent a moment; then he said, "Well, I don't think you have mended the matter; it _is_ a dissenting meeting, call it what you will, though not the kind of one I meant." "What can you mean?" asked Willis. "Rather, what mean _you_ by going to such places?" retorted Charles; "why, it is against your oath." "My oath! what oath?" "There's not an oath now; but there was an oath till lately," said Reding; "and we still make a very solemn engagement. Don't you recollect your matriculation at the Vice-Chancellor's, and what oaths and declarations you made?" "I don't know what I made: my tutor told me nothing about it. I signed a book or two." "You did more," said Reding. "I was told most carefully. You solemnly engaged to keep the statutes; and one statute is, not to go into any dissenting chapel or meeting whatever." "Catholics are not Dissenters," said Willis. "Oh, don't speak so," said Charles; "you know it's meant to include them. The statute wishes us to keep from all places of worship whatever but our own." "But it is an illegal declaration or vow," said Willis, "and so not binding." "Where did you find that get-off?" said Charles; "the priest put that into your head." "I don't know the priest; I never spoke a word to him," answered Willis. "Well, any how, it's not your own answer," said Reding; "and does not help you. I am no casuist; but if it is an illegal engagement you should not continue to enjoy the benefit of it." "What benefit?" "Your cap and gown; a university education; the chance of a scholarship or fellowship. Give up these, and then plead, if you will, and lawfully, that you are quit of your engagement; but don't sail under false colours: don't take the benefit and break the stipulation." "You take it too seriously; there are half a hundred statutes _you_ don't keep, any more than I. You are most inconsistent." "Well, if we don't keep them," said Charles, "I suppose it is in points where the authorities don't enforce them; for instance, they don't mean us to dress in brown, though the statutes order it." "But they _do_ mean to keep you from walking down High Street in beaver," answered Willis; "for the Proctors march up and down, and send you back, if they catch you." "But _this_ is a different matter," said Reding, changing his ground; "this is a matter of religion. It can't be right to go to strange places of worship or meetings." "Why," said Willis, "if we are one Church with the Roman Catholics, I can't make out for the life of me how it's wrong for us to go to them or them to us." "I'm no divine, I don't understand what is meant by one Church," said Charles; "but I know well that there's not a bishop, not a clergyman, not a sober churchman in the land but would give it against you. It's a sheer absurdity." "Don't talk in that way," answered Willis, "please don't. I feel all my heart drawn to the Catholic worship; our own service is so cold." "That's just what every stiff Dissenter says," answered Charles; "every poor cottager, too, who knows no better, and goes after the Methodists--after her dear Mr. Spoutaway or the preaching cobbler. _She_ says (I have heard them), 'Oh, sir, I suppose we ought to go where we get most good. Mr. So-and-so goes to my heart--he goes through me.'" Willis laughed; "Well, not a bad reason, as times go, _I_ think," said he: "poor souls, what better means of judging have they? how can you hope they will like 'the Scripture moveth us'? Really you are making too much of it. This is only the second time I have been there, and, I tell you in earnest, I find my mind filled with awe and devotion there; as I think you would too. I really am better for it; I cannot pray in church; there's a bad smell there, and the pews hide everything; I can't see through a deal board. But here, when I went in, I found all still, and calm, the space open, and, in the twilight, the Tabernacle just visible, pointed out by the lamp." Charles looked very uncomfortable. "Really, Willis," he said, "I don't know what to say to you. Heaven forbid that I should speak against the Roman Catholics; I know nothing about them. But _this_ I know, that you are not a Roman Catholic, and have no business there. If they have such sacred things among them as those you allude to, still these are not yours; you are an intruder. I know nothing about it; I don't like to give a judgment, I am sure. But it's a tampering with sacred things; running here and there, touching and tasting, taking up, putting down. I don't like it," he added, with vehemence; "it's taking liberties with God." "Oh, my dear Reding, please don't speak so very severely," said poor Willis; "now what have I done more than you would do yourself, were you in France or Italy? Do you mean to say you wouldn't enter the churches abroad?" "I will only decide about what is before me," answered Reding; "when I go abroad, then will be the time to think about your question. It is quite enough to know what we ought to do at the moment, and I am clear you have been doing wrong. How did you find your way there?" "White took me." "Then there is one man in the world more thoughtless than you: do many of the gownsmen go there?" "Not that I know of; one or two have gone from curiosity; there is no practice of going, at least this is what I am told." "Well," said Charles, "you must promise me you will not go again. Come, we won't part till you do." "That is too much," said Willis, gently; then, disengaging his arm from Reding's, he suddenly darted away from him, saying, "Good-bye, good-bye; to our next merry meeting--_au revoir_." There was no help for it. Charles walked slowly home, saying to himself: "What if, after all, the Roman Catholic Church is the true Church? I wish I knew what to believe; no one will tell me what to believe; I am so left to myself." Then he thought: "I suppose I know quite enough for practice--more than I _do_ practise; and I ought surely to be contented and thankful." CHAPTER XII. Charles was an affectionate son, and the Long Vacation passed very happily at home. He was up early, and read steadily till luncheon, and then he was at the service of his father, mother, and sisters for the rest of the day. He loved the calm, quiet country; he loved the monotonous flow of time, when each day is like the other; and, after the excitement of Oxford, the secluded parsonage was like a haven beyond the tossing of the waves. The whirl of opinions and perplexities which had encircled him at Oxford now were like the distant sound of the ocean--they reminded him of his present security. The undulating meadows, the green lanes, the open heath, the common with its wide-spreading dusky elms, the high timber which fringed the level path from village to village, ever and anon broken and thrown into groups, or losing itself in copses--even the gate, and the stile, and the turnpike-road had the charm, not of novelty, but of long familiar use; they had the poetry of many recollections. Nor was the dilapidated, deformed church, with its outside staircases, its unsightly galleries, its wide intruded windows, its uncouth pews, its low nunting table, its forlorn vestry, and its damp earthy smell, without its pleasant associations to the inner man; for there it was that for many a year, Sunday after Sunday, he had heard his dear father read and preach; there were the old monuments, with Latin inscriptions and strange devices, the black boards with white letters, the Resurgams and grinning skulls, the fire-buckets, the faded militia-colours, and, almost as much a fixture, the old clerk, with a Welsh wig over his ears, shouting the responses out of place--which had arrested his imagination, and awed him when a child. And then there was his home itself; its well-known rooms, its pleasant routine, its order, and its comfort--an old and true friend, the dearer to him because he had made new ones. "Where I shall be in time to come I know not," he said to himself; "I am but a boy; many things which I have not a dream of, which my imagination cannot compass, may come on me before I die--if I live; but here at least, and now, I am happy, and I will enjoy my happiness. Some say that school is the pleasantest time of one's life; this does not exclude college. I suppose care is what makes life so wearing. At present I have no care, no responsibility; I suppose I shall feel a little when I go up for my degree. Care is a terrible thing; I have had a little of it at times at school. What a strange thing to fancy, I shall be one day twenty-five or thirty! How the weeks are flying by! the Vacation will soon be over. Oh, I am so happy, it quite makes me afraid. Yet I shall have strength for my day." Sometimes, however, his thoughts took a sadder turn, and he anticipated the future more vividly than he enjoyed the present. Mr. Malcolm had come to see them, after an absence from the parsonage for several years: his visit was a great pleasure to Mr. Reding, and not much less to himself, to whom a green home and a family circle were agreeable sights, after his bachelor-life at college. He had been a great favourite with Charles and his sisters as children, though now his popularity with them for the most part rested on the memory of the past. When he told them amusing stories, or allowed them to climb his knee and take off his spectacles, he did all that was necessary to gain their childish hearts; more is necessary to conciliate the affection of young men and women; and thus it is not surprising that he lived in their minds principally by prescription. He neither knew this, nor would have thought much about it if he had; for, like many persons of advancing years, he made himself very much his own centre, did not care to enter into the minds of others, did not consult for them, or find his happiness in them. He was kind and friendly to the young people, as he would be kind to a canary-bird or a lap-dog; it was a sort of external love; and, though they got on capitally with him, they did not miss him when gone, nor would have been much troubled to know that he was never to come again. Charles drove him about the country, stamped his letters, secured him his newspapers from the neighbouring town, and listened to his stories about Oxford and Oxford men. He really liked him, and wished to please him; but, as to consulting him in any serious matter, or going to him for comfort in affliction, he would as soon have thought of betaking him to Dan the pedlar, or old Isaac who played the Sunday bassoon. "How have your peaches been this year, Malcolm?" said Mr. Reding one day after dinner to his guest. "You ought to know that we have no peaches in Oxford," answered Mr. Malcolm. "My memory plays me false, then: I had a vision of, at least, October peaches on one occasion, and fine ones too." "Ah, you mean at old Tom Spindle's, the jockey's," answered Mr. Malcolm; "it's true, he had a bit of a brick wall, and was proud of it. But peaches come when there is no one in Oxford to eat them; so either the tree, or at least the fruit, is a great rarity there. Oxford wasn't so empty once; you have old mulberry-trees there in record of better days." "At that time, too," said Charles, "I suppose, the more expensive fruits were not cultivated. Mulberries are the witness, not only of a full college, but of simple tastes." "Charles is secretly cutting at our hothouse here," said Mr. Reding; "as if our first father did not prefer fruits and flowers to beef and mutton." "No, indeed," said Charles, "I think peaches capital things; and as to flowers, I am even too fond of scents." "Charles has some theory, then, about scents, I'll be bound," said his father; "I never knew a boy who so placed his likings and dislikings on fancies. He began to eat olives directly he read the OEdipus of Sophocles; and, I verily believe, will soon give up oranges from his dislike to King William." "Every one does so," said Charles: "who would not be in the fashion? There's Aunt Kitty, she calls a bonnet, 'a sweet' one year, which makes her 'a perfect fright' the next." "You're right, papa, in this instance," said his mother; "I know he has some good reason, though I never can recollect it, why he smells a rose, or distils lavender. What is it, my dear Mary?" "'Relics ye are of Eden's bowers,'" said she. "Why, sir, that was precisely your own reason just now," said Charles to his father. "There's more than that," said Mrs. Reding, "if I knew what it was." "He thinks the scent more intellectual than the other senses," said Mary, smiling. "Such a boy for paradoxes!" said his mother. "Well, so it is in a certain way," said Charles, "but I can't explain. Sounds and scents are more ethereal, less material; they have no shape--like the angels." Mr. Malcolm laughed. "Well, I grant it, Charles," he said; "they are length without breadth!" "Did you ever hear the like?" said Mrs. Reding, laughing too; "don't encourage him, Mr. Malcolm; you are worse than he. Angels length without breadth!" "They pass from place to place, they come, they go," continued Mr. Malcolm. "They conjure up the past so vividly," said Charles. "But sounds surely more than scents," said Mr. Malcolm. "Pardon me; the reverse as _I_ think," answered Charles. "That _is_ a paradox, Charles," said Mr. Malcolm; "the smell of roast-beef never went further than to remind a man of dinner; but sounds are pathetic and inspiring." "Well, sir, but think of this," said Charles, "scents are complete in themselves, yet do not consist of parts. Think how very distinct the smell of a rose is from a pink, a pink from a sweet-pea, a sweet-pea from a stock, a stock from lilac, lilac from lavender, lavender from jasmine, jasmine from honeysuckle, honeysuckle from hawthorn, hawthorn from hyacinth, hyacinth"---- "Spare us," interrupted Mr. Malcolm; "you are going through the index of Loudon!" "And these are only the scents of flowers; how different flowers smell from fruits, fruits from spices, spices from roast-beef or pork-cutlets, and so on. Now, what I was coming to is this--these scents are perfectly distinct from each other, and _sui generis_; they never can be confused; yet each is communicated to the apprehension in an instant. Sights take up a great space, a tune is a succession of sounds; but scents are at once specific and complete, yet indivisible. Who can halve a scent? they need neither time nor space; thus they are immaterial or spiritual." "Charles hasn't been to Oxford for nothing," said his mother, laughing and looking at Mary; "this is what I call chopping logic!" "Well done, Charles,"

consent

How many times the word 'consent' appears in the text?

will choose time. I think the University goes down just when Oxford begins to be most beautiful. The walks and meadows are so fragrant and bright now, the hay half carried, and the short new grass appearing." "Reding ought to live here all through the Long," said Tenby: "does any one live through the Vacation, sir, in Oxford?" "Do you mean they die before the end of it, Mr. Tenby?" asked Vincent. "It can't be denied," he continued, "that many, like Mr. Reding, think it a most pleasant time. _I_ am fond of Oxford; but it is not my _habitat_ out of term-time." "Well, I think I should like to make it so," said Charles, "but, I suppose, undergraduates are not allowed." Mr. Vincent answered with more than necessary gravity, "No;" it rested with the Principal; but he conceived that he would not consent to it. Vincent added that certainly there _were_ parties who remained in Oxford through the Long Vacation. It was said mysteriously. Charles answered that, if it was against college rules, there was no help for it; else, were he reading for his degree, he should like nothing better than to pass the Long Vacation in Oxford, if he might judge by the pleasantness of the last ten days. "That is a compliment, Mr. Reding, to your company," said Vincent. At this moment the door opened, and in came the manciple with the dinner paper, which Mr. Vincent had formally to run his eye over. "Watkins," he said, giving it back to him, "I almost think to-day is one of the Fasts of the Church. Go and look, Watkins, and bring me word." The astonished manciple, who had never been sent on such a commission in his whole career before, hastened out of the room, to task his wits how best to fulfil it. The question seemed to strike the company as forcibly, for there was a sudden silence, which was succeeded by a shuffling of feet and a leave-taking; as if, though they had secured their ham and mutton at breakfast, they did not like to risk their dinner. Watkins returned sooner than could have been expected. He said that Mr. Vincent was right; to-day he had found was "the feast of the Apostles." "The Vigil of St. Peter, you mean, Watkins," said Mr. Vincent; "I thought so. Then let us have a plain beefsteak and a saddle of mutton; no Portugal onions, Watkins, or currant-jelly; and some simple pudding, Charlotte pudding, Watkins--that will do." Watkins vanished. By this time, Charles found himself alone with the college authority; who began to speak to him in a more confidential tone. "Mr. Reding," said he, "I did not like to question you before the others, but I conceive you had no particular _meaning_ in your praise of Oxford in the Long Vacation? In the mouths of some it would have been suspicious." Charles was all surprise. "To tell the truth, Mr. Reding, as things stand," he proceeded, "it is often a mark of _party_, this residence in the Vacation; though, of course, there is nothing in the _thing_ itself but what is perfectly natural and right." Charles was all attention. "My good sir," the tutor proceeded, "avoid parties; be sure to avoid party. You are young in your career among us. I always feel anxious about young men of talent; there is the greatest danger of the talent of the University being absorbed in party." Reding expressed a hope that nothing he had done had given cause to his tutor's remark. "No," replied Mr. Vincent, "no;" yet with some slight hesitation; "no, I don't know that it has. But I have thought some of your remarks and questions at lecture were like a person pushing things _too far_, and wishing to form a _system_." Charles was so much taken aback by the charge, that the unexplained mystery of the Long Vacation went out of his head. He said he was "very sorry," and "obliged;" and tried to recollect what he could have said to give ground to Mr. Vincent's remark. Not being able at the moment to recollect, he went on. "I assure you, sir, I know so little of parties in the place, that I hardly know their leaders. I have heard persons mentioned, but, if I tried, I think I should, in some cases, mismatch names and opinions." "I believe it," said Vincent; "but you are young; I am cautioning you against _tendencies_. You may suddenly find yourself absorbed before you know where you are." Charles thought this a good opportunity of asking some questions in detail, about points which puzzled him. He asked whether Dr. Brownside was considered a safe divine to follow. "I hold, d'ye see," answered Vincent, "that all errors are counterfeits of truth. Clever men say true things, Mr. Reding, true in their substance, but," sinking his voice to a whisper, "they go _too far_. It might even be shown that all sects are in one sense but parts of the Catholic Church. I don't say true parts, that is a further question; but they _embody_ great _principles_. The Quakers represent the principle of simplicity and evangelical poverty; they even have a dress of their own, like monks. The Independents represent the rights of the laity; the Wesleyans cherish the devotional principle; the Irvingites, the symbolical and mystical; the High Church party, the principle of obedience; the Liberals are the guardians of reason. No party, then, I conceive, is entirely right or entirely wrong. As to Dr. Brownside, there certainly have been various opinions entertained about his divinity; still, he is an able man, and I think you will gain _good_, gain _good_ from his teaching. But mind, I don't _recommend_ him; yet I respect him, and I consider that he says many things very well worth your attention. I would advise you, then, to accept the _good_ which his sermons offer, without committing yourself to the _bad_. That, depend upon it, Mr. Reding, is the golden though the obvious rule in these matters." Charles said, in answer, that Mr. Vincent was overrating his powers; that he had to learn before he could judge; and that he wished very much to know whether Vincent could recommend him any book, in which he might see at once _what_ the true Church-of-England doctrine was on a number of points which perplexed him. Mr. Vincent replied, he must be on his guard against dissipating his mind with such reading, at a time when his University duties had a definite claim upon him. He ought to avoid all controversies of the day, all authors of the day. He would advise him to read _no_ living authors. "Read dead authors alone," he continued; "dead authors are safe. Our great divines," and he stood upright, "were models; 'there were giants on the earth in those days,' as King George the Third had once said of them to Dr. Johnson. They had that depth, and power, and gravity, and fulness, and erudition; and they were so racy, always racy, and what might be called English. They had that richness, too, such a mine of thought, such a world of opinion, such activity of mind, such inexhaustible resource, such diversity, too. Then they were so eloquent; the majestic Hooker, the imaginative Taylor, the brilliant Hall, the learning of Barrow, the strong sense of South, the keen logic of Chillingworth, good, honest old Burnet," etc., etc. There did not seem much reason why he should stop at one moment more than another; at length, however, he did stop. It was prose, but it was pleasant prose to Charles; he knew just enough about these writers to feel interested in hearing them talked about, and to him Vincent seemed to be saying a good deal, when in fact he was saying very little. When he stopped, Charles said he believed that there were persons in the University who were promoting the study of these authors. Mr. Vincent looked grave. "It is true," he said; "but, my young friend, I have already hinted to you that indifferent things are perverted to the purposes of _party_. At this moment the names of some of our greatest divines are little better than a watchword by which the opinions of living individuals are signified." "Which opinions, I suppose," Charles answered, "are not to be found in those authors." "I'll not say that," said Mr. Vincent. "I have the greatest respect for the individuals in question, and I am not denying that they have done good to our Church by drawing attention in this lax day to the old Church-of-England divinity. But it is one thing to agree with these gentlemen; another," laying his hand on Charles's shoulder, "another to belong to their party. Do not make man your master; get good from all; think well of all persons, and you will be a wise man." Reding inquired, with some timidity, if this was not something like what Dr. Brownside had said in the University pulpit; but perhaps the latter advocated a toleration of opinions in a different sense? Mr. Vincent answered rather shortly, that he had not heard Dr. Brownside's sermon; but, for himself, he had been speaking only of persons in our own communion. "Our Church," he said, "admitted of great liberty of thought within her pale. Even our greatest divines differed from each other in many respects; nay, Bishop Taylor differed from himself. It was a great principle in the English Church. Her true children agree to differ. In truth," he continued, "there is that robust, masculine, noble independence in the English mind, which refuses to be tied down to artificial shapes, but is like, I will say, some great and beautiful production of nature,--a tree, which is rich in foliage and fantastic in limb, no sickly denizen of the hothouse, or helpless dependent of the garden wall, but in careless magnificence sheds its fruits upon the free earth, for the bird of the air and the beast of the field, and all sorts of cattle, to eat thereof and rejoice." When Charles came away, he tried to think what he had gained by his conversation with Mr. Vincent; not exactly what he had wanted, some practical rules to guide his mind and keep him steady; but still some useful hints. He had already been averse to parties, and offended at what he saw of individuals attached to them. Vincent had confirmed him in his resolution to keep aloof from them, and to attend to his duties in the place. He felt pleased to have had this talk with him; but what could he mean by suspecting a tendency in himself to push things too far, and thereby to implicate himself in party? He was obliged to resign himself to ignorance on the subject, and to be content with keeping a watch over himself in future. CHAPTER XI. No opportunity has occurred of informing the reader that, during the last week or two, Charles had accidentally been a good deal thrown across Willis, the _umbra_ of White at Bateman's breakfast-party. He had liked his looks on that occasion, when he was dumb; he did not like him so much when he heard him talk; still he could not help being interested in him, and not the least for this reason, that Willis seemed to have taken a great fancy to himself. He certainly did court Charles, and seemed anxious to stand well with him. Charles, however, did not like his mode of talking better than he did White's; and when he first saw his rooms, there was much in them which shocked both his good sense and his religious principles. A large ivory crucifix, in a glass case, was a conspicuous ornament between the windows; an engraving, representing the Blessed Trinity, as is usual in Catholic countries, hung over the fireplace, and a picture of the Madonna and St. Dominic was opposite to it. On the mantelpiece were a rosary, a thuribulum, and other tokens of Catholicism, of which Charles did not know the uses; a missal, ritual, and some Catholic tracts, lay on the table; and, as he happened to come on Willis unexpectedly, he found him sitting in a vestment more like a cassock than a reading-gown, and engaged upon some portion of the Breviary. Virgil and Sophocles, Herodotus and Cicero seemed, as impure pagans, to have hid themselves in corners, or flitted away, before the awful presence of the Ancient Church. Charles had taken upon himself to protest against some of these singularities, but without success. On the evening before his departure for the country he had occasion to go towards Folly Bridge to pay a bill, when he was startled, as he passed what he had ever taken for a dissenting chapel, to see Willis come out of it. He hardly could believe he saw correctly; he knew, indeed, that Willis had been detained in Oxford, as he had been himself; but what had compelled him to a visit so extraordinary as that which he had just made, Charles had no means of determining. "Willis!" he cried, as he stopped. Willis coloured, and tried to look easy. "Do come a few paces with me," said Charles. "What in the world has taken you there? Is it not a dissenting meeting?" "Dissenting meeting!" cried Willis, surprised and offended in his turn: "what on earth could make you think I would go to a dissenting meeting?" "Well, I beg your pardon," said Charles; "I recollect now: it's the exhibition room. However, _once_ it _was_ a chapel: that's my mistake. Isn't it what is called 'the Old Methodist Chapel?' I never was there; they showed there the _Dio-astro-doxon_, so I think they called it." Charles talked on, to cover his own mistake, for he was ashamed of the charge he had made. Willis did not know whether he was in jest or earnest. "Reding," he said, "don't go on; you offend me." "Well, what is it?" said Charles. "You know well enough," answered Willis, "though you wish to annoy me." "I don't indeed." "It's the Catholic church," said Willis. Reding was silent a moment; then he said, "Well, I don't think you have mended the matter; it _is_ a dissenting meeting, call it what you will, though not the kind of one I meant." "What can you mean?" asked Willis. "Rather, what mean _you_ by going to such places?" retorted Charles; "why, it is against your oath." "My oath! what oath?" "There's not an oath now; but there was an oath till lately," said Reding; "and we still make a very solemn engagement. Don't you recollect your matriculation at the Vice-Chancellor's, and what oaths and declarations you made?" "I don't know what I made: my tutor told me nothing about it. I signed a book or two." "You did more," said Reding. "I was told most carefully. You solemnly engaged to keep the statutes; and one statute is, not to go into any dissenting chapel or meeting whatever." "Catholics are not Dissenters," said Willis. "Oh, don't speak so," said Charles; "you know it's meant to include them. The statute wishes us to keep from all places of worship whatever but our own." "But it is an illegal declaration or vow," said Willis, "and so not binding." "Where did you find that get-off?" said Charles; "the priest put that into your head." "I don't know the priest; I never spoke a word to him," answered Willis. "Well, any how, it's not your own answer," said Reding; "and does not help you. I am no casuist; but if it is an illegal engagement you should not continue to enjoy the benefit of it." "What benefit?" "Your cap and gown; a university education; the chance of a scholarship or fellowship. Give up these, and then plead, if you will, and lawfully, that you are quit of your engagement; but don't sail under false colours: don't take the benefit and break the stipulation." "You take it too seriously; there are half a hundred statutes _you_ don't keep, any more than I. You are most inconsistent." "Well, if we don't keep them," said Charles, "I suppose it is in points where the authorities don't enforce them; for instance, they don't mean us to dress in brown, though the statutes order it." "But they _do_ mean to keep you from walking down High Street in beaver," answered Willis; "for the Proctors march up and down, and send you back, if they catch you." "But _this_ is a different matter," said Reding, changing his ground; "this is a matter of religion. It can't be right to go to strange places of worship or meetings." "Why," said Willis, "if we are one Church with the Roman Catholics, I can't make out for the life of me how it's wrong for us to go to them or them to us." "I'm no divine, I don't understand what is meant by one Church," said Charles; "but I know well that there's not a bishop, not a clergyman, not a sober churchman in the land but would give it against you. It's a sheer absurdity." "Don't talk in that way," answered Willis, "please don't. I feel all my heart drawn to the Catholic worship; our own service is so cold." "That's just what every stiff Dissenter says," answered Charles; "every poor cottager, too, who knows no better, and goes after the Methodists--after her dear Mr. Spoutaway or the preaching cobbler. _She_ says (I have heard them), 'Oh, sir, I suppose we ought to go where we get most good. Mr. So-and-so goes to my heart--he goes through me.'" Willis laughed; "Well, not a bad reason, as times go, _I_ think," said he: "poor souls, what better means of judging have they? how can you hope they will like 'the Scripture moveth us'? Really you are making too much of it. This is only the second time I have been there, and, I tell you in earnest, I find my mind filled with awe and devotion there; as I think you would too. I really am better for it; I cannot pray in church; there's a bad smell there, and the pews hide everything; I can't see through a deal board. But here, when I went in, I found all still, and calm, the space open, and, in the twilight, the Tabernacle just visible, pointed out by the lamp." Charles looked very uncomfortable. "Really, Willis," he said, "I don't know what to say to you. Heaven forbid that I should speak against the Roman Catholics; I know nothing about them. But _this_ I know, that you are not a Roman Catholic, and have no business there. If they have such sacred things among them as those you allude to, still these are not yours; you are an intruder. I know nothing about it; I don't like to give a judgment, I am sure. But it's a tampering with sacred things; running here and there, touching and tasting, taking up, putting down. I don't like it," he added, with vehemence; "it's taking liberties with God." "Oh, my dear Reding, please don't speak so very severely," said poor Willis; "now what have I done more than you would do yourself, were you in France or Italy? Do you mean to say you wouldn't enter the churches abroad?" "I will only decide about what is before me," answered Reding; "when I go abroad, then will be the time to think about your question. It is quite enough to know what we ought to do at the moment, and I am clear you have been doing wrong. How did you find your way there?" "White took me." "Then there is one man in the world more thoughtless than you: do many of the gownsmen go there?" "Not that I know of; one or two have gone from curiosity; there is no practice of going, at least this is what I am told." "Well," said Charles, "you must promise me you will not go again. Come, we won't part till you do." "That is too much," said Willis, gently; then, disengaging his arm from Reding's, he suddenly darted away from him, saying, "Good-bye, good-bye; to our next merry meeting--_au revoir_." There was no help for it. Charles walked slowly home, saying to himself: "What if, after all, the Roman Catholic Church is the true Church? I wish I knew what to believe; no one will tell me what to believe; I am so left to myself." Then he thought: "I suppose I know quite enough for practice--more than I _do_ practise; and I ought surely to be contented and thankful." CHAPTER XII. Charles was an affectionate son, and the Long Vacation passed very happily at home. He was up early, and read steadily till luncheon, and then he was at the service of his father, mother, and sisters for the rest of the day. He loved the calm, quiet country; he loved the monotonous flow of time, when each day is like the other; and, after the excitement of Oxford, the secluded parsonage was like a haven beyond the tossing of the waves. The whirl of opinions and perplexities which had encircled him at Oxford now were like the distant sound of the ocean--they reminded him of his present security. The undulating meadows, the green lanes, the open heath, the common with its wide-spreading dusky elms, the high timber which fringed the level path from village to village, ever and anon broken and thrown into groups, or losing itself in copses--even the gate, and the stile, and the turnpike-road had the charm, not of novelty, but of long familiar use; they had the poetry of many recollections. Nor was the dilapidated, deformed church, with its outside staircases, its unsightly galleries, its wide intruded windows, its uncouth pews, its low nunting table, its forlorn vestry, and its damp earthy smell, without its pleasant associations to the inner man; for there it was that for many a year, Sunday after Sunday, he had heard his dear father read and preach; there were the old monuments, with Latin inscriptions and strange devices, the black boards with white letters, the Resurgams and grinning skulls, the fire-buckets, the faded militia-colours, and, almost as much a fixture, the old clerk, with a Welsh wig over his ears, shouting the responses out of place--which had arrested his imagination, and awed him when a child. And then there was his home itself; its well-known rooms, its pleasant routine, its order, and its comfort--an old and true friend, the dearer to him because he had made new ones. "Where I shall be in time to come I know not," he said to himself; "I am but a boy; many things which I have not a dream of, which my imagination cannot compass, may come on me before I die--if I live; but here at least, and now, I am happy, and I will enjoy my happiness. Some say that school is the pleasantest time of one's life; this does not exclude college. I suppose care is what makes life so wearing. At present I have no care, no responsibility; I suppose I shall feel a little when I go up for my degree. Care is a terrible thing; I have had a little of it at times at school. What a strange thing to fancy, I shall be one day twenty-five or thirty! How the weeks are flying by! the Vacation will soon be over. Oh, I am so happy, it quite makes me afraid. Yet I shall have strength for my day." Sometimes, however, his thoughts took a sadder turn, and he anticipated the future more vividly than he enjoyed the present. Mr. Malcolm had come to see them, after an absence from the parsonage for several years: his visit was a great pleasure to Mr. Reding, and not much less to himself, to whom a green home and a family circle were agreeable sights, after his bachelor-life at college. He had been a great favourite with Charles and his sisters as children, though now his popularity with them for the most part rested on the memory of the past. When he told them amusing stories, or allowed them to climb his knee and take off his spectacles, he did all that was necessary to gain their childish hearts; more is necessary to conciliate the affection of young men and women; and thus it is not surprising that he lived in their minds principally by prescription. He neither knew this, nor would have thought much about it if he had; for, like many persons of advancing years, he made himself very much his own centre, did not care to enter into the minds of others, did not consult for them, or find his happiness in them. He was kind and friendly to the young people, as he would be kind to a canary-bird or a lap-dog; it was a sort of external love; and, though they got on capitally with him, they did not miss him when gone, nor would have been much troubled to know that he was never to come again. Charles drove him about the country, stamped his letters, secured him his newspapers from the neighbouring town, and listened to his stories about Oxford and Oxford men. He really liked him, and wished to please him; but, as to consulting him in any serious matter, or going to him for comfort in affliction, he would as soon have thought of betaking him to Dan the pedlar, or old Isaac who played the Sunday bassoon. "How have your peaches been this year, Malcolm?" said Mr. Reding one day after dinner to his guest. "You ought to know that we have no peaches in Oxford," answered Mr. Malcolm. "My memory plays me false, then: I had a vision of, at least, October peaches on one occasion, and fine ones too." "Ah, you mean at old Tom Spindle's, the jockey's," answered Mr. Malcolm; "it's true, he had a bit of a brick wall, and was proud of it. But peaches come when there is no one in Oxford to eat them; so either the tree, or at least the fruit, is a great rarity there. Oxford wasn't so empty once; you have old mulberry-trees there in record of better days." "At that time, too," said Charles, "I suppose, the more expensive fruits were not cultivated. Mulberries are the witness, not only of a full college, but of simple tastes." "Charles is secretly cutting at our hothouse here," said Mr. Reding; "as if our first father did not prefer fruits and flowers to beef and mutton." "No, indeed," said Charles, "I think peaches capital things; and as to flowers, I am even too fond of scents." "Charles has some theory, then, about scents, I'll be bound," said his father; "I never knew a boy who so placed his likings and dislikings on fancies. He began to eat olives directly he read the OEdipus of Sophocles; and, I verily believe, will soon give up oranges from his dislike to King William." "Every one does so," said Charles: "who would not be in the fashion? There's Aunt Kitty, she calls a bonnet, 'a sweet' one year, which makes her 'a perfect fright' the next." "You're right, papa, in this instance," said his mother; "I know he has some good reason, though I never can recollect it, why he smells a rose, or distils lavender. What is it, my dear Mary?" "'Relics ye are of Eden's bowers,'" said she. "Why, sir, that was precisely your own reason just now," said Charles to his father. "There's more than that," said Mrs. Reding, "if I knew what it was." "He thinks the scent more intellectual than the other senses," said Mary, smiling. "Such a boy for paradoxes!" said his mother. "Well, so it is in a certain way," said Charles, "but I can't explain. Sounds and scents are more ethereal, less material; they have no shape--like the angels." Mr. Malcolm laughed. "Well, I grant it, Charles," he said; "they are length without breadth!" "Did you ever hear the like?" said Mrs. Reding, laughing too; "don't encourage him, Mr. Malcolm; you are worse than he. Angels length without breadth!" "They pass from place to place, they come, they go," continued Mr. Malcolm. "They conjure up the past so vividly," said Charles. "But sounds surely more than scents," said Mr. Malcolm. "Pardon me; the reverse as _I_ think," answered Charles. "That _is_ a paradox, Charles," said Mr. Malcolm; "the smell of roast-beef never went further than to remind a man of dinner; but sounds are pathetic and inspiring." "Well, sir, but think of this," said Charles, "scents are complete in themselves, yet do not consist of parts. Think how very distinct the smell of a rose is from a pink, a pink from a sweet-pea, a sweet-pea from a stock, a stock from lilac, lilac from lavender, lavender from jasmine, jasmine from honeysuckle, honeysuckle from hawthorn, hawthorn from hyacinth, hyacinth"---- "Spare us," interrupted Mr. Malcolm; "you are going through the index of Loudon!" "And these are only the scents of flowers; how different flowers smell from fruits, fruits from spices, spices from roast-beef or pork-cutlets, and so on. Now, what I was coming to is this--these scents are perfectly distinct from each other, and _sui generis_; they never can be confused; yet each is communicated to the apprehension in an instant. Sights take up a great space, a tune is a succession of sounds; but scents are at once specific and complete, yet indivisible. Who can halve a scent? they need neither time nor space; thus they are immaterial or spiritual." "Charles hasn't been to Oxford for nothing," said his mother, laughing and looking at Mary; "this is what I call chopping logic!" "Well done, Charles,"

proceeded

How many times the word 'proceeded' appears in the text?

will do it, but life is so uncertain that I think for the present I had better refrain. Have you ascertained whether Kitty can cook, make her own gowns, and trim hats? I understand it is a great promoter of married happiness when the wife can do so, and I am not sure whether all my girls have turned their education to such good account." Mr. Morland only replied by asking if he might be allowed to see Miss Bennet at once, and her father left the room, foreseeing that, whatever happened, he should not have one more quiet hour during that day. His anticipations were soon in the way to be fulfilled, for on finding his daughters, and sending Kitty to the library, he had to give Jane an outline of what had just passed, then repeat it to Bingley, who joined them, and listened to their exclamations of surprise, and regret at the probable downfall of Mr. Morland's hopes. Jane and Bingley were both too convinced of Kitty's prior attachment to have the slightest expectation of his success, and Mr. Bennet was put in full possession of the facts relating to it, while they anxiously awaited the termination of the interview. It came, after some minutes, in a glimpse of Kitty emerging from the library and hurrying upstairs with streaming eyes, and while they all debated as to their next move, Mr. Morland was seen to cross the hall rapidly, looking nowhere but in front of him, and leave the house with precipitation. Jane herself, almost equally distressed, longed to go to Kitty, and Bingley questioned whether he ought not to hasten after the young man, while Mr. Bennet was disposed to think they would be better left to themselves for a time, and wished heartily that there were only just enough lovers in the world to go round, one to each young lady, and none over. In spite of this, Jane was not long in finding her way to her agitated sister and in showing her the tenderest consideration. Kitty's distress was very great, and also very sincere, for she had in truth been far from guessing that Mr. Morland took a more than common interest in her, and as is usual in such cases, the declaration of the young man's love woke in her feelings which she had not known to exist, of reciprocal kindness and even affection, which only did not share the nature and strength of his. Kitty could never have been hard-hearted to any lover, least of all to one whom she liked as much as she did James Morland, and his devotion touched her as deeply as the knowledge that she could not accept it wounded her. Between regrets for what had happened, pity for him and for herself, and the excited thoughts of William Price which the incident itself was bound to evoke, she was in a sad state, and Jane easily prevailed upon her to have her dinner upstairs and go early to bed. Not so easily could she check the tears which flowed continuously, and Jane, to occupy her mind and body, proposed that she should go to-morrow to Pemberley, instead of in three days' time, as arranged; she could very well be sent over, and the change would be beneficial; besides, she was not really leaving them, for there was the November visit to look forward to. Kitty caught at the suggestion, and declining the offices of the maid, began to busy herself about her packing, as Jane hoped she would do, while the latter descended to consult with her husband and father. Mr. Bennet and Bingley both approved, and Jane hastily wrote a few lines to Elizabeth to apprise her of what had happened, that she might be prepared for Kitty's arrival. The two gentlemen walked to the nearest post town to convey the letter; and after dinner the indefatigable Bingley again set out, this time to the Rectory, to perform the same kind office by James Morland as his wife had been doing by Kitty. The young man, though calmer, proved far more unreceptive of consolation. He had felt his rebuff acutely, for Kitty had been too much taken by surprise, too sure of herself, to make it otherwise than decisive, and even the modest hopes he had ventured to entertain, of being able to make more progress with her once the subject was opened between them, had been most thoroughly dispelled. Miss Bennet would not hear another word of it--begged him never to speak of it again--with tears reproached him for having spoilt everything, so that in addition to his own disappointment he had the pain of feeling that she thought less well of him than before. Bingley could deny this, but could not affirm anything else likely to give him comfort. It remained for Morland himself to declare, which he did in a firm though melancholy tone, that he regretted having distressed Miss Bennet, and would endeavour so to meet her in the future that she would not suffer through being reminded of it by any act of word of his. Bingley commended his courage, told him of Kitty's departure, and begged him to continue coming to Desborough just the same; and walked home with a full report of what had just passed. Jane shook her head over it, for, while sympathizing with both, she was more truly sorry for Mr. Morland, since for him she could see no immediate prospect of compensation, in spite of her father's assurances that a young clergyman was seldom allowed to remain inconsolable for more than six months, and if Kitty's other young man only did what was expected of him, her fate would be a certainty in half that time. Chapter XIII Needless to say, Kitty was heartily welcomed by Georgiana and Elizabeth, and given every opportunity to relieve her mind by descriptions of the tragical affair in all its aspects. Both regretted it deeply for Mr. Morland's sake, and Elizabeth privately did so for Kitty's sake, having such a good opinion of him as to make her wish that Kitty could have been persuaded out of her fancy for a young man, who, however excellent, was comparatively a stranger to them all, and whose intentions, at present, were extremely uncertain. She would have rejoiced if Kitty and Morland could have made each other happy, and had entertained a slight hope that her hint to Kitty might perhaps have helped matters, in directing her thoughts into another channel, but it seemed to be of no avail, and Georgiana gave her friend her warmest support, implying entire agreement with her point of view. "I could not help it, now, could I, Georgiana? You know yourself, Lizzie, that I never dreamt it. How could I do anything else but refuse him outright? I was amazingly grieved to do so, but you know very well, Georgiana, that if I could think of one man more than another, _he_ is not that one." She paused for assent, which Georgiana gave by a silent caress, and then continued: "It is all so unfortunate. It will never be as pleasant at Desborough now. Poor Mr. Morland! I wish I had not had to hurt him. He does want someone so badly in the Rectory." "Well, my dear, do not make yourself ill with these vain regrets," said Elizabeth. "It is, as you say, very unfortunate, but no one blames you. If you could not care for him, you could not do it, and someone else will have to inhabit that nice Rectory." Kitty looked as if this prospect were not very pleasing either, but Georgiana, seeing what Elizabeth wished, began to talk cheerfully of something else, and Kitty gradually joined in, though whenever the two girls were alone together she found it difficult to abstain long from referring to some branch of the subject. Georgiana's loyalty and patience never failed, but she wished for November almost as earnestly as Kitty herself, so that matters might reach some definite conclusion, for Kitty's restlessness had considerably increased since she had received James Morland's offer, and she was constantly nervous and excitable and not mistress of herself. On the day when the Bingleys and Mr. Bennet came over for the latter to take leave before returning to Longbourn, this was specially noticeable in her state of anxious flutter when drawing Jane aside to inquire after Mr. Morland. Mr. Bennet bade her farewell gravely and more affectionately than was his wont, telling her that he left her in good hands, and would only give her one piece of advice, namely, that second thoughts were sometimes best. Kitty blushed deeply and could not pretend to misunderstand him, but told Georgiana afterwards that it was impossible to have better second thoughts when Price was the first. With his elder daughter Mr. Bennet was rather more explicit, telling Elizabeth that he considered it was a great pity that so unobjectionable a young man should have been sent about his business. Elizabeth entirely agreed with him, and thought it would not be going too far to express Mr. Morland's praise in even warmer terms. "He will never set the Thames on fire, but there seems good stuff in him," was Mr. Bennet's reply. "When he proposed for her I had not taken much notice of him, except to think him a tolerably sensible fellow, and of course I had to readjust my ideas; but I soon began to see that he must not be judged by that alone. I have really liked him better, too, for his way of taking his refusal." "My dear father, it does not always indicate a want of sense to wish to be married," interposed Elizabeth. "Perhaps not, but Morland is much better off as he is than in marrying a girl he knows so little about. Kitty is flighty and expensive; she ought to stay longer with you and Jane, and not think of being married for the next ten years." Elizabeth smiled and said she thought that it was unnecessary, but that it would certainly be better for Kitty to marry a clergyman than an officer in the navy, who would be compelled to spend long periods away from home. "As to that, of course it is a complete absurdity, and I cannot think why you women, who are so fond of making matches, did not originate something less ridiculously unsuitable among yourselves." Elizabeth thought it wiser not to explain who actually had originated the idea, and said after a pause: "You were saying that you have liked Mr. Morland better of late?" "Yes, he has positively shown some sort of self-command and dignity. He turned up at the house a day or two afterwards, apparently _not_ bent on making us all uncomfortable by the sight of his misery, as most rejected lovers do. Besides, Bingley had had the foresight to produce some excellent port." "I hear from Jane," said Elizabeth, "that he does not avoid or seek the mention of Kitty, and she thinks he is trying to give up all hope of her." "Her absence for a few weeks will no doubt materially assist him," said Mr. Bennet. Kitty seized the opportunity offered by this visit to speak a private word to her brother-in-law with reference to the hero, as Bingley persisted in calling him. She herself had no news, for Mrs. Knightley's frequent letters reported him still at Portsmouth, and Bingley had heard nothing, but promised to write and renew his invitation as soon as October was fairly in. The same silence prevailed at Pemberley with regard to Miss Crawford. No announcement of her marriage had reached any of them, and Elizabeth had a half inclination to make some inquiries, but was dissuaded by Darcy, who said: "Whatever precisely has happened, Elizabeth, we can be sure of one thing, that Miss Crawford has allowed Fitzwilliam to understand that she does not wish him to approach her again. Under these circumstances it is better that you should have no news to give him." Elizabeth sighed as she agreed to the wisdom of this decision, but when shortly after her father's departure a letter was received from Colonel Fitzwilliam to say he would be returning at the end of the month, she could not help wishing that she was more fully informed of the present state of affairs. It would be a relief, even though a sad one, to Fitzwilliam's mind to know that Miss Crawford was actually married and he would be unselfish enough to wish to hear that she was happy. Nothing occurred, however, to enlighten them, and Fitzwilliam arrived on the appointed day, looking much as usual except for a few more lines about the eyes and an increased number of grey hairs. It was the first time he and Georgiana had been together at Pemberley since the rupture of their engagement, and both must have felt conscious of it, Georgiana in particular being prepared to be miserable for a time, from the belief that her cousin, instead of being cheered and invigorated as formerly by his return home, must be reminded at every turn of the failure of their experiment, the failure caused by her wretched weakness and incapacity. Worse still, her brother must be reminded of it, and there might be a repetition of his stern looks, his cold manner. She trembled at the thought, unaware that Darcy had long been persuaded of the wisdom of their parting, ever since events in Bath had shown him where his cousin's real affections were likely to be bestowed, and the only difference which Georgiana perceived after Fitzwilliam's arrival was in the particular kindness he showed her, and the complete renewal of the old comfortable relations amongst them all. When inquiries after the Hursts and Mrs. Annesley had been made, and Georgiana had mentioned the dinner-party and the persons who had been present, little more was said with reference to London; indeed, there was little more for either to say, for Georgiana dared not refer to the person who had chiefly occupied his mind there. Fitzwilliam talked of his book and of Ireland, inquired about the prospects of the shooting, showed interest in the minutest details of life in the neighbourhood, and in every way endeavoured to prove that he was exactly his old self; and only when walking with Elizabeth in the Park one morning did he betray how far that was from being the case. There was no doubt that his disappointment had coloured his whole life. He had allowed himself to think of Miss Crawford, and to build high upon his hopes, and to find himself again mistaken had been a blow which cut at the foundations of all his happiness. His gaiety was feigned, his pursuits had lost their zest, his friends no longer sufficed him: and as he said to Elizabeth, he had felt he had better adopt some country occupation and settle down to it, and there grow old as quietly and quickly as might be. Elizabeth's heart was wrung; the spectacle of her cousin's fine nature locked away, as it were, in a closed room, as a thing no one had any need for, was inexpressively painful to her, and nothing else would have caused her to venture upon a reopening of the subject which he himself had not approached. With the utmost gentleness she spoke a few words of commiseration, and then, still proceeding with extreme caution, she told him of the absence of news and her assumption that Miss Crawford's marriage with Sir Walter Elliot had been delayed. "I daresay it has," returned Colonel Fitzwilliam, with a kind of listlessness, striking with his stick at the head of some tall grasses which bordered their path. "There can be no doubt of it, I suppose?" pursued Elizabeth. "None at all, I should imagine," replied the Colonel. "Miss Crawford is not the kind of woman who would break her word, once the engagement had been announced." "No, of course not," said Elizabeth; "but I had expected that she or Mrs. Grant would have written to me, or even Mrs. Wentworth, as they must know I should be interested." Colonel Fitzwilliam could not immediately recall anything of Mrs. Wentworth beyond her name, and on being reminded that she was Sir Walter Elliot's daughter, presently replied: "I do not think it altogether surprising she should not have written to you. She probably cares little for the marriage, and still less for the one which it was anticipated would follow it--I mean Miss Elliot's to Mr. Crawford." This was a new idea to Elizabeth, and while she was pondering over it, and the inferences to be drawn from it, Colonel Fitzwilliam broke the silence by saying: "Perhaps we had better not speak of this anymore, Elizabeth. I know your great kindness of heart, but I feel it does no good, rather harm, to be reviving thoughts which I must in honour suppress as much as possible. I was anxious to know whether you had heard anything, and to ask you again, when you have the chance, to tell her that I wish her well; but now we have mentioned it, it would, I think, be best for my contemptibly weak character to put it as far away as possible." With tears in her eyes, Elizabeth assured him that through the tenderest regard for him, not through any fear of overtaxing his fortitude, she would respect his wishes, but could not help begging him to remain with them at Pemberley as heretofore, so as to give them an opportunity of showing him how completely their happiness was bound up with his, and of making use of any opportunity which might arise for them to be of service to him. Fitzwilliam gratefully promised to stay for the present, and said that his only engagement was to go to some friends in Leicestershire in November, for the hunting. Elizabeth was, nevertheless, not perfectly satisfied, and took occasion to ask Georgiana shortly afterwards whether it was from Mrs. Wentworth that she had heard confirmation of the fact that Sir Walter Elliot was engaged to Miss Crawford. "No," said Georgiana, in surprise, "it was from Mr. Price. Mrs. Wentworth never mentioned it. Mrs. Wentworth! Of course, I recollect now, she is Sir Walter Elliot's daughter; but at the time I never thought of it, for, you see, I did not know Sir Walter was the man." "Very true; I had also forgotten that you did not know," said Elizabeth, "and would never connect her with Miss Crawford. I have been thinking that I should like, for our own satisfaction, to know when the wedding is going to take place, and the simplest way will be to write and ask Mrs. Wentworth. I wish I had done so before, but I did not wish to be in haste, and I felt so convinced we should hear from others." Georgiana agreed that this was the best course to pursue, and Elizabeth, having told Darcy of her intention, to which, on account of her promise to Fitzwilliam, he could no longer object, wrote and dispatched her letter. The season was now drawing on, and with the shortening days the family at Pemberley found themselves thrown more upon the resources of their own immediate circle for amusement. The weather was consistently bad, and though this did not prevent the gentlemen from covering great distances for the purpose of slaughtering their game, the ladies were of necessity restricted to a smaller area, and their walks seldom extended beyond the park, except when their inclinations led them along a tolerably clean road towards the Rectory. This happened pretty frequently, for both Elizabeth and Georgiana were extremely attached to Elinor Ferrars. Their friendship was of a particularly sincere and well-balanced kind, and was not marred by their constant intercourse, as each knew how to maintain that degree of reserve which prevents indiscriminate confidences and so greatly strengthens mutual respect. Kitty was the one who perhaps found the society of the Rectory the least congenial; but it is to be feared that she was extremely difficult to please that autumn, and in the impatience with which she waited for one young man she might have sometimes regretted the solace which the company of the other would have afforded. In such a small neighbourhood everyone was of some value, and they all heard with interest of the approaching visit to Mr. and Mrs. Edward Ferrars of an old friend, Mrs. Jennings, who was coming early in October to spend six or seven weeks with them. Mrs. Ferrars was in delicate health, and Mrs. Jennings, besides having an almost maternal affection for her, was well qualified to be of service as sick nurse and enlivening companion, so that Elinor's warning to Mrs. Darcy that her friend, although the kindest of women, had not always the most refined manner of expressing herself, did not prevent them from being anxious to make her acquaintance. Mrs. Jennings performed in safety the long journey from her son-in-law's house in Devonshire, and arrived in her customary high spirits. It was her first visit to the Ferrars's since their removal from Delaford, and she had to examine the house, to criticize minutely the arrangement of their furniture, and to compare their surroundings, social and material, with what they had been in their old home. Mrs. Darcy paid an early call on the new arrival, and the morning after her visit Georgiana and Kitty also found their way to the Rectory. Mrs. Jennings's exuberance, her loud laugh and general noisy cheerfulness did not recommend her strongly to either of the girls in the first few minutes, and Georgiana was glad to move to a chair by Mrs. Ferrars, to enter into a quieter conversation with her; but before long, judging by the sounds which reached them, Mrs. Jennings and Kitty had found some subjects in common. This perhaps was not so surprising, as Mrs. Jennings was exceedingly fond of the society of all young girls, and cared not at all whether they returned her partiality or no. In this case she had begun, with the utmost frankness, to discourse on the subject nearest her heart at the moment, namely, her dear Mrs. Ferrars, and was relating all the circumstances under which their friendship had been formed, the Dashwood girls' visit to London, the disagreeable conduct of Mrs. Ferrars's mother and sister, and the absurd misunderstanding as to Colonel Brandon's attentions, the whole being punctuated by frequent bursts of laughter; and she would doubtless have gone on to describe in detail the events attending the engagement of her two young friends, had not Elinor mildly but decisively interposed. "Dear madam," she said, breaking off in the midst of a remark to Georgiana, "I am sure Miss Bennet does not wish to hear the history of such a very dull old couple as ourselves. You are so kind as to be more interested in it than most people could be." "Lord, my dear," cried Mrs. Jennings, "why did you not stop me? I declare I am very sorry if I said a word I ought not. I know my tongue does run on, and Miss Bennet must excuse me, for it was only for the pleasure of talking to you and Mr. Edward. And as for its being dull, I don't believe there is anybody who does not like to hear of other people's love-affairs; it makes one think of one's own, now, does it not, Miss Bennet?" Kitty blushed and looked embarrassed, and Mrs. Jennings laughed heartily, saying: "It is just as I thought; Miss Bennet could tell us a pretty tale too, I'll be bound, if only she would." "Miss Bennet can tell us some wonderful tales of the West Indies," said Elinor, endeavouring to turn Mrs. Jennings's mind from her favourite topic; "she has a sister there, who writes to her constantly, does she not, Miss Bennet? Those tropical places must be very beautiful. Do you remember how Colonel Brandon used to talk to us of his travels in the East, ma'am?" "That I do, my dear," replied Mrs. Jennings emphatically, "and I never want to hear again of such fearful things as he had seen--swamps, and great things like alligators ... and insects that did everything insects ought not. I hope you will tell your sister not to get amongst them, Miss Bennet." Kitty replied that her sister had written chiefly of the beautiful balls and illuminations which they frequently had, and lately of some shocks of earthquake which had frightened them terribly. Mrs. Jennings exclaimed at this, and declared that the finest ball in the world would not compensate her if there was the fear that the ground would open under her feet while she was dancing. "But I know young people do not care what risks they run," said she. "There was Sir John Middleton three weeks ago wanted to have a moonlight picnic; my daughter Middleton was all against it, for the weather was so threatening, but have it he would, and the consequence was that they all ate their supper, or as much of it as they could, in a roaring thunderstorm. I can tell you they were in a pretty pickle when they got back! All the girls so cross, and the young men not a dry thread among them through trying to protect the ladies. But Sir John, he made no bones about it at all, but said they would go again another night, when for sure it would be fine." Her hearers could not help laughing at such a picture of undaunted pleasure-seeking, and Elinor inquired if the second party had taken place. "Oh, Lord, yes; they all came, but their fathers and mothers made them promise not to stir beyond the grounds. I heard, at any rate, they turned it into a dance instead. But, as I say, young people don't care for a drop of rain. I am sure, when I was young, I would as lief have had it as not, for there was no hardship in sheltering under a hedge, with the right young man to hold an umbrella over you, do you think so, Miss Bennet?" "Still, I fancy that most people, old or young, prefer outdoor expeditions to be in dry weather," said Elinor. "That reminds me that I must show you what terrible havoc last night's rain and wind worked in my flower borders. When I looked out first, I was quite in despair, thinking I should not have another nosegay all the autumn. There is a gleam of sunshine now, so shall we take a turn in the garden?" Georgiana gladly walked out with her, and Mrs. Jennings and Kitty followed at a distance, the former questioning her young companion about her sister abroad and hearing laments over the gaieties which that sister had been able to offer her, but which she had never been able to accept. Mrs. Jennings's hearty comments of "Well, there now, that is a shame!" and "A regiment too! You would have broken all their hearts, I vow!" and other such remarks pleased Kitty, while she knew in her heart they ought not to do so. The two girls shortly after took their leave, and while walking homeward naturally compared notes upon the stranger whom they had just met. Georgiana expressed herself guardedly, not wishing to condemn any friend of Mrs. Ferrars's, although feeling as if that friend could not be in any way an accession to their party; but Kitty's first unfavorable impression seemed to have been obliterated, and she declared frankly that she liked Mrs. Jennings and thought she was very merry and good-natured. Georgiana could not quite agree with this, for she found Mrs. Jennings's style of raillery not at all to her mind, but admitted that she might be pleasanter when one got to know her well. At dinner these opinions were canvassed, and Georgiana found, as she expected, that her own were largely shared by Elizabeth, who, however, was amused at her severity, and told her that she would often meet people who, with more refined manners, were yet at heart far more vulgar than Mrs. Jennings and had not a tenth part of her redeeming qualities. "I do not think I want to meet them, then," said Georgiana. "But I am sure you are right, Elizabeth, and I daresay she will be a great comfort to Mrs. Ferrars." When the ladies were together after dinner, Kitty, whose gravity and preoccupation had been noticeable for the last half-hour, after wandering several times round the room, stationed herself near to her sister and began, in a solemn tone: "Lizzie, I want to ask you something very important." Elizabeth, smiling, professed herself all attention, and Kitty continued: "You know you have never kept your promise, that you made before you were married, of having a ball here, for each winter something has happened to prevent it." "Quite true, Kitty; so a ball is in your mind; and what made you think of it just now?" "I never come here without thinking of it, but I had somehow not expected to be staying long enough this year, as I imagined I should go home directly after the shooting party. But Mrs. Jennings said to-day she supposed you sometimes had balls in this lovely house, and she was sure Georgiana and I were fond of dancing." "And Mrs. Jennings is quite right about the latter statement, is she not?" Georgiana looked up with a smile, to assent to her share of the question, and Kitty clasped her hands rapturously, exclaiming: "Oh, Lizzie, you know how much I love a ball! It would be so kind of you and Darcy! Everyone would enjoy it!" "I am very

rupture

How many times the word 'rupture' appears in the text?

will do it, but life is so uncertain that I think for the present I had better refrain. Have you ascertained whether Kitty can cook, make her own gowns, and trim hats? I understand it is a great promoter of married happiness when the wife can do so, and I am not sure whether all my girls have turned their education to such good account." Mr. Morland only replied by asking if he might be allowed to see Miss Bennet at once, and her father left the room, foreseeing that, whatever happened, he should not have one more quiet hour during that day. His anticipations were soon in the way to be fulfilled, for on finding his daughters, and sending Kitty to the library, he had to give Jane an outline of what had just passed, then repeat it to Bingley, who joined them, and listened to their exclamations of surprise, and regret at the probable downfall of Mr. Morland's hopes. Jane and Bingley were both too convinced of Kitty's prior attachment to have the slightest expectation of his success, and Mr. Bennet was put in full possession of the facts relating to it, while they anxiously awaited the termination of the interview. It came, after some minutes, in a glimpse of Kitty emerging from the library and hurrying upstairs with streaming eyes, and while they all debated as to their next move, Mr. Morland was seen to cross the hall rapidly, looking nowhere but in front of him, and leave the house with precipitation. Jane herself, almost equally distressed, longed to go to Kitty, and Bingley questioned whether he ought not to hasten after the young man, while Mr. Bennet was disposed to think they would be better left to themselves for a time, and wished heartily that there were only just enough lovers in the world to go round, one to each young lady, and none over. In spite of this, Jane was not long in finding her way to her agitated sister and in showing her the tenderest consideration. Kitty's distress was very great, and also very sincere, for she had in truth been far from guessing that Mr. Morland took a more than common interest in her, and as is usual in such cases, the declaration of the young man's love woke in her feelings which she had not known to exist, of reciprocal kindness and even affection, which only did not share the nature and strength of his. Kitty could never have been hard-hearted to any lover, least of all to one whom she liked as much as she did James Morland, and his devotion touched her as deeply as the knowledge that she could not accept it wounded her. Between regrets for what had happened, pity for him and for herself, and the excited thoughts of William Price which the incident itself was bound to evoke, she was in a sad state, and Jane easily prevailed upon her to have her dinner upstairs and go early to bed. Not so easily could she check the tears which flowed continuously, and Jane, to occupy her mind and body, proposed that she should go to-morrow to Pemberley, instead of in three days' time, as arranged; she could very well be sent over, and the change would be beneficial; besides, she was not really leaving them, for there was the November visit to look forward to. Kitty caught at the suggestion, and declining the offices of the maid, began to busy herself about her packing, as Jane hoped she would do, while the latter descended to consult with her husband and father. Mr. Bennet and Bingley both approved, and Jane hastily wrote a few lines to Elizabeth to apprise her of what had happened, that she might be prepared for Kitty's arrival. The two gentlemen walked to the nearest post town to convey the letter; and after dinner the indefatigable Bingley again set out, this time to the Rectory, to perform the same kind office by James Morland as his wife had been doing by Kitty. The young man, though calmer, proved far more unreceptive of consolation. He had felt his rebuff acutely, for Kitty had been too much taken by surprise, too sure of herself, to make it otherwise than decisive, and even the modest hopes he had ventured to entertain, of being able to make more progress with her once the subject was opened between them, had been most thoroughly dispelled. Miss Bennet would not hear another word of it--begged him never to speak of it again--with tears reproached him for having spoilt everything, so that in addition to his own disappointment he had the pain of feeling that she thought less well of him than before. Bingley could deny this, but could not affirm anything else likely to give him comfort. It remained for Morland himself to declare, which he did in a firm though melancholy tone, that he regretted having distressed Miss Bennet, and would endeavour so to meet her in the future that she would not suffer through being reminded of it by any act of word of his. Bingley commended his courage, told him of Kitty's departure, and begged him to continue coming to Desborough just the same; and walked home with a full report of what had just passed. Jane shook her head over it, for, while sympathizing with both, she was more truly sorry for Mr. Morland, since for him she could see no immediate prospect of compensation, in spite of her father's assurances that a young clergyman was seldom allowed to remain inconsolable for more than six months, and if Kitty's other young man only did what was expected of him, her fate would be a certainty in half that time. Chapter XIII Needless to say, Kitty was heartily welcomed by Georgiana and Elizabeth, and given every opportunity to relieve her mind by descriptions of the tragical affair in all its aspects. Both regretted it deeply for Mr. Morland's sake, and Elizabeth privately did so for Kitty's sake, having such a good opinion of him as to make her wish that Kitty could have been persuaded out of her fancy for a young man, who, however excellent, was comparatively a stranger to them all, and whose intentions, at present, were extremely uncertain. She would have rejoiced if Kitty and Morland could have made each other happy, and had entertained a slight hope that her hint to Kitty might perhaps have helped matters, in directing her thoughts into another channel, but it seemed to be of no avail, and Georgiana gave her friend her warmest support, implying entire agreement with her point of view. "I could not help it, now, could I, Georgiana? You know yourself, Lizzie, that I never dreamt it. How could I do anything else but refuse him outright? I was amazingly grieved to do so, but you know very well, Georgiana, that if I could think of one man more than another, _he_ is not that one." She paused for assent, which Georgiana gave by a silent caress, and then continued: "It is all so unfortunate. It will never be as pleasant at Desborough now. Poor Mr. Morland! I wish I had not had to hurt him. He does want someone so badly in the Rectory." "Well, my dear, do not make yourself ill with these vain regrets," said Elizabeth. "It is, as you say, very unfortunate, but no one blames you. If you could not care for him, you could not do it, and someone else will have to inhabit that nice Rectory." Kitty looked as if this prospect were not very pleasing either, but Georgiana, seeing what Elizabeth wished, began to talk cheerfully of something else, and Kitty gradually joined in, though whenever the two girls were alone together she found it difficult to abstain long from referring to some branch of the subject. Georgiana's loyalty and patience never failed, but she wished for November almost as earnestly as Kitty herself, so that matters might reach some definite conclusion, for Kitty's restlessness had considerably increased since she had received James Morland's offer, and she was constantly nervous and excitable and not mistress of herself. On the day when the Bingleys and Mr. Bennet came over for the latter to take leave before returning to Longbourn, this was specially noticeable in her state of anxious flutter when drawing Jane aside to inquire after Mr. Morland. Mr. Bennet bade her farewell gravely and more affectionately than was his wont, telling her that he left her in good hands, and would only give her one piece of advice, namely, that second thoughts were sometimes best. Kitty blushed deeply and could not pretend to misunderstand him, but told Georgiana afterwards that it was impossible to have better second thoughts when Price was the first. With his elder daughter Mr. Bennet was rather more explicit, telling Elizabeth that he considered it was a great pity that so unobjectionable a young man should have been sent about his business. Elizabeth entirely agreed with him, and thought it would not be going too far to express Mr. Morland's praise in even warmer terms. "He will never set the Thames on fire, but there seems good stuff in him," was Mr. Bennet's reply. "When he proposed for her I had not taken much notice of him, except to think him a tolerably sensible fellow, and of course I had to readjust my ideas; but I soon began to see that he must not be judged by that alone. I have really liked him better, too, for his way of taking his refusal." "My dear father, it does not always indicate a want of sense to wish to be married," interposed Elizabeth. "Perhaps not, but Morland is much better off as he is than in marrying a girl he knows so little about. Kitty is flighty and expensive; she ought to stay longer with you and Jane, and not think of being married for the next ten years." Elizabeth smiled and said she thought that it was unnecessary, but that it would certainly be better for Kitty to marry a clergyman than an officer in the navy, who would be compelled to spend long periods away from home. "As to that, of course it is a complete absurdity, and I cannot think why you women, who are so fond of making matches, did not originate something less ridiculously unsuitable among yourselves." Elizabeth thought it wiser not to explain who actually had originated the idea, and said after a pause: "You were saying that you have liked Mr. Morland better of late?" "Yes, he has positively shown some sort of self-command and dignity. He turned up at the house a day or two afterwards, apparently _not_ bent on making us all uncomfortable by the sight of his misery, as most rejected lovers do. Besides, Bingley had had the foresight to produce some excellent port." "I hear from Jane," said Elizabeth, "that he does not avoid or seek the mention of Kitty, and she thinks he is trying to give up all hope of her." "Her absence for a few weeks will no doubt materially assist him," said Mr. Bennet. Kitty seized the opportunity offered by this visit to speak a private word to her brother-in-law with reference to the hero, as Bingley persisted in calling him. She herself had no news, for Mrs. Knightley's frequent letters reported him still at Portsmouth, and Bingley had heard nothing, but promised to write and renew his invitation as soon as October was fairly in. The same silence prevailed at Pemberley with regard to Miss Crawford. No announcement of her marriage had reached any of them, and Elizabeth had a half inclination to make some inquiries, but was dissuaded by Darcy, who said: "Whatever precisely has happened, Elizabeth, we can be sure of one thing, that Miss Crawford has allowed Fitzwilliam to understand that she does not wish him to approach her again. Under these circumstances it is better that you should have no news to give him." Elizabeth sighed as she agreed to the wisdom of this decision, but when shortly after her father's departure a letter was received from Colonel Fitzwilliam to say he would be returning at the end of the month, she could not help wishing that she was more fully informed of the present state of affairs. It would be a relief, even though a sad one, to Fitzwilliam's mind to know that Miss Crawford was actually married and he would be unselfish enough to wish to hear that she was happy. Nothing occurred, however, to enlighten them, and Fitzwilliam arrived on the appointed day, looking much as usual except for a few more lines about the eyes and an increased number of grey hairs. It was the first time he and Georgiana had been together at Pemberley since the rupture of their engagement, and both must have felt conscious of it, Georgiana in particular being prepared to be miserable for a time, from the belief that her cousin, instead of being cheered and invigorated as formerly by his return home, must be reminded at every turn of the failure of their experiment, the failure caused by her wretched weakness and incapacity. Worse still, her brother must be reminded of it, and there might be a repetition of his stern looks, his cold manner. She trembled at the thought, unaware that Darcy had long been persuaded of the wisdom of their parting, ever since events in Bath had shown him where his cousin's real affections were likely to be bestowed, and the only difference which Georgiana perceived after Fitzwilliam's arrival was in the particular kindness he showed her, and the complete renewal of the old comfortable relations amongst them all. When inquiries after the Hursts and Mrs. Annesley had been made, and Georgiana had mentioned the dinner-party and the persons who had been present, little more was said with reference to London; indeed, there was little more for either to say, for Georgiana dared not refer to the person who had chiefly occupied his mind there. Fitzwilliam talked of his book and of Ireland, inquired about the prospects of the shooting, showed interest in the minutest details of life in the neighbourhood, and in every way endeavoured to prove that he was exactly his old self; and only when walking with Elizabeth in the Park one morning did he betray how far that was from being the case. There was no doubt that his disappointment had coloured his whole life. He had allowed himself to think of Miss Crawford, and to build high upon his hopes, and to find himself again mistaken had been a blow which cut at the foundations of all his happiness. His gaiety was feigned, his pursuits had lost their zest, his friends no longer sufficed him: and as he said to Elizabeth, he had felt he had better adopt some country occupation and settle down to it, and there grow old as quietly and quickly as might be. Elizabeth's heart was wrung; the spectacle of her cousin's fine nature locked away, as it were, in a closed room, as a thing no one had any need for, was inexpressively painful to her, and nothing else would have caused her to venture upon a reopening of the subject which he himself had not approached. With the utmost gentleness she spoke a few words of commiseration, and then, still proceeding with extreme caution, she told him of the absence of news and her assumption that Miss Crawford's marriage with Sir Walter Elliot had been delayed. "I daresay it has," returned Colonel Fitzwilliam, with a kind of listlessness, striking with his stick at the head of some tall grasses which bordered their path. "There can be no doubt of it, I suppose?" pursued Elizabeth. "None at all, I should imagine," replied the Colonel. "Miss Crawford is not the kind of woman who would break her word, once the engagement had been announced." "No, of course not," said Elizabeth; "but I had expected that she or Mrs. Grant would have written to me, or even Mrs. Wentworth, as they must know I should be interested." Colonel Fitzwilliam could not immediately recall anything of Mrs. Wentworth beyond her name, and on being reminded that she was Sir Walter Elliot's daughter, presently replied: "I do not think it altogether surprising she should not have written to you. She probably cares little for the marriage, and still less for the one which it was anticipated would follow it--I mean Miss Elliot's to Mr. Crawford." This was a new idea to Elizabeth, and while she was pondering over it, and the inferences to be drawn from it, Colonel Fitzwilliam broke the silence by saying: "Perhaps we had better not speak of this anymore, Elizabeth. I know your great kindness of heart, but I feel it does no good, rather harm, to be reviving thoughts which I must in honour suppress as much as possible. I was anxious to know whether you had heard anything, and to ask you again, when you have the chance, to tell her that I wish her well; but now we have mentioned it, it would, I think, be best for my contemptibly weak character to put it as far away as possible." With tears in her eyes, Elizabeth assured him that through the tenderest regard for him, not through any fear of overtaxing his fortitude, she would respect his wishes, but could not help begging him to remain with them at Pemberley as heretofore, so as to give them an opportunity of showing him how completely their happiness was bound up with his, and of making use of any opportunity which might arise for them to be of service to him. Fitzwilliam gratefully promised to stay for the present, and said that his only engagement was to go to some friends in Leicestershire in November, for the hunting. Elizabeth was, nevertheless, not perfectly satisfied, and took occasion to ask Georgiana shortly afterwards whether it was from Mrs. Wentworth that she had heard confirmation of the fact that Sir Walter Elliot was engaged to Miss Crawford. "No," said Georgiana, in surprise, "it was from Mr. Price. Mrs. Wentworth never mentioned it. Mrs. Wentworth! Of course, I recollect now, she is Sir Walter Elliot's daughter; but at the time I never thought of it, for, you see, I did not know Sir Walter was the man." "Very true; I had also forgotten that you did not know," said Elizabeth, "and would never connect her with Miss Crawford. I have been thinking that I should like, for our own satisfaction, to know when the wedding is going to take place, and the simplest way will be to write and ask Mrs. Wentworth. I wish I had done so before, but I did not wish to be in haste, and I felt so convinced we should hear from others." Georgiana agreed that this was the best course to pursue, and Elizabeth, having told Darcy of her intention, to which, on account of her promise to Fitzwilliam, he could no longer object, wrote and dispatched her letter. The season was now drawing on, and with the shortening days the family at Pemberley found themselves thrown more upon the resources of their own immediate circle for amusement. The weather was consistently bad, and though this did not prevent the gentlemen from covering great distances for the purpose of slaughtering their game, the ladies were of necessity restricted to a smaller area, and their walks seldom extended beyond the park, except when their inclinations led them along a tolerably clean road towards the Rectory. This happened pretty frequently, for both Elizabeth and Georgiana were extremely attached to Elinor Ferrars. Their friendship was of a particularly sincere and well-balanced kind, and was not marred by their constant intercourse, as each knew how to maintain that degree of reserve which prevents indiscriminate confidences and so greatly strengthens mutual respect. Kitty was the one who perhaps found the society of the Rectory the least congenial; but it is to be feared that she was extremely difficult to please that autumn, and in the impatience with which she waited for one young man she might have sometimes regretted the solace which the company of the other would have afforded. In such a small neighbourhood everyone was of some value, and they all heard with interest of the approaching visit to Mr. and Mrs. Edward Ferrars of an old friend, Mrs. Jennings, who was coming early in October to spend six or seven weeks with them. Mrs. Ferrars was in delicate health, and Mrs. Jennings, besides having an almost maternal affection for her, was well qualified to be of service as sick nurse and enlivening companion, so that Elinor's warning to Mrs. Darcy that her friend, although the kindest of women, had not always the most refined manner of expressing herself, did not prevent them from being anxious to make her acquaintance. Mrs. Jennings performed in safety the long journey from her son-in-law's house in Devonshire, and arrived in her customary high spirits. It was her first visit to the Ferrars's since their removal from Delaford, and she had to examine the house, to criticize minutely the arrangement of their furniture, and to compare their surroundings, social and material, with what they had been in their old home. Mrs. Darcy paid an early call on the new arrival, and the morning after her visit Georgiana and Kitty also found their way to the Rectory. Mrs. Jennings's exuberance, her loud laugh and general noisy cheerfulness did not recommend her strongly to either of the girls in the first few minutes, and Georgiana was glad to move to a chair by Mrs. Ferrars, to enter into a quieter conversation with her; but before long, judging by the sounds which reached them, Mrs. Jennings and Kitty had found some subjects in common. This perhaps was not so surprising, as Mrs. Jennings was exceedingly fond of the society of all young girls, and cared not at all whether they returned her partiality or no. In this case she had begun, with the utmost frankness, to discourse on the subject nearest her heart at the moment, namely, her dear Mrs. Ferrars, and was relating all the circumstances under which their friendship had been formed, the Dashwood girls' visit to London, the disagreeable conduct of Mrs. Ferrars's mother and sister, and the absurd misunderstanding as to Colonel Brandon's attentions, the whole being punctuated by frequent bursts of laughter; and she would doubtless have gone on to describe in detail the events attending the engagement of her two young friends, had not Elinor mildly but decisively interposed. "Dear madam," she said, breaking off in the midst of a remark to Georgiana, "I am sure Miss Bennet does not wish to hear the history of such a very dull old couple as ourselves. You are so kind as to be more interested in it than most people could be." "Lord, my dear," cried Mrs. Jennings, "why did you not stop me? I declare I am very sorry if I said a word I ought not. I know my tongue does run on, and Miss Bennet must excuse me, for it was only for the pleasure of talking to you and Mr. Edward. And as for its being dull, I don't believe there is anybody who does not like to hear of other people's love-affairs; it makes one think of one's own, now, does it not, Miss Bennet?" Kitty blushed and looked embarrassed, and Mrs. Jennings laughed heartily, saying: "It is just as I thought; Miss Bennet could tell us a pretty tale too, I'll be bound, if only she would." "Miss Bennet can tell us some wonderful tales of the West Indies," said Elinor, endeavouring to turn Mrs. Jennings's mind from her favourite topic; "she has a sister there, who writes to her constantly, does she not, Miss Bennet? Those tropical places must be very beautiful. Do you remember how Colonel Brandon used to talk to us of his travels in the East, ma'am?" "That I do, my dear," replied Mrs. Jennings emphatically, "and I never want to hear again of such fearful things as he had seen--swamps, and great things like alligators ... and insects that did everything insects ought not. I hope you will tell your sister not to get amongst them, Miss Bennet." Kitty replied that her sister had written chiefly of the beautiful balls and illuminations which they frequently had, and lately of some shocks of earthquake which had frightened them terribly. Mrs. Jennings exclaimed at this, and declared that the finest ball in the world would not compensate her if there was the fear that the ground would open under her feet while she was dancing. "But I know young people do not care what risks they run," said she. "There was Sir John Middleton three weeks ago wanted to have a moonlight picnic; my daughter Middleton was all against it, for the weather was so threatening, but have it he would, and the consequence was that they all ate their supper, or as much of it as they could, in a roaring thunderstorm. I can tell you they were in a pretty pickle when they got back! All the girls so cross, and the young men not a dry thread among them through trying to protect the ladies. But Sir John, he made no bones about it at all, but said they would go again another night, when for sure it would be fine." Her hearers could not help laughing at such a picture of undaunted pleasure-seeking, and Elinor inquired if the second party had taken place. "Oh, Lord, yes; they all came, but their fathers and mothers made them promise not to stir beyond the grounds. I heard, at any rate, they turned it into a dance instead. But, as I say, young people don't care for a drop of rain. I am sure, when I was young, I would as lief have had it as not, for there was no hardship in sheltering under a hedge, with the right young man to hold an umbrella over you, do you think so, Miss Bennet?" "Still, I fancy that most people, old or young, prefer outdoor expeditions to be in dry weather," said Elinor. "That reminds me that I must show you what terrible havoc last night's rain and wind worked in my flower borders. When I looked out first, I was quite in despair, thinking I should not have another nosegay all the autumn. There is a gleam of sunshine now, so shall we take a turn in the garden?" Georgiana gladly walked out with her, and Mrs. Jennings and Kitty followed at a distance, the former questioning her young companion about her sister abroad and hearing laments over the gaieties which that sister had been able to offer her, but which she had never been able to accept. Mrs. Jennings's hearty comments of "Well, there now, that is a shame!" and "A regiment too! You would have broken all their hearts, I vow!" and other such remarks pleased Kitty, while she knew in her heart they ought not to do so. The two girls shortly after took their leave, and while walking homeward naturally compared notes upon the stranger whom they had just met. Georgiana expressed herself guardedly, not wishing to condemn any friend of Mrs. Ferrars's, although feeling as if that friend could not be in any way an accession to their party; but Kitty's first unfavorable impression seemed to have been obliterated, and she declared frankly that she liked Mrs. Jennings and thought she was very merry and good-natured. Georgiana could not quite agree with this, for she found Mrs. Jennings's style of raillery not at all to her mind, but admitted that she might be pleasanter when one got to know her well. At dinner these opinions were canvassed, and Georgiana found, as she expected, that her own were largely shared by Elizabeth, who, however, was amused at her severity, and told her that she would often meet people who, with more refined manners, were yet at heart far more vulgar than Mrs. Jennings and had not a tenth part of her redeeming qualities. "I do not think I want to meet them, then," said Georgiana. "But I am sure you are right, Elizabeth, and I daresay she will be a great comfort to Mrs. Ferrars." When the ladies were together after dinner, Kitty, whose gravity and preoccupation had been noticeable for the last half-hour, after wandering several times round the room, stationed herself near to her sister and began, in a solemn tone: "Lizzie, I want to ask you something very important." Elizabeth, smiling, professed herself all attention, and Kitty continued: "You know you have never kept your promise, that you made before you were married, of having a ball here, for each winter something has happened to prevent it." "Quite true, Kitty; so a ball is in your mind; and what made you think of it just now?" "I never come here without thinking of it, but I had somehow not expected to be staying long enough this year, as I imagined I should go home directly after the shooting party. But Mrs. Jennings said to-day she supposed you sometimes had balls in this lovely house, and she was sure Georgiana and I were fond of dancing." "And Mrs. Jennings is quite right about the latter statement, is she not?" Georgiana looked up with a smile, to assent to her share of the question, and Kitty clasped her hands rapturously, exclaiming: "Oh, Lizzie, you know how much I love a ball! It would be so kind of you and Darcy! Everyone would enjoy it!" "I am very

lard

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will do it, but life is so uncertain that I think for the present I had better refrain. Have you ascertained whether Kitty can cook, make her own gowns, and trim hats? I understand it is a great promoter of married happiness when the wife can do so, and I am not sure whether all my girls have turned their education to such good account." Mr. Morland only replied by asking if he might be allowed to see Miss Bennet at once, and her father left the room, foreseeing that, whatever happened, he should not have one more quiet hour during that day. His anticipations were soon in the way to be fulfilled, for on finding his daughters, and sending Kitty to the library, he had to give Jane an outline of what had just passed, then repeat it to Bingley, who joined them, and listened to their exclamations of surprise, and regret at the probable downfall of Mr. Morland's hopes. Jane and Bingley were both too convinced of Kitty's prior attachment to have the slightest expectation of his success, and Mr. Bennet was put in full possession of the facts relating to it, while they anxiously awaited the termination of the interview. It came, after some minutes, in a glimpse of Kitty emerging from the library and hurrying upstairs with streaming eyes, and while they all debated as to their next move, Mr. Morland was seen to cross the hall rapidly, looking nowhere but in front of him, and leave the house with precipitation. Jane herself, almost equally distressed, longed to go to Kitty, and Bingley questioned whether he ought not to hasten after the young man, while Mr. Bennet was disposed to think they would be better left to themselves for a time, and wished heartily that there were only just enough lovers in the world to go round, one to each young lady, and none over. In spite of this, Jane was not long in finding her way to her agitated sister and in showing her the tenderest consideration. Kitty's distress was very great, and also very sincere, for she had in truth been far from guessing that Mr. Morland took a more than common interest in her, and as is usual in such cases, the declaration of the young man's love woke in her feelings which she had not known to exist, of reciprocal kindness and even affection, which only did not share the nature and strength of his. Kitty could never have been hard-hearted to any lover, least of all to one whom she liked as much as she did James Morland, and his devotion touched her as deeply as the knowledge that she could not accept it wounded her. Between regrets for what had happened, pity for him and for herself, and the excited thoughts of William Price which the incident itself was bound to evoke, she was in a sad state, and Jane easily prevailed upon her to have her dinner upstairs and go early to bed. Not so easily could she check the tears which flowed continuously, and Jane, to occupy her mind and body, proposed that she should go to-morrow to Pemberley, instead of in three days' time, as arranged; she could very well be sent over, and the change would be beneficial; besides, she was not really leaving them, for there was the November visit to look forward to. Kitty caught at the suggestion, and declining the offices of the maid, began to busy herself about her packing, as Jane hoped she would do, while the latter descended to consult with her husband and father. Mr. Bennet and Bingley both approved, and Jane hastily wrote a few lines to Elizabeth to apprise her of what had happened, that she might be prepared for Kitty's arrival. The two gentlemen walked to the nearest post town to convey the letter; and after dinner the indefatigable Bingley again set out, this time to the Rectory, to perform the same kind office by James Morland as his wife had been doing by Kitty. The young man, though calmer, proved far more unreceptive of consolation. He had felt his rebuff acutely, for Kitty had been too much taken by surprise, too sure of herself, to make it otherwise than decisive, and even the modest hopes he had ventured to entertain, of being able to make more progress with her once the subject was opened between them, had been most thoroughly dispelled. Miss Bennet would not hear another word of it--begged him never to speak of it again--with tears reproached him for having spoilt everything, so that in addition to his own disappointment he had the pain of feeling that she thought less well of him than before. Bingley could deny this, but could not affirm anything else likely to give him comfort. It remained for Morland himself to declare, which he did in a firm though melancholy tone, that he regretted having distressed Miss Bennet, and would endeavour so to meet her in the future that she would not suffer through being reminded of it by any act of word of his. Bingley commended his courage, told him of Kitty's departure, and begged him to continue coming to Desborough just the same; and walked home with a full report of what had just passed. Jane shook her head over it, for, while sympathizing with both, she was more truly sorry for Mr. Morland, since for him she could see no immediate prospect of compensation, in spite of her father's assurances that a young clergyman was seldom allowed to remain inconsolable for more than six months, and if Kitty's other young man only did what was expected of him, her fate would be a certainty in half that time. Chapter XIII Needless to say, Kitty was heartily welcomed by Georgiana and Elizabeth, and given every opportunity to relieve her mind by descriptions of the tragical affair in all its aspects. Both regretted it deeply for Mr. Morland's sake, and Elizabeth privately did so for Kitty's sake, having such a good opinion of him as to make her wish that Kitty could have been persuaded out of her fancy for a young man, who, however excellent, was comparatively a stranger to them all, and whose intentions, at present, were extremely uncertain. She would have rejoiced if Kitty and Morland could have made each other happy, and had entertained a slight hope that her hint to Kitty might perhaps have helped matters, in directing her thoughts into another channel, but it seemed to be of no avail, and Georgiana gave her friend her warmest support, implying entire agreement with her point of view. "I could not help it, now, could I, Georgiana? You know yourself, Lizzie, that I never dreamt it. How could I do anything else but refuse him outright? I was amazingly grieved to do so, but you know very well, Georgiana, that if I could think of one man more than another, _he_ is not that one." She paused for assent, which Georgiana gave by a silent caress, and then continued: "It is all so unfortunate. It will never be as pleasant at Desborough now. Poor Mr. Morland! I wish I had not had to hurt him. He does want someone so badly in the Rectory." "Well, my dear, do not make yourself ill with these vain regrets," said Elizabeth. "It is, as you say, very unfortunate, but no one blames you. If you could not care for him, you could not do it, and someone else will have to inhabit that nice Rectory." Kitty looked as if this prospect were not very pleasing either, but Georgiana, seeing what Elizabeth wished, began to talk cheerfully of something else, and Kitty gradually joined in, though whenever the two girls were alone together she found it difficult to abstain long from referring to some branch of the subject. Georgiana's loyalty and patience never failed, but she wished for November almost as earnestly as Kitty herself, so that matters might reach some definite conclusion, for Kitty's restlessness had considerably increased since she had received James Morland's offer, and she was constantly nervous and excitable and not mistress of herself. On the day when the Bingleys and Mr. Bennet came over for the latter to take leave before returning to Longbourn, this was specially noticeable in her state of anxious flutter when drawing Jane aside to inquire after Mr. Morland. Mr. Bennet bade her farewell gravely and more affectionately than was his wont, telling her that he left her in good hands, and would only give her one piece of advice, namely, that second thoughts were sometimes best. Kitty blushed deeply and could not pretend to misunderstand him, but told Georgiana afterwards that it was impossible to have better second thoughts when Price was the first. With his elder daughter Mr. Bennet was rather more explicit, telling Elizabeth that he considered it was a great pity that so unobjectionable a young man should have been sent about his business. Elizabeth entirely agreed with him, and thought it would not be going too far to express Mr. Morland's praise in even warmer terms. "He will never set the Thames on fire, but there seems good stuff in him," was Mr. Bennet's reply. "When he proposed for her I had not taken much notice of him, except to think him a tolerably sensible fellow, and of course I had to readjust my ideas; but I soon began to see that he must not be judged by that alone. I have really liked him better, too, for his way of taking his refusal." "My dear father, it does not always indicate a want of sense to wish to be married," interposed Elizabeth. "Perhaps not, but Morland is much better off as he is than in marrying a girl he knows so little about. Kitty is flighty and expensive; she ought to stay longer with you and Jane, and not think of being married for the next ten years." Elizabeth smiled and said she thought that it was unnecessary, but that it would certainly be better for Kitty to marry a clergyman than an officer in the navy, who would be compelled to spend long periods away from home. "As to that, of course it is a complete absurdity, and I cannot think why you women, who are so fond of making matches, did not originate something less ridiculously unsuitable among yourselves." Elizabeth thought it wiser not to explain who actually had originated the idea, and said after a pause: "You were saying that you have liked Mr. Morland better of late?" "Yes, he has positively shown some sort of self-command and dignity. He turned up at the house a day or two afterwards, apparently _not_ bent on making us all uncomfortable by the sight of his misery, as most rejected lovers do. Besides, Bingley had had the foresight to produce some excellent port." "I hear from Jane," said Elizabeth, "that he does not avoid or seek the mention of Kitty, and she thinks he is trying to give up all hope of her." "Her absence for a few weeks will no doubt materially assist him," said Mr. Bennet. Kitty seized the opportunity offered by this visit to speak a private word to her brother-in-law with reference to the hero, as Bingley persisted in calling him. She herself had no news, for Mrs. Knightley's frequent letters reported him still at Portsmouth, and Bingley had heard nothing, but promised to write and renew his invitation as soon as October was fairly in. The same silence prevailed at Pemberley with regard to Miss Crawford. No announcement of her marriage had reached any of them, and Elizabeth had a half inclination to make some inquiries, but was dissuaded by Darcy, who said: "Whatever precisely has happened, Elizabeth, we can be sure of one thing, that Miss Crawford has allowed Fitzwilliam to understand that she does not wish him to approach her again. Under these circumstances it is better that you should have no news to give him." Elizabeth sighed as she agreed to the wisdom of this decision, but when shortly after her father's departure a letter was received from Colonel Fitzwilliam to say he would be returning at the end of the month, she could not help wishing that she was more fully informed of the present state of affairs. It would be a relief, even though a sad one, to Fitzwilliam's mind to know that Miss Crawford was actually married and he would be unselfish enough to wish to hear that she was happy. Nothing occurred, however, to enlighten them, and Fitzwilliam arrived on the appointed day, looking much as usual except for a few more lines about the eyes and an increased number of grey hairs. It was the first time he and Georgiana had been together at Pemberley since the rupture of their engagement, and both must have felt conscious of it, Georgiana in particular being prepared to be miserable for a time, from the belief that her cousin, instead of being cheered and invigorated as formerly by his return home, must be reminded at every turn of the failure of their experiment, the failure caused by her wretched weakness and incapacity. Worse still, her brother must be reminded of it, and there might be a repetition of his stern looks, his cold manner. She trembled at the thought, unaware that Darcy had long been persuaded of the wisdom of their parting, ever since events in Bath had shown him where his cousin's real affections were likely to be bestowed, and the only difference which Georgiana perceived after Fitzwilliam's arrival was in the particular kindness he showed her, and the complete renewal of the old comfortable relations amongst them all. When inquiries after the Hursts and Mrs. Annesley had been made, and Georgiana had mentioned the dinner-party and the persons who had been present, little more was said with reference to London; indeed, there was little more for either to say, for Georgiana dared not refer to the person who had chiefly occupied his mind there. Fitzwilliam talked of his book and of Ireland, inquired about the prospects of the shooting, showed interest in the minutest details of life in the neighbourhood, and in every way endeavoured to prove that he was exactly his old self; and only when walking with Elizabeth in the Park one morning did he betray how far that was from being the case. There was no doubt that his disappointment had coloured his whole life. He had allowed himself to think of Miss Crawford, and to build high upon his hopes, and to find himself again mistaken had been a blow which cut at the foundations of all his happiness. His gaiety was feigned, his pursuits had lost their zest, his friends no longer sufficed him: and as he said to Elizabeth, he had felt he had better adopt some country occupation and settle down to it, and there grow old as quietly and quickly as might be. Elizabeth's heart was wrung; the spectacle of her cousin's fine nature locked away, as it were, in a closed room, as a thing no one had any need for, was inexpressively painful to her, and nothing else would have caused her to venture upon a reopening of the subject which he himself had not approached. With the utmost gentleness she spoke a few words of commiseration, and then, still proceeding with extreme caution, she told him of the absence of news and her assumption that Miss Crawford's marriage with Sir Walter Elliot had been delayed. "I daresay it has," returned Colonel Fitzwilliam, with a kind of listlessness, striking with his stick at the head of some tall grasses which bordered their path. "There can be no doubt of it, I suppose?" pursued Elizabeth. "None at all, I should imagine," replied the Colonel. "Miss Crawford is not the kind of woman who would break her word, once the engagement had been announced." "No, of course not," said Elizabeth; "but I had expected that she or Mrs. Grant would have written to me, or even Mrs. Wentworth, as they must know I should be interested." Colonel Fitzwilliam could not immediately recall anything of Mrs. Wentworth beyond her name, and on being reminded that she was Sir Walter Elliot's daughter, presently replied: "I do not think it altogether surprising she should not have written to you. She probably cares little for the marriage, and still less for the one which it was anticipated would follow it--I mean Miss Elliot's to Mr. Crawford." This was a new idea to Elizabeth, and while she was pondering over it, and the inferences to be drawn from it, Colonel Fitzwilliam broke the silence by saying: "Perhaps we had better not speak of this anymore, Elizabeth. I know your great kindness of heart, but I feel it does no good, rather harm, to be reviving thoughts which I must in honour suppress as much as possible. I was anxious to know whether you had heard anything, and to ask you again, when you have the chance, to tell her that I wish her well; but now we have mentioned it, it would, I think, be best for my contemptibly weak character to put it as far away as possible." With tears in her eyes, Elizabeth assured him that through the tenderest regard for him, not through any fear of overtaxing his fortitude, she would respect his wishes, but could not help begging him to remain with them at Pemberley as heretofore, so as to give them an opportunity of showing him how completely their happiness was bound up with his, and of making use of any opportunity which might arise for them to be of service to him. Fitzwilliam gratefully promised to stay for the present, and said that his only engagement was to go to some friends in Leicestershire in November, for the hunting. Elizabeth was, nevertheless, not perfectly satisfied, and took occasion to ask Georgiana shortly afterwards whether it was from Mrs. Wentworth that she had heard confirmation of the fact that Sir Walter Elliot was engaged to Miss Crawford. "No," said Georgiana, in surprise, "it was from Mr. Price. Mrs. Wentworth never mentioned it. Mrs. Wentworth! Of course, I recollect now, she is Sir Walter Elliot's daughter; but at the time I never thought of it, for, you see, I did not know Sir Walter was the man." "Very true; I had also forgotten that you did not know," said Elizabeth, "and would never connect her with Miss Crawford. I have been thinking that I should like, for our own satisfaction, to know when the wedding is going to take place, and the simplest way will be to write and ask Mrs. Wentworth. I wish I had done so before, but I did not wish to be in haste, and I felt so convinced we should hear from others." Georgiana agreed that this was the best course to pursue, and Elizabeth, having told Darcy of her intention, to which, on account of her promise to Fitzwilliam, he could no longer object, wrote and dispatched her letter. The season was now drawing on, and with the shortening days the family at Pemberley found themselves thrown more upon the resources of their own immediate circle for amusement. The weather was consistently bad, and though this did not prevent the gentlemen from covering great distances for the purpose of slaughtering their game, the ladies were of necessity restricted to a smaller area, and their walks seldom extended beyond the park, except when their inclinations led them along a tolerably clean road towards the Rectory. This happened pretty frequently, for both Elizabeth and Georgiana were extremely attached to Elinor Ferrars. Their friendship was of a particularly sincere and well-balanced kind, and was not marred by their constant intercourse, as each knew how to maintain that degree of reserve which prevents indiscriminate confidences and so greatly strengthens mutual respect. Kitty was the one who perhaps found the society of the Rectory the least congenial; but it is to be feared that she was extremely difficult to please that autumn, and in the impatience with which she waited for one young man she might have sometimes regretted the solace which the company of the other would have afforded. In such a small neighbourhood everyone was of some value, and they all heard with interest of the approaching visit to Mr. and Mrs. Edward Ferrars of an old friend, Mrs. Jennings, who was coming early in October to spend six or seven weeks with them. Mrs. Ferrars was in delicate health, and Mrs. Jennings, besides having an almost maternal affection for her, was well qualified to be of service as sick nurse and enlivening companion, so that Elinor's warning to Mrs. Darcy that her friend, although the kindest of women, had not always the most refined manner of expressing herself, did not prevent them from being anxious to make her acquaintance. Mrs. Jennings performed in safety the long journey from her son-in-law's house in Devonshire, and arrived in her customary high spirits. It was her first visit to the Ferrars's since their removal from Delaford, and she had to examine the house, to criticize minutely the arrangement of their furniture, and to compare their surroundings, social and material, with what they had been in their old home. Mrs. Darcy paid an early call on the new arrival, and the morning after her visit Georgiana and Kitty also found their way to the Rectory. Mrs. Jennings's exuberance, her loud laugh and general noisy cheerfulness did not recommend her strongly to either of the girls in the first few minutes, and Georgiana was glad to move to a chair by Mrs. Ferrars, to enter into a quieter conversation with her; but before long, judging by the sounds which reached them, Mrs. Jennings and Kitty had found some subjects in common. This perhaps was not so surprising, as Mrs. Jennings was exceedingly fond of the society of all young girls, and cared not at all whether they returned her partiality or no. In this case she had begun, with the utmost frankness, to discourse on the subject nearest her heart at the moment, namely, her dear Mrs. Ferrars, and was relating all the circumstances under which their friendship had been formed, the Dashwood girls' visit to London, the disagreeable conduct of Mrs. Ferrars's mother and sister, and the absurd misunderstanding as to Colonel Brandon's attentions, the whole being punctuated by frequent bursts of laughter; and she would doubtless have gone on to describe in detail the events attending the engagement of her two young friends, had not Elinor mildly but decisively interposed. "Dear madam," she said, breaking off in the midst of a remark to Georgiana, "I am sure Miss Bennet does not wish to hear the history of such a very dull old couple as ourselves. You are so kind as to be more interested in it than most people could be." "Lord, my dear," cried Mrs. Jennings, "why did you not stop me? I declare I am very sorry if I said a word I ought not. I know my tongue does run on, and Miss Bennet must excuse me, for it was only for the pleasure of talking to you and Mr. Edward. And as for its being dull, I don't believe there is anybody who does not like to hear of other people's love-affairs; it makes one think of one's own, now, does it not, Miss Bennet?" Kitty blushed and looked embarrassed, and Mrs. Jennings laughed heartily, saying: "It is just as I thought; Miss Bennet could tell us a pretty tale too, I'll be bound, if only she would." "Miss Bennet can tell us some wonderful tales of the West Indies," said Elinor, endeavouring to turn Mrs. Jennings's mind from her favourite topic; "she has a sister there, who writes to her constantly, does she not, Miss Bennet? Those tropical places must be very beautiful. Do you remember how Colonel Brandon used to talk to us of his travels in the East, ma'am?" "That I do, my dear," replied Mrs. Jennings emphatically, "and I never want to hear again of such fearful things as he had seen--swamps, and great things like alligators ... and insects that did everything insects ought not. I hope you will tell your sister not to get amongst them, Miss Bennet." Kitty replied that her sister had written chiefly of the beautiful balls and illuminations which they frequently had, and lately of some shocks of earthquake which had frightened them terribly. Mrs. Jennings exclaimed at this, and declared that the finest ball in the world would not compensate her if there was the fear that the ground would open under her feet while she was dancing. "But I know young people do not care what risks they run," said she. "There was Sir John Middleton three weeks ago wanted to have a moonlight picnic; my daughter Middleton was all against it, for the weather was so threatening, but have it he would, and the consequence was that they all ate their supper, or as much of it as they could, in a roaring thunderstorm. I can tell you they were in a pretty pickle when they got back! All the girls so cross, and the young men not a dry thread among them through trying to protect the ladies. But Sir John, he made no bones about it at all, but said they would go again another night, when for sure it would be fine." Her hearers could not help laughing at such a picture of undaunted pleasure-seeking, and Elinor inquired if the second party had taken place. "Oh, Lord, yes; they all came, but their fathers and mothers made them promise not to stir beyond the grounds. I heard, at any rate, they turned it into a dance instead. But, as I say, young people don't care for a drop of rain. I am sure, when I was young, I would as lief have had it as not, for there was no hardship in sheltering under a hedge, with the right young man to hold an umbrella over you, do you think so, Miss Bennet?" "Still, I fancy that most people, old or young, prefer outdoor expeditions to be in dry weather," said Elinor. "That reminds me that I must show you what terrible havoc last night's rain and wind worked in my flower borders. When I looked out first, I was quite in despair, thinking I should not have another nosegay all the autumn. There is a gleam of sunshine now, so shall we take a turn in the garden?" Georgiana gladly walked out with her, and Mrs. Jennings and Kitty followed at a distance, the former questioning her young companion about her sister abroad and hearing laments over the gaieties which that sister had been able to offer her, but which she had never been able to accept. Mrs. Jennings's hearty comments of "Well, there now, that is a shame!" and "A regiment too! You would have broken all their hearts, I vow!" and other such remarks pleased Kitty, while she knew in her heart they ought not to do so. The two girls shortly after took their leave, and while walking homeward naturally compared notes upon the stranger whom they had just met. Georgiana expressed herself guardedly, not wishing to condemn any friend of Mrs. Ferrars's, although feeling as if that friend could not be in any way an accession to their party; but Kitty's first unfavorable impression seemed to have been obliterated, and she declared frankly that she liked Mrs. Jennings and thought she was very merry and good-natured. Georgiana could not quite agree with this, for she found Mrs. Jennings's style of raillery not at all to her mind, but admitted that she might be pleasanter when one got to know her well. At dinner these opinions were canvassed, and Georgiana found, as she expected, that her own were largely shared by Elizabeth, who, however, was amused at her severity, and told her that she would often meet people who, with more refined manners, were yet at heart far more vulgar than Mrs. Jennings and had not a tenth part of her redeeming qualities. "I do not think I want to meet them, then," said Georgiana. "But I am sure you are right, Elizabeth, and I daresay she will be a great comfort to Mrs. Ferrars." When the ladies were together after dinner, Kitty, whose gravity and preoccupation had been noticeable for the last half-hour, after wandering several times round the room, stationed herself near to her sister and began, in a solemn tone: "Lizzie, I want to ask you something very important." Elizabeth, smiling, professed herself all attention, and Kitty continued: "You know you have never kept your promise, that you made before you were married, of having a ball here, for each winter something has happened to prevent it." "Quite true, Kitty; so a ball is in your mind; and what made you think of it just now?" "I never come here without thinking of it, but I had somehow not expected to be staying long enough this year, as I imagined I should go home directly after the shooting party. But Mrs. Jennings said to-day she supposed you sometimes had balls in this lovely house, and she was sure Georgiana and I were fond of dancing." "And Mrs. Jennings is quite right about the latter statement, is she not?" Georgiana looked up with a smile, to assent to her share of the question, and Kitty clasped her hands rapturously, exclaiming: "Oh, Lizzie, you know how much I love a ball! It would be so kind of you and Darcy! Everyone would enjoy it!" "I am very

when

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will do it, but life is so uncertain that I think for the present I had better refrain. Have you ascertained whether Kitty can cook, make her own gowns, and trim hats? I understand it is a great promoter of married happiness when the wife can do so, and I am not sure whether all my girls have turned their education to such good account." Mr. Morland only replied by asking if he might be allowed to see Miss Bennet at once, and her father left the room, foreseeing that, whatever happened, he should not have one more quiet hour during that day. His anticipations were soon in the way to be fulfilled, for on finding his daughters, and sending Kitty to the library, he had to give Jane an outline of what had just passed, then repeat it to Bingley, who joined them, and listened to their exclamations of surprise, and regret at the probable downfall of Mr. Morland's hopes. Jane and Bingley were both too convinced of Kitty's prior attachment to have the slightest expectation of his success, and Mr. Bennet was put in full possession of the facts relating to it, while they anxiously awaited the termination of the interview. It came, after some minutes, in a glimpse of Kitty emerging from the library and hurrying upstairs with streaming eyes, and while they all debated as to their next move, Mr. Morland was seen to cross the hall rapidly, looking nowhere but in front of him, and leave the house with precipitation. Jane herself, almost equally distressed, longed to go to Kitty, and Bingley questioned whether he ought not to hasten after the young man, while Mr. Bennet was disposed to think they would be better left to themselves for a time, and wished heartily that there were only just enough lovers in the world to go round, one to each young lady, and none over. In spite of this, Jane was not long in finding her way to her agitated sister and in showing her the tenderest consideration. Kitty's distress was very great, and also very sincere, for she had in truth been far from guessing that Mr. Morland took a more than common interest in her, and as is usual in such cases, the declaration of the young man's love woke in her feelings which she had not known to exist, of reciprocal kindness and even affection, which only did not share the nature and strength of his. Kitty could never have been hard-hearted to any lover, least of all to one whom she liked as much as she did James Morland, and his devotion touched her as deeply as the knowledge that she could not accept it wounded her. Between regrets for what had happened, pity for him and for herself, and the excited thoughts of William Price which the incident itself was bound to evoke, she was in a sad state, and Jane easily prevailed upon her to have her dinner upstairs and go early to bed. Not so easily could she check the tears which flowed continuously, and Jane, to occupy her mind and body, proposed that she should go to-morrow to Pemberley, instead of in three days' time, as arranged; she could very well be sent over, and the change would be beneficial; besides, she was not really leaving them, for there was the November visit to look forward to. Kitty caught at the suggestion, and declining the offices of the maid, began to busy herself about her packing, as Jane hoped she would do, while the latter descended to consult with her husband and father. Mr. Bennet and Bingley both approved, and Jane hastily wrote a few lines to Elizabeth to apprise her of what had happened, that she might be prepared for Kitty's arrival. The two gentlemen walked to the nearest post town to convey the letter; and after dinner the indefatigable Bingley again set out, this time to the Rectory, to perform the same kind office by James Morland as his wife had been doing by Kitty. The young man, though calmer, proved far more unreceptive of consolation. He had felt his rebuff acutely, for Kitty had been too much taken by surprise, too sure of herself, to make it otherwise than decisive, and even the modest hopes he had ventured to entertain, of being able to make more progress with her once the subject was opened between them, had been most thoroughly dispelled. Miss Bennet would not hear another word of it--begged him never to speak of it again--with tears reproached him for having spoilt everything, so that in addition to his own disappointment he had the pain of feeling that she thought less well of him than before. Bingley could deny this, but could not affirm anything else likely to give him comfort. It remained for Morland himself to declare, which he did in a firm though melancholy tone, that he regretted having distressed Miss Bennet, and would endeavour so to meet her in the future that she would not suffer through being reminded of it by any act of word of his. Bingley commended his courage, told him of Kitty's departure, and begged him to continue coming to Desborough just the same; and walked home with a full report of what had just passed. Jane shook her head over it, for, while sympathizing with both, she was more truly sorry for Mr. Morland, since for him she could see no immediate prospect of compensation, in spite of her father's assurances that a young clergyman was seldom allowed to remain inconsolable for more than six months, and if Kitty's other young man only did what was expected of him, her fate would be a certainty in half that time. Chapter XIII Needless to say, Kitty was heartily welcomed by Georgiana and Elizabeth, and given every opportunity to relieve her mind by descriptions of the tragical affair in all its aspects. Both regretted it deeply for Mr. Morland's sake, and Elizabeth privately did so for Kitty's sake, having such a good opinion of him as to make her wish that Kitty could have been persuaded out of her fancy for a young man, who, however excellent, was comparatively a stranger to them all, and whose intentions, at present, were extremely uncertain. She would have rejoiced if Kitty and Morland could have made each other happy, and had entertained a slight hope that her hint to Kitty might perhaps have helped matters, in directing her thoughts into another channel, but it seemed to be of no avail, and Georgiana gave her friend her warmest support, implying entire agreement with her point of view. "I could not help it, now, could I, Georgiana? You know yourself, Lizzie, that I never dreamt it. How could I do anything else but refuse him outright? I was amazingly grieved to do so, but you know very well, Georgiana, that if I could think of one man more than another, _he_ is not that one." She paused for assent, which Georgiana gave by a silent caress, and then continued: "It is all so unfortunate. It will never be as pleasant at Desborough now. Poor Mr. Morland! I wish I had not had to hurt him. He does want someone so badly in the Rectory." "Well, my dear, do not make yourself ill with these vain regrets," said Elizabeth. "It is, as you say, very unfortunate, but no one blames you. If you could not care for him, you could not do it, and someone else will have to inhabit that nice Rectory." Kitty looked as if this prospect were not very pleasing either, but Georgiana, seeing what Elizabeth wished, began to talk cheerfully of something else, and Kitty gradually joined in, though whenever the two girls were alone together she found it difficult to abstain long from referring to some branch of the subject. Georgiana's loyalty and patience never failed, but she wished for November almost as earnestly as Kitty herself, so that matters might reach some definite conclusion, for Kitty's restlessness had considerably increased since she had received James Morland's offer, and she was constantly nervous and excitable and not mistress of herself. On the day when the Bingleys and Mr. Bennet came over for the latter to take leave before returning to Longbourn, this was specially noticeable in her state of anxious flutter when drawing Jane aside to inquire after Mr. Morland. Mr. Bennet bade her farewell gravely and more affectionately than was his wont, telling her that he left her in good hands, and would only give her one piece of advice, namely, that second thoughts were sometimes best. Kitty blushed deeply and could not pretend to misunderstand him, but told Georgiana afterwards that it was impossible to have better second thoughts when Price was the first. With his elder daughter Mr. Bennet was rather more explicit, telling Elizabeth that he considered it was a great pity that so unobjectionable a young man should have been sent about his business. Elizabeth entirely agreed with him, and thought it would not be going too far to express Mr. Morland's praise in even warmer terms. "He will never set the Thames on fire, but there seems good stuff in him," was Mr. Bennet's reply. "When he proposed for her I had not taken much notice of him, except to think him a tolerably sensible fellow, and of course I had to readjust my ideas; but I soon began to see that he must not be judged by that alone. I have really liked him better, too, for his way of taking his refusal." "My dear father, it does not always indicate a want of sense to wish to be married," interposed Elizabeth. "Perhaps not, but Morland is much better off as he is than in marrying a girl he knows so little about. Kitty is flighty and expensive; she ought to stay longer with you and Jane, and not think of being married for the next ten years." Elizabeth smiled and said she thought that it was unnecessary, but that it would certainly be better for Kitty to marry a clergyman than an officer in the navy, who would be compelled to spend long periods away from home. "As to that, of course it is a complete absurdity, and I cannot think why you women, who are so fond of making matches, did not originate something less ridiculously unsuitable among yourselves." Elizabeth thought it wiser not to explain who actually had originated the idea, and said after a pause: "You were saying that you have liked Mr. Morland better of late?" "Yes, he has positively shown some sort of self-command and dignity. He turned up at the house a day or two afterwards, apparently _not_ bent on making us all uncomfortable by the sight of his misery, as most rejected lovers do. Besides, Bingley had had the foresight to produce some excellent port." "I hear from Jane," said Elizabeth, "that he does not avoid or seek the mention of Kitty, and she thinks he is trying to give up all hope of her." "Her absence for a few weeks will no doubt materially assist him," said Mr. Bennet. Kitty seized the opportunity offered by this visit to speak a private word to her brother-in-law with reference to the hero, as Bingley persisted in calling him. She herself had no news, for Mrs. Knightley's frequent letters reported him still at Portsmouth, and Bingley had heard nothing, but promised to write and renew his invitation as soon as October was fairly in. The same silence prevailed at Pemberley with regard to Miss Crawford. No announcement of her marriage had reached any of them, and Elizabeth had a half inclination to make some inquiries, but was dissuaded by Darcy, who said: "Whatever precisely has happened, Elizabeth, we can be sure of one thing, that Miss Crawford has allowed Fitzwilliam to understand that she does not wish him to approach her again. Under these circumstances it is better that you should have no news to give him." Elizabeth sighed as she agreed to the wisdom of this decision, but when shortly after her father's departure a letter was received from Colonel Fitzwilliam to say he would be returning at the end of the month, she could not help wishing that she was more fully informed of the present state of affairs. It would be a relief, even though a sad one, to Fitzwilliam's mind to know that Miss Crawford was actually married and he would be unselfish enough to wish to hear that she was happy. Nothing occurred, however, to enlighten them, and Fitzwilliam arrived on the appointed day, looking much as usual except for a few more lines about the eyes and an increased number of grey hairs. It was the first time he and Georgiana had been together at Pemberley since the rupture of their engagement, and both must have felt conscious of it, Georgiana in particular being prepared to be miserable for a time, from the belief that her cousin, instead of being cheered and invigorated as formerly by his return home, must be reminded at every turn of the failure of their experiment, the failure caused by her wretched weakness and incapacity. Worse still, her brother must be reminded of it, and there might be a repetition of his stern looks, his cold manner. She trembled at the thought, unaware that Darcy had long been persuaded of the wisdom of their parting, ever since events in Bath had shown him where his cousin's real affections were likely to be bestowed, and the only difference which Georgiana perceived after Fitzwilliam's arrival was in the particular kindness he showed her, and the complete renewal of the old comfortable relations amongst them all. When inquiries after the Hursts and Mrs. Annesley had been made, and Georgiana had mentioned the dinner-party and the persons who had been present, little more was said with reference to London; indeed, there was little more for either to say, for Georgiana dared not refer to the person who had chiefly occupied his mind there. Fitzwilliam talked of his book and of Ireland, inquired about the prospects of the shooting, showed interest in the minutest details of life in the neighbourhood, and in every way endeavoured to prove that he was exactly his old self; and only when walking with Elizabeth in the Park one morning did he betray how far that was from being the case. There was no doubt that his disappointment had coloured his whole life. He had allowed himself to think of Miss Crawford, and to build high upon his hopes, and to find himself again mistaken had been a blow which cut at the foundations of all his happiness. His gaiety was feigned, his pursuits had lost their zest, his friends no longer sufficed him: and as he said to Elizabeth, he had felt he had better adopt some country occupation and settle down to it, and there grow old as quietly and quickly as might be. Elizabeth's heart was wrung; the spectacle of her cousin's fine nature locked away, as it were, in a closed room, as a thing no one had any need for, was inexpressively painful to her, and nothing else would have caused her to venture upon a reopening of the subject which he himself had not approached. With the utmost gentleness she spoke a few words of commiseration, and then, still proceeding with extreme caution, she told him of the absence of news and her assumption that Miss Crawford's marriage with Sir Walter Elliot had been delayed. "I daresay it has," returned Colonel Fitzwilliam, with a kind of listlessness, striking with his stick at the head of some tall grasses which bordered their path. "There can be no doubt of it, I suppose?" pursued Elizabeth. "None at all, I should imagine," replied the Colonel. "Miss Crawford is not the kind of woman who would break her word, once the engagement had been announced." "No, of course not," said Elizabeth; "but I had expected that she or Mrs. Grant would have written to me, or even Mrs. Wentworth, as they must know I should be interested." Colonel Fitzwilliam could not immediately recall anything of Mrs. Wentworth beyond her name, and on being reminded that she was Sir Walter Elliot's daughter, presently replied: "I do not think it altogether surprising she should not have written to you. She probably cares little for the marriage, and still less for the one which it was anticipated would follow it--I mean Miss Elliot's to Mr. Crawford." This was a new idea to Elizabeth, and while she was pondering over it, and the inferences to be drawn from it, Colonel Fitzwilliam broke the silence by saying: "Perhaps we had better not speak of this anymore, Elizabeth. I know your great kindness of heart, but I feel it does no good, rather harm, to be reviving thoughts which I must in honour suppress as much as possible. I was anxious to know whether you had heard anything, and to ask you again, when you have the chance, to tell her that I wish her well; but now we have mentioned it, it would, I think, be best for my contemptibly weak character to put it as far away as possible." With tears in her eyes, Elizabeth assured him that through the tenderest regard for him, not through any fear of overtaxing his fortitude, she would respect his wishes, but could not help begging him to remain with them at Pemberley as heretofore, so as to give them an opportunity of showing him how completely their happiness was bound up with his, and of making use of any opportunity which might arise for them to be of service to him. Fitzwilliam gratefully promised to stay for the present, and said that his only engagement was to go to some friends in Leicestershire in November, for the hunting. Elizabeth was, nevertheless, not perfectly satisfied, and took occasion to ask Georgiana shortly afterwards whether it was from Mrs. Wentworth that she had heard confirmation of the fact that Sir Walter Elliot was engaged to Miss Crawford. "No," said Georgiana, in surprise, "it was from Mr. Price. Mrs. Wentworth never mentioned it. Mrs. Wentworth! Of course, I recollect now, she is Sir Walter Elliot's daughter; but at the time I never thought of it, for, you see, I did not know Sir Walter was the man." "Very true; I had also forgotten that you did not know," said Elizabeth, "and would never connect her with Miss Crawford. I have been thinking that I should like, for our own satisfaction, to know when the wedding is going to take place, and the simplest way will be to write and ask Mrs. Wentworth. I wish I had done so before, but I did not wish to be in haste, and I felt so convinced we should hear from others." Georgiana agreed that this was the best course to pursue, and Elizabeth, having told Darcy of her intention, to which, on account of her promise to Fitzwilliam, he could no longer object, wrote and dispatched her letter. The season was now drawing on, and with the shortening days the family at Pemberley found themselves thrown more upon the resources of their own immediate circle for amusement. The weather was consistently bad, and though this did not prevent the gentlemen from covering great distances for the purpose of slaughtering their game, the ladies were of necessity restricted to a smaller area, and their walks seldom extended beyond the park, except when their inclinations led them along a tolerably clean road towards the Rectory. This happened pretty frequently, for both Elizabeth and Georgiana were extremely attached to Elinor Ferrars. Their friendship was of a particularly sincere and well-balanced kind, and was not marred by their constant intercourse, as each knew how to maintain that degree of reserve which prevents indiscriminate confidences and so greatly strengthens mutual respect. Kitty was the one who perhaps found the society of the Rectory the least congenial; but it is to be feared that she was extremely difficult to please that autumn, and in the impatience with which she waited for one young man she might have sometimes regretted the solace which the company of the other would have afforded. In such a small neighbourhood everyone was of some value, and they all heard with interest of the approaching visit to Mr. and Mrs. Edward Ferrars of an old friend, Mrs. Jennings, who was coming early in October to spend six or seven weeks with them. Mrs. Ferrars was in delicate health, and Mrs. Jennings, besides having an almost maternal affection for her, was well qualified to be of service as sick nurse and enlivening companion, so that Elinor's warning to Mrs. Darcy that her friend, although the kindest of women, had not always the most refined manner of expressing herself, did not prevent them from being anxious to make her acquaintance. Mrs. Jennings performed in safety the long journey from her son-in-law's house in Devonshire, and arrived in her customary high spirits. It was her first visit to the Ferrars's since their removal from Delaford, and she had to examine the house, to criticize minutely the arrangement of their furniture, and to compare their surroundings, social and material, with what they had been in their old home. Mrs. Darcy paid an early call on the new arrival, and the morning after her visit Georgiana and Kitty also found their way to the Rectory. Mrs. Jennings's exuberance, her loud laugh and general noisy cheerfulness did not recommend her strongly to either of the girls in the first few minutes, and Georgiana was glad to move to a chair by Mrs. Ferrars, to enter into a quieter conversation with her; but before long, judging by the sounds which reached them, Mrs. Jennings and Kitty had found some subjects in common. This perhaps was not so surprising, as Mrs. Jennings was exceedingly fond of the society of all young girls, and cared not at all whether they returned her partiality or no. In this case she had begun, with the utmost frankness, to discourse on the subject nearest her heart at the moment, namely, her dear Mrs. Ferrars, and was relating all the circumstances under which their friendship had been formed, the Dashwood girls' visit to London, the disagreeable conduct of Mrs. Ferrars's mother and sister, and the absurd misunderstanding as to Colonel Brandon's attentions, the whole being punctuated by frequent bursts of laughter; and she would doubtless have gone on to describe in detail the events attending the engagement of her two young friends, had not Elinor mildly but decisively interposed. "Dear madam," she said, breaking off in the midst of a remark to Georgiana, "I am sure Miss Bennet does not wish to hear the history of such a very dull old couple as ourselves. You are so kind as to be more interested in it than most people could be." "Lord, my dear," cried Mrs. Jennings, "why did you not stop me? I declare I am very sorry if I said a word I ought not. I know my tongue does run on, and Miss Bennet must excuse me, for it was only for the pleasure of talking to you and Mr. Edward. And as for its being dull, I don't believe there is anybody who does not like to hear of other people's love-affairs; it makes one think of one's own, now, does it not, Miss Bennet?" Kitty blushed and looked embarrassed, and Mrs. Jennings laughed heartily, saying: "It is just as I thought; Miss Bennet could tell us a pretty tale too, I'll be bound, if only she would." "Miss Bennet can tell us some wonderful tales of the West Indies," said Elinor, endeavouring to turn Mrs. Jennings's mind from her favourite topic; "she has a sister there, who writes to her constantly, does she not, Miss Bennet? Those tropical places must be very beautiful. Do you remember how Colonel Brandon used to talk to us of his travels in the East, ma'am?" "That I do, my dear," replied Mrs. Jennings emphatically, "and I never want to hear again of such fearful things as he had seen--swamps, and great things like alligators ... and insects that did everything insects ought not. I hope you will tell your sister not to get amongst them, Miss Bennet." Kitty replied that her sister had written chiefly of the beautiful balls and illuminations which they frequently had, and lately of some shocks of earthquake which had frightened them terribly. Mrs. Jennings exclaimed at this, and declared that the finest ball in the world would not compensate her if there was the fear that the ground would open under her feet while she was dancing. "But I know young people do not care what risks they run," said she. "There was Sir John Middleton three weeks ago wanted to have a moonlight picnic; my daughter Middleton was all against it, for the weather was so threatening, but have it he would, and the consequence was that they all ate their supper, or as much of it as they could, in a roaring thunderstorm. I can tell you they were in a pretty pickle when they got back! All the girls so cross, and the young men not a dry thread among them through trying to protect the ladies. But Sir John, he made no bones about it at all, but said they would go again another night, when for sure it would be fine." Her hearers could not help laughing at such a picture of undaunted pleasure-seeking, and Elinor inquired if the second party had taken place. "Oh, Lord, yes; they all came, but their fathers and mothers made them promise not to stir beyond the grounds. I heard, at any rate, they turned it into a dance instead. But, as I say, young people don't care for a drop of rain. I am sure, when I was young, I would as lief have had it as not, for there was no hardship in sheltering under a hedge, with the right young man to hold an umbrella over you, do you think so, Miss Bennet?" "Still, I fancy that most people, old or young, prefer outdoor expeditions to be in dry weather," said Elinor. "That reminds me that I must show you what terrible havoc last night's rain and wind worked in my flower borders. When I looked out first, I was quite in despair, thinking I should not have another nosegay all the autumn. There is a gleam of sunshine now, so shall we take a turn in the garden?" Georgiana gladly walked out with her, and Mrs. Jennings and Kitty followed at a distance, the former questioning her young companion about her sister abroad and hearing laments over the gaieties which that sister had been able to offer her, but which she had never been able to accept. Mrs. Jennings's hearty comments of "Well, there now, that is a shame!" and "A regiment too! You would have broken all their hearts, I vow!" and other such remarks pleased Kitty, while she knew in her heart they ought not to do so. The two girls shortly after took their leave, and while walking homeward naturally compared notes upon the stranger whom they had just met. Georgiana expressed herself guardedly, not wishing to condemn any friend of Mrs. Ferrars's, although feeling as if that friend could not be in any way an accession to their party; but Kitty's first unfavorable impression seemed to have been obliterated, and she declared frankly that she liked Mrs. Jennings and thought she was very merry and good-natured. Georgiana could not quite agree with this, for she found Mrs. Jennings's style of raillery not at all to her mind, but admitted that she might be pleasanter when one got to know her well. At dinner these opinions were canvassed, and Georgiana found, as she expected, that her own were largely shared by Elizabeth, who, however, was amused at her severity, and told her that she would often meet people who, with more refined manners, were yet at heart far more vulgar than Mrs. Jennings and had not a tenth part of her redeeming qualities. "I do not think I want to meet them, then," said Georgiana. "But I am sure you are right, Elizabeth, and I daresay she will be a great comfort to Mrs. Ferrars." When the ladies were together after dinner, Kitty, whose gravity and preoccupation had been noticeable for the last half-hour, after wandering several times round the room, stationed herself near to her sister and began, in a solemn tone: "Lizzie, I want to ask you something very important." Elizabeth, smiling, professed herself all attention, and Kitty continued: "You know you have never kept your promise, that you made before you were married, of having a ball here, for each winter something has happened to prevent it." "Quite true, Kitty; so a ball is in your mind; and what made you think of it just now?" "I never come here without thinking of it, but I had somehow not expected to be staying long enough this year, as I imagined I should go home directly after the shooting party. But Mrs. Jennings said to-day she supposed you sometimes had balls in this lovely house, and she was sure Georgiana and I were fond of dancing." "And Mrs. Jennings is quite right about the latter statement, is she not?" Georgiana looked up with a smile, to assent to her share of the question, and Kitty clasped her hands rapturously, exclaiming: "Oh, Lizzie, you know how much I love a ball! It would be so kind of you and Darcy! Everyone would enjoy it!" "I am very

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How many times the word 'poor' appears in the text?

will do it, but life is so uncertain that I think for the present I had better refrain. Have you ascertained whether Kitty can cook, make her own gowns, and trim hats? I understand it is a great promoter of married happiness when the wife can do so, and I am not sure whether all my girls have turned their education to such good account." Mr. Morland only replied by asking if he might be allowed to see Miss Bennet at once, and her father left the room, foreseeing that, whatever happened, he should not have one more quiet hour during that day. His anticipations were soon in the way to be fulfilled, for on finding his daughters, and sending Kitty to the library, he had to give Jane an outline of what had just passed, then repeat it to Bingley, who joined them, and listened to their exclamations of surprise, and regret at the probable downfall of Mr. Morland's hopes. Jane and Bingley were both too convinced of Kitty's prior attachment to have the slightest expectation of his success, and Mr. Bennet was put in full possession of the facts relating to it, while they anxiously awaited the termination of the interview. It came, after some minutes, in a glimpse of Kitty emerging from the library and hurrying upstairs with streaming eyes, and while they all debated as to their next move, Mr. Morland was seen to cross the hall rapidly, looking nowhere but in front of him, and leave the house with precipitation. Jane herself, almost equally distressed, longed to go to Kitty, and Bingley questioned whether he ought not to hasten after the young man, while Mr. Bennet was disposed to think they would be better left to themselves for a time, and wished heartily that there were only just enough lovers in the world to go round, one to each young lady, and none over. In spite of this, Jane was not long in finding her way to her agitated sister and in showing her the tenderest consideration. Kitty's distress was very great, and also very sincere, for she had in truth been far from guessing that Mr. Morland took a more than common interest in her, and as is usual in such cases, the declaration of the young man's love woke in her feelings which she had not known to exist, of reciprocal kindness and even affection, which only did not share the nature and strength of his. Kitty could never have been hard-hearted to any lover, least of all to one whom she liked as much as she did James Morland, and his devotion touched her as deeply as the knowledge that she could not accept it wounded her. Between regrets for what had happened, pity for him and for herself, and the excited thoughts of William Price which the incident itself was bound to evoke, she was in a sad state, and Jane easily prevailed upon her to have her dinner upstairs and go early to bed. Not so easily could she check the tears which flowed continuously, and Jane, to occupy her mind and body, proposed that she should go to-morrow to Pemberley, instead of in three days' time, as arranged; she could very well be sent over, and the change would be beneficial; besides, she was not really leaving them, for there was the November visit to look forward to. Kitty caught at the suggestion, and declining the offices of the maid, began to busy herself about her packing, as Jane hoped she would do, while the latter descended to consult with her husband and father. Mr. Bennet and Bingley both approved, and Jane hastily wrote a few lines to Elizabeth to apprise her of what had happened, that she might be prepared for Kitty's arrival. The two gentlemen walked to the nearest post town to convey the letter; and after dinner the indefatigable Bingley again set out, this time to the Rectory, to perform the same kind office by James Morland as his wife had been doing by Kitty. The young man, though calmer, proved far more unreceptive of consolation. He had felt his rebuff acutely, for Kitty had been too much taken by surprise, too sure of herself, to make it otherwise than decisive, and even the modest hopes he had ventured to entertain, of being able to make more progress with her once the subject was opened between them, had been most thoroughly dispelled. Miss Bennet would not hear another word of it--begged him never to speak of it again--with tears reproached him for having spoilt everything, so that in addition to his own disappointment he had the pain of feeling that she thought less well of him than before. Bingley could deny this, but could not affirm anything else likely to give him comfort. It remained for Morland himself to declare, which he did in a firm though melancholy tone, that he regretted having distressed Miss Bennet, and would endeavour so to meet her in the future that she would not suffer through being reminded of it by any act of word of his. Bingley commended his courage, told him of Kitty's departure, and begged him to continue coming to Desborough just the same; and walked home with a full report of what had just passed. Jane shook her head over it, for, while sympathizing with both, she was more truly sorry for Mr. Morland, since for him she could see no immediate prospect of compensation, in spite of her father's assurances that a young clergyman was seldom allowed to remain inconsolable for more than six months, and if Kitty's other young man only did what was expected of him, her fate would be a certainty in half that time. Chapter XIII Needless to say, Kitty was heartily welcomed by Georgiana and Elizabeth, and given every opportunity to relieve her mind by descriptions of the tragical affair in all its aspects. Both regretted it deeply for Mr. Morland's sake, and Elizabeth privately did so for Kitty's sake, having such a good opinion of him as to make her wish that Kitty could have been persuaded out of her fancy for a young man, who, however excellent, was comparatively a stranger to them all, and whose intentions, at present, were extremely uncertain. She would have rejoiced if Kitty and Morland could have made each other happy, and had entertained a slight hope that her hint to Kitty might perhaps have helped matters, in directing her thoughts into another channel, but it seemed to be of no avail, and Georgiana gave her friend her warmest support, implying entire agreement with her point of view. "I could not help it, now, could I, Georgiana? You know yourself, Lizzie, that I never dreamt it. How could I do anything else but refuse him outright? I was amazingly grieved to do so, but you know very well, Georgiana, that if I could think of one man more than another, _he_ is not that one." She paused for assent, which Georgiana gave by a silent caress, and then continued: "It is all so unfortunate. It will never be as pleasant at Desborough now. Poor Mr. Morland! I wish I had not had to hurt him. He does want someone so badly in the Rectory." "Well, my dear, do not make yourself ill with these vain regrets," said Elizabeth. "It is, as you say, very unfortunate, but no one blames you. If you could not care for him, you could not do it, and someone else will have to inhabit that nice Rectory." Kitty looked as if this prospect were not very pleasing either, but Georgiana, seeing what Elizabeth wished, began to talk cheerfully of something else, and Kitty gradually joined in, though whenever the two girls were alone together she found it difficult to abstain long from referring to some branch of the subject. Georgiana's loyalty and patience never failed, but she wished for November almost as earnestly as Kitty herself, so that matters might reach some definite conclusion, for Kitty's restlessness had considerably increased since she had received James Morland's offer, and she was constantly nervous and excitable and not mistress of herself. On the day when the Bingleys and Mr. Bennet came over for the latter to take leave before returning to Longbourn, this was specially noticeable in her state of anxious flutter when drawing Jane aside to inquire after Mr. Morland. Mr. Bennet bade her farewell gravely and more affectionately than was his wont, telling her that he left her in good hands, and would only give her one piece of advice, namely, that second thoughts were sometimes best. Kitty blushed deeply and could not pretend to misunderstand him, but told Georgiana afterwards that it was impossible to have better second thoughts when Price was the first. With his elder daughter Mr. Bennet was rather more explicit, telling Elizabeth that he considered it was a great pity that so unobjectionable a young man should have been sent about his business. Elizabeth entirely agreed with him, and thought it would not be going too far to express Mr. Morland's praise in even warmer terms. "He will never set the Thames on fire, but there seems good stuff in him," was Mr. Bennet's reply. "When he proposed for her I had not taken much notice of him, except to think him a tolerably sensible fellow, and of course I had to readjust my ideas; but I soon began to see that he must not be judged by that alone. I have really liked him better, too, for his way of taking his refusal." "My dear father, it does not always indicate a want of sense to wish to be married," interposed Elizabeth. "Perhaps not, but Morland is much better off as he is than in marrying a girl he knows so little about. Kitty is flighty and expensive; she ought to stay longer with you and Jane, and not think of being married for the next ten years." Elizabeth smiled and said she thought that it was unnecessary, but that it would certainly be better for Kitty to marry a clergyman than an officer in the navy, who would be compelled to spend long periods away from home. "As to that, of course it is a complete absurdity, and I cannot think why you women, who are so fond of making matches, did not originate something less ridiculously unsuitable among yourselves." Elizabeth thought it wiser not to explain who actually had originated the idea, and said after a pause: "You were saying that you have liked Mr. Morland better of late?" "Yes, he has positively shown some sort of self-command and dignity. He turned up at the house a day or two afterwards, apparently _not_ bent on making us all uncomfortable by the sight of his misery, as most rejected lovers do. Besides, Bingley had had the foresight to produce some excellent port." "I hear from Jane," said Elizabeth, "that he does not avoid or seek the mention of Kitty, and she thinks he is trying to give up all hope of her." "Her absence for a few weeks will no doubt materially assist him," said Mr. Bennet. Kitty seized the opportunity offered by this visit to speak a private word to her brother-in-law with reference to the hero, as Bingley persisted in calling him. She herself had no news, for Mrs. Knightley's frequent letters reported him still at Portsmouth, and Bingley had heard nothing, but promised to write and renew his invitation as soon as October was fairly in. The same silence prevailed at Pemberley with regard to Miss Crawford. No announcement of her marriage had reached any of them, and Elizabeth had a half inclination to make some inquiries, but was dissuaded by Darcy, who said: "Whatever precisely has happened, Elizabeth, we can be sure of one thing, that Miss Crawford has allowed Fitzwilliam to understand that she does not wish him to approach her again. Under these circumstances it is better that you should have no news to give him." Elizabeth sighed as she agreed to the wisdom of this decision, but when shortly after her father's departure a letter was received from Colonel Fitzwilliam to say he would be returning at the end of the month, she could not help wishing that she was more fully informed of the present state of affairs. It would be a relief, even though a sad one, to Fitzwilliam's mind to know that Miss Crawford was actually married and he would be unselfish enough to wish to hear that she was happy. Nothing occurred, however, to enlighten them, and Fitzwilliam arrived on the appointed day, looking much as usual except for a few more lines about the eyes and an increased number of grey hairs. It was the first time he and Georgiana had been together at Pemberley since the rupture of their engagement, and both must have felt conscious of it, Georgiana in particular being prepared to be miserable for a time, from the belief that her cousin, instead of being cheered and invigorated as formerly by his return home, must be reminded at every turn of the failure of their experiment, the failure caused by her wretched weakness and incapacity. Worse still, her brother must be reminded of it, and there might be a repetition of his stern looks, his cold manner. She trembled at the thought, unaware that Darcy had long been persuaded of the wisdom of their parting, ever since events in Bath had shown him where his cousin's real affections were likely to be bestowed, and the only difference which Georgiana perceived after Fitzwilliam's arrival was in the particular kindness he showed her, and the complete renewal of the old comfortable relations amongst them all. When inquiries after the Hursts and Mrs. Annesley had been made, and Georgiana had mentioned the dinner-party and the persons who had been present, little more was said with reference to London; indeed, there was little more for either to say, for Georgiana dared not refer to the person who had chiefly occupied his mind there. Fitzwilliam talked of his book and of Ireland, inquired about the prospects of the shooting, showed interest in the minutest details of life in the neighbourhood, and in every way endeavoured to prove that he was exactly his old self; and only when walking with Elizabeth in the Park one morning did he betray how far that was from being the case. There was no doubt that his disappointment had coloured his whole life. He had allowed himself to think of Miss Crawford, and to build high upon his hopes, and to find himself again mistaken had been a blow which cut at the foundations of all his happiness. His gaiety was feigned, his pursuits had lost their zest, his friends no longer sufficed him: and as he said to Elizabeth, he had felt he had better adopt some country occupation and settle down to it, and there grow old as quietly and quickly as might be. Elizabeth's heart was wrung; the spectacle of her cousin's fine nature locked away, as it were, in a closed room, as a thing no one had any need for, was inexpressively painful to her, and nothing else would have caused her to venture upon a reopening of the subject which he himself had not approached. With the utmost gentleness she spoke a few words of commiseration, and then, still proceeding with extreme caution, she told him of the absence of news and her assumption that Miss Crawford's marriage with Sir Walter Elliot had been delayed. "I daresay it has," returned Colonel Fitzwilliam, with a kind of listlessness, striking with his stick at the head of some tall grasses which bordered their path. "There can be no doubt of it, I suppose?" pursued Elizabeth. "None at all, I should imagine," replied the Colonel. "Miss Crawford is not the kind of woman who would break her word, once the engagement had been announced." "No, of course not," said Elizabeth; "but I had expected that she or Mrs. Grant would have written to me, or even Mrs. Wentworth, as they must know I should be interested." Colonel Fitzwilliam could not immediately recall anything of Mrs. Wentworth beyond her name, and on being reminded that she was Sir Walter Elliot's daughter, presently replied: "I do not think it altogether surprising she should not have written to you. She probably cares little for the marriage, and still less for the one which it was anticipated would follow it--I mean Miss Elliot's to Mr. Crawford." This was a new idea to Elizabeth, and while she was pondering over it, and the inferences to be drawn from it, Colonel Fitzwilliam broke the silence by saying: "Perhaps we had better not speak of this anymore, Elizabeth. I know your great kindness of heart, but I feel it does no good, rather harm, to be reviving thoughts which I must in honour suppress as much as possible. I was anxious to know whether you had heard anything, and to ask you again, when you have the chance, to tell her that I wish her well; but now we have mentioned it, it would, I think, be best for my contemptibly weak character to put it as far away as possible." With tears in her eyes, Elizabeth assured him that through the tenderest regard for him, not through any fear of overtaxing his fortitude, she would respect his wishes, but could not help begging him to remain with them at Pemberley as heretofore, so as to give them an opportunity of showing him how completely their happiness was bound up with his, and of making use of any opportunity which might arise for them to be of service to him. Fitzwilliam gratefully promised to stay for the present, and said that his only engagement was to go to some friends in Leicestershire in November, for the hunting. Elizabeth was, nevertheless, not perfectly satisfied, and took occasion to ask Georgiana shortly afterwards whether it was from Mrs. Wentworth that she had heard confirmation of the fact that Sir Walter Elliot was engaged to Miss Crawford. "No," said Georgiana, in surprise, "it was from Mr. Price. Mrs. Wentworth never mentioned it. Mrs. Wentworth! Of course, I recollect now, she is Sir Walter Elliot's daughter; but at the time I never thought of it, for, you see, I did not know Sir Walter was the man." "Very true; I had also forgotten that you did not know," said Elizabeth, "and would never connect her with Miss Crawford. I have been thinking that I should like, for our own satisfaction, to know when the wedding is going to take place, and the simplest way will be to write and ask Mrs. Wentworth. I wish I had done so before, but I did not wish to be in haste, and I felt so convinced we should hear from others." Georgiana agreed that this was the best course to pursue, and Elizabeth, having told Darcy of her intention, to which, on account of her promise to Fitzwilliam, he could no longer object, wrote and dispatched her letter. The season was now drawing on, and with the shortening days the family at Pemberley found themselves thrown more upon the resources of their own immediate circle for amusement. The weather was consistently bad, and though this did not prevent the gentlemen from covering great distances for the purpose of slaughtering their game, the ladies were of necessity restricted to a smaller area, and their walks seldom extended beyond the park, except when their inclinations led them along a tolerably clean road towards the Rectory. This happened pretty frequently, for both Elizabeth and Georgiana were extremely attached to Elinor Ferrars. Their friendship was of a particularly sincere and well-balanced kind, and was not marred by their constant intercourse, as each knew how to maintain that degree of reserve which prevents indiscriminate confidences and so greatly strengthens mutual respect. Kitty was the one who perhaps found the society of the Rectory the least congenial; but it is to be feared that she was extremely difficult to please that autumn, and in the impatience with which she waited for one young man she might have sometimes regretted the solace which the company of the other would have afforded. In such a small neighbourhood everyone was of some value, and they all heard with interest of the approaching visit to Mr. and Mrs. Edward Ferrars of an old friend, Mrs. Jennings, who was coming early in October to spend six or seven weeks with them. Mrs. Ferrars was in delicate health, and Mrs. Jennings, besides having an almost maternal affection for her, was well qualified to be of service as sick nurse and enlivening companion, so that Elinor's warning to Mrs. Darcy that her friend, although the kindest of women, had not always the most refined manner of expressing herself, did not prevent them from being anxious to make her acquaintance. Mrs. Jennings performed in safety the long journey from her son-in-law's house in Devonshire, and arrived in her customary high spirits. It was her first visit to the Ferrars's since their removal from Delaford, and she had to examine the house, to criticize minutely the arrangement of their furniture, and to compare their surroundings, social and material, with what they had been in their old home. Mrs. Darcy paid an early call on the new arrival, and the morning after her visit Georgiana and Kitty also found their way to the Rectory. Mrs. Jennings's exuberance, her loud laugh and general noisy cheerfulness did not recommend her strongly to either of the girls in the first few minutes, and Georgiana was glad to move to a chair by Mrs. Ferrars, to enter into a quieter conversation with her; but before long, judging by the sounds which reached them, Mrs. Jennings and Kitty had found some subjects in common. This perhaps was not so surprising, as Mrs. Jennings was exceedingly fond of the society of all young girls, and cared not at all whether they returned her partiality or no. In this case she had begun, with the utmost frankness, to discourse on the subject nearest her heart at the moment, namely, her dear Mrs. Ferrars, and was relating all the circumstances under which their friendship had been formed, the Dashwood girls' visit to London, the disagreeable conduct of Mrs. Ferrars's mother and sister, and the absurd misunderstanding as to Colonel Brandon's attentions, the whole being punctuated by frequent bursts of laughter; and she would doubtless have gone on to describe in detail the events attending the engagement of her two young friends, had not Elinor mildly but decisively interposed. "Dear madam," she said, breaking off in the midst of a remark to Georgiana, "I am sure Miss Bennet does not wish to hear the history of such a very dull old couple as ourselves. You are so kind as to be more interested in it than most people could be." "Lord, my dear," cried Mrs. Jennings, "why did you not stop me? I declare I am very sorry if I said a word I ought not. I know my tongue does run on, and Miss Bennet must excuse me, for it was only for the pleasure of talking to you and Mr. Edward. And as for its being dull, I don't believe there is anybody who does not like to hear of other people's love-affairs; it makes one think of one's own, now, does it not, Miss Bennet?" Kitty blushed and looked embarrassed, and Mrs. Jennings laughed heartily, saying: "It is just as I thought; Miss Bennet could tell us a pretty tale too, I'll be bound, if only she would." "Miss Bennet can tell us some wonderful tales of the West Indies," said Elinor, endeavouring to turn Mrs. Jennings's mind from her favourite topic; "she has a sister there, who writes to her constantly, does she not, Miss Bennet? Those tropical places must be very beautiful. Do you remember how Colonel Brandon used to talk to us of his travels in the East, ma'am?" "That I do, my dear," replied Mrs. Jennings emphatically, "and I never want to hear again of such fearful things as he had seen--swamps, and great things like alligators ... and insects that did everything insects ought not. I hope you will tell your sister not to get amongst them, Miss Bennet." Kitty replied that her sister had written chiefly of the beautiful balls and illuminations which they frequently had, and lately of some shocks of earthquake which had frightened them terribly. Mrs. Jennings exclaimed at this, and declared that the finest ball in the world would not compensate her if there was the fear that the ground would open under her feet while she was dancing. "But I know young people do not care what risks they run," said she. "There was Sir John Middleton three weeks ago wanted to have a moonlight picnic; my daughter Middleton was all against it, for the weather was so threatening, but have it he would, and the consequence was that they all ate their supper, or as much of it as they could, in a roaring thunderstorm. I can tell you they were in a pretty pickle when they got back! All the girls so cross, and the young men not a dry thread among them through trying to protect the ladies. But Sir John, he made no bones about it at all, but said they would go again another night, when for sure it would be fine." Her hearers could not help laughing at such a picture of undaunted pleasure-seeking, and Elinor inquired if the second party had taken place. "Oh, Lord, yes; they all came, but their fathers and mothers made them promise not to stir beyond the grounds. I heard, at any rate, they turned it into a dance instead. But, as I say, young people don't care for a drop of rain. I am sure, when I was young, I would as lief have had it as not, for there was no hardship in sheltering under a hedge, with the right young man to hold an umbrella over you, do you think so, Miss Bennet?" "Still, I fancy that most people, old or young, prefer outdoor expeditions to be in dry weather," said Elinor. "That reminds me that I must show you what terrible havoc last night's rain and wind worked in my flower borders. When I looked out first, I was quite in despair, thinking I should not have another nosegay all the autumn. There is a gleam of sunshine now, so shall we take a turn in the garden?" Georgiana gladly walked out with her, and Mrs. Jennings and Kitty followed at a distance, the former questioning her young companion about her sister abroad and hearing laments over the gaieties which that sister had been able to offer her, but which she had never been able to accept. Mrs. Jennings's hearty comments of "Well, there now, that is a shame!" and "A regiment too! You would have broken all their hearts, I vow!" and other such remarks pleased Kitty, while she knew in her heart they ought not to do so. The two girls shortly after took their leave, and while walking homeward naturally compared notes upon the stranger whom they had just met. Georgiana expressed herself guardedly, not wishing to condemn any friend of Mrs. Ferrars's, although feeling as if that friend could not be in any way an accession to their party; but Kitty's first unfavorable impression seemed to have been obliterated, and she declared frankly that she liked Mrs. Jennings and thought she was very merry and good-natured. Georgiana could not quite agree with this, for she found Mrs. Jennings's style of raillery not at all to her mind, but admitted that she might be pleasanter when one got to know her well. At dinner these opinions were canvassed, and Georgiana found, as she expected, that her own were largely shared by Elizabeth, who, however, was amused at her severity, and told her that she would often meet people who, with more refined manners, were yet at heart far more vulgar than Mrs. Jennings and had not a tenth part of her redeeming qualities. "I do not think I want to meet them, then," said Georgiana. "But I am sure you are right, Elizabeth, and I daresay she will be a great comfort to Mrs. Ferrars." When the ladies were together after dinner, Kitty, whose gravity and preoccupation had been noticeable for the last half-hour, after wandering several times round the room, stationed herself near to her sister and began, in a solemn tone: "Lizzie, I want to ask you something very important." Elizabeth, smiling, professed herself all attention, and Kitty continued: "You know you have never kept your promise, that you made before you were married, of having a ball here, for each winter something has happened to prevent it." "Quite true, Kitty; so a ball is in your mind; and what made you think of it just now?" "I never come here without thinking of it, but I had somehow not expected to be staying long enough this year, as I imagined I should go home directly after the shooting party. But Mrs. Jennings said to-day she supposed you sometimes had balls in this lovely house, and she was sure Georgiana and I were fond of dancing." "And Mrs. Jennings is quite right about the latter statement, is she not?" Georgiana looked up with a smile, to assent to her share of the question, and Kitty clasped her hands rapturously, exclaiming: "Oh, Lizzie, you know how much I love a ball! It would be so kind of you and Darcy! Everyone would enjoy it!" "I am very

go

How many times the word 'go' appears in the text?

will do it, but life is so uncertain that I think for the present I had better refrain. Have you ascertained whether Kitty can cook, make her own gowns, and trim hats? I understand it is a great promoter of married happiness when the wife can do so, and I am not sure whether all my girls have turned their education to such good account." Mr. Morland only replied by asking if he might be allowed to see Miss Bennet at once, and her father left the room, foreseeing that, whatever happened, he should not have one more quiet hour during that day. His anticipations were soon in the way to be fulfilled, for on finding his daughters, and sending Kitty to the library, he had to give Jane an outline of what had just passed, then repeat it to Bingley, who joined them, and listened to their exclamations of surprise, and regret at the probable downfall of Mr. Morland's hopes. Jane and Bingley were both too convinced of Kitty's prior attachment to have the slightest expectation of his success, and Mr. Bennet was put in full possession of the facts relating to it, while they anxiously awaited the termination of the interview. It came, after some minutes, in a glimpse of Kitty emerging from the library and hurrying upstairs with streaming eyes, and while they all debated as to their next move, Mr. Morland was seen to cross the hall rapidly, looking nowhere but in front of him, and leave the house with precipitation. Jane herself, almost equally distressed, longed to go to Kitty, and Bingley questioned whether he ought not to hasten after the young man, while Mr. Bennet was disposed to think they would be better left to themselves for a time, and wished heartily that there were only just enough lovers in the world to go round, one to each young lady, and none over. In spite of this, Jane was not long in finding her way to her agitated sister and in showing her the tenderest consideration. Kitty's distress was very great, and also very sincere, for she had in truth been far from guessing that Mr. Morland took a more than common interest in her, and as is usual in such cases, the declaration of the young man's love woke in her feelings which she had not known to exist, of reciprocal kindness and even affection, which only did not share the nature and strength of his. Kitty could never have been hard-hearted to any lover, least of all to one whom she liked as much as she did James Morland, and his devotion touched her as deeply as the knowledge that she could not accept it wounded her. Between regrets for what had happened, pity for him and for herself, and the excited thoughts of William Price which the incident itself was bound to evoke, she was in a sad state, and Jane easily prevailed upon her to have her dinner upstairs and go early to bed. Not so easily could she check the tears which flowed continuously, and Jane, to occupy her mind and body, proposed that she should go to-morrow to Pemberley, instead of in three days' time, as arranged; she could very well be sent over, and the change would be beneficial; besides, she was not really leaving them, for there was the November visit to look forward to. Kitty caught at the suggestion, and declining the offices of the maid, began to busy herself about her packing, as Jane hoped she would do, while the latter descended to consult with her husband and father. Mr. Bennet and Bingley both approved, and Jane hastily wrote a few lines to Elizabeth to apprise her of what had happened, that she might be prepared for Kitty's arrival. The two gentlemen walked to the nearest post town to convey the letter; and after dinner the indefatigable Bingley again set out, this time to the Rectory, to perform the same kind office by James Morland as his wife had been doing by Kitty. The young man, though calmer, proved far more unreceptive of consolation. He had felt his rebuff acutely, for Kitty had been too much taken by surprise, too sure of herself, to make it otherwise than decisive, and even the modest hopes he had ventured to entertain, of being able to make more progress with her once the subject was opened between them, had been most thoroughly dispelled. Miss Bennet would not hear another word of it--begged him never to speak of it again--with tears reproached him for having spoilt everything, so that in addition to his own disappointment he had the pain of feeling that she thought less well of him than before. Bingley could deny this, but could not affirm anything else likely to give him comfort. It remained for Morland himself to declare, which he did in a firm though melancholy tone, that he regretted having distressed Miss Bennet, and would endeavour so to meet her in the future that she would not suffer through being reminded of it by any act of word of his. Bingley commended his courage, told him of Kitty's departure, and begged him to continue coming to Desborough just the same; and walked home with a full report of what had just passed. Jane shook her head over it, for, while sympathizing with both, she was more truly sorry for Mr. Morland, since for him she could see no immediate prospect of compensation, in spite of her father's assurances that a young clergyman was seldom allowed to remain inconsolable for more than six months, and if Kitty's other young man only did what was expected of him, her fate would be a certainty in half that time. Chapter XIII Needless to say, Kitty was heartily welcomed by Georgiana and Elizabeth, and given every opportunity to relieve her mind by descriptions of the tragical affair in all its aspects. Both regretted it deeply for Mr. Morland's sake, and Elizabeth privately did so for Kitty's sake, having such a good opinion of him as to make her wish that Kitty could have been persuaded out of her fancy for a young man, who, however excellent, was comparatively a stranger to them all, and whose intentions, at present, were extremely uncertain. She would have rejoiced if Kitty and Morland could have made each other happy, and had entertained a slight hope that her hint to Kitty might perhaps have helped matters, in directing her thoughts into another channel, but it seemed to be of no avail, and Georgiana gave her friend her warmest support, implying entire agreement with her point of view. "I could not help it, now, could I, Georgiana? You know yourself, Lizzie, that I never dreamt it. How could I do anything else but refuse him outright? I was amazingly grieved to do so, but you know very well, Georgiana, that if I could think of one man more than another, _he_ is not that one." She paused for assent, which Georgiana gave by a silent caress, and then continued: "It is all so unfortunate. It will never be as pleasant at Desborough now. Poor Mr. Morland! I wish I had not had to hurt him. He does want someone so badly in the Rectory." "Well, my dear, do not make yourself ill with these vain regrets," said Elizabeth. "It is, as you say, very unfortunate, but no one blames you. If you could not care for him, you could not do it, and someone else will have to inhabit that nice Rectory." Kitty looked as if this prospect were not very pleasing either, but Georgiana, seeing what Elizabeth wished, began to talk cheerfully of something else, and Kitty gradually joined in, though whenever the two girls were alone together she found it difficult to abstain long from referring to some branch of the subject. Georgiana's loyalty and patience never failed, but she wished for November almost as earnestly as Kitty herself, so that matters might reach some definite conclusion, for Kitty's restlessness had considerably increased since she had received James Morland's offer, and she was constantly nervous and excitable and not mistress of herself. On the day when the Bingleys and Mr. Bennet came over for the latter to take leave before returning to Longbourn, this was specially noticeable in her state of anxious flutter when drawing Jane aside to inquire after Mr. Morland. Mr. Bennet bade her farewell gravely and more affectionately than was his wont, telling her that he left her in good hands, and would only give her one piece of advice, namely, that second thoughts were sometimes best. Kitty blushed deeply and could not pretend to misunderstand him, but told Georgiana afterwards that it was impossible to have better second thoughts when Price was the first. With his elder daughter Mr. Bennet was rather more explicit, telling Elizabeth that he considered it was a great pity that so unobjectionable a young man should have been sent about his business. Elizabeth entirely agreed with him, and thought it would not be going too far to express Mr. Morland's praise in even warmer terms. "He will never set the Thames on fire, but there seems good stuff in him," was Mr. Bennet's reply. "When he proposed for her I had not taken much notice of him, except to think him a tolerably sensible fellow, and of course I had to readjust my ideas; but I soon began to see that he must not be judged by that alone. I have really liked him better, too, for his way of taking his refusal." "My dear father, it does not always indicate a want of sense to wish to be married," interposed Elizabeth. "Perhaps not, but Morland is much better off as he is than in marrying a girl he knows so little about. Kitty is flighty and expensive; she ought to stay longer with you and Jane, and not think of being married for the next ten years." Elizabeth smiled and said she thought that it was unnecessary, but that it would certainly be better for Kitty to marry a clergyman than an officer in the navy, who would be compelled to spend long periods away from home. "As to that, of course it is a complete absurdity, and I cannot think why you women, who are so fond of making matches, did not originate something less ridiculously unsuitable among yourselves." Elizabeth thought it wiser not to explain who actually had originated the idea, and said after a pause: "You were saying that you have liked Mr. Morland better of late?" "Yes, he has positively shown some sort of self-command and dignity. He turned up at the house a day or two afterwards, apparently _not_ bent on making us all uncomfortable by the sight of his misery, as most rejected lovers do. Besides, Bingley had had the foresight to produce some excellent port." "I hear from Jane," said Elizabeth, "that he does not avoid or seek the mention of Kitty, and she thinks he is trying to give up all hope of her." "Her absence for a few weeks will no doubt materially assist him," said Mr. Bennet. Kitty seized the opportunity offered by this visit to speak a private word to her brother-in-law with reference to the hero, as Bingley persisted in calling him. She herself had no news, for Mrs. Knightley's frequent letters reported him still at Portsmouth, and Bingley had heard nothing, but promised to write and renew his invitation as soon as October was fairly in. The same silence prevailed at Pemberley with regard to Miss Crawford. No announcement of her marriage had reached any of them, and Elizabeth had a half inclination to make some inquiries, but was dissuaded by Darcy, who said: "Whatever precisely has happened, Elizabeth, we can be sure of one thing, that Miss Crawford has allowed Fitzwilliam to understand that she does not wish him to approach her again. Under these circumstances it is better that you should have no news to give him." Elizabeth sighed as she agreed to the wisdom of this decision, but when shortly after her father's departure a letter was received from Colonel Fitzwilliam to say he would be returning at the end of the month, she could not help wishing that she was more fully informed of the present state of affairs. It would be a relief, even though a sad one, to Fitzwilliam's mind to know that Miss Crawford was actually married and he would be unselfish enough to wish to hear that she was happy. Nothing occurred, however, to enlighten them, and Fitzwilliam arrived on the appointed day, looking much as usual except for a few more lines about the eyes and an increased number of grey hairs. It was the first time he and Georgiana had been together at Pemberley since the rupture of their engagement, and both must have felt conscious of it, Georgiana in particular being prepared to be miserable for a time, from the belief that her cousin, instead of being cheered and invigorated as formerly by his return home, must be reminded at every turn of the failure of their experiment, the failure caused by her wretched weakness and incapacity. Worse still, her brother must be reminded of it, and there might be a repetition of his stern looks, his cold manner. She trembled at the thought, unaware that Darcy had long been persuaded of the wisdom of their parting, ever since events in Bath had shown him where his cousin's real affections were likely to be bestowed, and the only difference which Georgiana perceived after Fitzwilliam's arrival was in the particular kindness he showed her, and the complete renewal of the old comfortable relations amongst them all. When inquiries after the Hursts and Mrs. Annesley had been made, and Georgiana had mentioned the dinner-party and the persons who had been present, little more was said with reference to London; indeed, there was little more for either to say, for Georgiana dared not refer to the person who had chiefly occupied his mind there. Fitzwilliam talked of his book and of Ireland, inquired about the prospects of the shooting, showed interest in the minutest details of life in the neighbourhood, and in every way endeavoured to prove that he was exactly his old self; and only when walking with Elizabeth in the Park one morning did he betray how far that was from being the case. There was no doubt that his disappointment had coloured his whole life. He had allowed himself to think of Miss Crawford, and to build high upon his hopes, and to find himself again mistaken had been a blow which cut at the foundations of all his happiness. His gaiety was feigned, his pursuits had lost their zest, his friends no longer sufficed him: and as he said to Elizabeth, he had felt he had better adopt some country occupation and settle down to it, and there grow old as quietly and quickly as might be. Elizabeth's heart was wrung; the spectacle of her cousin's fine nature locked away, as it were, in a closed room, as a thing no one had any need for, was inexpressively painful to her, and nothing else would have caused her to venture upon a reopening of the subject which he himself had not approached. With the utmost gentleness she spoke a few words of commiseration, and then, still proceeding with extreme caution, she told him of the absence of news and her assumption that Miss Crawford's marriage with Sir Walter Elliot had been delayed. "I daresay it has," returned Colonel Fitzwilliam, with a kind of listlessness, striking with his stick at the head of some tall grasses which bordered their path. "There can be no doubt of it, I suppose?" pursued Elizabeth. "None at all, I should imagine," replied the Colonel. "Miss Crawford is not the kind of woman who would break her word, once the engagement had been announced." "No, of course not," said Elizabeth; "but I had expected that she or Mrs. Grant would have written to me, or even Mrs. Wentworth, as they must know I should be interested." Colonel Fitzwilliam could not immediately recall anything of Mrs. Wentworth beyond her name, and on being reminded that she was Sir Walter Elliot's daughter, presently replied: "I do not think it altogether surprising she should not have written to you. She probably cares little for the marriage, and still less for the one which it was anticipated would follow it--I mean Miss Elliot's to Mr. Crawford." This was a new idea to Elizabeth, and while she was pondering over it, and the inferences to be drawn from it, Colonel Fitzwilliam broke the silence by saying: "Perhaps we had better not speak of this anymore, Elizabeth. I know your great kindness of heart, but I feel it does no good, rather harm, to be reviving thoughts which I must in honour suppress as much as possible. I was anxious to know whether you had heard anything, and to ask you again, when you have the chance, to tell her that I wish her well; but now we have mentioned it, it would, I think, be best for my contemptibly weak character to put it as far away as possible." With tears in her eyes, Elizabeth assured him that through the tenderest regard for him, not through any fear of overtaxing his fortitude, she would respect his wishes, but could not help begging him to remain with them at Pemberley as heretofore, so as to give them an opportunity of showing him how completely their happiness was bound up with his, and of making use of any opportunity which might arise for them to be of service to him. Fitzwilliam gratefully promised to stay for the present, and said that his only engagement was to go to some friends in Leicestershire in November, for the hunting. Elizabeth was, nevertheless, not perfectly satisfied, and took occasion to ask Georgiana shortly afterwards whether it was from Mrs. Wentworth that she had heard confirmation of the fact that Sir Walter Elliot was engaged to Miss Crawford. "No," said Georgiana, in surprise, "it was from Mr. Price. Mrs. Wentworth never mentioned it. Mrs. Wentworth! Of course, I recollect now, she is Sir Walter Elliot's daughter; but at the time I never thought of it, for, you see, I did not know Sir Walter was the man." "Very true; I had also forgotten that you did not know," said Elizabeth, "and would never connect her with Miss Crawford. I have been thinking that I should like, for our own satisfaction, to know when the wedding is going to take place, and the simplest way will be to write and ask Mrs. Wentworth. I wish I had done so before, but I did not wish to be in haste, and I felt so convinced we should hear from others." Georgiana agreed that this was the best course to pursue, and Elizabeth, having told Darcy of her intention, to which, on account of her promise to Fitzwilliam, he could no longer object, wrote and dispatched her letter. The season was now drawing on, and with the shortening days the family at Pemberley found themselves thrown more upon the resources of their own immediate circle for amusement. The weather was consistently bad, and though this did not prevent the gentlemen from covering great distances for the purpose of slaughtering their game, the ladies were of necessity restricted to a smaller area, and their walks seldom extended beyond the park, except when their inclinations led them along a tolerably clean road towards the Rectory. This happened pretty frequently, for both Elizabeth and Georgiana were extremely attached to Elinor Ferrars. Their friendship was of a particularly sincere and well-balanced kind, and was not marred by their constant intercourse, as each knew how to maintain that degree of reserve which prevents indiscriminate confidences and so greatly strengthens mutual respect. Kitty was the one who perhaps found the society of the Rectory the least congenial; but it is to be feared that she was extremely difficult to please that autumn, and in the impatience with which she waited for one young man she might have sometimes regretted the solace which the company of the other would have afforded. In such a small neighbourhood everyone was of some value, and they all heard with interest of the approaching visit to Mr. and Mrs. Edward Ferrars of an old friend, Mrs. Jennings, who was coming early in October to spend six or seven weeks with them. Mrs. Ferrars was in delicate health, and Mrs. Jennings, besides having an almost maternal affection for her, was well qualified to be of service as sick nurse and enlivening companion, so that Elinor's warning to Mrs. Darcy that her friend, although the kindest of women, had not always the most refined manner of expressing herself, did not prevent them from being anxious to make her acquaintance. Mrs. Jennings performed in safety the long journey from her son-in-law's house in Devonshire, and arrived in her customary high spirits. It was her first visit to the Ferrars's since their removal from Delaford, and she had to examine the house, to criticize minutely the arrangement of their furniture, and to compare their surroundings, social and material, with what they had been in their old home. Mrs. Darcy paid an early call on the new arrival, and the morning after her visit Georgiana and Kitty also found their way to the Rectory. Mrs. Jennings's exuberance, her loud laugh and general noisy cheerfulness did not recommend her strongly to either of the girls in the first few minutes, and Georgiana was glad to move to a chair by Mrs. Ferrars, to enter into a quieter conversation with her; but before long, judging by the sounds which reached them, Mrs. Jennings and Kitty had found some subjects in common. This perhaps was not so surprising, as Mrs. Jennings was exceedingly fond of the society of all young girls, and cared not at all whether they returned her partiality or no. In this case she had begun, with the utmost frankness, to discourse on the subject nearest her heart at the moment, namely, her dear Mrs. Ferrars, and was relating all the circumstances under which their friendship had been formed, the Dashwood girls' visit to London, the disagreeable conduct of Mrs. Ferrars's mother and sister, and the absurd misunderstanding as to Colonel Brandon's attentions, the whole being punctuated by frequent bursts of laughter; and she would doubtless have gone on to describe in detail the events attending the engagement of her two young friends, had not Elinor mildly but decisively interposed. "Dear madam," she said, breaking off in the midst of a remark to Georgiana, "I am sure Miss Bennet does not wish to hear the history of such a very dull old couple as ourselves. You are so kind as to be more interested in it than most people could be." "Lord, my dear," cried Mrs. Jennings, "why did you not stop me? I declare I am very sorry if I said a word I ought not. I know my tongue does run on, and Miss Bennet must excuse me, for it was only for the pleasure of talking to you and Mr. Edward. And as for its being dull, I don't believe there is anybody who does not like to hear of other people's love-affairs; it makes one think of one's own, now, does it not, Miss Bennet?" Kitty blushed and looked embarrassed, and Mrs. Jennings laughed heartily, saying: "It is just as I thought; Miss Bennet could tell us a pretty tale too, I'll be bound, if only she would." "Miss Bennet can tell us some wonderful tales of the West Indies," said Elinor, endeavouring to turn Mrs. Jennings's mind from her favourite topic; "she has a sister there, who writes to her constantly, does she not, Miss Bennet? Those tropical places must be very beautiful. Do you remember how Colonel Brandon used to talk to us of his travels in the East, ma'am?" "That I do, my dear," replied Mrs. Jennings emphatically, "and I never want to hear again of such fearful things as he had seen--swamps, and great things like alligators ... and insects that did everything insects ought not. I hope you will tell your sister not to get amongst them, Miss Bennet." Kitty replied that her sister had written chiefly of the beautiful balls and illuminations which they frequently had, and lately of some shocks of earthquake which had frightened them terribly. Mrs. Jennings exclaimed at this, and declared that the finest ball in the world would not compensate her if there was the fear that the ground would open under her feet while she was dancing. "But I know young people do not care what risks they run," said she. "There was Sir John Middleton three weeks ago wanted to have a moonlight picnic; my daughter Middleton was all against it, for the weather was so threatening, but have it he would, and the consequence was that they all ate their supper, or as much of it as they could, in a roaring thunderstorm. I can tell you they were in a pretty pickle when they got back! All the girls so cross, and the young men not a dry thread among them through trying to protect the ladies. But Sir John, he made no bones about it at all, but said they would go again another night, when for sure it would be fine." Her hearers could not help laughing at such a picture of undaunted pleasure-seeking, and Elinor inquired if the second party had taken place. "Oh, Lord, yes; they all came, but their fathers and mothers made them promise not to stir beyond the grounds. I heard, at any rate, they turned it into a dance instead. But, as I say, young people don't care for a drop of rain. I am sure, when I was young, I would as lief have had it as not, for there was no hardship in sheltering under a hedge, with the right young man to hold an umbrella over you, do you think so, Miss Bennet?" "Still, I fancy that most people, old or young, prefer outdoor expeditions to be in dry weather," said Elinor. "That reminds me that I must show you what terrible havoc last night's rain and wind worked in my flower borders. When I looked out first, I was quite in despair, thinking I should not have another nosegay all the autumn. There is a gleam of sunshine now, so shall we take a turn in the garden?" Georgiana gladly walked out with her, and Mrs. Jennings and Kitty followed at a distance, the former questioning her young companion about her sister abroad and hearing laments over the gaieties which that sister had been able to offer her, but which she had never been able to accept. Mrs. Jennings's hearty comments of "Well, there now, that is a shame!" and "A regiment too! You would have broken all their hearts, I vow!" and other such remarks pleased Kitty, while she knew in her heart they ought not to do so. The two girls shortly after took their leave, and while walking homeward naturally compared notes upon the stranger whom they had just met. Georgiana expressed herself guardedly, not wishing to condemn any friend of Mrs. Ferrars's, although feeling as if that friend could not be in any way an accession to their party; but Kitty's first unfavorable impression seemed to have been obliterated, and she declared frankly that she liked Mrs. Jennings and thought she was very merry and good-natured. Georgiana could not quite agree with this, for she found Mrs. Jennings's style of raillery not at all to her mind, but admitted that she might be pleasanter when one got to know her well. At dinner these opinions were canvassed, and Georgiana found, as she expected, that her own were largely shared by Elizabeth, who, however, was amused at her severity, and told her that she would often meet people who, with more refined manners, were yet at heart far more vulgar than Mrs. Jennings and had not a tenth part of her redeeming qualities. "I do not think I want to meet them, then," said Georgiana. "But I am sure you are right, Elizabeth, and I daresay she will be a great comfort to Mrs. Ferrars." When the ladies were together after dinner, Kitty, whose gravity and preoccupation had been noticeable for the last half-hour, after wandering several times round the room, stationed herself near to her sister and began, in a solemn tone: "Lizzie, I want to ask you something very important." Elizabeth, smiling, professed herself all attention, and Kitty continued: "You know you have never kept your promise, that you made before you were married, of having a ball here, for each winter something has happened to prevent it." "Quite true, Kitty; so a ball is in your mind; and what made you think of it just now?" "I never come here without thinking of it, but I had somehow not expected to be staying long enough this year, as I imagined I should go home directly after the shooting party. But Mrs. Jennings said to-day she supposed you sometimes had balls in this lovely house, and she was sure Georgiana and I were fond of dancing." "And Mrs. Jennings is quite right about the latter statement, is she not?" Georgiana looked up with a smile, to assent to her share of the question, and Kitty clasped her hands rapturously, exclaiming: "Oh, Lizzie, you know how much I love a ball! It would be so kind of you and Darcy! Everyone would enjoy it!" "I am very

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will do it, but life is so uncertain that I think for the present I had better refrain. Have you ascertained whether Kitty can cook, make her own gowns, and trim hats? I understand it is a great promoter of married happiness when the wife can do so, and I am not sure whether all my girls have turned their education to such good account." Mr. Morland only replied by asking if he might be allowed to see Miss Bennet at once, and her father left the room, foreseeing that, whatever happened, he should not have one more quiet hour during that day. His anticipations were soon in the way to be fulfilled, for on finding his daughters, and sending Kitty to the library, he had to give Jane an outline of what had just passed, then repeat it to Bingley, who joined them, and listened to their exclamations of surprise, and regret at the probable downfall of Mr. Morland's hopes. Jane and Bingley were both too convinced of Kitty's prior attachment to have the slightest expectation of his success, and Mr. Bennet was put in full possession of the facts relating to it, while they anxiously awaited the termination of the interview. It came, after some minutes, in a glimpse of Kitty emerging from the library and hurrying upstairs with streaming eyes, and while they all debated as to their next move, Mr. Morland was seen to cross the hall rapidly, looking nowhere but in front of him, and leave the house with precipitation. Jane herself, almost equally distressed, longed to go to Kitty, and Bingley questioned whether he ought not to hasten after the young man, while Mr. Bennet was disposed to think they would be better left to themselves for a time, and wished heartily that there were only just enough lovers in the world to go round, one to each young lady, and none over. In spite of this, Jane was not long in finding her way to her agitated sister and in showing her the tenderest consideration. Kitty's distress was very great, and also very sincere, for she had in truth been far from guessing that Mr. Morland took a more than common interest in her, and as is usual in such cases, the declaration of the young man's love woke in her feelings which she had not known to exist, of reciprocal kindness and even affection, which only did not share the nature and strength of his. Kitty could never have been hard-hearted to any lover, least of all to one whom she liked as much as she did James Morland, and his devotion touched her as deeply as the knowledge that she could not accept it wounded her. Between regrets for what had happened, pity for him and for herself, and the excited thoughts of William Price which the incident itself was bound to evoke, she was in a sad state, and Jane easily prevailed upon her to have her dinner upstairs and go early to bed. Not so easily could she check the tears which flowed continuously, and Jane, to occupy her mind and body, proposed that she should go to-morrow to Pemberley, instead of in three days' time, as arranged; she could very well be sent over, and the change would be beneficial; besides, she was not really leaving them, for there was the November visit to look forward to. Kitty caught at the suggestion, and declining the offices of the maid, began to busy herself about her packing, as Jane hoped she would do, while the latter descended to consult with her husband and father. Mr. Bennet and Bingley both approved, and Jane hastily wrote a few lines to Elizabeth to apprise her of what had happened, that she might be prepared for Kitty's arrival. The two gentlemen walked to the nearest post town to convey the letter; and after dinner the indefatigable Bingley again set out, this time to the Rectory, to perform the same kind office by James Morland as his wife had been doing by Kitty. The young man, though calmer, proved far more unreceptive of consolation. He had felt his rebuff acutely, for Kitty had been too much taken by surprise, too sure of herself, to make it otherwise than decisive, and even the modest hopes he had ventured to entertain, of being able to make more progress with her once the subject was opened between them, had been most thoroughly dispelled. Miss Bennet would not hear another word of it--begged him never to speak of it again--with tears reproached him for having spoilt everything, so that in addition to his own disappointment he had the pain of feeling that she thought less well of him than before. Bingley could deny this, but could not affirm anything else likely to give him comfort. It remained for Morland himself to declare, which he did in a firm though melancholy tone, that he regretted having distressed Miss Bennet, and would endeavour so to meet her in the future that she would not suffer through being reminded of it by any act of word of his. Bingley commended his courage, told him of Kitty's departure, and begged him to continue coming to Desborough just the same; and walked home with a full report of what had just passed. Jane shook her head over it, for, while sympathizing with both, she was more truly sorry for Mr. Morland, since for him she could see no immediate prospect of compensation, in spite of her father's assurances that a young clergyman was seldom allowed to remain inconsolable for more than six months, and if Kitty's other young man only did what was expected of him, her fate would be a certainty in half that time. Chapter XIII Needless to say, Kitty was heartily welcomed by Georgiana and Elizabeth, and given every opportunity to relieve her mind by descriptions of the tragical affair in all its aspects. Both regretted it deeply for Mr. Morland's sake, and Elizabeth privately did so for Kitty's sake, having such a good opinion of him as to make her wish that Kitty could have been persuaded out of her fancy for a young man, who, however excellent, was comparatively a stranger to them all, and whose intentions, at present, were extremely uncertain. She would have rejoiced if Kitty and Morland could have made each other happy, and had entertained a slight hope that her hint to Kitty might perhaps have helped matters, in directing her thoughts into another channel, but it seemed to be of no avail, and Georgiana gave her friend her warmest support, implying entire agreement with her point of view. "I could not help it, now, could I, Georgiana? You know yourself, Lizzie, that I never dreamt it. How could I do anything else but refuse him outright? I was amazingly grieved to do so, but you know very well, Georgiana, that if I could think of one man more than another, _he_ is not that one." She paused for assent, which Georgiana gave by a silent caress, and then continued: "It is all so unfortunate. It will never be as pleasant at Desborough now. Poor Mr. Morland! I wish I had not had to hurt him. He does want someone so badly in the Rectory." "Well, my dear, do not make yourself ill with these vain regrets," said Elizabeth. "It is, as you say, very unfortunate, but no one blames you. If you could not care for him, you could not do it, and someone else will have to inhabit that nice Rectory." Kitty looked as if this prospect were not very pleasing either, but Georgiana, seeing what Elizabeth wished, began to talk cheerfully of something else, and Kitty gradually joined in, though whenever the two girls were alone together she found it difficult to abstain long from referring to some branch of the subject. Georgiana's loyalty and patience never failed, but she wished for November almost as earnestly as Kitty herself, so that matters might reach some definite conclusion, for Kitty's restlessness had considerably increased since she had received James Morland's offer, and she was constantly nervous and excitable and not mistress of herself. On the day when the Bingleys and Mr. Bennet came over for the latter to take leave before returning to Longbourn, this was specially noticeable in her state of anxious flutter when drawing Jane aside to inquire after Mr. Morland. Mr. Bennet bade her farewell gravely and more affectionately than was his wont, telling her that he left her in good hands, and would only give her one piece of advice, namely, that second thoughts were sometimes best. Kitty blushed deeply and could not pretend to misunderstand him, but told Georgiana afterwards that it was impossible to have better second thoughts when Price was the first. With his elder daughter Mr. Bennet was rather more explicit, telling Elizabeth that he considered it was a great pity that so unobjectionable a young man should have been sent about his business. Elizabeth entirely agreed with him, and thought it would not be going too far to express Mr. Morland's praise in even warmer terms. "He will never set the Thames on fire, but there seems good stuff in him," was Mr. Bennet's reply. "When he proposed for her I had not taken much notice of him, except to think him a tolerably sensible fellow, and of course I had to readjust my ideas; but I soon began to see that he must not be judged by that alone. I have really liked him better, too, for his way of taking his refusal." "My dear father, it does not always indicate a want of sense to wish to be married," interposed Elizabeth. "Perhaps not, but Morland is much better off as he is than in marrying a girl he knows so little about. Kitty is flighty and expensive; she ought to stay longer with you and Jane, and not think of being married for the next ten years." Elizabeth smiled and said she thought that it was unnecessary, but that it would certainly be better for Kitty to marry a clergyman than an officer in the navy, who would be compelled to spend long periods away from home. "As to that, of course it is a complete absurdity, and I cannot think why you women, who are so fond of making matches, did not originate something less ridiculously unsuitable among yourselves." Elizabeth thought it wiser not to explain who actually had originated the idea, and said after a pause: "You were saying that you have liked Mr. Morland better of late?" "Yes, he has positively shown some sort of self-command and dignity. He turned up at the house a day or two afterwards, apparently _not_ bent on making us all uncomfortable by the sight of his misery, as most rejected lovers do. Besides, Bingley had had the foresight to produce some excellent port." "I hear from Jane," said Elizabeth, "that he does not avoid or seek the mention of Kitty, and she thinks he is trying to give up all hope of her." "Her absence for a few weeks will no doubt materially assist him," said Mr. Bennet. Kitty seized the opportunity offered by this visit to speak a private word to her brother-in-law with reference to the hero, as Bingley persisted in calling him. She herself had no news, for Mrs. Knightley's frequent letters reported him still at Portsmouth, and Bingley had heard nothing, but promised to write and renew his invitation as soon as October was fairly in. The same silence prevailed at Pemberley with regard to Miss Crawford. No announcement of her marriage had reached any of them, and Elizabeth had a half inclination to make some inquiries, but was dissuaded by Darcy, who said: "Whatever precisely has happened, Elizabeth, we can be sure of one thing, that Miss Crawford has allowed Fitzwilliam to understand that she does not wish him to approach her again. Under these circumstances it is better that you should have no news to give him." Elizabeth sighed as she agreed to the wisdom of this decision, but when shortly after her father's departure a letter was received from Colonel Fitzwilliam to say he would be returning at the end of the month, she could not help wishing that she was more fully informed of the present state of affairs. It would be a relief, even though a sad one, to Fitzwilliam's mind to know that Miss Crawford was actually married and he would be unselfish enough to wish to hear that she was happy. Nothing occurred, however, to enlighten them, and Fitzwilliam arrived on the appointed day, looking much as usual except for a few more lines about the eyes and an increased number of grey hairs. It was the first time he and Georgiana had been together at Pemberley since the rupture of their engagement, and both must have felt conscious of it, Georgiana in particular being prepared to be miserable for a time, from the belief that her cousin, instead of being cheered and invigorated as formerly by his return home, must be reminded at every turn of the failure of their experiment, the failure caused by her wretched weakness and incapacity. Worse still, her brother must be reminded of it, and there might be a repetition of his stern looks, his cold manner. She trembled at the thought, unaware that Darcy had long been persuaded of the wisdom of their parting, ever since events in Bath had shown him where his cousin's real affections were likely to be bestowed, and the only difference which Georgiana perceived after Fitzwilliam's arrival was in the particular kindness he showed her, and the complete renewal of the old comfortable relations amongst them all. When inquiries after the Hursts and Mrs. Annesley had been made, and Georgiana had mentioned the dinner-party and the persons who had been present, little more was said with reference to London; indeed, there was little more for either to say, for Georgiana dared not refer to the person who had chiefly occupied his mind there. Fitzwilliam talked of his book and of Ireland, inquired about the prospects of the shooting, showed interest in the minutest details of life in the neighbourhood, and in every way endeavoured to prove that he was exactly his old self; and only when walking with Elizabeth in the Park one morning did he betray how far that was from being the case. There was no doubt that his disappointment had coloured his whole life. He had allowed himself to think of Miss Crawford, and to build high upon his hopes, and to find himself again mistaken had been a blow which cut at the foundations of all his happiness. His gaiety was feigned, his pursuits had lost their zest, his friends no longer sufficed him: and as he said to Elizabeth, he had felt he had better adopt some country occupation and settle down to it, and there grow old as quietly and quickly as might be. Elizabeth's heart was wrung; the spectacle of her cousin's fine nature locked away, as it were, in a closed room, as a thing no one had any need for, was inexpressively painful to her, and nothing else would have caused her to venture upon a reopening of the subject which he himself had not approached. With the utmost gentleness she spoke a few words of commiseration, and then, still proceeding with extreme caution, she told him of the absence of news and her assumption that Miss Crawford's marriage with Sir Walter Elliot had been delayed. "I daresay it has," returned Colonel Fitzwilliam, with a kind of listlessness, striking with his stick at the head of some tall grasses which bordered their path. "There can be no doubt of it, I suppose?" pursued Elizabeth. "None at all, I should imagine," replied the Colonel. "Miss Crawford is not the kind of woman who would break her word, once the engagement had been announced." "No, of course not," said Elizabeth; "but I had expected that she or Mrs. Grant would have written to me, or even Mrs. Wentworth, as they must know I should be interested." Colonel Fitzwilliam could not immediately recall anything of Mrs. Wentworth beyond her name, and on being reminded that she was Sir Walter Elliot's daughter, presently replied: "I do not think it altogether surprising she should not have written to you. She probably cares little for the marriage, and still less for the one which it was anticipated would follow it--I mean Miss Elliot's to Mr. Crawford." This was a new idea to Elizabeth, and while she was pondering over it, and the inferences to be drawn from it, Colonel Fitzwilliam broke the silence by saying: "Perhaps we had better not speak of this anymore, Elizabeth. I know your great kindness of heart, but I feel it does no good, rather harm, to be reviving thoughts which I must in honour suppress as much as possible. I was anxious to know whether you had heard anything, and to ask you again, when you have the chance, to tell her that I wish her well; but now we have mentioned it, it would, I think, be best for my contemptibly weak character to put it as far away as possible." With tears in her eyes, Elizabeth assured him that through the tenderest regard for him, not through any fear of overtaxing his fortitude, she would respect his wishes, but could not help begging him to remain with them at Pemberley as heretofore, so as to give them an opportunity of showing him how completely their happiness was bound up with his, and of making use of any opportunity which might arise for them to be of service to him. Fitzwilliam gratefully promised to stay for the present, and said that his only engagement was to go to some friends in Leicestershire in November, for the hunting. Elizabeth was, nevertheless, not perfectly satisfied, and took occasion to ask Georgiana shortly afterwards whether it was from Mrs. Wentworth that she had heard confirmation of the fact that Sir Walter Elliot was engaged to Miss Crawford. "No," said Georgiana, in surprise, "it was from Mr. Price. Mrs. Wentworth never mentioned it. Mrs. Wentworth! Of course, I recollect now, she is Sir Walter Elliot's daughter; but at the time I never thought of it, for, you see, I did not know Sir Walter was the man." "Very true; I had also forgotten that you did not know," said Elizabeth, "and would never connect her with Miss Crawford. I have been thinking that I should like, for our own satisfaction, to know when the wedding is going to take place, and the simplest way will be to write and ask Mrs. Wentworth. I wish I had done so before, but I did not wish to be in haste, and I felt so convinced we should hear from others." Georgiana agreed that this was the best course to pursue, and Elizabeth, having told Darcy of her intention, to which, on account of her promise to Fitzwilliam, he could no longer object, wrote and dispatched her letter. The season was now drawing on, and with the shortening days the family at Pemberley found themselves thrown more upon the resources of their own immediate circle for amusement. The weather was consistently bad, and though this did not prevent the gentlemen from covering great distances for the purpose of slaughtering their game, the ladies were of necessity restricted to a smaller area, and their walks seldom extended beyond the park, except when their inclinations led them along a tolerably clean road towards the Rectory. This happened pretty frequently, for both Elizabeth and Georgiana were extremely attached to Elinor Ferrars. Their friendship was of a particularly sincere and well-balanced kind, and was not marred by their constant intercourse, as each knew how to maintain that degree of reserve which prevents indiscriminate confidences and so greatly strengthens mutual respect. Kitty was the one who perhaps found the society of the Rectory the least congenial; but it is to be feared that she was extremely difficult to please that autumn, and in the impatience with which she waited for one young man she might have sometimes regretted the solace which the company of the other would have afforded. In such a small neighbourhood everyone was of some value, and they all heard with interest of the approaching visit to Mr. and Mrs. Edward Ferrars of an old friend, Mrs. Jennings, who was coming early in October to spend six or seven weeks with them. Mrs. Ferrars was in delicate health, and Mrs. Jennings, besides having an almost maternal affection for her, was well qualified to be of service as sick nurse and enlivening companion, so that Elinor's warning to Mrs. Darcy that her friend, although the kindest of women, had not always the most refined manner of expressing herself, did not prevent them from being anxious to make her acquaintance. Mrs. Jennings performed in safety the long journey from her son-in-law's house in Devonshire, and arrived in her customary high spirits. It was her first visit to the Ferrars's since their removal from Delaford, and she had to examine the house, to criticize minutely the arrangement of their furniture, and to compare their surroundings, social and material, with what they had been in their old home. Mrs. Darcy paid an early call on the new arrival, and the morning after her visit Georgiana and Kitty also found their way to the Rectory. Mrs. Jennings's exuberance, her loud laugh and general noisy cheerfulness did not recommend her strongly to either of the girls in the first few minutes, and Georgiana was glad to move to a chair by Mrs. Ferrars, to enter into a quieter conversation with her; but before long, judging by the sounds which reached them, Mrs. Jennings and Kitty had found some subjects in common. This perhaps was not so surprising, as Mrs. Jennings was exceedingly fond of the society of all young girls, and cared not at all whether they returned her partiality or no. In this case she had begun, with the utmost frankness, to discourse on the subject nearest her heart at the moment, namely, her dear Mrs. Ferrars, and was relating all the circumstances under which their friendship had been formed, the Dashwood girls' visit to London, the disagreeable conduct of Mrs. Ferrars's mother and sister, and the absurd misunderstanding as to Colonel Brandon's attentions, the whole being punctuated by frequent bursts of laughter; and she would doubtless have gone on to describe in detail the events attending the engagement of her two young friends, had not Elinor mildly but decisively interposed. "Dear madam," she said, breaking off in the midst of a remark to Georgiana, "I am sure Miss Bennet does not wish to hear the history of such a very dull old couple as ourselves. You are so kind as to be more interested in it than most people could be." "Lord, my dear," cried Mrs. Jennings, "why did you not stop me? I declare I am very sorry if I said a word I ought not. I know my tongue does run on, and Miss Bennet must excuse me, for it was only for the pleasure of talking to you and Mr. Edward. And as for its being dull, I don't believe there is anybody who does not like to hear of other people's love-affairs; it makes one think of one's own, now, does it not, Miss Bennet?" Kitty blushed and looked embarrassed, and Mrs. Jennings laughed heartily, saying: "It is just as I thought; Miss Bennet could tell us a pretty tale too, I'll be bound, if only she would." "Miss Bennet can tell us some wonderful tales of the West Indies," said Elinor, endeavouring to turn Mrs. Jennings's mind from her favourite topic; "she has a sister there, who writes to her constantly, does she not, Miss Bennet? Those tropical places must be very beautiful. Do you remember how Colonel Brandon used to talk to us of his travels in the East, ma'am?" "That I do, my dear," replied Mrs. Jennings emphatically, "and I never want to hear again of such fearful things as he had seen--swamps, and great things like alligators ... and insects that did everything insects ought not. I hope you will tell your sister not to get amongst them, Miss Bennet." Kitty replied that her sister had written chiefly of the beautiful balls and illuminations which they frequently had, and lately of some shocks of earthquake which had frightened them terribly. Mrs. Jennings exclaimed at this, and declared that the finest ball in the world would not compensate her if there was the fear that the ground would open under her feet while she was dancing. "But I know young people do not care what risks they run," said she. "There was Sir John Middleton three weeks ago wanted to have a moonlight picnic; my daughter Middleton was all against it, for the weather was so threatening, but have it he would, and the consequence was that they all ate their supper, or as much of it as they could, in a roaring thunderstorm. I can tell you they were in a pretty pickle when they got back! All the girls so cross, and the young men not a dry thread among them through trying to protect the ladies. But Sir John, he made no bones about it at all, but said they would go again another night, when for sure it would be fine." Her hearers could not help laughing at such a picture of undaunted pleasure-seeking, and Elinor inquired if the second party had taken place. "Oh, Lord, yes; they all came, but their fathers and mothers made them promise not to stir beyond the grounds. I heard, at any rate, they turned it into a dance instead. But, as I say, young people don't care for a drop of rain. I am sure, when I was young, I would as lief have had it as not, for there was no hardship in sheltering under a hedge, with the right young man to hold an umbrella over you, do you think so, Miss Bennet?" "Still, I fancy that most people, old or young, prefer outdoor expeditions to be in dry weather," said Elinor. "That reminds me that I must show you what terrible havoc last night's rain and wind worked in my flower borders. When I looked out first, I was quite in despair, thinking I should not have another nosegay all the autumn. There is a gleam of sunshine now, so shall we take a turn in the garden?" Georgiana gladly walked out with her, and Mrs. Jennings and Kitty followed at a distance, the former questioning her young companion about her sister abroad and hearing laments over the gaieties which that sister had been able to offer her, but which she had never been able to accept. Mrs. Jennings's hearty comments of "Well, there now, that is a shame!" and "A regiment too! You would have broken all their hearts, I vow!" and other such remarks pleased Kitty, while she knew in her heart they ought not to do so. The two girls shortly after took their leave, and while walking homeward naturally compared notes upon the stranger whom they had just met. Georgiana expressed herself guardedly, not wishing to condemn any friend of Mrs. Ferrars's, although feeling as if that friend could not be in any way an accession to their party; but Kitty's first unfavorable impression seemed to have been obliterated, and she declared frankly that she liked Mrs. Jennings and thought she was very merry and good-natured. Georgiana could not quite agree with this, for she found Mrs. Jennings's style of raillery not at all to her mind, but admitted that she might be pleasanter when one got to know her well. At dinner these opinions were canvassed, and Georgiana found, as she expected, that her own were largely shared by Elizabeth, who, however, was amused at her severity, and told her that she would often meet people who, with more refined manners, were yet at heart far more vulgar than Mrs. Jennings and had not a tenth part of her redeeming qualities. "I do not think I want to meet them, then," said Georgiana. "But I am sure you are right, Elizabeth, and I daresay she will be a great comfort to Mrs. Ferrars." When the ladies were together after dinner, Kitty, whose gravity and preoccupation had been noticeable for the last half-hour, after wandering several times round the room, stationed herself near to her sister and began, in a solemn tone: "Lizzie, I want to ask you something very important." Elizabeth, smiling, professed herself all attention, and Kitty continued: "You know you have never kept your promise, that you made before you were married, of having a ball here, for each winter something has happened to prevent it." "Quite true, Kitty; so a ball is in your mind; and what made you think of it just now?" "I never come here without thinking of it, but I had somehow not expected to be staying long enough this year, as I imagined I should go home directly after the shooting party. But Mrs. Jennings said to-day she supposed you sometimes had balls in this lovely house, and she was sure Georgiana and I were fond of dancing." "And Mrs. Jennings is quite right about the latter statement, is she not?" Georgiana looked up with a smile, to assent to her share of the question, and Kitty clasped her hands rapturously, exclaiming: "Oh, Lizzie, you know how much I love a ball! It would be so kind of you and Darcy! Everyone would enjoy it!" "I am very

passers

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will do it, but life is so uncertain that I think for the present I had better refrain. Have you ascertained whether Kitty can cook, make her own gowns, and trim hats? I understand it is a great promoter of married happiness when the wife can do so, and I am not sure whether all my girls have turned their education to such good account." Mr. Morland only replied by asking if he might be allowed to see Miss Bennet at once, and her father left the room, foreseeing that, whatever happened, he should not have one more quiet hour during that day. His anticipations were soon in the way to be fulfilled, for on finding his daughters, and sending Kitty to the library, he had to give Jane an outline of what had just passed, then repeat it to Bingley, who joined them, and listened to their exclamations of surprise, and regret at the probable downfall of Mr. Morland's hopes. Jane and Bingley were both too convinced of Kitty's prior attachment to have the slightest expectation of his success, and Mr. Bennet was put in full possession of the facts relating to it, while they anxiously awaited the termination of the interview. It came, after some minutes, in a glimpse of Kitty emerging from the library and hurrying upstairs with streaming eyes, and while they all debated as to their next move, Mr. Morland was seen to cross the hall rapidly, looking nowhere but in front of him, and leave the house with precipitation. Jane herself, almost equally distressed, longed to go to Kitty, and Bingley questioned whether he ought not to hasten after the young man, while Mr. Bennet was disposed to think they would be better left to themselves for a time, and wished heartily that there were only just enough lovers in the world to go round, one to each young lady, and none over. In spite of this, Jane was not long in finding her way to her agitated sister and in showing her the tenderest consideration. Kitty's distress was very great, and also very sincere, for she had in truth been far from guessing that Mr. Morland took a more than common interest in her, and as is usual in such cases, the declaration of the young man's love woke in her feelings which she had not known to exist, of reciprocal kindness and even affection, which only did not share the nature and strength of his. Kitty could never have been hard-hearted to any lover, least of all to one whom she liked as much as she did James Morland, and his devotion touched her as deeply as the knowledge that she could not accept it wounded her. Between regrets for what had happened, pity for him and for herself, and the excited thoughts of William Price which the incident itself was bound to evoke, she was in a sad state, and Jane easily prevailed upon her to have her dinner upstairs and go early to bed. Not so easily could she check the tears which flowed continuously, and Jane, to occupy her mind and body, proposed that she should go to-morrow to Pemberley, instead of in three days' time, as arranged; she could very well be sent over, and the change would be beneficial; besides, she was not really leaving them, for there was the November visit to look forward to. Kitty caught at the suggestion, and declining the offices of the maid, began to busy herself about her packing, as Jane hoped she would do, while the latter descended to consult with her husband and father. Mr. Bennet and Bingley both approved, and Jane hastily wrote a few lines to Elizabeth to apprise her of what had happened, that she might be prepared for Kitty's arrival. The two gentlemen walked to the nearest post town to convey the letter; and after dinner the indefatigable Bingley again set out, this time to the Rectory, to perform the same kind office by James Morland as his wife had been doing by Kitty. The young man, though calmer, proved far more unreceptive of consolation. He had felt his rebuff acutely, for Kitty had been too much taken by surprise, too sure of herself, to make it otherwise than decisive, and even the modest hopes he had ventured to entertain, of being able to make more progress with her once the subject was opened between them, had been most thoroughly dispelled. Miss Bennet would not hear another word of it--begged him never to speak of it again--with tears reproached him for having spoilt everything, so that in addition to his own disappointment he had the pain of feeling that she thought less well of him than before. Bingley could deny this, but could not affirm anything else likely to give him comfort. It remained for Morland himself to declare, which he did in a firm though melancholy tone, that he regretted having distressed Miss Bennet, and would endeavour so to meet her in the future that she would not suffer through being reminded of it by any act of word of his. Bingley commended his courage, told him of Kitty's departure, and begged him to continue coming to Desborough just the same; and walked home with a full report of what had just passed. Jane shook her head over it, for, while sympathizing with both, she was more truly sorry for Mr. Morland, since for him she could see no immediate prospect of compensation, in spite of her father's assurances that a young clergyman was seldom allowed to remain inconsolable for more than six months, and if Kitty's other young man only did what was expected of him, her fate would be a certainty in half that time. Chapter XIII Needless to say, Kitty was heartily welcomed by Georgiana and Elizabeth, and given every opportunity to relieve her mind by descriptions of the tragical affair in all its aspects. Both regretted it deeply for Mr. Morland's sake, and Elizabeth privately did so for Kitty's sake, having such a good opinion of him as to make her wish that Kitty could have been persuaded out of her fancy for a young man, who, however excellent, was comparatively a stranger to them all, and whose intentions, at present, were extremely uncertain. She would have rejoiced if Kitty and Morland could have made each other happy, and had entertained a slight hope that her hint to Kitty might perhaps have helped matters, in directing her thoughts into another channel, but it seemed to be of no avail, and Georgiana gave her friend her warmest support, implying entire agreement with her point of view. "I could not help it, now, could I, Georgiana? You know yourself, Lizzie, that I never dreamt it. How could I do anything else but refuse him outright? I was amazingly grieved to do so, but you know very well, Georgiana, that if I could think of one man more than another, _he_ is not that one." She paused for assent, which Georgiana gave by a silent caress, and then continued: "It is all so unfortunate. It will never be as pleasant at Desborough now. Poor Mr. Morland! I wish I had not had to hurt him. He does want someone so badly in the Rectory." "Well, my dear, do not make yourself ill with these vain regrets," said Elizabeth. "It is, as you say, very unfortunate, but no one blames you. If you could not care for him, you could not do it, and someone else will have to inhabit that nice Rectory." Kitty looked as if this prospect were not very pleasing either, but Georgiana, seeing what Elizabeth wished, began to talk cheerfully of something else, and Kitty gradually joined in, though whenever the two girls were alone together she found it difficult to abstain long from referring to some branch of the subject. Georgiana's loyalty and patience never failed, but she wished for November almost as earnestly as Kitty herself, so that matters might reach some definite conclusion, for Kitty's restlessness had considerably increased since she had received James Morland's offer, and she was constantly nervous and excitable and not mistress of herself. On the day when the Bingleys and Mr. Bennet came over for the latter to take leave before returning to Longbourn, this was specially noticeable in her state of anxious flutter when drawing Jane aside to inquire after Mr. Morland. Mr. Bennet bade her farewell gravely and more affectionately than was his wont, telling her that he left her in good hands, and would only give her one piece of advice, namely, that second thoughts were sometimes best. Kitty blushed deeply and could not pretend to misunderstand him, but told Georgiana afterwards that it was impossible to have better second thoughts when Price was the first. With his elder daughter Mr. Bennet was rather more explicit, telling Elizabeth that he considered it was a great pity that so unobjectionable a young man should have been sent about his business. Elizabeth entirely agreed with him, and thought it would not be going too far to express Mr. Morland's praise in even warmer terms. "He will never set the Thames on fire, but there seems good stuff in him," was Mr. Bennet's reply. "When he proposed for her I had not taken much notice of him, except to think him a tolerably sensible fellow, and of course I had to readjust my ideas; but I soon began to see that he must not be judged by that alone. I have really liked him better, too, for his way of taking his refusal." "My dear father, it does not always indicate a want of sense to wish to be married," interposed Elizabeth. "Perhaps not, but Morland is much better off as he is than in marrying a girl he knows so little about. Kitty is flighty and expensive; she ought to stay longer with you and Jane, and not think of being married for the next ten years." Elizabeth smiled and said she thought that it was unnecessary, but that it would certainly be better for Kitty to marry a clergyman than an officer in the navy, who would be compelled to spend long periods away from home. "As to that, of course it is a complete absurdity, and I cannot think why you women, who are so fond of making matches, did not originate something less ridiculously unsuitable among yourselves." Elizabeth thought it wiser not to explain who actually had originated the idea, and said after a pause: "You were saying that you have liked Mr. Morland better of late?" "Yes, he has positively shown some sort of self-command and dignity. He turned up at the house a day or two afterwards, apparently _not_ bent on making us all uncomfortable by the sight of his misery, as most rejected lovers do. Besides, Bingley had had the foresight to produce some excellent port." "I hear from Jane," said Elizabeth, "that he does not avoid or seek the mention of Kitty, and she thinks he is trying to give up all hope of her." "Her absence for a few weeks will no doubt materially assist him," said Mr. Bennet. Kitty seized the opportunity offered by this visit to speak a private word to her brother-in-law with reference to the hero, as Bingley persisted in calling him. She herself had no news, for Mrs. Knightley's frequent letters reported him still at Portsmouth, and Bingley had heard nothing, but promised to write and renew his invitation as soon as October was fairly in. The same silence prevailed at Pemberley with regard to Miss Crawford. No announcement of her marriage had reached any of them, and Elizabeth had a half inclination to make some inquiries, but was dissuaded by Darcy, who said: "Whatever precisely has happened, Elizabeth, we can be sure of one thing, that Miss Crawford has allowed Fitzwilliam to understand that she does not wish him to approach her again. Under these circumstances it is better that you should have no news to give him." Elizabeth sighed as she agreed to the wisdom of this decision, but when shortly after her father's departure a letter was received from Colonel Fitzwilliam to say he would be returning at the end of the month, she could not help wishing that she was more fully informed of the present state of affairs. It would be a relief, even though a sad one, to Fitzwilliam's mind to know that Miss Crawford was actually married and he would be unselfish enough to wish to hear that she was happy. Nothing occurred, however, to enlighten them, and Fitzwilliam arrived on the appointed day, looking much as usual except for a few more lines about the eyes and an increased number of grey hairs. It was the first time he and Georgiana had been together at Pemberley since the rupture of their engagement, and both must have felt conscious of it, Georgiana in particular being prepared to be miserable for a time, from the belief that her cousin, instead of being cheered and invigorated as formerly by his return home, must be reminded at every turn of the failure of their experiment, the failure caused by her wretched weakness and incapacity. Worse still, her brother must be reminded of it, and there might be a repetition of his stern looks, his cold manner. She trembled at the thought, unaware that Darcy had long been persuaded of the wisdom of their parting, ever since events in Bath had shown him where his cousin's real affections were likely to be bestowed, and the only difference which Georgiana perceived after Fitzwilliam's arrival was in the particular kindness he showed her, and the complete renewal of the old comfortable relations amongst them all. When inquiries after the Hursts and Mrs. Annesley had been made, and Georgiana had mentioned the dinner-party and the persons who had been present, little more was said with reference to London; indeed, there was little more for either to say, for Georgiana dared not refer to the person who had chiefly occupied his mind there. Fitzwilliam talked of his book and of Ireland, inquired about the prospects of the shooting, showed interest in the minutest details of life in the neighbourhood, and in every way endeavoured to prove that he was exactly his old self; and only when walking with Elizabeth in the Park one morning did he betray how far that was from being the case. There was no doubt that his disappointment had coloured his whole life. He had allowed himself to think of Miss Crawford, and to build high upon his hopes, and to find himself again mistaken had been a blow which cut at the foundations of all his happiness. His gaiety was feigned, his pursuits had lost their zest, his friends no longer sufficed him: and as he said to Elizabeth, he had felt he had better adopt some country occupation and settle down to it, and there grow old as quietly and quickly as might be. Elizabeth's heart was wrung; the spectacle of her cousin's fine nature locked away, as it were, in a closed room, as a thing no one had any need for, was inexpressively painful to her, and nothing else would have caused her to venture upon a reopening of the subject which he himself had not approached. With the utmost gentleness she spoke a few words of commiseration, and then, still proceeding with extreme caution, she told him of the absence of news and her assumption that Miss Crawford's marriage with Sir Walter Elliot had been delayed. "I daresay it has," returned Colonel Fitzwilliam, with a kind of listlessness, striking with his stick at the head of some tall grasses which bordered their path. "There can be no doubt of it, I suppose?" pursued Elizabeth. "None at all, I should imagine," replied the Colonel. "Miss Crawford is not the kind of woman who would break her word, once the engagement had been announced." "No, of course not," said Elizabeth; "but I had expected that she or Mrs. Grant would have written to me, or even Mrs. Wentworth, as they must know I should be interested." Colonel Fitzwilliam could not immediately recall anything of Mrs. Wentworth beyond her name, and on being reminded that she was Sir Walter Elliot's daughter, presently replied: "I do not think it altogether surprising she should not have written to you. She probably cares little for the marriage, and still less for the one which it was anticipated would follow it--I mean Miss Elliot's to Mr. Crawford." This was a new idea to Elizabeth, and while she was pondering over it, and the inferences to be drawn from it, Colonel Fitzwilliam broke the silence by saying: "Perhaps we had better not speak of this anymore, Elizabeth. I know your great kindness of heart, but I feel it does no good, rather harm, to be reviving thoughts which I must in honour suppress as much as possible. I was anxious to know whether you had heard anything, and to ask you again, when you have the chance, to tell her that I wish her well; but now we have mentioned it, it would, I think, be best for my contemptibly weak character to put it as far away as possible." With tears in her eyes, Elizabeth assured him that through the tenderest regard for him, not through any fear of overtaxing his fortitude, she would respect his wishes, but could not help begging him to remain with them at Pemberley as heretofore, so as to give them an opportunity of showing him how completely their happiness was bound up with his, and of making use of any opportunity which might arise for them to be of service to him. Fitzwilliam gratefully promised to stay for the present, and said that his only engagement was to go to some friends in Leicestershire in November, for the hunting. Elizabeth was, nevertheless, not perfectly satisfied, and took occasion to ask Georgiana shortly afterwards whether it was from Mrs. Wentworth that she had heard confirmation of the fact that Sir Walter Elliot was engaged to Miss Crawford. "No," said Georgiana, in surprise, "it was from Mr. Price. Mrs. Wentworth never mentioned it. Mrs. Wentworth! Of course, I recollect now, she is Sir Walter Elliot's daughter; but at the time I never thought of it, for, you see, I did not know Sir Walter was the man." "Very true; I had also forgotten that you did not know," said Elizabeth, "and would never connect her with Miss Crawford. I have been thinking that I should like, for our own satisfaction, to know when the wedding is going to take place, and the simplest way will be to write and ask Mrs. Wentworth. I wish I had done so before, but I did not wish to be in haste, and I felt so convinced we should hear from others." Georgiana agreed that this was the best course to pursue, and Elizabeth, having told Darcy of her intention, to which, on account of her promise to Fitzwilliam, he could no longer object, wrote and dispatched her letter. The season was now drawing on, and with the shortening days the family at Pemberley found themselves thrown more upon the resources of their own immediate circle for amusement. The weather was consistently bad, and though this did not prevent the gentlemen from covering great distances for the purpose of slaughtering their game, the ladies were of necessity restricted to a smaller area, and their walks seldom extended beyond the park, except when their inclinations led them along a tolerably clean road towards the Rectory. This happened pretty frequently, for both Elizabeth and Georgiana were extremely attached to Elinor Ferrars. Their friendship was of a particularly sincere and well-balanced kind, and was not marred by their constant intercourse, as each knew how to maintain that degree of reserve which prevents indiscriminate confidences and so greatly strengthens mutual respect. Kitty was the one who perhaps found the society of the Rectory the least congenial; but it is to be feared that she was extremely difficult to please that autumn, and in the impatience with which she waited for one young man she might have sometimes regretted the solace which the company of the other would have afforded. In such a small neighbourhood everyone was of some value, and they all heard with interest of the approaching visit to Mr. and Mrs. Edward Ferrars of an old friend, Mrs. Jennings, who was coming early in October to spend six or seven weeks with them. Mrs. Ferrars was in delicate health, and Mrs. Jennings, besides having an almost maternal affection for her, was well qualified to be of service as sick nurse and enlivening companion, so that Elinor's warning to Mrs. Darcy that her friend, although the kindest of women, had not always the most refined manner of expressing herself, did not prevent them from being anxious to make her acquaintance. Mrs. Jennings performed in safety the long journey from her son-in-law's house in Devonshire, and arrived in her customary high spirits. It was her first visit to the Ferrars's since their removal from Delaford, and she had to examine the house, to criticize minutely the arrangement of their furniture, and to compare their surroundings, social and material, with what they had been in their old home. Mrs. Darcy paid an early call on the new arrival, and the morning after her visit Georgiana and Kitty also found their way to the Rectory. Mrs. Jennings's exuberance, her loud laugh and general noisy cheerfulness did not recommend her strongly to either of the girls in the first few minutes, and Georgiana was glad to move to a chair by Mrs. Ferrars, to enter into a quieter conversation with her; but before long, judging by the sounds which reached them, Mrs. Jennings and Kitty had found some subjects in common. This perhaps was not so surprising, as Mrs. Jennings was exceedingly fond of the society of all young girls, and cared not at all whether they returned her partiality or no. In this case she had begun, with the utmost frankness, to discourse on the subject nearest her heart at the moment, namely, her dear Mrs. Ferrars, and was relating all the circumstances under which their friendship had been formed, the Dashwood girls' visit to London, the disagreeable conduct of Mrs. Ferrars's mother and sister, and the absurd misunderstanding as to Colonel Brandon's attentions, the whole being punctuated by frequent bursts of laughter; and she would doubtless have gone on to describe in detail the events attending the engagement of her two young friends, had not Elinor mildly but decisively interposed. "Dear madam," she said, breaking off in the midst of a remark to Georgiana, "I am sure Miss Bennet does not wish to hear the history of such a very dull old couple as ourselves. You are so kind as to be more interested in it than most people could be." "Lord, my dear," cried Mrs. Jennings, "why did you not stop me? I declare I am very sorry if I said a word I ought not. I know my tongue does run on, and Miss Bennet must excuse me, for it was only for the pleasure of talking to you and Mr. Edward. And as for its being dull, I don't believe there is anybody who does not like to hear of other people's love-affairs; it makes one think of one's own, now, does it not, Miss Bennet?" Kitty blushed and looked embarrassed, and Mrs. Jennings laughed heartily, saying: "It is just as I thought; Miss Bennet could tell us a pretty tale too, I'll be bound, if only she would." "Miss Bennet can tell us some wonderful tales of the West Indies," said Elinor, endeavouring to turn Mrs. Jennings's mind from her favourite topic; "she has a sister there, who writes to her constantly, does she not, Miss Bennet? Those tropical places must be very beautiful. Do you remember how Colonel Brandon used to talk to us of his travels in the East, ma'am?" "That I do, my dear," replied Mrs. Jennings emphatically, "and I never want to hear again of such fearful things as he had seen--swamps, and great things like alligators ... and insects that did everything insects ought not. I hope you will tell your sister not to get amongst them, Miss Bennet." Kitty replied that her sister had written chiefly of the beautiful balls and illuminations which they frequently had, and lately of some shocks of earthquake which had frightened them terribly. Mrs. Jennings exclaimed at this, and declared that the finest ball in the world would not compensate her if there was the fear that the ground would open under her feet while she was dancing. "But I know young people do not care what risks they run," said she. "There was Sir John Middleton three weeks ago wanted to have a moonlight picnic; my daughter Middleton was all against it, for the weather was so threatening, but have it he would, and the consequence was that they all ate their supper, or as much of it as they could, in a roaring thunderstorm. I can tell you they were in a pretty pickle when they got back! All the girls so cross, and the young men not a dry thread among them through trying to protect the ladies. But Sir John, he made no bones about it at all, but said they would go again another night, when for sure it would be fine." Her hearers could not help laughing at such a picture of undaunted pleasure-seeking, and Elinor inquired if the second party had taken place. "Oh, Lord, yes; they all came, but their fathers and mothers made them promise not to stir beyond the grounds. I heard, at any rate, they turned it into a dance instead. But, as I say, young people don't care for a drop of rain. I am sure, when I was young, I would as lief have had it as not, for there was no hardship in sheltering under a hedge, with the right young man to hold an umbrella over you, do you think so, Miss Bennet?" "Still, I fancy that most people, old or young, prefer outdoor expeditions to be in dry weather," said Elinor. "That reminds me that I must show you what terrible havoc last night's rain and wind worked in my flower borders. When I looked out first, I was quite in despair, thinking I should not have another nosegay all the autumn. There is a gleam of sunshine now, so shall we take a turn in the garden?" Georgiana gladly walked out with her, and Mrs. Jennings and Kitty followed at a distance, the former questioning her young companion about her sister abroad and hearing laments over the gaieties which that sister had been able to offer her, but which she had never been able to accept. Mrs. Jennings's hearty comments of "Well, there now, that is a shame!" and "A regiment too! You would have broken all their hearts, I vow!" and other such remarks pleased Kitty, while she knew in her heart they ought not to do so. The two girls shortly after took their leave, and while walking homeward naturally compared notes upon the stranger whom they had just met. Georgiana expressed herself guardedly, not wishing to condemn any friend of Mrs. Ferrars's, although feeling as if that friend could not be in any way an accession to their party; but Kitty's first unfavorable impression seemed to have been obliterated, and she declared frankly that she liked Mrs. Jennings and thought she was very merry and good-natured. Georgiana could not quite agree with this, for she found Mrs. Jennings's style of raillery not at all to her mind, but admitted that she might be pleasanter when one got to know her well. At dinner these opinions were canvassed, and Georgiana found, as she expected, that her own were largely shared by Elizabeth, who, however, was amused at her severity, and told her that she would often meet people who, with more refined manners, were yet at heart far more vulgar than Mrs. Jennings and had not a tenth part of her redeeming qualities. "I do not think I want to meet them, then," said Georgiana. "But I am sure you are right, Elizabeth, and I daresay she will be a great comfort to Mrs. Ferrars." When the ladies were together after dinner, Kitty, whose gravity and preoccupation had been noticeable for the last half-hour, after wandering several times round the room, stationed herself near to her sister and began, in a solemn tone: "Lizzie, I want to ask you something very important." Elizabeth, smiling, professed herself all attention, and Kitty continued: "You know you have never kept your promise, that you made before you were married, of having a ball here, for each winter something has happened to prevent it." "Quite true, Kitty; so a ball is in your mind; and what made you think of it just now?" "I never come here without thinking of it, but I had somehow not expected to be staying long enough this year, as I imagined I should go home directly after the shooting party. But Mrs. Jennings said to-day she supposed you sometimes had balls in this lovely house, and she was sure Georgiana and I were fond of dancing." "And Mrs. Jennings is quite right about the latter statement, is she not?" Georgiana looked up with a smile, to assent to her share of the question, and Kitty clasped her hands rapturously, exclaiming: "Oh, Lizzie, you know how much I love a ball! It would be so kind of you and Darcy! Everyone would enjoy it!" "I am very

long

How many times the word 'long' appears in the text?

will do it, but life is so uncertain that I think for the present I had better refrain. Have you ascertained whether Kitty can cook, make her own gowns, and trim hats? I understand it is a great promoter of married happiness when the wife can do so, and I am not sure whether all my girls have turned their education to such good account." Mr. Morland only replied by asking if he might be allowed to see Miss Bennet at once, and her father left the room, foreseeing that, whatever happened, he should not have one more quiet hour during that day. His anticipations were soon in the way to be fulfilled, for on finding his daughters, and sending Kitty to the library, he had to give Jane an outline of what had just passed, then repeat it to Bingley, who joined them, and listened to their exclamations of surprise, and regret at the probable downfall of Mr. Morland's hopes. Jane and Bingley were both too convinced of Kitty's prior attachment to have the slightest expectation of his success, and Mr. Bennet was put in full possession of the facts relating to it, while they anxiously awaited the termination of the interview. It came, after some minutes, in a glimpse of Kitty emerging from the library and hurrying upstairs with streaming eyes, and while they all debated as to their next move, Mr. Morland was seen to cross the hall rapidly, looking nowhere but in front of him, and leave the house with precipitation. Jane herself, almost equally distressed, longed to go to Kitty, and Bingley questioned whether he ought not to hasten after the young man, while Mr. Bennet was disposed to think they would be better left to themselves for a time, and wished heartily that there were only just enough lovers in the world to go round, one to each young lady, and none over. In spite of this, Jane was not long in finding her way to her agitated sister and in showing her the tenderest consideration. Kitty's distress was very great, and also very sincere, for she had in truth been far from guessing that Mr. Morland took a more than common interest in her, and as is usual in such cases, the declaration of the young man's love woke in her feelings which she had not known to exist, of reciprocal kindness and even affection, which only did not share the nature and strength of his. Kitty could never have been hard-hearted to any lover, least of all to one whom she liked as much as she did James Morland, and his devotion touched her as deeply as the knowledge that she could not accept it wounded her. Between regrets for what had happened, pity for him and for herself, and the excited thoughts of William Price which the incident itself was bound to evoke, she was in a sad state, and Jane easily prevailed upon her to have her dinner upstairs and go early to bed. Not so easily could she check the tears which flowed continuously, and Jane, to occupy her mind and body, proposed that she should go to-morrow to Pemberley, instead of in three days' time, as arranged; she could very well be sent over, and the change would be beneficial; besides, she was not really leaving them, for there was the November visit to look forward to. Kitty caught at the suggestion, and declining the offices of the maid, began to busy herself about her packing, as Jane hoped she would do, while the latter descended to consult with her husband and father. Mr. Bennet and Bingley both approved, and Jane hastily wrote a few lines to Elizabeth to apprise her of what had happened, that she might be prepared for Kitty's arrival. The two gentlemen walked to the nearest post town to convey the letter; and after dinner the indefatigable Bingley again set out, this time to the Rectory, to perform the same kind office by James Morland as his wife had been doing by Kitty. The young man, though calmer, proved far more unreceptive of consolation. He had felt his rebuff acutely, for Kitty had been too much taken by surprise, too sure of herself, to make it otherwise than decisive, and even the modest hopes he had ventured to entertain, of being able to make more progress with her once the subject was opened between them, had been most thoroughly dispelled. Miss Bennet would not hear another word of it--begged him never to speak of it again--with tears reproached him for having spoilt everything, so that in addition to his own disappointment he had the pain of feeling that she thought less well of him than before. Bingley could deny this, but could not affirm anything else likely to give him comfort. It remained for Morland himself to declare, which he did in a firm though melancholy tone, that he regretted having distressed Miss Bennet, and would endeavour so to meet her in the future that she would not suffer through being reminded of it by any act of word of his. Bingley commended his courage, told him of Kitty's departure, and begged him to continue coming to Desborough just the same; and walked home with a full report of what had just passed. Jane shook her head over it, for, while sympathizing with both, she was more truly sorry for Mr. Morland, since for him she could see no immediate prospect of compensation, in spite of her father's assurances that a young clergyman was seldom allowed to remain inconsolable for more than six months, and if Kitty's other young man only did what was expected of him, her fate would be a certainty in half that time. Chapter XIII Needless to say, Kitty was heartily welcomed by Georgiana and Elizabeth, and given every opportunity to relieve her mind by descriptions of the tragical affair in all its aspects. Both regretted it deeply for Mr. Morland's sake, and Elizabeth privately did so for Kitty's sake, having such a good opinion of him as to make her wish that Kitty could have been persuaded out of her fancy for a young man, who, however excellent, was comparatively a stranger to them all, and whose intentions, at present, were extremely uncertain. She would have rejoiced if Kitty and Morland could have made each other happy, and had entertained a slight hope that her hint to Kitty might perhaps have helped matters, in directing her thoughts into another channel, but it seemed to be of no avail, and Georgiana gave her friend her warmest support, implying entire agreement with her point of view. "I could not help it, now, could I, Georgiana? You know yourself, Lizzie, that I never dreamt it. How could I do anything else but refuse him outright? I was amazingly grieved to do so, but you know very well, Georgiana, that if I could think of one man more than another, _he_ is not that one." She paused for assent, which Georgiana gave by a silent caress, and then continued: "It is all so unfortunate. It will never be as pleasant at Desborough now. Poor Mr. Morland! I wish I had not had to hurt him. He does want someone so badly in the Rectory." "Well, my dear, do not make yourself ill with these vain regrets," said Elizabeth. "It is, as you say, very unfortunate, but no one blames you. If you could not care for him, you could not do it, and someone else will have to inhabit that nice Rectory." Kitty looked as if this prospect were not very pleasing either, but Georgiana, seeing what Elizabeth wished, began to talk cheerfully of something else, and Kitty gradually joined in, though whenever the two girls were alone together she found it difficult to abstain long from referring to some branch of the subject. Georgiana's loyalty and patience never failed, but she wished for November almost as earnestly as Kitty herself, so that matters might reach some definite conclusion, for Kitty's restlessness had considerably increased since she had received James Morland's offer, and she was constantly nervous and excitable and not mistress of herself. On the day when the Bingleys and Mr. Bennet came over for the latter to take leave before returning to Longbourn, this was specially noticeable in her state of anxious flutter when drawing Jane aside to inquire after Mr. Morland. Mr. Bennet bade her farewell gravely and more affectionately than was his wont, telling her that he left her in good hands, and would only give her one piece of advice, namely, that second thoughts were sometimes best. Kitty blushed deeply and could not pretend to misunderstand him, but told Georgiana afterwards that it was impossible to have better second thoughts when Price was the first. With his elder daughter Mr. Bennet was rather more explicit, telling Elizabeth that he considered it was a great pity that so unobjectionable a young man should have been sent about his business. Elizabeth entirely agreed with him, and thought it would not be going too far to express Mr. Morland's praise in even warmer terms. "He will never set the Thames on fire, but there seems good stuff in him," was Mr. Bennet's reply. "When he proposed for her I had not taken much notice of him, except to think him a tolerably sensible fellow, and of course I had to readjust my ideas; but I soon began to see that he must not be judged by that alone. I have really liked him better, too, for his way of taking his refusal." "My dear father, it does not always indicate a want of sense to wish to be married," interposed Elizabeth. "Perhaps not, but Morland is much better off as he is than in marrying a girl he knows so little about. Kitty is flighty and expensive; she ought to stay longer with you and Jane, and not think of being married for the next ten years." Elizabeth smiled and said she thought that it was unnecessary, but that it would certainly be better for Kitty to marry a clergyman than an officer in the navy, who would be compelled to spend long periods away from home. "As to that, of course it is a complete absurdity, and I cannot think why you women, who are so fond of making matches, did not originate something less ridiculously unsuitable among yourselves." Elizabeth thought it wiser not to explain who actually had originated the idea, and said after a pause: "You were saying that you have liked Mr. Morland better of late?" "Yes, he has positively shown some sort of self-command and dignity. He turned up at the house a day or two afterwards, apparently _not_ bent on making us all uncomfortable by the sight of his misery, as most rejected lovers do. Besides, Bingley had had the foresight to produce some excellent port." "I hear from Jane," said Elizabeth, "that he does not avoid or seek the mention of Kitty, and she thinks he is trying to give up all hope of her." "Her absence for a few weeks will no doubt materially assist him," said Mr. Bennet. Kitty seized the opportunity offered by this visit to speak a private word to her brother-in-law with reference to the hero, as Bingley persisted in calling him. She herself had no news, for Mrs. Knightley's frequent letters reported him still at Portsmouth, and Bingley had heard nothing, but promised to write and renew his invitation as soon as October was fairly in. The same silence prevailed at Pemberley with regard to Miss Crawford. No announcement of her marriage had reached any of them, and Elizabeth had a half inclination to make some inquiries, but was dissuaded by Darcy, who said: "Whatever precisely has happened, Elizabeth, we can be sure of one thing, that Miss Crawford has allowed Fitzwilliam to understand that she does not wish him to approach her again. Under these circumstances it is better that you should have no news to give him." Elizabeth sighed as she agreed to the wisdom of this decision, but when shortly after her father's departure a letter was received from Colonel Fitzwilliam to say he would be returning at the end of the month, she could not help wishing that she was more fully informed of the present state of affairs. It would be a relief, even though a sad one, to Fitzwilliam's mind to know that Miss Crawford was actually married and he would be unselfish enough to wish to hear that she was happy. Nothing occurred, however, to enlighten them, and Fitzwilliam arrived on the appointed day, looking much as usual except for a few more lines about the eyes and an increased number of grey hairs. It was the first time he and Georgiana had been together at Pemberley since the rupture of their engagement, and both must have felt conscious of it, Georgiana in particular being prepared to be miserable for a time, from the belief that her cousin, instead of being cheered and invigorated as formerly by his return home, must be reminded at every turn of the failure of their experiment, the failure caused by her wretched weakness and incapacity. Worse still, her brother must be reminded of it, and there might be a repetition of his stern looks, his cold manner. She trembled at the thought, unaware that Darcy had long been persuaded of the wisdom of their parting, ever since events in Bath had shown him where his cousin's real affections were likely to be bestowed, and the only difference which Georgiana perceived after Fitzwilliam's arrival was in the particular kindness he showed her, and the complete renewal of the old comfortable relations amongst them all. When inquiries after the Hursts and Mrs. Annesley had been made, and Georgiana had mentioned the dinner-party and the persons who had been present, little more was said with reference to London; indeed, there was little more for either to say, for Georgiana dared not refer to the person who had chiefly occupied his mind there. Fitzwilliam talked of his book and of Ireland, inquired about the prospects of the shooting, showed interest in the minutest details of life in the neighbourhood, and in every way endeavoured to prove that he was exactly his old self; and only when walking with Elizabeth in the Park one morning did he betray how far that was from being the case. There was no doubt that his disappointment had coloured his whole life. He had allowed himself to think of Miss Crawford, and to build high upon his hopes, and to find himself again mistaken had been a blow which cut at the foundations of all his happiness. His gaiety was feigned, his pursuits had lost their zest, his friends no longer sufficed him: and as he said to Elizabeth, he had felt he had better adopt some country occupation and settle down to it, and there grow old as quietly and quickly as might be. Elizabeth's heart was wrung; the spectacle of her cousin's fine nature locked away, as it were, in a closed room, as a thing no one had any need for, was inexpressively painful to her, and nothing else would have caused her to venture upon a reopening of the subject which he himself had not approached. With the utmost gentleness she spoke a few words of commiseration, and then, still proceeding with extreme caution, she told him of the absence of news and her assumption that Miss Crawford's marriage with Sir Walter Elliot had been delayed. "I daresay it has," returned Colonel Fitzwilliam, with a kind of listlessness, striking with his stick at the head of some tall grasses which bordered their path. "There can be no doubt of it, I suppose?" pursued Elizabeth. "None at all, I should imagine," replied the Colonel. "Miss Crawford is not the kind of woman who would break her word, once the engagement had been announced." "No, of course not," said Elizabeth; "but I had expected that she or Mrs. Grant would have written to me, or even Mrs. Wentworth, as they must know I should be interested." Colonel Fitzwilliam could not immediately recall anything of Mrs. Wentworth beyond her name, and on being reminded that she was Sir Walter Elliot's daughter, presently replied: "I do not think it altogether surprising she should not have written to you. She probably cares little for the marriage, and still less for the one which it was anticipated would follow it--I mean Miss Elliot's to Mr. Crawford." This was a new idea to Elizabeth, and while she was pondering over it, and the inferences to be drawn from it, Colonel Fitzwilliam broke the silence by saying: "Perhaps we had better not speak of this anymore, Elizabeth. I know your great kindness of heart, but I feel it does no good, rather harm, to be reviving thoughts which I must in honour suppress as much as possible. I was anxious to know whether you had heard anything, and to ask you again, when you have the chance, to tell her that I wish her well; but now we have mentioned it, it would, I think, be best for my contemptibly weak character to put it as far away as possible." With tears in her eyes, Elizabeth assured him that through the tenderest regard for him, not through any fear of overtaxing his fortitude, she would respect his wishes, but could not help begging him to remain with them at Pemberley as heretofore, so as to give them an opportunity of showing him how completely their happiness was bound up with his, and of making use of any opportunity which might arise for them to be of service to him. Fitzwilliam gratefully promised to stay for the present, and said that his only engagement was to go to some friends in Leicestershire in November, for the hunting. Elizabeth was, nevertheless, not perfectly satisfied, and took occasion to ask Georgiana shortly afterwards whether it was from Mrs. Wentworth that she had heard confirmation of the fact that Sir Walter Elliot was engaged to Miss Crawford. "No," said Georgiana, in surprise, "it was from Mr. Price. Mrs. Wentworth never mentioned it. Mrs. Wentworth! Of course, I recollect now, she is Sir Walter Elliot's daughter; but at the time I never thought of it, for, you see, I did not know Sir Walter was the man." "Very true; I had also forgotten that you did not know," said Elizabeth, "and would never connect her with Miss Crawford. I have been thinking that I should like, for our own satisfaction, to know when the wedding is going to take place, and the simplest way will be to write and ask Mrs. Wentworth. I wish I had done so before, but I did not wish to be in haste, and I felt so convinced we should hear from others." Georgiana agreed that this was the best course to pursue, and Elizabeth, having told Darcy of her intention, to which, on account of her promise to Fitzwilliam, he could no longer object, wrote and dispatched her letter. The season was now drawing on, and with the shortening days the family at Pemberley found themselves thrown more upon the resources of their own immediate circle for amusement. The weather was consistently bad, and though this did not prevent the gentlemen from covering great distances for the purpose of slaughtering their game, the ladies were of necessity restricted to a smaller area, and their walks seldom extended beyond the park, except when their inclinations led them along a tolerably clean road towards the Rectory. This happened pretty frequently, for both Elizabeth and Georgiana were extremely attached to Elinor Ferrars. Their friendship was of a particularly sincere and well-balanced kind, and was not marred by their constant intercourse, as each knew how to maintain that degree of reserve which prevents indiscriminate confidences and so greatly strengthens mutual respect. Kitty was the one who perhaps found the society of the Rectory the least congenial; but it is to be feared that she was extremely difficult to please that autumn, and in the impatience with which she waited for one young man she might have sometimes regretted the solace which the company of the other would have afforded. In such a small neighbourhood everyone was of some value, and they all heard with interest of the approaching visit to Mr. and Mrs. Edward Ferrars of an old friend, Mrs. Jennings, who was coming early in October to spend six or seven weeks with them. Mrs. Ferrars was in delicate health, and Mrs. Jennings, besides having an almost maternal affection for her, was well qualified to be of service as sick nurse and enlivening companion, so that Elinor's warning to Mrs. Darcy that her friend, although the kindest of women, had not always the most refined manner of expressing herself, did not prevent them from being anxious to make her acquaintance. Mrs. Jennings performed in safety the long journey from her son-in-law's house in Devonshire, and arrived in her customary high spirits. It was her first visit to the Ferrars's since their removal from Delaford, and she had to examine the house, to criticize minutely the arrangement of their furniture, and to compare their surroundings, social and material, with what they had been in their old home. Mrs. Darcy paid an early call on the new arrival, and the morning after her visit Georgiana and Kitty also found their way to the Rectory. Mrs. Jennings's exuberance, her loud laugh and general noisy cheerfulness did not recommend her strongly to either of the girls in the first few minutes, and Georgiana was glad to move to a chair by Mrs. Ferrars, to enter into a quieter conversation with her; but before long, judging by the sounds which reached them, Mrs. Jennings and Kitty had found some subjects in common. This perhaps was not so surprising, as Mrs. Jennings was exceedingly fond of the society of all young girls, and cared not at all whether they returned her partiality or no. In this case she had begun, with the utmost frankness, to discourse on the subject nearest her heart at the moment, namely, her dear Mrs. Ferrars, and was relating all the circumstances under which their friendship had been formed, the Dashwood girls' visit to London, the disagreeable conduct of Mrs. Ferrars's mother and sister, and the absurd misunderstanding as to Colonel Brandon's attentions, the whole being punctuated by frequent bursts of laughter; and she would doubtless have gone on to describe in detail the events attending the engagement of her two young friends, had not Elinor mildly but decisively interposed. "Dear madam," she said, breaking off in the midst of a remark to Georgiana, "I am sure Miss Bennet does not wish to hear the history of such a very dull old couple as ourselves. You are so kind as to be more interested in it than most people could be." "Lord, my dear," cried Mrs. Jennings, "why did you not stop me? I declare I am very sorry if I said a word I ought not. I know my tongue does run on, and Miss Bennet must excuse me, for it was only for the pleasure of talking to you and Mr. Edward. And as for its being dull, I don't believe there is anybody who does not like to hear of other people's love-affairs; it makes one think of one's own, now, does it not, Miss Bennet?" Kitty blushed and looked embarrassed, and Mrs. Jennings laughed heartily, saying: "It is just as I thought; Miss Bennet could tell us a pretty tale too, I'll be bound, if only she would." "Miss Bennet can tell us some wonderful tales of the West Indies," said Elinor, endeavouring to turn Mrs. Jennings's mind from her favourite topic; "she has a sister there, who writes to her constantly, does she not, Miss Bennet? Those tropical places must be very beautiful. Do you remember how Colonel Brandon used to talk to us of his travels in the East, ma'am?" "That I do, my dear," replied Mrs. Jennings emphatically, "and I never want to hear again of such fearful things as he had seen--swamps, and great things like alligators ... and insects that did everything insects ought not. I hope you will tell your sister not to get amongst them, Miss Bennet." Kitty replied that her sister had written chiefly of the beautiful balls and illuminations which they frequently had, and lately of some shocks of earthquake which had frightened them terribly. Mrs. Jennings exclaimed at this, and declared that the finest ball in the world would not compensate her if there was the fear that the ground would open under her feet while she was dancing. "But I know young people do not care what risks they run," said she. "There was Sir John Middleton three weeks ago wanted to have a moonlight picnic; my daughter Middleton was all against it, for the weather was so threatening, but have it he would, and the consequence was that they all ate their supper, or as much of it as they could, in a roaring thunderstorm. I can tell you they were in a pretty pickle when they got back! All the girls so cross, and the young men not a dry thread among them through trying to protect the ladies. But Sir John, he made no bones about it at all, but said they would go again another night, when for sure it would be fine." Her hearers could not help laughing at such a picture of undaunted pleasure-seeking, and Elinor inquired if the second party had taken place. "Oh, Lord, yes; they all came, but their fathers and mothers made them promise not to stir beyond the grounds. I heard, at any rate, they turned it into a dance instead. But, as I say, young people don't care for a drop of rain. I am sure, when I was young, I would as lief have had it as not, for there was no hardship in sheltering under a hedge, with the right young man to hold an umbrella over you, do you think so, Miss Bennet?" "Still, I fancy that most people, old or young, prefer outdoor expeditions to be in dry weather," said Elinor. "That reminds me that I must show you what terrible havoc last night's rain and wind worked in my flower borders. When I looked out first, I was quite in despair, thinking I should not have another nosegay all the autumn. There is a gleam of sunshine now, so shall we take a turn in the garden?" Georgiana gladly walked out with her, and Mrs. Jennings and Kitty followed at a distance, the former questioning her young companion about her sister abroad and hearing laments over the gaieties which that sister had been able to offer her, but which she had never been able to accept. Mrs. Jennings's hearty comments of "Well, there now, that is a shame!" and "A regiment too! You would have broken all their hearts, I vow!" and other such remarks pleased Kitty, while she knew in her heart they ought not to do so. The two girls shortly after took their leave, and while walking homeward naturally compared notes upon the stranger whom they had just met. Georgiana expressed herself guardedly, not wishing to condemn any friend of Mrs. Ferrars's, although feeling as if that friend could not be in any way an accession to their party; but Kitty's first unfavorable impression seemed to have been obliterated, and she declared frankly that she liked Mrs. Jennings and thought she was very merry and good-natured. Georgiana could not quite agree with this, for she found Mrs. Jennings's style of raillery not at all to her mind, but admitted that she might be pleasanter when one got to know her well. At dinner these opinions were canvassed, and Georgiana found, as she expected, that her own were largely shared by Elizabeth, who, however, was amused at her severity, and told her that she would often meet people who, with more refined manners, were yet at heart far more vulgar than Mrs. Jennings and had not a tenth part of her redeeming qualities. "I do not think I want to meet them, then," said Georgiana. "But I am sure you are right, Elizabeth, and I daresay she will be a great comfort to Mrs. Ferrars." When the ladies were together after dinner, Kitty, whose gravity and preoccupation had been noticeable for the last half-hour, after wandering several times round the room, stationed herself near to her sister and began, in a solemn tone: "Lizzie, I want to ask you something very important." Elizabeth, smiling, professed herself all attention, and Kitty continued: "You know you have never kept your promise, that you made before you were married, of having a ball here, for each winter something has happened to prevent it." "Quite true, Kitty; so a ball is in your mind; and what made you think of it just now?" "I never come here without thinking of it, but I had somehow not expected to be staying long enough this year, as I imagined I should go home directly after the shooting party. But Mrs. Jennings said to-day she supposed you sometimes had balls in this lovely house, and she was sure Georgiana and I were fond of dancing." "And Mrs. Jennings is quite right about the latter statement, is she not?" Georgiana looked up with a smile, to assent to her share of the question, and Kitty clasped her hands rapturously, exclaiming: "Oh, Lizzie, you know how much I love a ball! It would be so kind of you and Darcy! Everyone would enjoy it!" "I am very

repeat

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will do it, but life is so uncertain that I think for the present I had better refrain. Have you ascertained whether Kitty can cook, make her own gowns, and trim hats? I understand it is a great promoter of married happiness when the wife can do so, and I am not sure whether all my girls have turned their education to such good account." Mr. Morland only replied by asking if he might be allowed to see Miss Bennet at once, and her father left the room, foreseeing that, whatever happened, he should not have one more quiet hour during that day. His anticipations were soon in the way to be fulfilled, for on finding his daughters, and sending Kitty to the library, he had to give Jane an outline of what had just passed, then repeat it to Bingley, who joined them, and listened to their exclamations of surprise, and regret at the probable downfall of Mr. Morland's hopes. Jane and Bingley were both too convinced of Kitty's prior attachment to have the slightest expectation of his success, and Mr. Bennet was put in full possession of the facts relating to it, while they anxiously awaited the termination of the interview. It came, after some minutes, in a glimpse of Kitty emerging from the library and hurrying upstairs with streaming eyes, and while they all debated as to their next move, Mr. Morland was seen to cross the hall rapidly, looking nowhere but in front of him, and leave the house with precipitation. Jane herself, almost equally distressed, longed to go to Kitty, and Bingley questioned whether he ought not to hasten after the young man, while Mr. Bennet was disposed to think they would be better left to themselves for a time, and wished heartily that there were only just enough lovers in the world to go round, one to each young lady, and none over. In spite of this, Jane was not long in finding her way to her agitated sister and in showing her the tenderest consideration. Kitty's distress was very great, and also very sincere, for she had in truth been far from guessing that Mr. Morland took a more than common interest in her, and as is usual in such cases, the declaration of the young man's love woke in her feelings which she had not known to exist, of reciprocal kindness and even affection, which only did not share the nature and strength of his. Kitty could never have been hard-hearted to any lover, least of all to one whom she liked as much as she did James Morland, and his devotion touched her as deeply as the knowledge that she could not accept it wounded her. Between regrets for what had happened, pity for him and for herself, and the excited thoughts of William Price which the incident itself was bound to evoke, she was in a sad state, and Jane easily prevailed upon her to have her dinner upstairs and go early to bed. Not so easily could she check the tears which flowed continuously, and Jane, to occupy her mind and body, proposed that she should go to-morrow to Pemberley, instead of in three days' time, as arranged; she could very well be sent over, and the change would be beneficial; besides, she was not really leaving them, for there was the November visit to look forward to. Kitty caught at the suggestion, and declining the offices of the maid, began to busy herself about her packing, as Jane hoped she would do, while the latter descended to consult with her husband and father. Mr. Bennet and Bingley both approved, and Jane hastily wrote a few lines to Elizabeth to apprise her of what had happened, that she might be prepared for Kitty's arrival. The two gentlemen walked to the nearest post town to convey the letter; and after dinner the indefatigable Bingley again set out, this time to the Rectory, to perform the same kind office by James Morland as his wife had been doing by Kitty. The young man, though calmer, proved far more unreceptive of consolation. He had felt his rebuff acutely, for Kitty had been too much taken by surprise, too sure of herself, to make it otherwise than decisive, and even the modest hopes he had ventured to entertain, of being able to make more progress with her once the subject was opened between them, had been most thoroughly dispelled. Miss Bennet would not hear another word of it--begged him never to speak of it again--with tears reproached him for having spoilt everything, so that in addition to his own disappointment he had the pain of feeling that she thought less well of him than before. Bingley could deny this, but could not affirm anything else likely to give him comfort. It remained for Morland himself to declare, which he did in a firm though melancholy tone, that he regretted having distressed Miss Bennet, and would endeavour so to meet her in the future that she would not suffer through being reminded of it by any act of word of his. Bingley commended his courage, told him of Kitty's departure, and begged him to continue coming to Desborough just the same; and walked home with a full report of what had just passed. Jane shook her head over it, for, while sympathizing with both, she was more truly sorry for Mr. Morland, since for him she could see no immediate prospect of compensation, in spite of her father's assurances that a young clergyman was seldom allowed to remain inconsolable for more than six months, and if Kitty's other young man only did what was expected of him, her fate would be a certainty in half that time. Chapter XIII Needless to say, Kitty was heartily welcomed by Georgiana and Elizabeth, and given every opportunity to relieve her mind by descriptions of the tragical affair in all its aspects. Both regretted it deeply for Mr. Morland's sake, and Elizabeth privately did so for Kitty's sake, having such a good opinion of him as to make her wish that Kitty could have been persuaded out of her fancy for a young man, who, however excellent, was comparatively a stranger to them all, and whose intentions, at present, were extremely uncertain. She would have rejoiced if Kitty and Morland could have made each other happy, and had entertained a slight hope that her hint to Kitty might perhaps have helped matters, in directing her thoughts into another channel, but it seemed to be of no avail, and Georgiana gave her friend her warmest support, implying entire agreement with her point of view. "I could not help it, now, could I, Georgiana? You know yourself, Lizzie, that I never dreamt it. How could I do anything else but refuse him outright? I was amazingly grieved to do so, but you know very well, Georgiana, that if I could think of one man more than another, _he_ is not that one." She paused for assent, which Georgiana gave by a silent caress, and then continued: "It is all so unfortunate. It will never be as pleasant at Desborough now. Poor Mr. Morland! I wish I had not had to hurt him. He does want someone so badly in the Rectory." "Well, my dear, do not make yourself ill with these vain regrets," said Elizabeth. "It is, as you say, very unfortunate, but no one blames you. If you could not care for him, you could not do it, and someone else will have to inhabit that nice Rectory." Kitty looked as if this prospect were not very pleasing either, but Georgiana, seeing what Elizabeth wished, began to talk cheerfully of something else, and Kitty gradually joined in, though whenever the two girls were alone together she found it difficult to abstain long from referring to some branch of the subject. Georgiana's loyalty and patience never failed, but she wished for November almost as earnestly as Kitty herself, so that matters might reach some definite conclusion, for Kitty's restlessness had considerably increased since she had received James Morland's offer, and she was constantly nervous and excitable and not mistress of herself. On the day when the Bingleys and Mr. Bennet came over for the latter to take leave before returning to Longbourn, this was specially noticeable in her state of anxious flutter when drawing Jane aside to inquire after Mr. Morland. Mr. Bennet bade her farewell gravely and more affectionately than was his wont, telling her that he left her in good hands, and would only give her one piece of advice, namely, that second thoughts were sometimes best. Kitty blushed deeply and could not pretend to misunderstand him, but told Georgiana afterwards that it was impossible to have better second thoughts when Price was the first. With his elder daughter Mr. Bennet was rather more explicit, telling Elizabeth that he considered it was a great pity that so unobjectionable a young man should have been sent about his business. Elizabeth entirely agreed with him, and thought it would not be going too far to express Mr. Morland's praise in even warmer terms. "He will never set the Thames on fire, but there seems good stuff in him," was Mr. Bennet's reply. "When he proposed for her I had not taken much notice of him, except to think him a tolerably sensible fellow, and of course I had to readjust my ideas; but I soon began to see that he must not be judged by that alone. I have really liked him better, too, for his way of taking his refusal." "My dear father, it does not always indicate a want of sense to wish to be married," interposed Elizabeth. "Perhaps not, but Morland is much better off as he is than in marrying a girl he knows so little about. Kitty is flighty and expensive; she ought to stay longer with you and Jane, and not think of being married for the next ten years." Elizabeth smiled and said she thought that it was unnecessary, but that it would certainly be better for Kitty to marry a clergyman than an officer in the navy, who would be compelled to spend long periods away from home. "As to that, of course it is a complete absurdity, and I cannot think why you women, who are so fond of making matches, did not originate something less ridiculously unsuitable among yourselves." Elizabeth thought it wiser not to explain who actually had originated the idea, and said after a pause: "You were saying that you have liked Mr. Morland better of late?" "Yes, he has positively shown some sort of self-command and dignity. He turned up at the house a day or two afterwards, apparently _not_ bent on making us all uncomfortable by the sight of his misery, as most rejected lovers do. Besides, Bingley had had the foresight to produce some excellent port." "I hear from Jane," said Elizabeth, "that he does not avoid or seek the mention of Kitty, and she thinks he is trying to give up all hope of her." "Her absence for a few weeks will no doubt materially assist him," said Mr. Bennet. Kitty seized the opportunity offered by this visit to speak a private word to her brother-in-law with reference to the hero, as Bingley persisted in calling him. She herself had no news, for Mrs. Knightley's frequent letters reported him still at Portsmouth, and Bingley had heard nothing, but promised to write and renew his invitation as soon as October was fairly in. The same silence prevailed at Pemberley with regard to Miss Crawford. No announcement of her marriage had reached any of them, and Elizabeth had a half inclination to make some inquiries, but was dissuaded by Darcy, who said: "Whatever precisely has happened, Elizabeth, we can be sure of one thing, that Miss Crawford has allowed Fitzwilliam to understand that she does not wish him to approach her again. Under these circumstances it is better that you should have no news to give him." Elizabeth sighed as she agreed to the wisdom of this decision, but when shortly after her father's departure a letter was received from Colonel Fitzwilliam to say he would be returning at the end of the month, she could not help wishing that she was more fully informed of the present state of affairs. It would be a relief, even though a sad one, to Fitzwilliam's mind to know that Miss Crawford was actually married and he would be unselfish enough to wish to hear that she was happy. Nothing occurred, however, to enlighten them, and Fitzwilliam arrived on the appointed day, looking much as usual except for a few more lines about the eyes and an increased number of grey hairs. It was the first time he and Georgiana had been together at Pemberley since the rupture of their engagement, and both must have felt conscious of it, Georgiana in particular being prepared to be miserable for a time, from the belief that her cousin, instead of being cheered and invigorated as formerly by his return home, must be reminded at every turn of the failure of their experiment, the failure caused by her wretched weakness and incapacity. Worse still, her brother must be reminded of it, and there might be a repetition of his stern looks, his cold manner. She trembled at the thought, unaware that Darcy had long been persuaded of the wisdom of their parting, ever since events in Bath had shown him where his cousin's real affections were likely to be bestowed, and the only difference which Georgiana perceived after Fitzwilliam's arrival was in the particular kindness he showed her, and the complete renewal of the old comfortable relations amongst them all. When inquiries after the Hursts and Mrs. Annesley had been made, and Georgiana had mentioned the dinner-party and the persons who had been present, little more was said with reference to London; indeed, there was little more for either to say, for Georgiana dared not refer to the person who had chiefly occupied his mind there. Fitzwilliam talked of his book and of Ireland, inquired about the prospects of the shooting, showed interest in the minutest details of life in the neighbourhood, and in every way endeavoured to prove that he was exactly his old self; and only when walking with Elizabeth in the Park one morning did he betray how far that was from being the case. There was no doubt that his disappointment had coloured his whole life. He had allowed himself to think of Miss Crawford, and to build high upon his hopes, and to find himself again mistaken had been a blow which cut at the foundations of all his happiness. His gaiety was feigned, his pursuits had lost their zest, his friends no longer sufficed him: and as he said to Elizabeth, he had felt he had better adopt some country occupation and settle down to it, and there grow old as quietly and quickly as might be. Elizabeth's heart was wrung; the spectacle of her cousin's fine nature locked away, as it were, in a closed room, as a thing no one had any need for, was inexpressively painful to her, and nothing else would have caused her to venture upon a reopening of the subject which he himself had not approached. With the utmost gentleness she spoke a few words of commiseration, and then, still proceeding with extreme caution, she told him of the absence of news and her assumption that Miss Crawford's marriage with Sir Walter Elliot had been delayed. "I daresay it has," returned Colonel Fitzwilliam, with a kind of listlessness, striking with his stick at the head of some tall grasses which bordered their path. "There can be no doubt of it, I suppose?" pursued Elizabeth. "None at all, I should imagine," replied the Colonel. "Miss Crawford is not the kind of woman who would break her word, once the engagement had been announced." "No, of course not," said Elizabeth; "but I had expected that she or Mrs. Grant would have written to me, or even Mrs. Wentworth, as they must know I should be interested." Colonel Fitzwilliam could not immediately recall anything of Mrs. Wentworth beyond her name, and on being reminded that she was Sir Walter Elliot's daughter, presently replied: "I do not think it altogether surprising she should not have written to you. She probably cares little for the marriage, and still less for the one which it was anticipated would follow it--I mean Miss Elliot's to Mr. Crawford." This was a new idea to Elizabeth, and while she was pondering over it, and the inferences to be drawn from it, Colonel Fitzwilliam broke the silence by saying: "Perhaps we had better not speak of this anymore, Elizabeth. I know your great kindness of heart, but I feel it does no good, rather harm, to be reviving thoughts which I must in honour suppress as much as possible. I was anxious to know whether you had heard anything, and to ask you again, when you have the chance, to tell her that I wish her well; but now we have mentioned it, it would, I think, be best for my contemptibly weak character to put it as far away as possible." With tears in her eyes, Elizabeth assured him that through the tenderest regard for him, not through any fear of overtaxing his fortitude, she would respect his wishes, but could not help begging him to remain with them at Pemberley as heretofore, so as to give them an opportunity of showing him how completely their happiness was bound up with his, and of making use of any opportunity which might arise for them to be of service to him. Fitzwilliam gratefully promised to stay for the present, and said that his only engagement was to go to some friends in Leicestershire in November, for the hunting. Elizabeth was, nevertheless, not perfectly satisfied, and took occasion to ask Georgiana shortly afterwards whether it was from Mrs. Wentworth that she had heard confirmation of the fact that Sir Walter Elliot was engaged to Miss Crawford. "No," said Georgiana, in surprise, "it was from Mr. Price. Mrs. Wentworth never mentioned it. Mrs. Wentworth! Of course, I recollect now, she is Sir Walter Elliot's daughter; but at the time I never thought of it, for, you see, I did not know Sir Walter was the man." "Very true; I had also forgotten that you did not know," said Elizabeth, "and would never connect her with Miss Crawford. I have been thinking that I should like, for our own satisfaction, to know when the wedding is going to take place, and the simplest way will be to write and ask Mrs. Wentworth. I wish I had done so before, but I did not wish to be in haste, and I felt so convinced we should hear from others." Georgiana agreed that this was the best course to pursue, and Elizabeth, having told Darcy of her intention, to which, on account of her promise to Fitzwilliam, he could no longer object, wrote and dispatched her letter. The season was now drawing on, and with the shortening days the family at Pemberley found themselves thrown more upon the resources of their own immediate circle for amusement. The weather was consistently bad, and though this did not prevent the gentlemen from covering great distances for the purpose of slaughtering their game, the ladies were of necessity restricted to a smaller area, and their walks seldom extended beyond the park, except when their inclinations led them along a tolerably clean road towards the Rectory. This happened pretty frequently, for both Elizabeth and Georgiana were extremely attached to Elinor Ferrars. Their friendship was of a particularly sincere and well-balanced kind, and was not marred by their constant intercourse, as each knew how to maintain that degree of reserve which prevents indiscriminate confidences and so greatly strengthens mutual respect. Kitty was the one who perhaps found the society of the Rectory the least congenial; but it is to be feared that she was extremely difficult to please that autumn, and in the impatience with which she waited for one young man she might have sometimes regretted the solace which the company of the other would have afforded. In such a small neighbourhood everyone was of some value, and they all heard with interest of the approaching visit to Mr. and Mrs. Edward Ferrars of an old friend, Mrs. Jennings, who was coming early in October to spend six or seven weeks with them. Mrs. Ferrars was in delicate health, and Mrs. Jennings, besides having an almost maternal affection for her, was well qualified to be of service as sick nurse and enlivening companion, so that Elinor's warning to Mrs. Darcy that her friend, although the kindest of women, had not always the most refined manner of expressing herself, did not prevent them from being anxious to make her acquaintance. Mrs. Jennings performed in safety the long journey from her son-in-law's house in Devonshire, and arrived in her customary high spirits. It was her first visit to the Ferrars's since their removal from Delaford, and she had to examine the house, to criticize minutely the arrangement of their furniture, and to compare their surroundings, social and material, with what they had been in their old home. Mrs. Darcy paid an early call on the new arrival, and the morning after her visit Georgiana and Kitty also found their way to the Rectory. Mrs. Jennings's exuberance, her loud laugh and general noisy cheerfulness did not recommend her strongly to either of the girls in the first few minutes, and Georgiana was glad to move to a chair by Mrs. Ferrars, to enter into a quieter conversation with her; but before long, judging by the sounds which reached them, Mrs. Jennings and Kitty had found some subjects in common. This perhaps was not so surprising, as Mrs. Jennings was exceedingly fond of the society of all young girls, and cared not at all whether they returned her partiality or no. In this case she had begun, with the utmost frankness, to discourse on the subject nearest her heart at the moment, namely, her dear Mrs. Ferrars, and was relating all the circumstances under which their friendship had been formed, the Dashwood girls' visit to London, the disagreeable conduct of Mrs. Ferrars's mother and sister, and the absurd misunderstanding as to Colonel Brandon's attentions, the whole being punctuated by frequent bursts of laughter; and she would doubtless have gone on to describe in detail the events attending the engagement of her two young friends, had not Elinor mildly but decisively interposed. "Dear madam," she said, breaking off in the midst of a remark to Georgiana, "I am sure Miss Bennet does not wish to hear the history of such a very dull old couple as ourselves. You are so kind as to be more interested in it than most people could be." "Lord, my dear," cried Mrs. Jennings, "why did you not stop me? I declare I am very sorry if I said a word I ought not. I know my tongue does run on, and Miss Bennet must excuse me, for it was only for the pleasure of talking to you and Mr. Edward. And as for its being dull, I don't believe there is anybody who does not like to hear of other people's love-affairs; it makes one think of one's own, now, does it not, Miss Bennet?" Kitty blushed and looked embarrassed, and Mrs. Jennings laughed heartily, saying: "It is just as I thought; Miss Bennet could tell us a pretty tale too, I'll be bound, if only she would." "Miss Bennet can tell us some wonderful tales of the West Indies," said Elinor, endeavouring to turn Mrs. Jennings's mind from her favourite topic; "she has a sister there, who writes to her constantly, does she not, Miss Bennet? Those tropical places must be very beautiful. Do you remember how Colonel Brandon used to talk to us of his travels in the East, ma'am?" "That I do, my dear," replied Mrs. Jennings emphatically, "and I never want to hear again of such fearful things as he had seen--swamps, and great things like alligators ... and insects that did everything insects ought not. I hope you will tell your sister not to get amongst them, Miss Bennet." Kitty replied that her sister had written chiefly of the beautiful balls and illuminations which they frequently had, and lately of some shocks of earthquake which had frightened them terribly. Mrs. Jennings exclaimed at this, and declared that the finest ball in the world would not compensate her if there was the fear that the ground would open under her feet while she was dancing. "But I know young people do not care what risks they run," said she. "There was Sir John Middleton three weeks ago wanted to have a moonlight picnic; my daughter Middleton was all against it, for the weather was so threatening, but have it he would, and the consequence was that they all ate their supper, or as much of it as they could, in a roaring thunderstorm. I can tell you they were in a pretty pickle when they got back! All the girls so cross, and the young men not a dry thread among them through trying to protect the ladies. But Sir John, he made no bones about it at all, but said they would go again another night, when for sure it would be fine." Her hearers could not help laughing at such a picture of undaunted pleasure-seeking, and Elinor inquired if the second party had taken place. "Oh, Lord, yes; they all came, but their fathers and mothers made them promise not to stir beyond the grounds. I heard, at any rate, they turned it into a dance instead. But, as I say, young people don't care for a drop of rain. I am sure, when I was young, I would as lief have had it as not, for there was no hardship in sheltering under a hedge, with the right young man to hold an umbrella over you, do you think so, Miss Bennet?" "Still, I fancy that most people, old or young, prefer outdoor expeditions to be in dry weather," said Elinor. "That reminds me that I must show you what terrible havoc last night's rain and wind worked in my flower borders. When I looked out first, I was quite in despair, thinking I should not have another nosegay all the autumn. There is a gleam of sunshine now, so shall we take a turn in the garden?" Georgiana gladly walked out with her, and Mrs. Jennings and Kitty followed at a distance, the former questioning her young companion about her sister abroad and hearing laments over the gaieties which that sister had been able to offer her, but which she had never been able to accept. Mrs. Jennings's hearty comments of "Well, there now, that is a shame!" and "A regiment too! You would have broken all their hearts, I vow!" and other such remarks pleased Kitty, while she knew in her heart they ought not to do so. The two girls shortly after took their leave, and while walking homeward naturally compared notes upon the stranger whom they had just met. Georgiana expressed herself guardedly, not wishing to condemn any friend of Mrs. Ferrars's, although feeling as if that friend could not be in any way an accession to their party; but Kitty's first unfavorable impression seemed to have been obliterated, and she declared frankly that she liked Mrs. Jennings and thought she was very merry and good-natured. Georgiana could not quite agree with this, for she found Mrs. Jennings's style of raillery not at all to her mind, but admitted that she might be pleasanter when one got to know her well. At dinner these opinions were canvassed, and Georgiana found, as she expected, that her own were largely shared by Elizabeth, who, however, was amused at her severity, and told her that she would often meet people who, with more refined manners, were yet at heart far more vulgar than Mrs. Jennings and had not a tenth part of her redeeming qualities. "I do not think I want to meet them, then," said Georgiana. "But I am sure you are right, Elizabeth, and I daresay she will be a great comfort to Mrs. Ferrars." When the ladies were together after dinner, Kitty, whose gravity and preoccupation had been noticeable for the last half-hour, after wandering several times round the room, stationed herself near to her sister and began, in a solemn tone: "Lizzie, I want to ask you something very important." Elizabeth, smiling, professed herself all attention, and Kitty continued: "You know you have never kept your promise, that you made before you were married, of having a ball here, for each winter something has happened to prevent it." "Quite true, Kitty; so a ball is in your mind; and what made you think of it just now?" "I never come here without thinking of it, but I had somehow not expected to be staying long enough this year, as I imagined I should go home directly after the shooting party. But Mrs. Jennings said to-day she supposed you sometimes had balls in this lovely house, and she was sure Georgiana and I were fond of dancing." "And Mrs. Jennings is quite right about the latter statement, is she not?" Georgiana looked up with a smile, to assent to her share of the question, and Kitty clasped her hands rapturously, exclaiming: "Oh, Lizzie, you know how much I love a ball! It would be so kind of you and Darcy! Everyone would enjoy it!" "I am very

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will do it, but life is so uncertain that I think for the present I had better refrain. Have you ascertained whether Kitty can cook, make her own gowns, and trim hats? I understand it is a great promoter of married happiness when the wife can do so, and I am not sure whether all my girls have turned their education to such good account." Mr. Morland only replied by asking if he might be allowed to see Miss Bennet at once, and her father left the room, foreseeing that, whatever happened, he should not have one more quiet hour during that day. His anticipations were soon in the way to be fulfilled, for on finding his daughters, and sending Kitty to the library, he had to give Jane an outline of what had just passed, then repeat it to Bingley, who joined them, and listened to their exclamations of surprise, and regret at the probable downfall of Mr. Morland's hopes. Jane and Bingley were both too convinced of Kitty's prior attachment to have the slightest expectation of his success, and Mr. Bennet was put in full possession of the facts relating to it, while they anxiously awaited the termination of the interview. It came, after some minutes, in a glimpse of Kitty emerging from the library and hurrying upstairs with streaming eyes, and while they all debated as to their next move, Mr. Morland was seen to cross the hall rapidly, looking nowhere but in front of him, and leave the house with precipitation. Jane herself, almost equally distressed, longed to go to Kitty, and Bingley questioned whether he ought not to hasten after the young man, while Mr. Bennet was disposed to think they would be better left to themselves for a time, and wished heartily that there were only just enough lovers in the world to go round, one to each young lady, and none over. In spite of this, Jane was not long in finding her way to her agitated sister and in showing her the tenderest consideration. Kitty's distress was very great, and also very sincere, for she had in truth been far from guessing that Mr. Morland took a more than common interest in her, and as is usual in such cases, the declaration of the young man's love woke in her feelings which she had not known to exist, of reciprocal kindness and even affection, which only did not share the nature and strength of his. Kitty could never have been hard-hearted to any lover, least of all to one whom she liked as much as she did James Morland, and his devotion touched her as deeply as the knowledge that she could not accept it wounded her. Between regrets for what had happened, pity for him and for herself, and the excited thoughts of William Price which the incident itself was bound to evoke, she was in a sad state, and Jane easily prevailed upon her to have her dinner upstairs and go early to bed. Not so easily could she check the tears which flowed continuously, and Jane, to occupy her mind and body, proposed that she should go to-morrow to Pemberley, instead of in three days' time, as arranged; she could very well be sent over, and the change would be beneficial; besides, she was not really leaving them, for there was the November visit to look forward to. Kitty caught at the suggestion, and declining the offices of the maid, began to busy herself about her packing, as Jane hoped she would do, while the latter descended to consult with her husband and father. Mr. Bennet and Bingley both approved, and Jane hastily wrote a few lines to Elizabeth to apprise her of what had happened, that she might be prepared for Kitty's arrival. The two gentlemen walked to the nearest post town to convey the letter; and after dinner the indefatigable Bingley again set out, this time to the Rectory, to perform the same kind office by James Morland as his wife had been doing by Kitty. The young man, though calmer, proved far more unreceptive of consolation. He had felt his rebuff acutely, for Kitty had been too much taken by surprise, too sure of herself, to make it otherwise than decisive, and even the modest hopes he had ventured to entertain, of being able to make more progress with her once the subject was opened between them, had been most thoroughly dispelled. Miss Bennet would not hear another word of it--begged him never to speak of it again--with tears reproached him for having spoilt everything, so that in addition to his own disappointment he had the pain of feeling that she thought less well of him than before. Bingley could deny this, but could not affirm anything else likely to give him comfort. It remained for Morland himself to declare, which he did in a firm though melancholy tone, that he regretted having distressed Miss Bennet, and would endeavour so to meet her in the future that she would not suffer through being reminded of it by any act of word of his. Bingley commended his courage, told him of Kitty's departure, and begged him to continue coming to Desborough just the same; and walked home with a full report of what had just passed. Jane shook her head over it, for, while sympathizing with both, she was more truly sorry for Mr. Morland, since for him she could see no immediate prospect of compensation, in spite of her father's assurances that a young clergyman was seldom allowed to remain inconsolable for more than six months, and if Kitty's other young man only did what was expected of him, her fate would be a certainty in half that time. Chapter XIII Needless to say, Kitty was heartily welcomed by Georgiana and Elizabeth, and given every opportunity to relieve her mind by descriptions of the tragical affair in all its aspects. Both regretted it deeply for Mr. Morland's sake, and Elizabeth privately did so for Kitty's sake, having such a good opinion of him as to make her wish that Kitty could have been persuaded out of her fancy for a young man, who, however excellent, was comparatively a stranger to them all, and whose intentions, at present, were extremely uncertain. She would have rejoiced if Kitty and Morland could have made each other happy, and had entertained a slight hope that her hint to Kitty might perhaps have helped matters, in directing her thoughts into another channel, but it seemed to be of no avail, and Georgiana gave her friend her warmest support, implying entire agreement with her point of view. "I could not help it, now, could I, Georgiana? You know yourself, Lizzie, that I never dreamt it. How could I do anything else but refuse him outright? I was amazingly grieved to do so, but you know very well, Georgiana, that if I could think of one man more than another, _he_ is not that one." She paused for assent, which Georgiana gave by a silent caress, and then continued: "It is all so unfortunate. It will never be as pleasant at Desborough now. Poor Mr. Morland! I wish I had not had to hurt him. He does want someone so badly in the Rectory." "Well, my dear, do not make yourself ill with these vain regrets," said Elizabeth. "It is, as you say, very unfortunate, but no one blames you. If you could not care for him, you could not do it, and someone else will have to inhabit that nice Rectory." Kitty looked as if this prospect were not very pleasing either, but Georgiana, seeing what Elizabeth wished, began to talk cheerfully of something else, and Kitty gradually joined in, though whenever the two girls were alone together she found it difficult to abstain long from referring to some branch of the subject. Georgiana's loyalty and patience never failed, but she wished for November almost as earnestly as Kitty herself, so that matters might reach some definite conclusion, for Kitty's restlessness had considerably increased since she had received James Morland's offer, and she was constantly nervous and excitable and not mistress of herself. On the day when the Bingleys and Mr. Bennet came over for the latter to take leave before returning to Longbourn, this was specially noticeable in her state of anxious flutter when drawing Jane aside to inquire after Mr. Morland. Mr. Bennet bade her farewell gravely and more affectionately than was his wont, telling her that he left her in good hands, and would only give her one piece of advice, namely, that second thoughts were sometimes best. Kitty blushed deeply and could not pretend to misunderstand him, but told Georgiana afterwards that it was impossible to have better second thoughts when Price was the first. With his elder daughter Mr. Bennet was rather more explicit, telling Elizabeth that he considered it was a great pity that so unobjectionable a young man should have been sent about his business. Elizabeth entirely agreed with him, and thought it would not be going too far to express Mr. Morland's praise in even warmer terms. "He will never set the Thames on fire, but there seems good stuff in him," was Mr. Bennet's reply. "When he proposed for her I had not taken much notice of him, except to think him a tolerably sensible fellow, and of course I had to readjust my ideas; but I soon began to see that he must not be judged by that alone. I have really liked him better, too, for his way of taking his refusal." "My dear father, it does not always indicate a want of sense to wish to be married," interposed Elizabeth. "Perhaps not, but Morland is much better off as he is than in marrying a girl he knows so little about. Kitty is flighty and expensive; she ought to stay longer with you and Jane, and not think of being married for the next ten years." Elizabeth smiled and said she thought that it was unnecessary, but that it would certainly be better for Kitty to marry a clergyman than an officer in the navy, who would be compelled to spend long periods away from home. "As to that, of course it is a complete absurdity, and I cannot think why you women, who are so fond of making matches, did not originate something less ridiculously unsuitable among yourselves." Elizabeth thought it wiser not to explain who actually had originated the idea, and said after a pause: "You were saying that you have liked Mr. Morland better of late?" "Yes, he has positively shown some sort of self-command and dignity. He turned up at the house a day or two afterwards, apparently _not_ bent on making us all uncomfortable by the sight of his misery, as most rejected lovers do. Besides, Bingley had had the foresight to produce some excellent port." "I hear from Jane," said Elizabeth, "that he does not avoid or seek the mention of Kitty, and she thinks he is trying to give up all hope of her." "Her absence for a few weeks will no doubt materially assist him," said Mr. Bennet. Kitty seized the opportunity offered by this visit to speak a private word to her brother-in-law with reference to the hero, as Bingley persisted in calling him. She herself had no news, for Mrs. Knightley's frequent letters reported him still at Portsmouth, and Bingley had heard nothing, but promised to write and renew his invitation as soon as October was fairly in. The same silence prevailed at Pemberley with regard to Miss Crawford. No announcement of her marriage had reached any of them, and Elizabeth had a half inclination to make some inquiries, but was dissuaded by Darcy, who said: "Whatever precisely has happened, Elizabeth, we can be sure of one thing, that Miss Crawford has allowed Fitzwilliam to understand that she does not wish him to approach her again. Under these circumstances it is better that you should have no news to give him." Elizabeth sighed as she agreed to the wisdom of this decision, but when shortly after her father's departure a letter was received from Colonel Fitzwilliam to say he would be returning at the end of the month, she could not help wishing that she was more fully informed of the present state of affairs. It would be a relief, even though a sad one, to Fitzwilliam's mind to know that Miss Crawford was actually married and he would be unselfish enough to wish to hear that she was happy. Nothing occurred, however, to enlighten them, and Fitzwilliam arrived on the appointed day, looking much as usual except for a few more lines about the eyes and an increased number of grey hairs. It was the first time he and Georgiana had been together at Pemberley since the rupture of their engagement, and both must have felt conscious of it, Georgiana in particular being prepared to be miserable for a time, from the belief that her cousin, instead of being cheered and invigorated as formerly by his return home, must be reminded at every turn of the failure of their experiment, the failure caused by her wretched weakness and incapacity. Worse still, her brother must be reminded of it, and there might be a repetition of his stern looks, his cold manner. She trembled at the thought, unaware that Darcy had long been persuaded of the wisdom of their parting, ever since events in Bath had shown him where his cousin's real affections were likely to be bestowed, and the only difference which Georgiana perceived after Fitzwilliam's arrival was in the particular kindness he showed her, and the complete renewal of the old comfortable relations amongst them all. When inquiries after the Hursts and Mrs. Annesley had been made, and Georgiana had mentioned the dinner-party and the persons who had been present, little more was said with reference to London; indeed, there was little more for either to say, for Georgiana dared not refer to the person who had chiefly occupied his mind there. Fitzwilliam talked of his book and of Ireland, inquired about the prospects of the shooting, showed interest in the minutest details of life in the neighbourhood, and in every way endeavoured to prove that he was exactly his old self; and only when walking with Elizabeth in the Park one morning did he betray how far that was from being the case. There was no doubt that his disappointment had coloured his whole life. He had allowed himself to think of Miss Crawford, and to build high upon his hopes, and to find himself again mistaken had been a blow which cut at the foundations of all his happiness. His gaiety was feigned, his pursuits had lost their zest, his friends no longer sufficed him: and as he said to Elizabeth, he had felt he had better adopt some country occupation and settle down to it, and there grow old as quietly and quickly as might be. Elizabeth's heart was wrung; the spectacle of her cousin's fine nature locked away, as it were, in a closed room, as a thing no one had any need for, was inexpressively painful to her, and nothing else would have caused her to venture upon a reopening of the subject which he himself had not approached. With the utmost gentleness she spoke a few words of commiseration, and then, still proceeding with extreme caution, she told him of the absence of news and her assumption that Miss Crawford's marriage with Sir Walter Elliot had been delayed. "I daresay it has," returned Colonel Fitzwilliam, with a kind of listlessness, striking with his stick at the head of some tall grasses which bordered their path. "There can be no doubt of it, I suppose?" pursued Elizabeth. "None at all, I should imagine," replied the Colonel. "Miss Crawford is not the kind of woman who would break her word, once the engagement had been announced." "No, of course not," said Elizabeth; "but I had expected that she or Mrs. Grant would have written to me, or even Mrs. Wentworth, as they must know I should be interested." Colonel Fitzwilliam could not immediately recall anything of Mrs. Wentworth beyond her name, and on being reminded that she was Sir Walter Elliot's daughter, presently replied: "I do not think it altogether surprising she should not have written to you. She probably cares little for the marriage, and still less for the one which it was anticipated would follow it--I mean Miss Elliot's to Mr. Crawford." This was a new idea to Elizabeth, and while she was pondering over it, and the inferences to be drawn from it, Colonel Fitzwilliam broke the silence by saying: "Perhaps we had better not speak of this anymore, Elizabeth. I know your great kindness of heart, but I feel it does no good, rather harm, to be reviving thoughts which I must in honour suppress as much as possible. I was anxious to know whether you had heard anything, and to ask you again, when you have the chance, to tell her that I wish her well; but now we have mentioned it, it would, I think, be best for my contemptibly weak character to put it as far away as possible." With tears in her eyes, Elizabeth assured him that through the tenderest regard for him, not through any fear of overtaxing his fortitude, she would respect his wishes, but could not help begging him to remain with them at Pemberley as heretofore, so as to give them an opportunity of showing him how completely their happiness was bound up with his, and of making use of any opportunity which might arise for them to be of service to him. Fitzwilliam gratefully promised to stay for the present, and said that his only engagement was to go to some friends in Leicestershire in November, for the hunting. Elizabeth was, nevertheless, not perfectly satisfied, and took occasion to ask Georgiana shortly afterwards whether it was from Mrs. Wentworth that she had heard confirmation of the fact that Sir Walter Elliot was engaged to Miss Crawford. "No," said Georgiana, in surprise, "it was from Mr. Price. Mrs. Wentworth never mentioned it. Mrs. Wentworth! Of course, I recollect now, she is Sir Walter Elliot's daughter; but at the time I never thought of it, for, you see, I did not know Sir Walter was the man." "Very true; I had also forgotten that you did not know," said Elizabeth, "and would never connect her with Miss Crawford. I have been thinking that I should like, for our own satisfaction, to know when the wedding is going to take place, and the simplest way will be to write and ask Mrs. Wentworth. I wish I had done so before, but I did not wish to be in haste, and I felt so convinced we should hear from others." Georgiana agreed that this was the best course to pursue, and Elizabeth, having told Darcy of her intention, to which, on account of her promise to Fitzwilliam, he could no longer object, wrote and dispatched her letter. The season was now drawing on, and with the shortening days the family at Pemberley found themselves thrown more upon the resources of their own immediate circle for amusement. The weather was consistently bad, and though this did not prevent the gentlemen from covering great distances for the purpose of slaughtering their game, the ladies were of necessity restricted to a smaller area, and their walks seldom extended beyond the park, except when their inclinations led them along a tolerably clean road towards the Rectory. This happened pretty frequently, for both Elizabeth and Georgiana were extremely attached to Elinor Ferrars. Their friendship was of a particularly sincere and well-balanced kind, and was not marred by their constant intercourse, as each knew how to maintain that degree of reserve which prevents indiscriminate confidences and so greatly strengthens mutual respect. Kitty was the one who perhaps found the society of the Rectory the least congenial; but it is to be feared that she was extremely difficult to please that autumn, and in the impatience with which she waited for one young man she might have sometimes regretted the solace which the company of the other would have afforded. In such a small neighbourhood everyone was of some value, and they all heard with interest of the approaching visit to Mr. and Mrs. Edward Ferrars of an old friend, Mrs. Jennings, who was coming early in October to spend six or seven weeks with them. Mrs. Ferrars was in delicate health, and Mrs. Jennings, besides having an almost maternal affection for her, was well qualified to be of service as sick nurse and enlivening companion, so that Elinor's warning to Mrs. Darcy that her friend, although the kindest of women, had not always the most refined manner of expressing herself, did not prevent them from being anxious to make her acquaintance. Mrs. Jennings performed in safety the long journey from her son-in-law's house in Devonshire, and arrived in her customary high spirits. It was her first visit to the Ferrars's since their removal from Delaford, and she had to examine the house, to criticize minutely the arrangement of their furniture, and to compare their surroundings, social and material, with what they had been in their old home. Mrs. Darcy paid an early call on the new arrival, and the morning after her visit Georgiana and Kitty also found their way to the Rectory. Mrs. Jennings's exuberance, her loud laugh and general noisy cheerfulness did not recommend her strongly to either of the girls in the first few minutes, and Georgiana was glad to move to a chair by Mrs. Ferrars, to enter into a quieter conversation with her; but before long, judging by the sounds which reached them, Mrs. Jennings and Kitty had found some subjects in common. This perhaps was not so surprising, as Mrs. Jennings was exceedingly fond of the society of all young girls, and cared not at all whether they returned her partiality or no. In this case she had begun, with the utmost frankness, to discourse on the subject nearest her heart at the moment, namely, her dear Mrs. Ferrars, and was relating all the circumstances under which their friendship had been formed, the Dashwood girls' visit to London, the disagreeable conduct of Mrs. Ferrars's mother and sister, and the absurd misunderstanding as to Colonel Brandon's attentions, the whole being punctuated by frequent bursts of laughter; and she would doubtless have gone on to describe in detail the events attending the engagement of her two young friends, had not Elinor mildly but decisively interposed. "Dear madam," she said, breaking off in the midst of a remark to Georgiana, "I am sure Miss Bennet does not wish to hear the history of such a very dull old couple as ourselves. You are so kind as to be more interested in it than most people could be." "Lord, my dear," cried Mrs. Jennings, "why did you not stop me? I declare I am very sorry if I said a word I ought not. I know my tongue does run on, and Miss Bennet must excuse me, for it was only for the pleasure of talking to you and Mr. Edward. And as for its being dull, I don't believe there is anybody who does not like to hear of other people's love-affairs; it makes one think of one's own, now, does it not, Miss Bennet?" Kitty blushed and looked embarrassed, and Mrs. Jennings laughed heartily, saying: "It is just as I thought; Miss Bennet could tell us a pretty tale too, I'll be bound, if only she would." "Miss Bennet can tell us some wonderful tales of the West Indies," said Elinor, endeavouring to turn Mrs. Jennings's mind from her favourite topic; "she has a sister there, who writes to her constantly, does she not, Miss Bennet? Those tropical places must be very beautiful. Do you remember how Colonel Brandon used to talk to us of his travels in the East, ma'am?" "That I do, my dear," replied Mrs. Jennings emphatically, "and I never want to hear again of such fearful things as he had seen--swamps, and great things like alligators ... and insects that did everything insects ought not. I hope you will tell your sister not to get amongst them, Miss Bennet." Kitty replied that her sister had written chiefly of the beautiful balls and illuminations which they frequently had, and lately of some shocks of earthquake which had frightened them terribly. Mrs. Jennings exclaimed at this, and declared that the finest ball in the world would not compensate her if there was the fear that the ground would open under her feet while she was dancing. "But I know young people do not care what risks they run," said she. "There was Sir John Middleton three weeks ago wanted to have a moonlight picnic; my daughter Middleton was all against it, for the weather was so threatening, but have it he would, and the consequence was that they all ate their supper, or as much of it as they could, in a roaring thunderstorm. I can tell you they were in a pretty pickle when they got back! All the girls so cross, and the young men not a dry thread among them through trying to protect the ladies. But Sir John, he made no bones about it at all, but said they would go again another night, when for sure it would be fine." Her hearers could not help laughing at such a picture of undaunted pleasure-seeking, and Elinor inquired if the second party had taken place. "Oh, Lord, yes; they all came, but their fathers and mothers made them promise not to stir beyond the grounds. I heard, at any rate, they turned it into a dance instead. But, as I say, young people don't care for a drop of rain. I am sure, when I was young, I would as lief have had it as not, for there was no hardship in sheltering under a hedge, with the right young man to hold an umbrella over you, do you think so, Miss Bennet?" "Still, I fancy that most people, old or young, prefer outdoor expeditions to be in dry weather," said Elinor. "That reminds me that I must show you what terrible havoc last night's rain and wind worked in my flower borders. When I looked out first, I was quite in despair, thinking I should not have another nosegay all the autumn. There is a gleam of sunshine now, so shall we take a turn in the garden?" Georgiana gladly walked out with her, and Mrs. Jennings and Kitty followed at a distance, the former questioning her young companion about her sister abroad and hearing laments over the gaieties which that sister had been able to offer her, but which she had never been able to accept. Mrs. Jennings's hearty comments of "Well, there now, that is a shame!" and "A regiment too! You would have broken all their hearts, I vow!" and other such remarks pleased Kitty, while she knew in her heart they ought not to do so. The two girls shortly after took their leave, and while walking homeward naturally compared notes upon the stranger whom they had just met. Georgiana expressed herself guardedly, not wishing to condemn any friend of Mrs. Ferrars's, although feeling as if that friend could not be in any way an accession to their party; but Kitty's first unfavorable impression seemed to have been obliterated, and she declared frankly that she liked Mrs. Jennings and thought she was very merry and good-natured. Georgiana could not quite agree with this, for she found Mrs. Jennings's style of raillery not at all to her mind, but admitted that she might be pleasanter when one got to know her well. At dinner these opinions were canvassed, and Georgiana found, as she expected, that her own were largely shared by Elizabeth, who, however, was amused at her severity, and told her that she would often meet people who, with more refined manners, were yet at heart far more vulgar than Mrs. Jennings and had not a tenth part of her redeeming qualities. "I do not think I want to meet them, then," said Georgiana. "But I am sure you are right, Elizabeth, and I daresay she will be a great comfort to Mrs. Ferrars." When the ladies were together after dinner, Kitty, whose gravity and preoccupation had been noticeable for the last half-hour, after wandering several times round the room, stationed herself near to her sister and began, in a solemn tone: "Lizzie, I want to ask you something very important." Elizabeth, smiling, professed herself all attention, and Kitty continued: "You know you have never kept your promise, that you made before you were married, of having a ball here, for each winter something has happened to prevent it." "Quite true, Kitty; so a ball is in your mind; and what made you think of it just now?" "I never come here without thinking of it, but I had somehow not expected to be staying long enough this year, as I imagined I should go home directly after the shooting party. But Mrs. Jennings said to-day she supposed you sometimes had balls in this lovely house, and she was sure Georgiana and I were fond of dancing." "And Mrs. Jennings is quite right about the latter statement, is she not?" Georgiana looked up with a smile, to assent to her share of the question, and Kitty clasped her hands rapturously, exclaiming: "Oh, Lizzie, you know how much I love a ball! It would be so kind of you and Darcy! Everyone would enjoy it!" "I am very

rational

How many times the word 'rational' appears in the text?

will do it, but life is so uncertain that I think for the present I had better refrain. Have you ascertained whether Kitty can cook, make her own gowns, and trim hats? I understand it is a great promoter of married happiness when the wife can do so, and I am not sure whether all my girls have turned their education to such good account." Mr. Morland only replied by asking if he might be allowed to see Miss Bennet at once, and her father left the room, foreseeing that, whatever happened, he should not have one more quiet hour during that day. His anticipations were soon in the way to be fulfilled, for on finding his daughters, and sending Kitty to the library, he had to give Jane an outline of what had just passed, then repeat it to Bingley, who joined them, and listened to their exclamations of surprise, and regret at the probable downfall of Mr. Morland's hopes. Jane and Bingley were both too convinced of Kitty's prior attachment to have the slightest expectation of his success, and Mr. Bennet was put in full possession of the facts relating to it, while they anxiously awaited the termination of the interview. It came, after some minutes, in a glimpse of Kitty emerging from the library and hurrying upstairs with streaming eyes, and while they all debated as to their next move, Mr. Morland was seen to cross the hall rapidly, looking nowhere but in front of him, and leave the house with precipitation. Jane herself, almost equally distressed, longed to go to Kitty, and Bingley questioned whether he ought not to hasten after the young man, while Mr. Bennet was disposed to think they would be better left to themselves for a time, and wished heartily that there were only just enough lovers in the world to go round, one to each young lady, and none over. In spite of this, Jane was not long in finding her way to her agitated sister and in showing her the tenderest consideration. Kitty's distress was very great, and also very sincere, for she had in truth been far from guessing that Mr. Morland took a more than common interest in her, and as is usual in such cases, the declaration of the young man's love woke in her feelings which she had not known to exist, of reciprocal kindness and even affection, which only did not share the nature and strength of his. Kitty could never have been hard-hearted to any lover, least of all to one whom she liked as much as she did James Morland, and his devotion touched her as deeply as the knowledge that she could not accept it wounded her. Between regrets for what had happened, pity for him and for herself, and the excited thoughts of William Price which the incident itself was bound to evoke, she was in a sad state, and Jane easily prevailed upon her to have her dinner upstairs and go early to bed. Not so easily could she check the tears which flowed continuously, and Jane, to occupy her mind and body, proposed that she should go to-morrow to Pemberley, instead of in three days' time, as arranged; she could very well be sent over, and the change would be beneficial; besides, she was not really leaving them, for there was the November visit to look forward to. Kitty caught at the suggestion, and declining the offices of the maid, began to busy herself about her packing, as Jane hoped she would do, while the latter descended to consult with her husband and father. Mr. Bennet and Bingley both approved, and Jane hastily wrote a few lines to Elizabeth to apprise her of what had happened, that she might be prepared for Kitty's arrival. The two gentlemen walked to the nearest post town to convey the letter; and after dinner the indefatigable Bingley again set out, this time to the Rectory, to perform the same kind office by James Morland as his wife had been doing by Kitty. The young man, though calmer, proved far more unreceptive of consolation. He had felt his rebuff acutely, for Kitty had been too much taken by surprise, too sure of herself, to make it otherwise than decisive, and even the modest hopes he had ventured to entertain, of being able to make more progress with her once the subject was opened between them, had been most thoroughly dispelled. Miss Bennet would not hear another word of it--begged him never to speak of it again--with tears reproached him for having spoilt everything, so that in addition to his own disappointment he had the pain of feeling that she thought less well of him than before. Bingley could deny this, but could not affirm anything else likely to give him comfort. It remained for Morland himself to declare, which he did in a firm though melancholy tone, that he regretted having distressed Miss Bennet, and would endeavour so to meet her in the future that she would not suffer through being reminded of it by any act of word of his. Bingley commended his courage, told him of Kitty's departure, and begged him to continue coming to Desborough just the same; and walked home with a full report of what had just passed. Jane shook her head over it, for, while sympathizing with both, she was more truly sorry for Mr. Morland, since for him she could see no immediate prospect of compensation, in spite of her father's assurances that a young clergyman was seldom allowed to remain inconsolable for more than six months, and if Kitty's other young man only did what was expected of him, her fate would be a certainty in half that time. Chapter XIII Needless to say, Kitty was heartily welcomed by Georgiana and Elizabeth, and given every opportunity to relieve her mind by descriptions of the tragical affair in all its aspects. Both regretted it deeply for Mr. Morland's sake, and Elizabeth privately did so for Kitty's sake, having such a good opinion of him as to make her wish that Kitty could have been persuaded out of her fancy for a young man, who, however excellent, was comparatively a stranger to them all, and whose intentions, at present, were extremely uncertain. She would have rejoiced if Kitty and Morland could have made each other happy, and had entertained a slight hope that her hint to Kitty might perhaps have helped matters, in directing her thoughts into another channel, but it seemed to be of no avail, and Georgiana gave her friend her warmest support, implying entire agreement with her point of view. "I could not help it, now, could I, Georgiana? You know yourself, Lizzie, that I never dreamt it. How could I do anything else but refuse him outright? I was amazingly grieved to do so, but you know very well, Georgiana, that if I could think of one man more than another, _he_ is not that one." She paused for assent, which Georgiana gave by a silent caress, and then continued: "It is all so unfortunate. It will never be as pleasant at Desborough now. Poor Mr. Morland! I wish I had not had to hurt him. He does want someone so badly in the Rectory." "Well, my dear, do not make yourself ill with these vain regrets," said Elizabeth. "It is, as you say, very unfortunate, but no one blames you. If you could not care for him, you could not do it, and someone else will have to inhabit that nice Rectory." Kitty looked as if this prospect were not very pleasing either, but Georgiana, seeing what Elizabeth wished, began to talk cheerfully of something else, and Kitty gradually joined in, though whenever the two girls were alone together she found it difficult to abstain long from referring to some branch of the subject. Georgiana's loyalty and patience never failed, but she wished for November almost as earnestly as Kitty herself, so that matters might reach some definite conclusion, for Kitty's restlessness had considerably increased since she had received James Morland's offer, and she was constantly nervous and excitable and not mistress of herself. On the day when the Bingleys and Mr. Bennet came over for the latter to take leave before returning to Longbourn, this was specially noticeable in her state of anxious flutter when drawing Jane aside to inquire after Mr. Morland. Mr. Bennet bade her farewell gravely and more affectionately than was his wont, telling her that he left her in good hands, and would only give her one piece of advice, namely, that second thoughts were sometimes best. Kitty blushed deeply and could not pretend to misunderstand him, but told Georgiana afterwards that it was impossible to have better second thoughts when Price was the first. With his elder daughter Mr. Bennet was rather more explicit, telling Elizabeth that he considered it was a great pity that so unobjectionable a young man should have been sent about his business. Elizabeth entirely agreed with him, and thought it would not be going too far to express Mr. Morland's praise in even warmer terms. "He will never set the Thames on fire, but there seems good stuff in him," was Mr. Bennet's reply. "When he proposed for her I had not taken much notice of him, except to think him a tolerably sensible fellow, and of course I had to readjust my ideas; but I soon began to see that he must not be judged by that alone. I have really liked him better, too, for his way of taking his refusal." "My dear father, it does not always indicate a want of sense to wish to be married," interposed Elizabeth. "Perhaps not, but Morland is much better off as he is than in marrying a girl he knows so little about. Kitty is flighty and expensive; she ought to stay longer with you and Jane, and not think of being married for the next ten years." Elizabeth smiled and said she thought that it was unnecessary, but that it would certainly be better for Kitty to marry a clergyman than an officer in the navy, who would be compelled to spend long periods away from home. "As to that, of course it is a complete absurdity, and I cannot think why you women, who are so fond of making matches, did not originate something less ridiculously unsuitable among yourselves." Elizabeth thought it wiser not to explain who actually had originated the idea, and said after a pause: "You were saying that you have liked Mr. Morland better of late?" "Yes, he has positively shown some sort of self-command and dignity. He turned up at the house a day or two afterwards, apparently _not_ bent on making us all uncomfortable by the sight of his misery, as most rejected lovers do. Besides, Bingley had had the foresight to produce some excellent port." "I hear from Jane," said Elizabeth, "that he does not avoid or seek the mention of Kitty, and she thinks he is trying to give up all hope of her." "Her absence for a few weeks will no doubt materially assist him," said Mr. Bennet. Kitty seized the opportunity offered by this visit to speak a private word to her brother-in-law with reference to the hero, as Bingley persisted in calling him. She herself had no news, for Mrs. Knightley's frequent letters reported him still at Portsmouth, and Bingley had heard nothing, but promised to write and renew his invitation as soon as October was fairly in. The same silence prevailed at Pemberley with regard to Miss Crawford. No announcement of her marriage had reached any of them, and Elizabeth had a half inclination to make some inquiries, but was dissuaded by Darcy, who said: "Whatever precisely has happened, Elizabeth, we can be sure of one thing, that Miss Crawford has allowed Fitzwilliam to understand that she does not wish him to approach her again. Under these circumstances it is better that you should have no news to give him." Elizabeth sighed as she agreed to the wisdom of this decision, but when shortly after her father's departure a letter was received from Colonel Fitzwilliam to say he would be returning at the end of the month, she could not help wishing that she was more fully informed of the present state of affairs. It would be a relief, even though a sad one, to Fitzwilliam's mind to know that Miss Crawford was actually married and he would be unselfish enough to wish to hear that she was happy. Nothing occurred, however, to enlighten them, and Fitzwilliam arrived on the appointed day, looking much as usual except for a few more lines about the eyes and an increased number of grey hairs. It was the first time he and Georgiana had been together at Pemberley since the rupture of their engagement, and both must have felt conscious of it, Georgiana in particular being prepared to be miserable for a time, from the belief that her cousin, instead of being cheered and invigorated as formerly by his return home, must be reminded at every turn of the failure of their experiment, the failure caused by her wretched weakness and incapacity. Worse still, her brother must be reminded of it, and there might be a repetition of his stern looks, his cold manner. She trembled at the thought, unaware that Darcy had long been persuaded of the wisdom of their parting, ever since events in Bath had shown him where his cousin's real affections were likely to be bestowed, and the only difference which Georgiana perceived after Fitzwilliam's arrival was in the particular kindness he showed her, and the complete renewal of the old comfortable relations amongst them all. When inquiries after the Hursts and Mrs. Annesley had been made, and Georgiana had mentioned the dinner-party and the persons who had been present, little more was said with reference to London; indeed, there was little more for either to say, for Georgiana dared not refer to the person who had chiefly occupied his mind there. Fitzwilliam talked of his book and of Ireland, inquired about the prospects of the shooting, showed interest in the minutest details of life in the neighbourhood, and in every way endeavoured to prove that he was exactly his old self; and only when walking with Elizabeth in the Park one morning did he betray how far that was from being the case. There was no doubt that his disappointment had coloured his whole life. He had allowed himself to think of Miss Crawford, and to build high upon his hopes, and to find himself again mistaken had been a blow which cut at the foundations of all his happiness. His gaiety was feigned, his pursuits had lost their zest, his friends no longer sufficed him: and as he said to Elizabeth, he had felt he had better adopt some country occupation and settle down to it, and there grow old as quietly and quickly as might be. Elizabeth's heart was wrung; the spectacle of her cousin's fine nature locked away, as it were, in a closed room, as a thing no one had any need for, was inexpressively painful to her, and nothing else would have caused her to venture upon a reopening of the subject which he himself had not approached. With the utmost gentleness she spoke a few words of commiseration, and then, still proceeding with extreme caution, she told him of the absence of news and her assumption that Miss Crawford's marriage with Sir Walter Elliot had been delayed. "I daresay it has," returned Colonel Fitzwilliam, with a kind of listlessness, striking with his stick at the head of some tall grasses which bordered their path. "There can be no doubt of it, I suppose?" pursued Elizabeth. "None at all, I should imagine," replied the Colonel. "Miss Crawford is not the kind of woman who would break her word, once the engagement had been announced." "No, of course not," said Elizabeth; "but I had expected that she or Mrs. Grant would have written to me, or even Mrs. Wentworth, as they must know I should be interested." Colonel Fitzwilliam could not immediately recall anything of Mrs. Wentworth beyond her name, and on being reminded that she was Sir Walter Elliot's daughter, presently replied: "I do not think it altogether surprising she should not have written to you. She probably cares little for the marriage, and still less for the one which it was anticipated would follow it--I mean Miss Elliot's to Mr. Crawford." This was a new idea to Elizabeth, and while she was pondering over it, and the inferences to be drawn from it, Colonel Fitzwilliam broke the silence by saying: "Perhaps we had better not speak of this anymore, Elizabeth. I know your great kindness of heart, but I feel it does no good, rather harm, to be reviving thoughts which I must in honour suppress as much as possible. I was anxious to know whether you had heard anything, and to ask you again, when you have the chance, to tell her that I wish her well; but now we have mentioned it, it would, I think, be best for my contemptibly weak character to put it as far away as possible." With tears in her eyes, Elizabeth assured him that through the tenderest regard for him, not through any fear of overtaxing his fortitude, she would respect his wishes, but could not help begging him to remain with them at Pemberley as heretofore, so as to give them an opportunity of showing him how completely their happiness was bound up with his, and of making use of any opportunity which might arise for them to be of service to him. Fitzwilliam gratefully promised to stay for the present, and said that his only engagement was to go to some friends in Leicestershire in November, for the hunting. Elizabeth was, nevertheless, not perfectly satisfied, and took occasion to ask Georgiana shortly afterwards whether it was from Mrs. Wentworth that she had heard confirmation of the fact that Sir Walter Elliot was engaged to Miss Crawford. "No," said Georgiana, in surprise, "it was from Mr. Price. Mrs. Wentworth never mentioned it. Mrs. Wentworth! Of course, I recollect now, she is Sir Walter Elliot's daughter; but at the time I never thought of it, for, you see, I did not know Sir Walter was the man." "Very true; I had also forgotten that you did not know," said Elizabeth, "and would never connect her with Miss Crawford. I have been thinking that I should like, for our own satisfaction, to know when the wedding is going to take place, and the simplest way will be to write and ask Mrs. Wentworth. I wish I had done so before, but I did not wish to be in haste, and I felt so convinced we should hear from others." Georgiana agreed that this was the best course to pursue, and Elizabeth, having told Darcy of her intention, to which, on account of her promise to Fitzwilliam, he could no longer object, wrote and dispatched her letter. The season was now drawing on, and with the shortening days the family at Pemberley found themselves thrown more upon the resources of their own immediate circle for amusement. The weather was consistently bad, and though this did not prevent the gentlemen from covering great distances for the purpose of slaughtering their game, the ladies were of necessity restricted to a smaller area, and their walks seldom extended beyond the park, except when their inclinations led them along a tolerably clean road towards the Rectory. This happened pretty frequently, for both Elizabeth and Georgiana were extremely attached to Elinor Ferrars. Their friendship was of a particularly sincere and well-balanced kind, and was not marred by their constant intercourse, as each knew how to maintain that degree of reserve which prevents indiscriminate confidences and so greatly strengthens mutual respect. Kitty was the one who perhaps found the society of the Rectory the least congenial; but it is to be feared that she was extremely difficult to please that autumn, and in the impatience with which she waited for one young man she might have sometimes regretted the solace which the company of the other would have afforded. In such a small neighbourhood everyone was of some value, and they all heard with interest of the approaching visit to Mr. and Mrs. Edward Ferrars of an old friend, Mrs. Jennings, who was coming early in October to spend six or seven weeks with them. Mrs. Ferrars was in delicate health, and Mrs. Jennings, besides having an almost maternal affection for her, was well qualified to be of service as sick nurse and enlivening companion, so that Elinor's warning to Mrs. Darcy that her friend, although the kindest of women, had not always the most refined manner of expressing herself, did not prevent them from being anxious to make her acquaintance. Mrs. Jennings performed in safety the long journey from her son-in-law's house in Devonshire, and arrived in her customary high spirits. It was her first visit to the Ferrars's since their removal from Delaford, and she had to examine the house, to criticize minutely the arrangement of their furniture, and to compare their surroundings, social and material, with what they had been in their old home. Mrs. Darcy paid an early call on the new arrival, and the morning after her visit Georgiana and Kitty also found their way to the Rectory. Mrs. Jennings's exuberance, her loud laugh and general noisy cheerfulness did not recommend her strongly to either of the girls in the first few minutes, and Georgiana was glad to move to a chair by Mrs. Ferrars, to enter into a quieter conversation with her; but before long, judging by the sounds which reached them, Mrs. Jennings and Kitty had found some subjects in common. This perhaps was not so surprising, as Mrs. Jennings was exceedingly fond of the society of all young girls, and cared not at all whether they returned her partiality or no. In this case she had begun, with the utmost frankness, to discourse on the subject nearest her heart at the moment, namely, her dear Mrs. Ferrars, and was relating all the circumstances under which their friendship had been formed, the Dashwood girls' visit to London, the disagreeable conduct of Mrs. Ferrars's mother and sister, and the absurd misunderstanding as to Colonel Brandon's attentions, the whole being punctuated by frequent bursts of laughter; and she would doubtless have gone on to describe in detail the events attending the engagement of her two young friends, had not Elinor mildly but decisively interposed. "Dear madam," she said, breaking off in the midst of a remark to Georgiana, "I am sure Miss Bennet does not wish to hear the history of such a very dull old couple as ourselves. You are so kind as to be more interested in it than most people could be." "Lord, my dear," cried Mrs. Jennings, "why did you not stop me? I declare I am very sorry if I said a word I ought not. I know my tongue does run on, and Miss Bennet must excuse me, for it was only for the pleasure of talking to you and Mr. Edward. And as for its being dull, I don't believe there is anybody who does not like to hear of other people's love-affairs; it makes one think of one's own, now, does it not, Miss Bennet?" Kitty blushed and looked embarrassed, and Mrs. Jennings laughed heartily, saying: "It is just as I thought; Miss Bennet could tell us a pretty tale too, I'll be bound, if only she would." "Miss Bennet can tell us some wonderful tales of the West Indies," said Elinor, endeavouring to turn Mrs. Jennings's mind from her favourite topic; "she has a sister there, who writes to her constantly, does she not, Miss Bennet? Those tropical places must be very beautiful. Do you remember how Colonel Brandon used to talk to us of his travels in the East, ma'am?" "That I do, my dear," replied Mrs. Jennings emphatically, "and I never want to hear again of such fearful things as he had seen--swamps, and great things like alligators ... and insects that did everything insects ought not. I hope you will tell your sister not to get amongst them, Miss Bennet." Kitty replied that her sister had written chiefly of the beautiful balls and illuminations which they frequently had, and lately of some shocks of earthquake which had frightened them terribly. Mrs. Jennings exclaimed at this, and declared that the finest ball in the world would not compensate her if there was the fear that the ground would open under her feet while she was dancing. "But I know young people do not care what risks they run," said she. "There was Sir John Middleton three weeks ago wanted to have a moonlight picnic; my daughter Middleton was all against it, for the weather was so threatening, but have it he would, and the consequence was that they all ate their supper, or as much of it as they could, in a roaring thunderstorm. I can tell you they were in a pretty pickle when they got back! All the girls so cross, and the young men not a dry thread among them through trying to protect the ladies. But Sir John, he made no bones about it at all, but said they would go again another night, when for sure it would be fine." Her hearers could not help laughing at such a picture of undaunted pleasure-seeking, and Elinor inquired if the second party had taken place. "Oh, Lord, yes; they all came, but their fathers and mothers made them promise not to stir beyond the grounds. I heard, at any rate, they turned it into a dance instead. But, as I say, young people don't care for a drop of rain. I am sure, when I was young, I would as lief have had it as not, for there was no hardship in sheltering under a hedge, with the right young man to hold an umbrella over you, do you think so, Miss Bennet?" "Still, I fancy that most people, old or young, prefer outdoor expeditions to be in dry weather," said Elinor. "That reminds me that I must show you what terrible havoc last night's rain and wind worked in my flower borders. When I looked out first, I was quite in despair, thinking I should not have another nosegay all the autumn. There is a gleam of sunshine now, so shall we take a turn in the garden?" Georgiana gladly walked out with her, and Mrs. Jennings and Kitty followed at a distance, the former questioning her young companion about her sister abroad and hearing laments over the gaieties which that sister had been able to offer her, but which she had never been able to accept. Mrs. Jennings's hearty comments of "Well, there now, that is a shame!" and "A regiment too! You would have broken all their hearts, I vow!" and other such remarks pleased Kitty, while she knew in her heart they ought not to do so. The two girls shortly after took their leave, and while walking homeward naturally compared notes upon the stranger whom they had just met. Georgiana expressed herself guardedly, not wishing to condemn any friend of Mrs. Ferrars's, although feeling as if that friend could not be in any way an accession to their party; but Kitty's first unfavorable impression seemed to have been obliterated, and she declared frankly that she liked Mrs. Jennings and thought she was very merry and good-natured. Georgiana could not quite agree with this, for she found Mrs. Jennings's style of raillery not at all to her mind, but admitted that she might be pleasanter when one got to know her well. At dinner these opinions were canvassed, and Georgiana found, as she expected, that her own were largely shared by Elizabeth, who, however, was amused at her severity, and told her that she would often meet people who, with more refined manners, were yet at heart far more vulgar than Mrs. Jennings and had not a tenth part of her redeeming qualities. "I do not think I want to meet them, then," said Georgiana. "But I am sure you are right, Elizabeth, and I daresay she will be a great comfort to Mrs. Ferrars." When the ladies were together after dinner, Kitty, whose gravity and preoccupation had been noticeable for the last half-hour, after wandering several times round the room, stationed herself near to her sister and began, in a solemn tone: "Lizzie, I want to ask you something very important." Elizabeth, smiling, professed herself all attention, and Kitty continued: "You know you have never kept your promise, that you made before you were married, of having a ball here, for each winter something has happened to prevent it." "Quite true, Kitty; so a ball is in your mind; and what made you think of it just now?" "I never come here without thinking of it, but I had somehow not expected to be staying long enough this year, as I imagined I should go home directly after the shooting party. But Mrs. Jennings said to-day she supposed you sometimes had balls in this lovely house, and she was sure Georgiana and I were fond of dancing." "And Mrs. Jennings is quite right about the latter statement, is she not?" Georgiana looked up with a smile, to assent to her share of the question, and Kitty clasped her hands rapturously, exclaiming: "Oh, Lizzie, you know how much I love a ball! It would be so kind of you and Darcy! Everyone would enjoy it!" "I am very

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will do it, but life is so uncertain that I think for the present I had better refrain. Have you ascertained whether Kitty can cook, make her own gowns, and trim hats? I understand it is a great promoter of married happiness when the wife can do so, and I am not sure whether all my girls have turned their education to such good account." Mr. Morland only replied by asking if he might be allowed to see Miss Bennet at once, and her father left the room, foreseeing that, whatever happened, he should not have one more quiet hour during that day. His anticipations were soon in the way to be fulfilled, for on finding his daughters, and sending Kitty to the library, he had to give Jane an outline of what had just passed, then repeat it to Bingley, who joined them, and listened to their exclamations of surprise, and regret at the probable downfall of Mr. Morland's hopes. Jane and Bingley were both too convinced of Kitty's prior attachment to have the slightest expectation of his success, and Mr. Bennet was put in full possession of the facts relating to it, while they anxiously awaited the termination of the interview. It came, after some minutes, in a glimpse of Kitty emerging from the library and hurrying upstairs with streaming eyes, and while they all debated as to their next move, Mr. Morland was seen to cross the hall rapidly, looking nowhere but in front of him, and leave the house with precipitation. Jane herself, almost equally distressed, longed to go to Kitty, and Bingley questioned whether he ought not to hasten after the young man, while Mr. Bennet was disposed to think they would be better left to themselves for a time, and wished heartily that there were only just enough lovers in the world to go round, one to each young lady, and none over. In spite of this, Jane was not long in finding her way to her agitated sister and in showing her the tenderest consideration. Kitty's distress was very great, and also very sincere, for she had in truth been far from guessing that Mr. Morland took a more than common interest in her, and as is usual in such cases, the declaration of the young man's love woke in her feelings which she had not known to exist, of reciprocal kindness and even affection, which only did not share the nature and strength of his. Kitty could never have been hard-hearted to any lover, least of all to one whom she liked as much as she did James Morland, and his devotion touched her as deeply as the knowledge that she could not accept it wounded her. Between regrets for what had happened, pity for him and for herself, and the excited thoughts of William Price which the incident itself was bound to evoke, she was in a sad state, and Jane easily prevailed upon her to have her dinner upstairs and go early to bed. Not so easily could she check the tears which flowed continuously, and Jane, to occupy her mind and body, proposed that she should go to-morrow to Pemberley, instead of in three days' time, as arranged; she could very well be sent over, and the change would be beneficial; besides, she was not really leaving them, for there was the November visit to look forward to. Kitty caught at the suggestion, and declining the offices of the maid, began to busy herself about her packing, as Jane hoped she would do, while the latter descended to consult with her husband and father. Mr. Bennet and Bingley both approved, and Jane hastily wrote a few lines to Elizabeth to apprise her of what had happened, that she might be prepared for Kitty's arrival. The two gentlemen walked to the nearest post town to convey the letter; and after dinner the indefatigable Bingley again set out, this time to the Rectory, to perform the same kind office by James Morland as his wife had been doing by Kitty. The young man, though calmer, proved far more unreceptive of consolation. He had felt his rebuff acutely, for Kitty had been too much taken by surprise, too sure of herself, to make it otherwise than decisive, and even the modest hopes he had ventured to entertain, of being able to make more progress with her once the subject was opened between them, had been most thoroughly dispelled. Miss Bennet would not hear another word of it--begged him never to speak of it again--with tears reproached him for having spoilt everything, so that in addition to his own disappointment he had the pain of feeling that she thought less well of him than before. Bingley could deny this, but could not affirm anything else likely to give him comfort. It remained for Morland himself to declare, which he did in a firm though melancholy tone, that he regretted having distressed Miss Bennet, and would endeavour so to meet her in the future that she would not suffer through being reminded of it by any act of word of his. Bingley commended his courage, told him of Kitty's departure, and begged him to continue coming to Desborough just the same; and walked home with a full report of what had just passed. Jane shook her head over it, for, while sympathizing with both, she was more truly sorry for Mr. Morland, since for him she could see no immediate prospect of compensation, in spite of her father's assurances that a young clergyman was seldom allowed to remain inconsolable for more than six months, and if Kitty's other young man only did what was expected of him, her fate would be a certainty in half that time. Chapter XIII Needless to say, Kitty was heartily welcomed by Georgiana and Elizabeth, and given every opportunity to relieve her mind by descriptions of the tragical affair in all its aspects. Both regretted it deeply for Mr. Morland's sake, and Elizabeth privately did so for Kitty's sake, having such a good opinion of him as to make her wish that Kitty could have been persuaded out of her fancy for a young man, who, however excellent, was comparatively a stranger to them all, and whose intentions, at present, were extremely uncertain. She would have rejoiced if Kitty and Morland could have made each other happy, and had entertained a slight hope that her hint to Kitty might perhaps have helped matters, in directing her thoughts into another channel, but it seemed to be of no avail, and Georgiana gave her friend her warmest support, implying entire agreement with her point of view. "I could not help it, now, could I, Georgiana? You know yourself, Lizzie, that I never dreamt it. How could I do anything else but refuse him outright? I was amazingly grieved to do so, but you know very well, Georgiana, that if I could think of one man more than another, _he_ is not that one." She paused for assent, which Georgiana gave by a silent caress, and then continued: "It is all so unfortunate. It will never be as pleasant at Desborough now. Poor Mr. Morland! I wish I had not had to hurt him. He does want someone so badly in the Rectory." "Well, my dear, do not make yourself ill with these vain regrets," said Elizabeth. "It is, as you say, very unfortunate, but no one blames you. If you could not care for him, you could not do it, and someone else will have to inhabit that nice Rectory." Kitty looked as if this prospect were not very pleasing either, but Georgiana, seeing what Elizabeth wished, began to talk cheerfully of something else, and Kitty gradually joined in, though whenever the two girls were alone together she found it difficult to abstain long from referring to some branch of the subject. Georgiana's loyalty and patience never failed, but she wished for November almost as earnestly as Kitty herself, so that matters might reach some definite conclusion, for Kitty's restlessness had considerably increased since she had received James Morland's offer, and she was constantly nervous and excitable and not mistress of herself. On the day when the Bingleys and Mr. Bennet came over for the latter to take leave before returning to Longbourn, this was specially noticeable in her state of anxious flutter when drawing Jane aside to inquire after Mr. Morland. Mr. Bennet bade her farewell gravely and more affectionately than was his wont, telling her that he left her in good hands, and would only give her one piece of advice, namely, that second thoughts were sometimes best. Kitty blushed deeply and could not pretend to misunderstand him, but told Georgiana afterwards that it was impossible to have better second thoughts when Price was the first. With his elder daughter Mr. Bennet was rather more explicit, telling Elizabeth that he considered it was a great pity that so unobjectionable a young man should have been sent about his business. Elizabeth entirely agreed with him, and thought it would not be going too far to express Mr. Morland's praise in even warmer terms. "He will never set the Thames on fire, but there seems good stuff in him," was Mr. Bennet's reply. "When he proposed for her I had not taken much notice of him, except to think him a tolerably sensible fellow, and of course I had to readjust my ideas; but I soon began to see that he must not be judged by that alone. I have really liked him better, too, for his way of taking his refusal." "My dear father, it does not always indicate a want of sense to wish to be married," interposed Elizabeth. "Perhaps not, but Morland is much better off as he is than in marrying a girl he knows so little about. Kitty is flighty and expensive; she ought to stay longer with you and Jane, and not think of being married for the next ten years." Elizabeth smiled and said she thought that it was unnecessary, but that it would certainly be better for Kitty to marry a clergyman than an officer in the navy, who would be compelled to spend long periods away from home. "As to that, of course it is a complete absurdity, and I cannot think why you women, who are so fond of making matches, did not originate something less ridiculously unsuitable among yourselves." Elizabeth thought it wiser not to explain who actually had originated the idea, and said after a pause: "You were saying that you have liked Mr. Morland better of late?" "Yes, he has positively shown some sort of self-command and dignity. He turned up at the house a day or two afterwards, apparently _not_ bent on making us all uncomfortable by the sight of his misery, as most rejected lovers do. Besides, Bingley had had the foresight to produce some excellent port." "I hear from Jane," said Elizabeth, "that he does not avoid or seek the mention of Kitty, and she thinks he is trying to give up all hope of her." "Her absence for a few weeks will no doubt materially assist him," said Mr. Bennet. Kitty seized the opportunity offered by this visit to speak a private word to her brother-in-law with reference to the hero, as Bingley persisted in calling him. She herself had no news, for Mrs. Knightley's frequent letters reported him still at Portsmouth, and Bingley had heard nothing, but promised to write and renew his invitation as soon as October was fairly in. The same silence prevailed at Pemberley with regard to Miss Crawford. No announcement of her marriage had reached any of them, and Elizabeth had a half inclination to make some inquiries, but was dissuaded by Darcy, who said: "Whatever precisely has happened, Elizabeth, we can be sure of one thing, that Miss Crawford has allowed Fitzwilliam to understand that she does not wish him to approach her again. Under these circumstances it is better that you should have no news to give him." Elizabeth sighed as she agreed to the wisdom of this decision, but when shortly after her father's departure a letter was received from Colonel Fitzwilliam to say he would be returning at the end of the month, she could not help wishing that she was more fully informed of the present state of affairs. It would be a relief, even though a sad one, to Fitzwilliam's mind to know that Miss Crawford was actually married and he would be unselfish enough to wish to hear that she was happy. Nothing occurred, however, to enlighten them, and Fitzwilliam arrived on the appointed day, looking much as usual except for a few more lines about the eyes and an increased number of grey hairs. It was the first time he and Georgiana had been together at Pemberley since the rupture of their engagement, and both must have felt conscious of it, Georgiana in particular being prepared to be miserable for a time, from the belief that her cousin, instead of being cheered and invigorated as formerly by his return home, must be reminded at every turn of the failure of their experiment, the failure caused by her wretched weakness and incapacity. Worse still, her brother must be reminded of it, and there might be a repetition of his stern looks, his cold manner. She trembled at the thought, unaware that Darcy had long been persuaded of the wisdom of their parting, ever since events in Bath had shown him where his cousin's real affections were likely to be bestowed, and the only difference which Georgiana perceived after Fitzwilliam's arrival was in the particular kindness he showed her, and the complete renewal of the old comfortable relations amongst them all. When inquiries after the Hursts and Mrs. Annesley had been made, and Georgiana had mentioned the dinner-party and the persons who had been present, little more was said with reference to London; indeed, there was little more for either to say, for Georgiana dared not refer to the person who had chiefly occupied his mind there. Fitzwilliam talked of his book and of Ireland, inquired about the prospects of the shooting, showed interest in the minutest details of life in the neighbourhood, and in every way endeavoured to prove that he was exactly his old self; and only when walking with Elizabeth in the Park one morning did he betray how far that was from being the case. There was no doubt that his disappointment had coloured his whole life. He had allowed himself to think of Miss Crawford, and to build high upon his hopes, and to find himself again mistaken had been a blow which cut at the foundations of all his happiness. His gaiety was feigned, his pursuits had lost their zest, his friends no longer sufficed him: and as he said to Elizabeth, he had felt he had better adopt some country occupation and settle down to it, and there grow old as quietly and quickly as might be. Elizabeth's heart was wrung; the spectacle of her cousin's fine nature locked away, as it were, in a closed room, as a thing no one had any need for, was inexpressively painful to her, and nothing else would have caused her to venture upon a reopening of the subject which he himself had not approached. With the utmost gentleness she spoke a few words of commiseration, and then, still proceeding with extreme caution, she told him of the absence of news and her assumption that Miss Crawford's marriage with Sir Walter Elliot had been delayed. "I daresay it has," returned Colonel Fitzwilliam, with a kind of listlessness, striking with his stick at the head of some tall grasses which bordered their path. "There can be no doubt of it, I suppose?" pursued Elizabeth. "None at all, I should imagine," replied the Colonel. "Miss Crawford is not the kind of woman who would break her word, once the engagement had been announced." "No, of course not," said Elizabeth; "but I had expected that she or Mrs. Grant would have written to me, or even Mrs. Wentworth, as they must know I should be interested." Colonel Fitzwilliam could not immediately recall anything of Mrs. Wentworth beyond her name, and on being reminded that she was Sir Walter Elliot's daughter, presently replied: "I do not think it altogether surprising she should not have written to you. She probably cares little for the marriage, and still less for the one which it was anticipated would follow it--I mean Miss Elliot's to Mr. Crawford." This was a new idea to Elizabeth, and while she was pondering over it, and the inferences to be drawn from it, Colonel Fitzwilliam broke the silence by saying: "Perhaps we had better not speak of this anymore, Elizabeth. I know your great kindness of heart, but I feel it does no good, rather harm, to be reviving thoughts which I must in honour suppress as much as possible. I was anxious to know whether you had heard anything, and to ask you again, when you have the chance, to tell her that I wish her well; but now we have mentioned it, it would, I think, be best for my contemptibly weak character to put it as far away as possible." With tears in her eyes, Elizabeth assured him that through the tenderest regard for him, not through any fear of overtaxing his fortitude, she would respect his wishes, but could not help begging him to remain with them at Pemberley as heretofore, so as to give them an opportunity of showing him how completely their happiness was bound up with his, and of making use of any opportunity which might arise for them to be of service to him. Fitzwilliam gratefully promised to stay for the present, and said that his only engagement was to go to some friends in Leicestershire in November, for the hunting. Elizabeth was, nevertheless, not perfectly satisfied, and took occasion to ask Georgiana shortly afterwards whether it was from Mrs. Wentworth that she had heard confirmation of the fact that Sir Walter Elliot was engaged to Miss Crawford. "No," said Georgiana, in surprise, "it was from Mr. Price. Mrs. Wentworth never mentioned it. Mrs. Wentworth! Of course, I recollect now, she is Sir Walter Elliot's daughter; but at the time I never thought of it, for, you see, I did not know Sir Walter was the man." "Very true; I had also forgotten that you did not know," said Elizabeth, "and would never connect her with Miss Crawford. I have been thinking that I should like, for our own satisfaction, to know when the wedding is going to take place, and the simplest way will be to write and ask Mrs. Wentworth. I wish I had done so before, but I did not wish to be in haste, and I felt so convinced we should hear from others." Georgiana agreed that this was the best course to pursue, and Elizabeth, having told Darcy of her intention, to which, on account of her promise to Fitzwilliam, he could no longer object, wrote and dispatched her letter. The season was now drawing on, and with the shortening days the family at Pemberley found themselves thrown more upon the resources of their own immediate circle for amusement. The weather was consistently bad, and though this did not prevent the gentlemen from covering great distances for the purpose of slaughtering their game, the ladies were of necessity restricted to a smaller area, and their walks seldom extended beyond the park, except when their inclinations led them along a tolerably clean road towards the Rectory. This happened pretty frequently, for both Elizabeth and Georgiana were extremely attached to Elinor Ferrars. Their friendship was of a particularly sincere and well-balanced kind, and was not marred by their constant intercourse, as each knew how to maintain that degree of reserve which prevents indiscriminate confidences and so greatly strengthens mutual respect. Kitty was the one who perhaps found the society of the Rectory the least congenial; but it is to be feared that she was extremely difficult to please that autumn, and in the impatience with which she waited for one young man she might have sometimes regretted the solace which the company of the other would have afforded. In such a small neighbourhood everyone was of some value, and they all heard with interest of the approaching visit to Mr. and Mrs. Edward Ferrars of an old friend, Mrs. Jennings, who was coming early in October to spend six or seven weeks with them. Mrs. Ferrars was in delicate health, and Mrs. Jennings, besides having an almost maternal affection for her, was well qualified to be of service as sick nurse and enlivening companion, so that Elinor's warning to Mrs. Darcy that her friend, although the kindest of women, had not always the most refined manner of expressing herself, did not prevent them from being anxious to make her acquaintance. Mrs. Jennings performed in safety the long journey from her son-in-law's house in Devonshire, and arrived in her customary high spirits. It was her first visit to the Ferrars's since their removal from Delaford, and she had to examine the house, to criticize minutely the arrangement of their furniture, and to compare their surroundings, social and material, with what they had been in their old home. Mrs. Darcy paid an early call on the new arrival, and the morning after her visit Georgiana and Kitty also found their way to the Rectory. Mrs. Jennings's exuberance, her loud laugh and general noisy cheerfulness did not recommend her strongly to either of the girls in the first few minutes, and Georgiana was glad to move to a chair by Mrs. Ferrars, to enter into a quieter conversation with her; but before long, judging by the sounds which reached them, Mrs. Jennings and Kitty had found some subjects in common. This perhaps was not so surprising, as Mrs. Jennings was exceedingly fond of the society of all young girls, and cared not at all whether they returned her partiality or no. In this case she had begun, with the utmost frankness, to discourse on the subject nearest her heart at the moment, namely, her dear Mrs. Ferrars, and was relating all the circumstances under which their friendship had been formed, the Dashwood girls' visit to London, the disagreeable conduct of Mrs. Ferrars's mother and sister, and the absurd misunderstanding as to Colonel Brandon's attentions, the whole being punctuated by frequent bursts of laughter; and she would doubtless have gone on to describe in detail the events attending the engagement of her two young friends, had not Elinor mildly but decisively interposed. "Dear madam," she said, breaking off in the midst of a remark to Georgiana, "I am sure Miss Bennet does not wish to hear the history of such a very dull old couple as ourselves. You are so kind as to be more interested in it than most people could be." "Lord, my dear," cried Mrs. Jennings, "why did you not stop me? I declare I am very sorry if I said a word I ought not. I know my tongue does run on, and Miss Bennet must excuse me, for it was only for the pleasure of talking to you and Mr. Edward. And as for its being dull, I don't believe there is anybody who does not like to hear of other people's love-affairs; it makes one think of one's own, now, does it not, Miss Bennet?" Kitty blushed and looked embarrassed, and Mrs. Jennings laughed heartily, saying: "It is just as I thought; Miss Bennet could tell us a pretty tale too, I'll be bound, if only she would." "Miss Bennet can tell us some wonderful tales of the West Indies," said Elinor, endeavouring to turn Mrs. Jennings's mind from her favourite topic; "she has a sister there, who writes to her constantly, does she not, Miss Bennet? Those tropical places must be very beautiful. Do you remember how Colonel Brandon used to talk to us of his travels in the East, ma'am?" "That I do, my dear," replied Mrs. Jennings emphatically, "and I never want to hear again of such fearful things as he had seen--swamps, and great things like alligators ... and insects that did everything insects ought not. I hope you will tell your sister not to get amongst them, Miss Bennet." Kitty replied that her sister had written chiefly of the beautiful balls and illuminations which they frequently had, and lately of some shocks of earthquake which had frightened them terribly. Mrs. Jennings exclaimed at this, and declared that the finest ball in the world would not compensate her if there was the fear that the ground would open under her feet while she was dancing. "But I know young people do not care what risks they run," said she. "There was Sir John Middleton three weeks ago wanted to have a moonlight picnic; my daughter Middleton was all against it, for the weather was so threatening, but have it he would, and the consequence was that they all ate their supper, or as much of it as they could, in a roaring thunderstorm. I can tell you they were in a pretty pickle when they got back! All the girls so cross, and the young men not a dry thread among them through trying to protect the ladies. But Sir John, he made no bones about it at all, but said they would go again another night, when for sure it would be fine." Her hearers could not help laughing at such a picture of undaunted pleasure-seeking, and Elinor inquired if the second party had taken place. "Oh, Lord, yes; they all came, but their fathers and mothers made them promise not to stir beyond the grounds. I heard, at any rate, they turned it into a dance instead. But, as I say, young people don't care for a drop of rain. I am sure, when I was young, I would as lief have had it as not, for there was no hardship in sheltering under a hedge, with the right young man to hold an umbrella over you, do you think so, Miss Bennet?" "Still, I fancy that most people, old or young, prefer outdoor expeditions to be in dry weather," said Elinor. "That reminds me that I must show you what terrible havoc last night's rain and wind worked in my flower borders. When I looked out first, I was quite in despair, thinking I should not have another nosegay all the autumn. There is a gleam of sunshine now, so shall we take a turn in the garden?" Georgiana gladly walked out with her, and Mrs. Jennings and Kitty followed at a distance, the former questioning her young companion about her sister abroad and hearing laments over the gaieties which that sister had been able to offer her, but which she had never been able to accept. Mrs. Jennings's hearty comments of "Well, there now, that is a shame!" and "A regiment too! You would have broken all their hearts, I vow!" and other such remarks pleased Kitty, while she knew in her heart they ought not to do so. The two girls shortly after took their leave, and while walking homeward naturally compared notes upon the stranger whom they had just met. Georgiana expressed herself guardedly, not wishing to condemn any friend of Mrs. Ferrars's, although feeling as if that friend could not be in any way an accession to their party; but Kitty's first unfavorable impression seemed to have been obliterated, and she declared frankly that she liked Mrs. Jennings and thought she was very merry and good-natured. Georgiana could not quite agree with this, for she found Mrs. Jennings's style of raillery not at all to her mind, but admitted that she might be pleasanter when one got to know her well. At dinner these opinions were canvassed, and Georgiana found, as she expected, that her own were largely shared by Elizabeth, who, however, was amused at her severity, and told her that she would often meet people who, with more refined manners, were yet at heart far more vulgar than Mrs. Jennings and had not a tenth part of her redeeming qualities. "I do not think I want to meet them, then," said Georgiana. "But I am sure you are right, Elizabeth, and I daresay she will be a great comfort to Mrs. Ferrars." When the ladies were together after dinner, Kitty, whose gravity and preoccupation had been noticeable for the last half-hour, after wandering several times round the room, stationed herself near to her sister and began, in a solemn tone: "Lizzie, I want to ask you something very important." Elizabeth, smiling, professed herself all attention, and Kitty continued: "You know you have never kept your promise, that you made before you were married, of having a ball here, for each winter something has happened to prevent it." "Quite true, Kitty; so a ball is in your mind; and what made you think of it just now?" "I never come here without thinking of it, but I had somehow not expected to be staying long enough this year, as I imagined I should go home directly after the shooting party. But Mrs. Jennings said to-day she supposed you sometimes had balls in this lovely house, and she was sure Georgiana and I were fond of dancing." "And Mrs. Jennings is quite right about the latter statement, is she not?" Georgiana looked up with a smile, to assent to her share of the question, and Kitty clasped her hands rapturously, exclaiming: "Oh, Lizzie, you know how much I love a ball! It would be so kind of you and Darcy! Everyone would enjoy it!" "I am very

cousin

How many times the word 'cousin' appears in the text?

will do it, but life is so uncertain that I think for the present I had better refrain. Have you ascertained whether Kitty can cook, make her own gowns, and trim hats? I understand it is a great promoter of married happiness when the wife can do so, and I am not sure whether all my girls have turned their education to such good account." Mr. Morland only replied by asking if he might be allowed to see Miss Bennet at once, and her father left the room, foreseeing that, whatever happened, he should not have one more quiet hour during that day. His anticipations were soon in the way to be fulfilled, for on finding his daughters, and sending Kitty to the library, he had to give Jane an outline of what had just passed, then repeat it to Bingley, who joined them, and listened to their exclamations of surprise, and regret at the probable downfall of Mr. Morland's hopes. Jane and Bingley were both too convinced of Kitty's prior attachment to have the slightest expectation of his success, and Mr. Bennet was put in full possession of the facts relating to it, while they anxiously awaited the termination of the interview. It came, after some minutes, in a glimpse of Kitty emerging from the library and hurrying upstairs with streaming eyes, and while they all debated as to their next move, Mr. Morland was seen to cross the hall rapidly, looking nowhere but in front of him, and leave the house with precipitation. Jane herself, almost equally distressed, longed to go to Kitty, and Bingley questioned whether he ought not to hasten after the young man, while Mr. Bennet was disposed to think they would be better left to themselves for a time, and wished heartily that there were only just enough lovers in the world to go round, one to each young lady, and none over. In spite of this, Jane was not long in finding her way to her agitated sister and in showing her the tenderest consideration. Kitty's distress was very great, and also very sincere, for she had in truth been far from guessing that Mr. Morland took a more than common interest in her, and as is usual in such cases, the declaration of the young man's love woke in her feelings which she had not known to exist, of reciprocal kindness and even affection, which only did not share the nature and strength of his. Kitty could never have been hard-hearted to any lover, least of all to one whom she liked as much as she did James Morland, and his devotion touched her as deeply as the knowledge that she could not accept it wounded her. Between regrets for what had happened, pity for him and for herself, and the excited thoughts of William Price which the incident itself was bound to evoke, she was in a sad state, and Jane easily prevailed upon her to have her dinner upstairs and go early to bed. Not so easily could she check the tears which flowed continuously, and Jane, to occupy her mind and body, proposed that she should go to-morrow to Pemberley, instead of in three days' time, as arranged; she could very well be sent over, and the change would be beneficial; besides, she was not really leaving them, for there was the November visit to look forward to. Kitty caught at the suggestion, and declining the offices of the maid, began to busy herself about her packing, as Jane hoped she would do, while the latter descended to consult with her husband and father. Mr. Bennet and Bingley both approved, and Jane hastily wrote a few lines to Elizabeth to apprise her of what had happened, that she might be prepared for Kitty's arrival. The two gentlemen walked to the nearest post town to convey the letter; and after dinner the indefatigable Bingley again set out, this time to the Rectory, to perform the same kind office by James Morland as his wife had been doing by Kitty. The young man, though calmer, proved far more unreceptive of consolation. He had felt his rebuff acutely, for Kitty had been too much taken by surprise, too sure of herself, to make it otherwise than decisive, and even the modest hopes he had ventured to entertain, of being able to make more progress with her once the subject was opened between them, had been most thoroughly dispelled. Miss Bennet would not hear another word of it--begged him never to speak of it again--with tears reproached him for having spoilt everything, so that in addition to his own disappointment he had the pain of feeling that she thought less well of him than before. Bingley could deny this, but could not affirm anything else likely to give him comfort. It remained for Morland himself to declare, which he did in a firm though melancholy tone, that he regretted having distressed Miss Bennet, and would endeavour so to meet her in the future that she would not suffer through being reminded of it by any act of word of his. Bingley commended his courage, told him of Kitty's departure, and begged him to continue coming to Desborough just the same; and walked home with a full report of what had just passed. Jane shook her head over it, for, while sympathizing with both, she was more truly sorry for Mr. Morland, since for him she could see no immediate prospect of compensation, in spite of her father's assurances that a young clergyman was seldom allowed to remain inconsolable for more than six months, and if Kitty's other young man only did what was expected of him, her fate would be a certainty in half that time. Chapter XIII Needless to say, Kitty was heartily welcomed by Georgiana and Elizabeth, and given every opportunity to relieve her mind by descriptions of the tragical affair in all its aspects. Both regretted it deeply for Mr. Morland's sake, and Elizabeth privately did so for Kitty's sake, having such a good opinion of him as to make her wish that Kitty could have been persuaded out of her fancy for a young man, who, however excellent, was comparatively a stranger to them all, and whose intentions, at present, were extremely uncertain. She would have rejoiced if Kitty and Morland could have made each other happy, and had entertained a slight hope that her hint to Kitty might perhaps have helped matters, in directing her thoughts into another channel, but it seemed to be of no avail, and Georgiana gave her friend her warmest support, implying entire agreement with her point of view. "I could not help it, now, could I, Georgiana? You know yourself, Lizzie, that I never dreamt it. How could I do anything else but refuse him outright? I was amazingly grieved to do so, but you know very well, Georgiana, that if I could think of one man more than another, _he_ is not that one." She paused for assent, which Georgiana gave by a silent caress, and then continued: "It is all so unfortunate. It will never be as pleasant at Desborough now. Poor Mr. Morland! I wish I had not had to hurt him. He does want someone so badly in the Rectory." "Well, my dear, do not make yourself ill with these vain regrets," said Elizabeth. "It is, as you say, very unfortunate, but no one blames you. If you could not care for him, you could not do it, and someone else will have to inhabit that nice Rectory." Kitty looked as if this prospect were not very pleasing either, but Georgiana, seeing what Elizabeth wished, began to talk cheerfully of something else, and Kitty gradually joined in, though whenever the two girls were alone together she found it difficult to abstain long from referring to some branch of the subject. Georgiana's loyalty and patience never failed, but she wished for November almost as earnestly as Kitty herself, so that matters might reach some definite conclusion, for Kitty's restlessness had considerably increased since she had received James Morland's offer, and she was constantly nervous and excitable and not mistress of herself. On the day when the Bingleys and Mr. Bennet came over for the latter to take leave before returning to Longbourn, this was specially noticeable in her state of anxious flutter when drawing Jane aside to inquire after Mr. Morland. Mr. Bennet bade her farewell gravely and more affectionately than was his wont, telling her that he left her in good hands, and would only give her one piece of advice, namely, that second thoughts were sometimes best. Kitty blushed deeply and could not pretend to misunderstand him, but told Georgiana afterwards that it was impossible to have better second thoughts when Price was the first. With his elder daughter Mr. Bennet was rather more explicit, telling Elizabeth that he considered it was a great pity that so unobjectionable a young man should have been sent about his business. Elizabeth entirely agreed with him, and thought it would not be going too far to express Mr. Morland's praise in even warmer terms. "He will never set the Thames on fire, but there seems good stuff in him," was Mr. Bennet's reply. "When he proposed for her I had not taken much notice of him, except to think him a tolerably sensible fellow, and of course I had to readjust my ideas; but I soon began to see that he must not be judged by that alone. I have really liked him better, too, for his way of taking his refusal." "My dear father, it does not always indicate a want of sense to wish to be married," interposed Elizabeth. "Perhaps not, but Morland is much better off as he is than in marrying a girl he knows so little about. Kitty is flighty and expensive; she ought to stay longer with you and Jane, and not think of being married for the next ten years." Elizabeth smiled and said she thought that it was unnecessary, but that it would certainly be better for Kitty to marry a clergyman than an officer in the navy, who would be compelled to spend long periods away from home. "As to that, of course it is a complete absurdity, and I cannot think why you women, who are so fond of making matches, did not originate something less ridiculously unsuitable among yourselves." Elizabeth thought it wiser not to explain who actually had originated the idea, and said after a pause: "You were saying that you have liked Mr. Morland better of late?" "Yes, he has positively shown some sort of self-command and dignity. He turned up at the house a day or two afterwards, apparently _not_ bent on making us all uncomfortable by the sight of his misery, as most rejected lovers do. Besides, Bingley had had the foresight to produce some excellent port." "I hear from Jane," said Elizabeth, "that he does not avoid or seek the mention of Kitty, and she thinks he is trying to give up all hope of her." "Her absence for a few weeks will no doubt materially assist him," said Mr. Bennet. Kitty seized the opportunity offered by this visit to speak a private word to her brother-in-law with reference to the hero, as Bingley persisted in calling him. She herself had no news, for Mrs. Knightley's frequent letters reported him still at Portsmouth, and Bingley had heard nothing, but promised to write and renew his invitation as soon as October was fairly in. The same silence prevailed at Pemberley with regard to Miss Crawford. No announcement of her marriage had reached any of them, and Elizabeth had a half inclination to make some inquiries, but was dissuaded by Darcy, who said: "Whatever precisely has happened, Elizabeth, we can be sure of one thing, that Miss Crawford has allowed Fitzwilliam to understand that she does not wish him to approach her again. Under these circumstances it is better that you should have no news to give him." Elizabeth sighed as she agreed to the wisdom of this decision, but when shortly after her father's departure a letter was received from Colonel Fitzwilliam to say he would be returning at the end of the month, she could not help wishing that she was more fully informed of the present state of affairs. It would be a relief, even though a sad one, to Fitzwilliam's mind to know that Miss Crawford was actually married and he would be unselfish enough to wish to hear that she was happy. Nothing occurred, however, to enlighten them, and Fitzwilliam arrived on the appointed day, looking much as usual except for a few more lines about the eyes and an increased number of grey hairs. It was the first time he and Georgiana had been together at Pemberley since the rupture of their engagement, and both must have felt conscious of it, Georgiana in particular being prepared to be miserable for a time, from the belief that her cousin, instead of being cheered and invigorated as formerly by his return home, must be reminded at every turn of the failure of their experiment, the failure caused by her wretched weakness and incapacity. Worse still, her brother must be reminded of it, and there might be a repetition of his stern looks, his cold manner. She trembled at the thought, unaware that Darcy had long been persuaded of the wisdom of their parting, ever since events in Bath had shown him where his cousin's real affections were likely to be bestowed, and the only difference which Georgiana perceived after Fitzwilliam's arrival was in the particular kindness he showed her, and the complete renewal of the old comfortable relations amongst them all. When inquiries after the Hursts and Mrs. Annesley had been made, and Georgiana had mentioned the dinner-party and the persons who had been present, little more was said with reference to London; indeed, there was little more for either to say, for Georgiana dared not refer to the person who had chiefly occupied his mind there. Fitzwilliam talked of his book and of Ireland, inquired about the prospects of the shooting, showed interest in the minutest details of life in the neighbourhood, and in every way endeavoured to prove that he was exactly his old self; and only when walking with Elizabeth in the Park one morning did he betray how far that was from being the case. There was no doubt that his disappointment had coloured his whole life. He had allowed himself to think of Miss Crawford, and to build high upon his hopes, and to find himself again mistaken had been a blow which cut at the foundations of all his happiness. His gaiety was feigned, his pursuits had lost their zest, his friends no longer sufficed him: and as he said to Elizabeth, he had felt he had better adopt some country occupation and settle down to it, and there grow old as quietly and quickly as might be. Elizabeth's heart was wrung; the spectacle of her cousin's fine nature locked away, as it were, in a closed room, as a thing no one had any need for, was inexpressively painful to her, and nothing else would have caused her to venture upon a reopening of the subject which he himself had not approached. With the utmost gentleness she spoke a few words of commiseration, and then, still proceeding with extreme caution, she told him of the absence of news and her assumption that Miss Crawford's marriage with Sir Walter Elliot had been delayed. "I daresay it has," returned Colonel Fitzwilliam, with a kind of listlessness, striking with his stick at the head of some tall grasses which bordered their path. "There can be no doubt of it, I suppose?" pursued Elizabeth. "None at all, I should imagine," replied the Colonel. "Miss Crawford is not the kind of woman who would break her word, once the engagement had been announced." "No, of course not," said Elizabeth; "but I had expected that she or Mrs. Grant would have written to me, or even Mrs. Wentworth, as they must know I should be interested." Colonel Fitzwilliam could not immediately recall anything of Mrs. Wentworth beyond her name, and on being reminded that she was Sir Walter Elliot's daughter, presently replied: "I do not think it altogether surprising she should not have written to you. She probably cares little for the marriage, and still less for the one which it was anticipated would follow it--I mean Miss Elliot's to Mr. Crawford." This was a new idea to Elizabeth, and while she was pondering over it, and the inferences to be drawn from it, Colonel Fitzwilliam broke the silence by saying: "Perhaps we had better not speak of this anymore, Elizabeth. I know your great kindness of heart, but I feel it does no good, rather harm, to be reviving thoughts which I must in honour suppress as much as possible. I was anxious to know whether you had heard anything, and to ask you again, when you have the chance, to tell her that I wish her well; but now we have mentioned it, it would, I think, be best for my contemptibly weak character to put it as far away as possible." With tears in her eyes, Elizabeth assured him that through the tenderest regard for him, not through any fear of overtaxing his fortitude, she would respect his wishes, but could not help begging him to remain with them at Pemberley as heretofore, so as to give them an opportunity of showing him how completely their happiness was bound up with his, and of making use of any opportunity which might arise for them to be of service to him. Fitzwilliam gratefully promised to stay for the present, and said that his only engagement was to go to some friends in Leicestershire in November, for the hunting. Elizabeth was, nevertheless, not perfectly satisfied, and took occasion to ask Georgiana shortly afterwards whether it was from Mrs. Wentworth that she had heard confirmation of the fact that Sir Walter Elliot was engaged to Miss Crawford. "No," said Georgiana, in surprise, "it was from Mr. Price. Mrs. Wentworth never mentioned it. Mrs. Wentworth! Of course, I recollect now, she is Sir Walter Elliot's daughter; but at the time I never thought of it, for, you see, I did not know Sir Walter was the man." "Very true; I had also forgotten that you did not know," said Elizabeth, "and would never connect her with Miss Crawford. I have been thinking that I should like, for our own satisfaction, to know when the wedding is going to take place, and the simplest way will be to write and ask Mrs. Wentworth. I wish I had done so before, but I did not wish to be in haste, and I felt so convinced we should hear from others." Georgiana agreed that this was the best course to pursue, and Elizabeth, having told Darcy of her intention, to which, on account of her promise to Fitzwilliam, he could no longer object, wrote and dispatched her letter. The season was now drawing on, and with the shortening days the family at Pemberley found themselves thrown more upon the resources of their own immediate circle for amusement. The weather was consistently bad, and though this did not prevent the gentlemen from covering great distances for the purpose of slaughtering their game, the ladies were of necessity restricted to a smaller area, and their walks seldom extended beyond the park, except when their inclinations led them along a tolerably clean road towards the Rectory. This happened pretty frequently, for both Elizabeth and Georgiana were extremely attached to Elinor Ferrars. Their friendship was of a particularly sincere and well-balanced kind, and was not marred by their constant intercourse, as each knew how to maintain that degree of reserve which prevents indiscriminate confidences and so greatly strengthens mutual respect. Kitty was the one who perhaps found the society of the Rectory the least congenial; but it is to be feared that she was extremely difficult to please that autumn, and in the impatience with which she waited for one young man she might have sometimes regretted the solace which the company of the other would have afforded. In such a small neighbourhood everyone was of some value, and they all heard with interest of the approaching visit to Mr. and Mrs. Edward Ferrars of an old friend, Mrs. Jennings, who was coming early in October to spend six or seven weeks with them. Mrs. Ferrars was in delicate health, and Mrs. Jennings, besides having an almost maternal affection for her, was well qualified to be of service as sick nurse and enlivening companion, so that Elinor's warning to Mrs. Darcy that her friend, although the kindest of women, had not always the most refined manner of expressing herself, did not prevent them from being anxious to make her acquaintance. Mrs. Jennings performed in safety the long journey from her son-in-law's house in Devonshire, and arrived in her customary high spirits. It was her first visit to the Ferrars's since their removal from Delaford, and she had to examine the house, to criticize minutely the arrangement of their furniture, and to compare their surroundings, social and material, with what they had been in their old home. Mrs. Darcy paid an early call on the new arrival, and the morning after her visit Georgiana and Kitty also found their way to the Rectory. Mrs. Jennings's exuberance, her loud laugh and general noisy cheerfulness did not recommend her strongly to either of the girls in the first few minutes, and Georgiana was glad to move to a chair by Mrs. Ferrars, to enter into a quieter conversation with her; but before long, judging by the sounds which reached them, Mrs. Jennings and Kitty had found some subjects in common. This perhaps was not so surprising, as Mrs. Jennings was exceedingly fond of the society of all young girls, and cared not at all whether they returned her partiality or no. In this case she had begun, with the utmost frankness, to discourse on the subject nearest her heart at the moment, namely, her dear Mrs. Ferrars, and was relating all the circumstances under which their friendship had been formed, the Dashwood girls' visit to London, the disagreeable conduct of Mrs. Ferrars's mother and sister, and the absurd misunderstanding as to Colonel Brandon's attentions, the whole being punctuated by frequent bursts of laughter; and she would doubtless have gone on to describe in detail the events attending the engagement of her two young friends, had not Elinor mildly but decisively interposed. "Dear madam," she said, breaking off in the midst of a remark to Georgiana, "I am sure Miss Bennet does not wish to hear the history of such a very dull old couple as ourselves. You are so kind as to be more interested in it than most people could be." "Lord, my dear," cried Mrs. Jennings, "why did you not stop me? I declare I am very sorry if I said a word I ought not. I know my tongue does run on, and Miss Bennet must excuse me, for it was only for the pleasure of talking to you and Mr. Edward. And as for its being dull, I don't believe there is anybody who does not like to hear of other people's love-affairs; it makes one think of one's own, now, does it not, Miss Bennet?" Kitty blushed and looked embarrassed, and Mrs. Jennings laughed heartily, saying: "It is just as I thought; Miss Bennet could tell us a pretty tale too, I'll be bound, if only she would." "Miss Bennet can tell us some wonderful tales of the West Indies," said Elinor, endeavouring to turn Mrs. Jennings's mind from her favourite topic; "she has a sister there, who writes to her constantly, does she not, Miss Bennet? Those tropical places must be very beautiful. Do you remember how Colonel Brandon used to talk to us of his travels in the East, ma'am?" "That I do, my dear," replied Mrs. Jennings emphatically, "and I never want to hear again of such fearful things as he had seen--swamps, and great things like alligators ... and insects that did everything insects ought not. I hope you will tell your sister not to get amongst them, Miss Bennet." Kitty replied that her sister had written chiefly of the beautiful balls and illuminations which they frequently had, and lately of some shocks of earthquake which had frightened them terribly. Mrs. Jennings exclaimed at this, and declared that the finest ball in the world would not compensate her if there was the fear that the ground would open under her feet while she was dancing. "But I know young people do not care what risks they run," said she. "There was Sir John Middleton three weeks ago wanted to have a moonlight picnic; my daughter Middleton was all against it, for the weather was so threatening, but have it he would, and the consequence was that they all ate their supper, or as much of it as they could, in a roaring thunderstorm. I can tell you they were in a pretty pickle when they got back! All the girls so cross, and the young men not a dry thread among them through trying to protect the ladies. But Sir John, he made no bones about it at all, but said they would go again another night, when for sure it would be fine." Her hearers could not help laughing at such a picture of undaunted pleasure-seeking, and Elinor inquired if the second party had taken place. "Oh, Lord, yes; they all came, but their fathers and mothers made them promise not to stir beyond the grounds. I heard, at any rate, they turned it into a dance instead. But, as I say, young people don't care for a drop of rain. I am sure, when I was young, I would as lief have had it as not, for there was no hardship in sheltering under a hedge, with the right young man to hold an umbrella over you, do you think so, Miss Bennet?" "Still, I fancy that most people, old or young, prefer outdoor expeditions to be in dry weather," said Elinor. "That reminds me that I must show you what terrible havoc last night's rain and wind worked in my flower borders. When I looked out first, I was quite in despair, thinking I should not have another nosegay all the autumn. There is a gleam of sunshine now, so shall we take a turn in the garden?" Georgiana gladly walked out with her, and Mrs. Jennings and Kitty followed at a distance, the former questioning her young companion about her sister abroad and hearing laments over the gaieties which that sister had been able to offer her, but which she had never been able to accept. Mrs. Jennings's hearty comments of "Well, there now, that is a shame!" and "A regiment too! You would have broken all their hearts, I vow!" and other such remarks pleased Kitty, while she knew in her heart they ought not to do so. The two girls shortly after took their leave, and while walking homeward naturally compared notes upon the stranger whom they had just met. Georgiana expressed herself guardedly, not wishing to condemn any friend of Mrs. Ferrars's, although feeling as if that friend could not be in any way an accession to their party; but Kitty's first unfavorable impression seemed to have been obliterated, and she declared frankly that she liked Mrs. Jennings and thought she was very merry and good-natured. Georgiana could not quite agree with this, for she found Mrs. Jennings's style of raillery not at all to her mind, but admitted that she might be pleasanter when one got to know her well. At dinner these opinions were canvassed, and Georgiana found, as she expected, that her own were largely shared by Elizabeth, who, however, was amused at her severity, and told her that she would often meet people who, with more refined manners, were yet at heart far more vulgar than Mrs. Jennings and had not a tenth part of her redeeming qualities. "I do not think I want to meet them, then," said Georgiana. "But I am sure you are right, Elizabeth, and I daresay she will be a great comfort to Mrs. Ferrars." When the ladies were together after dinner, Kitty, whose gravity and preoccupation had been noticeable for the last half-hour, after wandering several times round the room, stationed herself near to her sister and began, in a solemn tone: "Lizzie, I want to ask you something very important." Elizabeth, smiling, professed herself all attention, and Kitty continued: "You know you have never kept your promise, that you made before you were married, of having a ball here, for each winter something has happened to prevent it." "Quite true, Kitty; so a ball is in your mind; and what made you think of it just now?" "I never come here without thinking of it, but I had somehow not expected to be staying long enough this year, as I imagined I should go home directly after the shooting party. But Mrs. Jennings said to-day she supposed you sometimes had balls in this lovely house, and she was sure Georgiana and I were fond of dancing." "And Mrs. Jennings is quite right about the latter statement, is she not?" Georgiana looked up with a smile, to assent to her share of the question, and Kitty clasped her hands rapturously, exclaiming: "Oh, Lizzie, you know how much I love a ball! It would be so kind of you and Darcy! Everyone would enjoy it!" "I am very

quickened

How many times the word 'quickened' appears in the text?

will do it, but life is so uncertain that I think for the present I had better refrain. Have you ascertained whether Kitty can cook, make her own gowns, and trim hats? I understand it is a great promoter of married happiness when the wife can do so, and I am not sure whether all my girls have turned their education to such good account." Mr. Morland only replied by asking if he might be allowed to see Miss Bennet at once, and her father left the room, foreseeing that, whatever happened, he should not have one more quiet hour during that day. His anticipations were soon in the way to be fulfilled, for on finding his daughters, and sending Kitty to the library, he had to give Jane an outline of what had just passed, then repeat it to Bingley, who joined them, and listened to their exclamations of surprise, and regret at the probable downfall of Mr. Morland's hopes. Jane and Bingley were both too convinced of Kitty's prior attachment to have the slightest expectation of his success, and Mr. Bennet was put in full possession of the facts relating to it, while they anxiously awaited the termination of the interview. It came, after some minutes, in a glimpse of Kitty emerging from the library and hurrying upstairs with streaming eyes, and while they all debated as to their next move, Mr. Morland was seen to cross the hall rapidly, looking nowhere but in front of him, and leave the house with precipitation. Jane herself, almost equally distressed, longed to go to Kitty, and Bingley questioned whether he ought not to hasten after the young man, while Mr. Bennet was disposed to think they would be better left to themselves for a time, and wished heartily that there were only just enough lovers in the world to go round, one to each young lady, and none over. In spite of this, Jane was not long in finding her way to her agitated sister and in showing her the tenderest consideration. Kitty's distress was very great, and also very sincere, for she had in truth been far from guessing that Mr. Morland took a more than common interest in her, and as is usual in such cases, the declaration of the young man's love woke in her feelings which she had not known to exist, of reciprocal kindness and even affection, which only did not share the nature and strength of his. Kitty could never have been hard-hearted to any lover, least of all to one whom she liked as much as she did James Morland, and his devotion touched her as deeply as the knowledge that she could not accept it wounded her. Between regrets for what had happened, pity for him and for herself, and the excited thoughts of William Price which the incident itself was bound to evoke, she was in a sad state, and Jane easily prevailed upon her to have her dinner upstairs and go early to bed. Not so easily could she check the tears which flowed continuously, and Jane, to occupy her mind and body, proposed that she should go to-morrow to Pemberley, instead of in three days' time, as arranged; she could very well be sent over, and the change would be beneficial; besides, she was not really leaving them, for there was the November visit to look forward to. Kitty caught at the suggestion, and declining the offices of the maid, began to busy herself about her packing, as Jane hoped she would do, while the latter descended to consult with her husband and father. Mr. Bennet and Bingley both approved, and Jane hastily wrote a few lines to Elizabeth to apprise her of what had happened, that she might be prepared for Kitty's arrival. The two gentlemen walked to the nearest post town to convey the letter; and after dinner the indefatigable Bingley again set out, this time to the Rectory, to perform the same kind office by James Morland as his wife had been doing by Kitty. The young man, though calmer, proved far more unreceptive of consolation. He had felt his rebuff acutely, for Kitty had been too much taken by surprise, too sure of herself, to make it otherwise than decisive, and even the modest hopes he had ventured to entertain, of being able to make more progress with her once the subject was opened between them, had been most thoroughly dispelled. Miss Bennet would not hear another word of it--begged him never to speak of it again--with tears reproached him for having spoilt everything, so that in addition to his own disappointment he had the pain of feeling that she thought less well of him than before. Bingley could deny this, but could not affirm anything else likely to give him comfort. It remained for Morland himself to declare, which he did in a firm though melancholy tone, that he regretted having distressed Miss Bennet, and would endeavour so to meet her in the future that she would not suffer through being reminded of it by any act of word of his. Bingley commended his courage, told him of Kitty's departure, and begged him to continue coming to Desborough just the same; and walked home with a full report of what had just passed. Jane shook her head over it, for, while sympathizing with both, she was more truly sorry for Mr. Morland, since for him she could see no immediate prospect of compensation, in spite of her father's assurances that a young clergyman was seldom allowed to remain inconsolable for more than six months, and if Kitty's other young man only did what was expected of him, her fate would be a certainty in half that time. Chapter XIII Needless to say, Kitty was heartily welcomed by Georgiana and Elizabeth, and given every opportunity to relieve her mind by descriptions of the tragical affair in all its aspects. Both regretted it deeply for Mr. Morland's sake, and Elizabeth privately did so for Kitty's sake, having such a good opinion of him as to make her wish that Kitty could have been persuaded out of her fancy for a young man, who, however excellent, was comparatively a stranger to them all, and whose intentions, at present, were extremely uncertain. She would have rejoiced if Kitty and Morland could have made each other happy, and had entertained a slight hope that her hint to Kitty might perhaps have helped matters, in directing her thoughts into another channel, but it seemed to be of no avail, and Georgiana gave her friend her warmest support, implying entire agreement with her point of view. "I could not help it, now, could I, Georgiana? You know yourself, Lizzie, that I never dreamt it. How could I do anything else but refuse him outright? I was amazingly grieved to do so, but you know very well, Georgiana, that if I could think of one man more than another, _he_ is not that one." She paused for assent, which Georgiana gave by a silent caress, and then continued: "It is all so unfortunate. It will never be as pleasant at Desborough now. Poor Mr. Morland! I wish I had not had to hurt him. He does want someone so badly in the Rectory." "Well, my dear, do not make yourself ill with these vain regrets," said Elizabeth. "It is, as you say, very unfortunate, but no one blames you. If you could not care for him, you could not do it, and someone else will have to inhabit that nice Rectory." Kitty looked as if this prospect were not very pleasing either, but Georgiana, seeing what Elizabeth wished, began to talk cheerfully of something else, and Kitty gradually joined in, though whenever the two girls were alone together she found it difficult to abstain long from referring to some branch of the subject. Georgiana's loyalty and patience never failed, but she wished for November almost as earnestly as Kitty herself, so that matters might reach some definite conclusion, for Kitty's restlessness had considerably increased since she had received James Morland's offer, and she was constantly nervous and excitable and not mistress of herself. On the day when the Bingleys and Mr. Bennet came over for the latter to take leave before returning to Longbourn, this was specially noticeable in her state of anxious flutter when drawing Jane aside to inquire after Mr. Morland. Mr. Bennet bade her farewell gravely and more affectionately than was his wont, telling her that he left her in good hands, and would only give her one piece of advice, namely, that second thoughts were sometimes best. Kitty blushed deeply and could not pretend to misunderstand him, but told Georgiana afterwards that it was impossible to have better second thoughts when Price was the first. With his elder daughter Mr. Bennet was rather more explicit, telling Elizabeth that he considered it was a great pity that so unobjectionable a young man should have been sent about his business. Elizabeth entirely agreed with him, and thought it would not be going too far to express Mr. Morland's praise in even warmer terms. "He will never set the Thames on fire, but there seems good stuff in him," was Mr. Bennet's reply. "When he proposed for her I had not taken much notice of him, except to think him a tolerably sensible fellow, and of course I had to readjust my ideas; but I soon began to see that he must not be judged by that alone. I have really liked him better, too, for his way of taking his refusal." "My dear father, it does not always indicate a want of sense to wish to be married," interposed Elizabeth. "Perhaps not, but Morland is much better off as he is than in marrying a girl he knows so little about. Kitty is flighty and expensive; she ought to stay longer with you and Jane, and not think of being married for the next ten years." Elizabeth smiled and said she thought that it was unnecessary, but that it would certainly be better for Kitty to marry a clergyman than an officer in the navy, who would be compelled to spend long periods away from home. "As to that, of course it is a complete absurdity, and I cannot think why you women, who are so fond of making matches, did not originate something less ridiculously unsuitable among yourselves." Elizabeth thought it wiser not to explain who actually had originated the idea, and said after a pause: "You were saying that you have liked Mr. Morland better of late?" "Yes, he has positively shown some sort of self-command and dignity. He turned up at the house a day or two afterwards, apparently _not_ bent on making us all uncomfortable by the sight of his misery, as most rejected lovers do. Besides, Bingley had had the foresight to produce some excellent port." "I hear from Jane," said Elizabeth, "that he does not avoid or seek the mention of Kitty, and she thinks he is trying to give up all hope of her." "Her absence for a few weeks will no doubt materially assist him," said Mr. Bennet. Kitty seized the opportunity offered by this visit to speak a private word to her brother-in-law with reference to the hero, as Bingley persisted in calling him. She herself had no news, for Mrs. Knightley's frequent letters reported him still at Portsmouth, and Bingley had heard nothing, but promised to write and renew his invitation as soon as October was fairly in. The same silence prevailed at Pemberley with regard to Miss Crawford. No announcement of her marriage had reached any of them, and Elizabeth had a half inclination to make some inquiries, but was dissuaded by Darcy, who said: "Whatever precisely has happened, Elizabeth, we can be sure of one thing, that Miss Crawford has allowed Fitzwilliam to understand that she does not wish him to approach her again. Under these circumstances it is better that you should have no news to give him." Elizabeth sighed as she agreed to the wisdom of this decision, but when shortly after her father's departure a letter was received from Colonel Fitzwilliam to say he would be returning at the end of the month, she could not help wishing that she was more fully informed of the present state of affairs. It would be a relief, even though a sad one, to Fitzwilliam's mind to know that Miss Crawford was actually married and he would be unselfish enough to wish to hear that she was happy. Nothing occurred, however, to enlighten them, and Fitzwilliam arrived on the appointed day, looking much as usual except for a few more lines about the eyes and an increased number of grey hairs. It was the first time he and Georgiana had been together at Pemberley since the rupture of their engagement, and both must have felt conscious of it, Georgiana in particular being prepared to be miserable for a time, from the belief that her cousin, instead of being cheered and invigorated as formerly by his return home, must be reminded at every turn of the failure of their experiment, the failure caused by her wretched weakness and incapacity. Worse still, her brother must be reminded of it, and there might be a repetition of his stern looks, his cold manner. She trembled at the thought, unaware that Darcy had long been persuaded of the wisdom of their parting, ever since events in Bath had shown him where his cousin's real affections were likely to be bestowed, and the only difference which Georgiana perceived after Fitzwilliam's arrival was in the particular kindness he showed her, and the complete renewal of the old comfortable relations amongst them all. When inquiries after the Hursts and Mrs. Annesley had been made, and Georgiana had mentioned the dinner-party and the persons who had been present, little more was said with reference to London; indeed, there was little more for either to say, for Georgiana dared not refer to the person who had chiefly occupied his mind there. Fitzwilliam talked of his book and of Ireland, inquired about the prospects of the shooting, showed interest in the minutest details of life in the neighbourhood, and in every way endeavoured to prove that he was exactly his old self; and only when walking with Elizabeth in the Park one morning did he betray how far that was from being the case. There was no doubt that his disappointment had coloured his whole life. He had allowed himself to think of Miss Crawford, and to build high upon his hopes, and to find himself again mistaken had been a blow which cut at the foundations of all his happiness. His gaiety was feigned, his pursuits had lost their zest, his friends no longer sufficed him: and as he said to Elizabeth, he had felt he had better adopt some country occupation and settle down to it, and there grow old as quietly and quickly as might be. Elizabeth's heart was wrung; the spectacle of her cousin's fine nature locked away, as it were, in a closed room, as a thing no one had any need for, was inexpressively painful to her, and nothing else would have caused her to venture upon a reopening of the subject which he himself had not approached. With the utmost gentleness she spoke a few words of commiseration, and then, still proceeding with extreme caution, she told him of the absence of news and her assumption that Miss Crawford's marriage with Sir Walter Elliot had been delayed. "I daresay it has," returned Colonel Fitzwilliam, with a kind of listlessness, striking with his stick at the head of some tall grasses which bordered their path. "There can be no doubt of it, I suppose?" pursued Elizabeth. "None at all, I should imagine," replied the Colonel. "Miss Crawford is not the kind of woman who would break her word, once the engagement had been announced." "No, of course not," said Elizabeth; "but I had expected that she or Mrs. Grant would have written to me, or even Mrs. Wentworth, as they must know I should be interested." Colonel Fitzwilliam could not immediately recall anything of Mrs. Wentworth beyond her name, and on being reminded that she was Sir Walter Elliot's daughter, presently replied: "I do not think it altogether surprising she should not have written to you. She probably cares little for the marriage, and still less for the one which it was anticipated would follow it--I mean Miss Elliot's to Mr. Crawford." This was a new idea to Elizabeth, and while she was pondering over it, and the inferences to be drawn from it, Colonel Fitzwilliam broke the silence by saying: "Perhaps we had better not speak of this anymore, Elizabeth. I know your great kindness of heart, but I feel it does no good, rather harm, to be reviving thoughts which I must in honour suppress as much as possible. I was anxious to know whether you had heard anything, and to ask you again, when you have the chance, to tell her that I wish her well; but now we have mentioned it, it would, I think, be best for my contemptibly weak character to put it as far away as possible." With tears in her eyes, Elizabeth assured him that through the tenderest regard for him, not through any fear of overtaxing his fortitude, she would respect his wishes, but could not help begging him to remain with them at Pemberley as heretofore, so as to give them an opportunity of showing him how completely their happiness was bound up with his, and of making use of any opportunity which might arise for them to be of service to him. Fitzwilliam gratefully promised to stay for the present, and said that his only engagement was to go to some friends in Leicestershire in November, for the hunting. Elizabeth was, nevertheless, not perfectly satisfied, and took occasion to ask Georgiana shortly afterwards whether it was from Mrs. Wentworth that she had heard confirmation of the fact that Sir Walter Elliot was engaged to Miss Crawford. "No," said Georgiana, in surprise, "it was from Mr. Price. Mrs. Wentworth never mentioned it. Mrs. Wentworth! Of course, I recollect now, she is Sir Walter Elliot's daughter; but at the time I never thought of it, for, you see, I did not know Sir Walter was the man." "Very true; I had also forgotten that you did not know," said Elizabeth, "and would never connect her with Miss Crawford. I have been thinking that I should like, for our own satisfaction, to know when the wedding is going to take place, and the simplest way will be to write and ask Mrs. Wentworth. I wish I had done so before, but I did not wish to be in haste, and I felt so convinced we should hear from others." Georgiana agreed that this was the best course to pursue, and Elizabeth, having told Darcy of her intention, to which, on account of her promise to Fitzwilliam, he could no longer object, wrote and dispatched her letter. The season was now drawing on, and with the shortening days the family at Pemberley found themselves thrown more upon the resources of their own immediate circle for amusement. The weather was consistently bad, and though this did not prevent the gentlemen from covering great distances for the purpose of slaughtering their game, the ladies were of necessity restricted to a smaller area, and their walks seldom extended beyond the park, except when their inclinations led them along a tolerably clean road towards the Rectory. This happened pretty frequently, for both Elizabeth and Georgiana were extremely attached to Elinor Ferrars. Their friendship was of a particularly sincere and well-balanced kind, and was not marred by their constant intercourse, as each knew how to maintain that degree of reserve which prevents indiscriminate confidences and so greatly strengthens mutual respect. Kitty was the one who perhaps found the society of the Rectory the least congenial; but it is to be feared that she was extremely difficult to please that autumn, and in the impatience with which she waited for one young man she might have sometimes regretted the solace which the company of the other would have afforded. In such a small neighbourhood everyone was of some value, and they all heard with interest of the approaching visit to Mr. and Mrs. Edward Ferrars of an old friend, Mrs. Jennings, who was coming early in October to spend six or seven weeks with them. Mrs. Ferrars was in delicate health, and Mrs. Jennings, besides having an almost maternal affection for her, was well qualified to be of service as sick nurse and enlivening companion, so that Elinor's warning to Mrs. Darcy that her friend, although the kindest of women, had not always the most refined manner of expressing herself, did not prevent them from being anxious to make her acquaintance. Mrs. Jennings performed in safety the long journey from her son-in-law's house in Devonshire, and arrived in her customary high spirits. It was her first visit to the Ferrars's since their removal from Delaford, and she had to examine the house, to criticize minutely the arrangement of their furniture, and to compare their surroundings, social and material, with what they had been in their old home. Mrs. Darcy paid an early call on the new arrival, and the morning after her visit Georgiana and Kitty also found their way to the Rectory. Mrs. Jennings's exuberance, her loud laugh and general noisy cheerfulness did not recommend her strongly to either of the girls in the first few minutes, and Georgiana was glad to move to a chair by Mrs. Ferrars, to enter into a quieter conversation with her; but before long, judging by the sounds which reached them, Mrs. Jennings and Kitty had found some subjects in common. This perhaps was not so surprising, as Mrs. Jennings was exceedingly fond of the society of all young girls, and cared not at all whether they returned her partiality or no. In this case she had begun, with the utmost frankness, to discourse on the subject nearest her heart at the moment, namely, her dear Mrs. Ferrars, and was relating all the circumstances under which their friendship had been formed, the Dashwood girls' visit to London, the disagreeable conduct of Mrs. Ferrars's mother and sister, and the absurd misunderstanding as to Colonel Brandon's attentions, the whole being punctuated by frequent bursts of laughter; and she would doubtless have gone on to describe in detail the events attending the engagement of her two young friends, had not Elinor mildly but decisively interposed. "Dear madam," she said, breaking off in the midst of a remark to Georgiana, "I am sure Miss Bennet does not wish to hear the history of such a very dull old couple as ourselves. You are so kind as to be more interested in it than most people could be." "Lord, my dear," cried Mrs. Jennings, "why did you not stop me? I declare I am very sorry if I said a word I ought not. I know my tongue does run on, and Miss Bennet must excuse me, for it was only for the pleasure of talking to you and Mr. Edward. And as for its being dull, I don't believe there is anybody who does not like to hear of other people's love-affairs; it makes one think of one's own, now, does it not, Miss Bennet?" Kitty blushed and looked embarrassed, and Mrs. Jennings laughed heartily, saying: "It is just as I thought; Miss Bennet could tell us a pretty tale too, I'll be bound, if only she would." "Miss Bennet can tell us some wonderful tales of the West Indies," said Elinor, endeavouring to turn Mrs. Jennings's mind from her favourite topic; "she has a sister there, who writes to her constantly, does she not, Miss Bennet? Those tropical places must be very beautiful. Do you remember how Colonel Brandon used to talk to us of his travels in the East, ma'am?" "That I do, my dear," replied Mrs. Jennings emphatically, "and I never want to hear again of such fearful things as he had seen--swamps, and great things like alligators ... and insects that did everything insects ought not. I hope you will tell your sister not to get amongst them, Miss Bennet." Kitty replied that her sister had written chiefly of the beautiful balls and illuminations which they frequently had, and lately of some shocks of earthquake which had frightened them terribly. Mrs. Jennings exclaimed at this, and declared that the finest ball in the world would not compensate her if there was the fear that the ground would open under her feet while she was dancing. "But I know young people do not care what risks they run," said she. "There was Sir John Middleton three weeks ago wanted to have a moonlight picnic; my daughter Middleton was all against it, for the weather was so threatening, but have it he would, and the consequence was that they all ate their supper, or as much of it as they could, in a roaring thunderstorm. I can tell you they were in a pretty pickle when they got back! All the girls so cross, and the young men not a dry thread among them through trying to protect the ladies. But Sir John, he made no bones about it at all, but said they would go again another night, when for sure it would be fine." Her hearers could not help laughing at such a picture of undaunted pleasure-seeking, and Elinor inquired if the second party had taken place. "Oh, Lord, yes; they all came, but their fathers and mothers made them promise not to stir beyond the grounds. I heard, at any rate, they turned it into a dance instead. But, as I say, young people don't care for a drop of rain. I am sure, when I was young, I would as lief have had it as not, for there was no hardship in sheltering under a hedge, with the right young man to hold an umbrella over you, do you think so, Miss Bennet?" "Still, I fancy that most people, old or young, prefer outdoor expeditions to be in dry weather," said Elinor. "That reminds me that I must show you what terrible havoc last night's rain and wind worked in my flower borders. When I looked out first, I was quite in despair, thinking I should not have another nosegay all the autumn. There is a gleam of sunshine now, so shall we take a turn in the garden?" Georgiana gladly walked out with her, and Mrs. Jennings and Kitty followed at a distance, the former questioning her young companion about her sister abroad and hearing laments over the gaieties which that sister had been able to offer her, but which she had never been able to accept. Mrs. Jennings's hearty comments of "Well, there now, that is a shame!" and "A regiment too! You would have broken all their hearts, I vow!" and other such remarks pleased Kitty, while she knew in her heart they ought not to do so. The two girls shortly after took their leave, and while walking homeward naturally compared notes upon the stranger whom they had just met. Georgiana expressed herself guardedly, not wishing to condemn any friend of Mrs. Ferrars's, although feeling as if that friend could not be in any way an accession to their party; but Kitty's first unfavorable impression seemed to have been obliterated, and she declared frankly that she liked Mrs. Jennings and thought she was very merry and good-natured. Georgiana could not quite agree with this, for she found Mrs. Jennings's style of raillery not at all to her mind, but admitted that she might be pleasanter when one got to know her well. At dinner these opinions were canvassed, and Georgiana found, as she expected, that her own were largely shared by Elizabeth, who, however, was amused at her severity, and told her that she would often meet people who, with more refined manners, were yet at heart far more vulgar than Mrs. Jennings and had not a tenth part of her redeeming qualities. "I do not think I want to meet them, then," said Georgiana. "But I am sure you are right, Elizabeth, and I daresay she will be a great comfort to Mrs. Ferrars." When the ladies were together after dinner, Kitty, whose gravity and preoccupation had been noticeable for the last half-hour, after wandering several times round the room, stationed herself near to her sister and began, in a solemn tone: "Lizzie, I want to ask you something very important." Elizabeth, smiling, professed herself all attention, and Kitty continued: "You know you have never kept your promise, that you made before you were married, of having a ball here, for each winter something has happened to prevent it." "Quite true, Kitty; so a ball is in your mind; and what made you think of it just now?" "I never come here without thinking of it, but I had somehow not expected to be staying long enough this year, as I imagined I should go home directly after the shooting party. But Mrs. Jennings said to-day she supposed you sometimes had balls in this lovely house, and she was sure Georgiana and I were fond of dancing." "And Mrs. Jennings is quite right about the latter statement, is she not?" Georgiana looked up with a smile, to assent to her share of the question, and Kitty clasped her hands rapturously, exclaiming: "Oh, Lizzie, you know how much I love a ball! It would be so kind of you and Darcy! Everyone would enjoy it!" "I am very

entirely

How many times the word 'entirely' appears in the text?

will do it, but life is so uncertain that I think for the present I had better refrain. Have you ascertained whether Kitty can cook, make her own gowns, and trim hats? I understand it is a great promoter of married happiness when the wife can do so, and I am not sure whether all my girls have turned their education to such good account." Mr. Morland only replied by asking if he might be allowed to see Miss Bennet at once, and her father left the room, foreseeing that, whatever happened, he should not have one more quiet hour during that day. His anticipations were soon in the way to be fulfilled, for on finding his daughters, and sending Kitty to the library, he had to give Jane an outline of what had just passed, then repeat it to Bingley, who joined them, and listened to their exclamations of surprise, and regret at the probable downfall of Mr. Morland's hopes. Jane and Bingley were both too convinced of Kitty's prior attachment to have the slightest expectation of his success, and Mr. Bennet was put in full possession of the facts relating to it, while they anxiously awaited the termination of the interview. It came, after some minutes, in a glimpse of Kitty emerging from the library and hurrying upstairs with streaming eyes, and while they all debated as to their next move, Mr. Morland was seen to cross the hall rapidly, looking nowhere but in front of him, and leave the house with precipitation. Jane herself, almost equally distressed, longed to go to Kitty, and Bingley questioned whether he ought not to hasten after the young man, while Mr. Bennet was disposed to think they would be better left to themselves for a time, and wished heartily that there were only just enough lovers in the world to go round, one to each young lady, and none over. In spite of this, Jane was not long in finding her way to her agitated sister and in showing her the tenderest consideration. Kitty's distress was very great, and also very sincere, for she had in truth been far from guessing that Mr. Morland took a more than common interest in her, and as is usual in such cases, the declaration of the young man's love woke in her feelings which she had not known to exist, of reciprocal kindness and even affection, which only did not share the nature and strength of his. Kitty could never have been hard-hearted to any lover, least of all to one whom she liked as much as she did James Morland, and his devotion touched her as deeply as the knowledge that she could not accept it wounded her. Between regrets for what had happened, pity for him and for herself, and the excited thoughts of William Price which the incident itself was bound to evoke, she was in a sad state, and Jane easily prevailed upon her to have her dinner upstairs and go early to bed. Not so easily could she check the tears which flowed continuously, and Jane, to occupy her mind and body, proposed that she should go to-morrow to Pemberley, instead of in three days' time, as arranged; she could very well be sent over, and the change would be beneficial; besides, she was not really leaving them, for there was the November visit to look forward to. Kitty caught at the suggestion, and declining the offices of the maid, began to busy herself about her packing, as Jane hoped she would do, while the latter descended to consult with her husband and father. Mr. Bennet and Bingley both approved, and Jane hastily wrote a few lines to Elizabeth to apprise her of what had happened, that she might be prepared for Kitty's arrival. The two gentlemen walked to the nearest post town to convey the letter; and after dinner the indefatigable Bingley again set out, this time to the Rectory, to perform the same kind office by James Morland as his wife had been doing by Kitty. The young man, though calmer, proved far more unreceptive of consolation. He had felt his rebuff acutely, for Kitty had been too much taken by surprise, too sure of herself, to make it otherwise than decisive, and even the modest hopes he had ventured to entertain, of being able to make more progress with her once the subject was opened between them, had been most thoroughly dispelled. Miss Bennet would not hear another word of it--begged him never to speak of it again--with tears reproached him for having spoilt everything, so that in addition to his own disappointment he had the pain of feeling that she thought less well of him than before. Bingley could deny this, but could not affirm anything else likely to give him comfort. It remained for Morland himself to declare, which he did in a firm though melancholy tone, that he regretted having distressed Miss Bennet, and would endeavour so to meet her in the future that she would not suffer through being reminded of it by any act of word of his. Bingley commended his courage, told him of Kitty's departure, and begged him to continue coming to Desborough just the same; and walked home with a full report of what had just passed. Jane shook her head over it, for, while sympathizing with both, she was more truly sorry for Mr. Morland, since for him she could see no immediate prospect of compensation, in spite of her father's assurances that a young clergyman was seldom allowed to remain inconsolable for more than six months, and if Kitty's other young man only did what was expected of him, her fate would be a certainty in half that time. Chapter XIII Needless to say, Kitty was heartily welcomed by Georgiana and Elizabeth, and given every opportunity to relieve her mind by descriptions of the tragical affair in all its aspects. Both regretted it deeply for Mr. Morland's sake, and Elizabeth privately did so for Kitty's sake, having such a good opinion of him as to make her wish that Kitty could have been persuaded out of her fancy for a young man, who, however excellent, was comparatively a stranger to them all, and whose intentions, at present, were extremely uncertain. She would have rejoiced if Kitty and Morland could have made each other happy, and had entertained a slight hope that her hint to Kitty might perhaps have helped matters, in directing her thoughts into another channel, but it seemed to be of no avail, and Georgiana gave her friend her warmest support, implying entire agreement with her point of view. "I could not help it, now, could I, Georgiana? You know yourself, Lizzie, that I never dreamt it. How could I do anything else but refuse him outright? I was amazingly grieved to do so, but you know very well, Georgiana, that if I could think of one man more than another, _he_ is not that one." She paused for assent, which Georgiana gave by a silent caress, and then continued: "It is all so unfortunate. It will never be as pleasant at Desborough now. Poor Mr. Morland! I wish I had not had to hurt him. He does want someone so badly in the Rectory." "Well, my dear, do not make yourself ill with these vain regrets," said Elizabeth. "It is, as you say, very unfortunate, but no one blames you. If you could not care for him, you could not do it, and someone else will have to inhabit that nice Rectory." Kitty looked as if this prospect were not very pleasing either, but Georgiana, seeing what Elizabeth wished, began to talk cheerfully of something else, and Kitty gradually joined in, though whenever the two girls were alone together she found it difficult to abstain long from referring to some branch of the subject. Georgiana's loyalty and patience never failed, but she wished for November almost as earnestly as Kitty herself, so that matters might reach some definite conclusion, for Kitty's restlessness had considerably increased since she had received James Morland's offer, and she was constantly nervous and excitable and not mistress of herself. On the day when the Bingleys and Mr. Bennet came over for the latter to take leave before returning to Longbourn, this was specially noticeable in her state of anxious flutter when drawing Jane aside to inquire after Mr. Morland. Mr. Bennet bade her farewell gravely and more affectionately than was his wont, telling her that he left her in good hands, and would only give her one piece of advice, namely, that second thoughts were sometimes best. Kitty blushed deeply and could not pretend to misunderstand him, but told Georgiana afterwards that it was impossible to have better second thoughts when Price was the first. With his elder daughter Mr. Bennet was rather more explicit, telling Elizabeth that he considered it was a great pity that so unobjectionable a young man should have been sent about his business. Elizabeth entirely agreed with him, and thought it would not be going too far to express Mr. Morland's praise in even warmer terms. "He will never set the Thames on fire, but there seems good stuff in him," was Mr. Bennet's reply. "When he proposed for her I had not taken much notice of him, except to think him a tolerably sensible fellow, and of course I had to readjust my ideas; but I soon began to see that he must not be judged by that alone. I have really liked him better, too, for his way of taking his refusal." "My dear father, it does not always indicate a want of sense to wish to be married," interposed Elizabeth. "Perhaps not, but Morland is much better off as he is than in marrying a girl he knows so little about. Kitty is flighty and expensive; she ought to stay longer with you and Jane, and not think of being married for the next ten years." Elizabeth smiled and said she thought that it was unnecessary, but that it would certainly be better for Kitty to marry a clergyman than an officer in the navy, who would be compelled to spend long periods away from home. "As to that, of course it is a complete absurdity, and I cannot think why you women, who are so fond of making matches, did not originate something less ridiculously unsuitable among yourselves." Elizabeth thought it wiser not to explain who actually had originated the idea, and said after a pause: "You were saying that you have liked Mr. Morland better of late?" "Yes, he has positively shown some sort of self-command and dignity. He turned up at the house a day or two afterwards, apparently _not_ bent on making us all uncomfortable by the sight of his misery, as most rejected lovers do. Besides, Bingley had had the foresight to produce some excellent port." "I hear from Jane," said Elizabeth, "that he does not avoid or seek the mention of Kitty, and she thinks he is trying to give up all hope of her." "Her absence for a few weeks will no doubt materially assist him," said Mr. Bennet. Kitty seized the opportunity offered by this visit to speak a private word to her brother-in-law with reference to the hero, as Bingley persisted in calling him. She herself had no news, for Mrs. Knightley's frequent letters reported him still at Portsmouth, and Bingley had heard nothing, but promised to write and renew his invitation as soon as October was fairly in. The same silence prevailed at Pemberley with regard to Miss Crawford. No announcement of her marriage had reached any of them, and Elizabeth had a half inclination to make some inquiries, but was dissuaded by Darcy, who said: "Whatever precisely has happened, Elizabeth, we can be sure of one thing, that Miss Crawford has allowed Fitzwilliam to understand that she does not wish him to approach her again. Under these circumstances it is better that you should have no news to give him." Elizabeth sighed as she agreed to the wisdom of this decision, but when shortly after her father's departure a letter was received from Colonel Fitzwilliam to say he would be returning at the end of the month, she could not help wishing that she was more fully informed of the present state of affairs. It would be a relief, even though a sad one, to Fitzwilliam's mind to know that Miss Crawford was actually married and he would be unselfish enough to wish to hear that she was happy. Nothing occurred, however, to enlighten them, and Fitzwilliam arrived on the appointed day, looking much as usual except for a few more lines about the eyes and an increased number of grey hairs. It was the first time he and Georgiana had been together at Pemberley since the rupture of their engagement, and both must have felt conscious of it, Georgiana in particular being prepared to be miserable for a time, from the belief that her cousin, instead of being cheered and invigorated as formerly by his return home, must be reminded at every turn of the failure of their experiment, the failure caused by her wretched weakness and incapacity. Worse still, her brother must be reminded of it, and there might be a repetition of his stern looks, his cold manner. She trembled at the thought, unaware that Darcy had long been persuaded of the wisdom of their parting, ever since events in Bath had shown him where his cousin's real affections were likely to be bestowed, and the only difference which Georgiana perceived after Fitzwilliam's arrival was in the particular kindness he showed her, and the complete renewal of the old comfortable relations amongst them all. When inquiries after the Hursts and Mrs. Annesley had been made, and Georgiana had mentioned the dinner-party and the persons who had been present, little more was said with reference to London; indeed, there was little more for either to say, for Georgiana dared not refer to the person who had chiefly occupied his mind there. Fitzwilliam talked of his book and of Ireland, inquired about the prospects of the shooting, showed interest in the minutest details of life in the neighbourhood, and in every way endeavoured to prove that he was exactly his old self; and only when walking with Elizabeth in the Park one morning did he betray how far that was from being the case. There was no doubt that his disappointment had coloured his whole life. He had allowed himself to think of Miss Crawford, and to build high upon his hopes, and to find himself again mistaken had been a blow which cut at the foundations of all his happiness. His gaiety was feigned, his pursuits had lost their zest, his friends no longer sufficed him: and as he said to Elizabeth, he had felt he had better adopt some country occupation and settle down to it, and there grow old as quietly and quickly as might be. Elizabeth's heart was wrung; the spectacle of her cousin's fine nature locked away, as it were, in a closed room, as a thing no one had any need for, was inexpressively painful to her, and nothing else would have caused her to venture upon a reopening of the subject which he himself had not approached. With the utmost gentleness she spoke a few words of commiseration, and then, still proceeding with extreme caution, she told him of the absence of news and her assumption that Miss Crawford's marriage with Sir Walter Elliot had been delayed. "I daresay it has," returned Colonel Fitzwilliam, with a kind of listlessness, striking with his stick at the head of some tall grasses which bordered their path. "There can be no doubt of it, I suppose?" pursued Elizabeth. "None at all, I should imagine," replied the Colonel. "Miss Crawford is not the kind of woman who would break her word, once the engagement had been announced." "No, of course not," said Elizabeth; "but I had expected that she or Mrs. Grant would have written to me, or even Mrs. Wentworth, as they must know I should be interested." Colonel Fitzwilliam could not immediately recall anything of Mrs. Wentworth beyond her name, and on being reminded that she was Sir Walter Elliot's daughter, presently replied: "I do not think it altogether surprising she should not have written to you. She probably cares little for the marriage, and still less for the one which it was anticipated would follow it--I mean Miss Elliot's to Mr. Crawford." This was a new idea to Elizabeth, and while she was pondering over it, and the inferences to be drawn from it, Colonel Fitzwilliam broke the silence by saying: "Perhaps we had better not speak of this anymore, Elizabeth. I know your great kindness of heart, but I feel it does no good, rather harm, to be reviving thoughts which I must in honour suppress as much as possible. I was anxious to know whether you had heard anything, and to ask you again, when you have the chance, to tell her that I wish her well; but now we have mentioned it, it would, I think, be best for my contemptibly weak character to put it as far away as possible." With tears in her eyes, Elizabeth assured him that through the tenderest regard for him, not through any fear of overtaxing his fortitude, she would respect his wishes, but could not help begging him to remain with them at Pemberley as heretofore, so as to give them an opportunity of showing him how completely their happiness was bound up with his, and of making use of any opportunity which might arise for them to be of service to him. Fitzwilliam gratefully promised to stay for the present, and said that his only engagement was to go to some friends in Leicestershire in November, for the hunting. Elizabeth was, nevertheless, not perfectly satisfied, and took occasion to ask Georgiana shortly afterwards whether it was from Mrs. Wentworth that she had heard confirmation of the fact that Sir Walter Elliot was engaged to Miss Crawford. "No," said Georgiana, in surprise, "it was from Mr. Price. Mrs. Wentworth never mentioned it. Mrs. Wentworth! Of course, I recollect now, she is Sir Walter Elliot's daughter; but at the time I never thought of it, for, you see, I did not know Sir Walter was the man." "Very true; I had also forgotten that you did not know," said Elizabeth, "and would never connect her with Miss Crawford. I have been thinking that I should like, for our own satisfaction, to know when the wedding is going to take place, and the simplest way will be to write and ask Mrs. Wentworth. I wish I had done so before, but I did not wish to be in haste, and I felt so convinced we should hear from others." Georgiana agreed that this was the best course to pursue, and Elizabeth, having told Darcy of her intention, to which, on account of her promise to Fitzwilliam, he could no longer object, wrote and dispatched her letter. The season was now drawing on, and with the shortening days the family at Pemberley found themselves thrown more upon the resources of their own immediate circle for amusement. The weather was consistently bad, and though this did not prevent the gentlemen from covering great distances for the purpose of slaughtering their game, the ladies were of necessity restricted to a smaller area, and their walks seldom extended beyond the park, except when their inclinations led them along a tolerably clean road towards the Rectory. This happened pretty frequently, for both Elizabeth and Georgiana were extremely attached to Elinor Ferrars. Their friendship was of a particularly sincere and well-balanced kind, and was not marred by their constant intercourse, as each knew how to maintain that degree of reserve which prevents indiscriminate confidences and so greatly strengthens mutual respect. Kitty was the one who perhaps found the society of the Rectory the least congenial; but it is to be feared that she was extremely difficult to please that autumn, and in the impatience with which she waited for one young man she might have sometimes regretted the solace which the company of the other would have afforded. In such a small neighbourhood everyone was of some value, and they all heard with interest of the approaching visit to Mr. and Mrs. Edward Ferrars of an old friend, Mrs. Jennings, who was coming early in October to spend six or seven weeks with them. Mrs. Ferrars was in delicate health, and Mrs. Jennings, besides having an almost maternal affection for her, was well qualified to be of service as sick nurse and enlivening companion, so that Elinor's warning to Mrs. Darcy that her friend, although the kindest of women, had not always the most refined manner of expressing herself, did not prevent them from being anxious to make her acquaintance. Mrs. Jennings performed in safety the long journey from her son-in-law's house in Devonshire, and arrived in her customary high spirits. It was her first visit to the Ferrars's since their removal from Delaford, and she had to examine the house, to criticize minutely the arrangement of their furniture, and to compare their surroundings, social and material, with what they had been in their old home. Mrs. Darcy paid an early call on the new arrival, and the morning after her visit Georgiana and Kitty also found their way to the Rectory. Mrs. Jennings's exuberance, her loud laugh and general noisy cheerfulness did not recommend her strongly to either of the girls in the first few minutes, and Georgiana was glad to move to a chair by Mrs. Ferrars, to enter into a quieter conversation with her; but before long, judging by the sounds which reached them, Mrs. Jennings and Kitty had found some subjects in common. This perhaps was not so surprising, as Mrs. Jennings was exceedingly fond of the society of all young girls, and cared not at all whether they returned her partiality or no. In this case she had begun, with the utmost frankness, to discourse on the subject nearest her heart at the moment, namely, her dear Mrs. Ferrars, and was relating all the circumstances under which their friendship had been formed, the Dashwood girls' visit to London, the disagreeable conduct of Mrs. Ferrars's mother and sister, and the absurd misunderstanding as to Colonel Brandon's attentions, the whole being punctuated by frequent bursts of laughter; and she would doubtless have gone on to describe in detail the events attending the engagement of her two young friends, had not Elinor mildly but decisively interposed. "Dear madam," she said, breaking off in the midst of a remark to Georgiana, "I am sure Miss Bennet does not wish to hear the history of such a very dull old couple as ourselves. You are so kind as to be more interested in it than most people could be." "Lord, my dear," cried Mrs. Jennings, "why did you not stop me? I declare I am very sorry if I said a word I ought not. I know my tongue does run on, and Miss Bennet must excuse me, for it was only for the pleasure of talking to you and Mr. Edward. And as for its being dull, I don't believe there is anybody who does not like to hear of other people's love-affairs; it makes one think of one's own, now, does it not, Miss Bennet?" Kitty blushed and looked embarrassed, and Mrs. Jennings laughed heartily, saying: "It is just as I thought; Miss Bennet could tell us a pretty tale too, I'll be bound, if only she would." "Miss Bennet can tell us some wonderful tales of the West Indies," said Elinor, endeavouring to turn Mrs. Jennings's mind from her favourite topic; "she has a sister there, who writes to her constantly, does she not, Miss Bennet? Those tropical places must be very beautiful. Do you remember how Colonel Brandon used to talk to us of his travels in the East, ma'am?" "That I do, my dear," replied Mrs. Jennings emphatically, "and I never want to hear again of such fearful things as he had seen--swamps, and great things like alligators ... and insects that did everything insects ought not. I hope you will tell your sister not to get amongst them, Miss Bennet." Kitty replied that her sister had written chiefly of the beautiful balls and illuminations which they frequently had, and lately of some shocks of earthquake which had frightened them terribly. Mrs. Jennings exclaimed at this, and declared that the finest ball in the world would not compensate her if there was the fear that the ground would open under her feet while she was dancing. "But I know young people do not care what risks they run," said she. "There was Sir John Middleton three weeks ago wanted to have a moonlight picnic; my daughter Middleton was all against it, for the weather was so threatening, but have it he would, and the consequence was that they all ate their supper, or as much of it as they could, in a roaring thunderstorm. I can tell you they were in a pretty pickle when they got back! All the girls so cross, and the young men not a dry thread among them through trying to protect the ladies. But Sir John, he made no bones about it at all, but said they would go again another night, when for sure it would be fine." Her hearers could not help laughing at such a picture of undaunted pleasure-seeking, and Elinor inquired if the second party had taken place. "Oh, Lord, yes; they all came, but their fathers and mothers made them promise not to stir beyond the grounds. I heard, at any rate, they turned it into a dance instead. But, as I say, young people don't care for a drop of rain. I am sure, when I was young, I would as lief have had it as not, for there was no hardship in sheltering under a hedge, with the right young man to hold an umbrella over you, do you think so, Miss Bennet?" "Still, I fancy that most people, old or young, prefer outdoor expeditions to be in dry weather," said Elinor. "That reminds me that I must show you what terrible havoc last night's rain and wind worked in my flower borders. When I looked out first, I was quite in despair, thinking I should not have another nosegay all the autumn. There is a gleam of sunshine now, so shall we take a turn in the garden?" Georgiana gladly walked out with her, and Mrs. Jennings and Kitty followed at a distance, the former questioning her young companion about her sister abroad and hearing laments over the gaieties which that sister had been able to offer her, but which she had never been able to accept. Mrs. Jennings's hearty comments of "Well, there now, that is a shame!" and "A regiment too! You would have broken all their hearts, I vow!" and other such remarks pleased Kitty, while she knew in her heart they ought not to do so. The two girls shortly after took their leave, and while walking homeward naturally compared notes upon the stranger whom they had just met. Georgiana expressed herself guardedly, not wishing to condemn any friend of Mrs. Ferrars's, although feeling as if that friend could not be in any way an accession to their party; but Kitty's first unfavorable impression seemed to have been obliterated, and she declared frankly that she liked Mrs. Jennings and thought she was very merry and good-natured. Georgiana could not quite agree with this, for she found Mrs. Jennings's style of raillery not at all to her mind, but admitted that she might be pleasanter when one got to know her well. At dinner these opinions were canvassed, and Georgiana found, as she expected, that her own were largely shared by Elizabeth, who, however, was amused at her severity, and told her that she would often meet people who, with more refined manners, were yet at heart far more vulgar than Mrs. Jennings and had not a tenth part of her redeeming qualities. "I do not think I want to meet them, then," said Georgiana. "But I am sure you are right, Elizabeth, and I daresay she will be a great comfort to Mrs. Ferrars." When the ladies were together after dinner, Kitty, whose gravity and preoccupation had been noticeable for the last half-hour, after wandering several times round the room, stationed herself near to her sister and began, in a solemn tone: "Lizzie, I want to ask you something very important." Elizabeth, smiling, professed herself all attention, and Kitty continued: "You know you have never kept your promise, that you made before you were married, of having a ball here, for each winter something has happened to prevent it." "Quite true, Kitty; so a ball is in your mind; and what made you think of it just now?" "I never come here without thinking of it, but I had somehow not expected to be staying long enough this year, as I imagined I should go home directly after the shooting party. But Mrs. Jennings said to-day she supposed you sometimes had balls in this lovely house, and she was sure Georgiana and I were fond of dancing." "And Mrs. Jennings is quite right about the latter statement, is she not?" Georgiana looked up with a smile, to assent to her share of the question, and Kitty clasped her hands rapturously, exclaiming: "Oh, Lizzie, you know how much I love a ball! It would be so kind of you and Darcy! Everyone would enjoy it!" "I am very

wasting

How many times the word 'wasting' appears in the text?

will do it, but life is so uncertain that I think for the present I had better refrain. Have you ascertained whether Kitty can cook, make her own gowns, and trim hats? I understand it is a great promoter of married happiness when the wife can do so, and I am not sure whether all my girls have turned their education to such good account." Mr. Morland only replied by asking if he might be allowed to see Miss Bennet at once, and her father left the room, foreseeing that, whatever happened, he should not have one more quiet hour during that day. His anticipations were soon in the way to be fulfilled, for on finding his daughters, and sending Kitty to the library, he had to give Jane an outline of what had just passed, then repeat it to Bingley, who joined them, and listened to their exclamations of surprise, and regret at the probable downfall of Mr. Morland's hopes. Jane and Bingley were both too convinced of Kitty's prior attachment to have the slightest expectation of his success, and Mr. Bennet was put in full possession of the facts relating to it, while they anxiously awaited the termination of the interview. It came, after some minutes, in a glimpse of Kitty emerging from the library and hurrying upstairs with streaming eyes, and while they all debated as to their next move, Mr. Morland was seen to cross the hall rapidly, looking nowhere but in front of him, and leave the house with precipitation. Jane herself, almost equally distressed, longed to go to Kitty, and Bingley questioned whether he ought not to hasten after the young man, while Mr. Bennet was disposed to think they would be better left to themselves for a time, and wished heartily that there were only just enough lovers in the world to go round, one to each young lady, and none over. In spite of this, Jane was not long in finding her way to her agitated sister and in showing her the tenderest consideration. Kitty's distress was very great, and also very sincere, for she had in truth been far from guessing that Mr. Morland took a more than common interest in her, and as is usual in such cases, the declaration of the young man's love woke in her feelings which she had not known to exist, of reciprocal kindness and even affection, which only did not share the nature and strength of his. Kitty could never have been hard-hearted to any lover, least of all to one whom she liked as much as she did James Morland, and his devotion touched her as deeply as the knowledge that she could not accept it wounded her. Between regrets for what had happened, pity for him and for herself, and the excited thoughts of William Price which the incident itself was bound to evoke, she was in a sad state, and Jane easily prevailed upon her to have her dinner upstairs and go early to bed. Not so easily could she check the tears which flowed continuously, and Jane, to occupy her mind and body, proposed that she should go to-morrow to Pemberley, instead of in three days' time, as arranged; she could very well be sent over, and the change would be beneficial; besides, she was not really leaving them, for there was the November visit to look forward to. Kitty caught at the suggestion, and declining the offices of the maid, began to busy herself about her packing, as Jane hoped she would do, while the latter descended to consult with her husband and father. Mr. Bennet and Bingley both approved, and Jane hastily wrote a few lines to Elizabeth to apprise her of what had happened, that she might be prepared for Kitty's arrival. The two gentlemen walked to the nearest post town to convey the letter; and after dinner the indefatigable Bingley again set out, this time to the Rectory, to perform the same kind office by James Morland as his wife had been doing by Kitty. The young man, though calmer, proved far more unreceptive of consolation. He had felt his rebuff acutely, for Kitty had been too much taken by surprise, too sure of herself, to make it otherwise than decisive, and even the modest hopes he had ventured to entertain, of being able to make more progress with her once the subject was opened between them, had been most thoroughly dispelled. Miss Bennet would not hear another word of it--begged him never to speak of it again--with tears reproached him for having spoilt everything, so that in addition to his own disappointment he had the pain of feeling that she thought less well of him than before. Bingley could deny this, but could not affirm anything else likely to give him comfort. It remained for Morland himself to declare, which he did in a firm though melancholy tone, that he regretted having distressed Miss Bennet, and would endeavour so to meet her in the future that she would not suffer through being reminded of it by any act of word of his. Bingley commended his courage, told him of Kitty's departure, and begged him to continue coming to Desborough just the same; and walked home with a full report of what had just passed. Jane shook her head over it, for, while sympathizing with both, she was more truly sorry for Mr. Morland, since for him she could see no immediate prospect of compensation, in spite of her father's assurances that a young clergyman was seldom allowed to remain inconsolable for more than six months, and if Kitty's other young man only did what was expected of him, her fate would be a certainty in half that time. Chapter XIII Needless to say, Kitty was heartily welcomed by Georgiana and Elizabeth, and given every opportunity to relieve her mind by descriptions of the tragical affair in all its aspects. Both regretted it deeply for Mr. Morland's sake, and Elizabeth privately did so for Kitty's sake, having such a good opinion of him as to make her wish that Kitty could have been persuaded out of her fancy for a young man, who, however excellent, was comparatively a stranger to them all, and whose intentions, at present, were extremely uncertain. She would have rejoiced if Kitty and Morland could have made each other happy, and had entertained a slight hope that her hint to Kitty might perhaps have helped matters, in directing her thoughts into another channel, but it seemed to be of no avail, and Georgiana gave her friend her warmest support, implying entire agreement with her point of view. "I could not help it, now, could I, Georgiana? You know yourself, Lizzie, that I never dreamt it. How could I do anything else but refuse him outright? I was amazingly grieved to do so, but you know very well, Georgiana, that if I could think of one man more than another, _he_ is not that one." She paused for assent, which Georgiana gave by a silent caress, and then continued: "It is all so unfortunate. It will never be as pleasant at Desborough now. Poor Mr. Morland! I wish I had not had to hurt him. He does want someone so badly in the Rectory." "Well, my dear, do not make yourself ill with these vain regrets," said Elizabeth. "It is, as you say, very unfortunate, but no one blames you. If you could not care for him, you could not do it, and someone else will have to inhabit that nice Rectory." Kitty looked as if this prospect were not very pleasing either, but Georgiana, seeing what Elizabeth wished, began to talk cheerfully of something else, and Kitty gradually joined in, though whenever the two girls were alone together she found it difficult to abstain long from referring to some branch of the subject. Georgiana's loyalty and patience never failed, but she wished for November almost as earnestly as Kitty herself, so that matters might reach some definite conclusion, for Kitty's restlessness had considerably increased since she had received James Morland's offer, and she was constantly nervous and excitable and not mistress of herself. On the day when the Bingleys and Mr. Bennet came over for the latter to take leave before returning to Longbourn, this was specially noticeable in her state of anxious flutter when drawing Jane aside to inquire after Mr. Morland. Mr. Bennet bade her farewell gravely and more affectionately than was his wont, telling her that he left her in good hands, and would only give her one piece of advice, namely, that second thoughts were sometimes best. Kitty blushed deeply and could not pretend to misunderstand him, but told Georgiana afterwards that it was impossible to have better second thoughts when Price was the first. With his elder daughter Mr. Bennet was rather more explicit, telling Elizabeth that he considered it was a great pity that so unobjectionable a young man should have been sent about his business. Elizabeth entirely agreed with him, and thought it would not be going too far to express Mr. Morland's praise in even warmer terms. "He will never set the Thames on fire, but there seems good stuff in him," was Mr. Bennet's reply. "When he proposed for her I had not taken much notice of him, except to think him a tolerably sensible fellow, and of course I had to readjust my ideas; but I soon began to see that he must not be judged by that alone. I have really liked him better, too, for his way of taking his refusal." "My dear father, it does not always indicate a want of sense to wish to be married," interposed Elizabeth. "Perhaps not, but Morland is much better off as he is than in marrying a girl he knows so little about. Kitty is flighty and expensive; she ought to stay longer with you and Jane, and not think of being married for the next ten years." Elizabeth smiled and said she thought that it was unnecessary, but that it would certainly be better for Kitty to marry a clergyman than an officer in the navy, who would be compelled to spend long periods away from home. "As to that, of course it is a complete absurdity, and I cannot think why you women, who are so fond of making matches, did not originate something less ridiculously unsuitable among yourselves." Elizabeth thought it wiser not to explain who actually had originated the idea, and said after a pause: "You were saying that you have liked Mr. Morland better of late?" "Yes, he has positively shown some sort of self-command and dignity. He turned up at the house a day or two afterwards, apparently _not_ bent on making us all uncomfortable by the sight of his misery, as most rejected lovers do. Besides, Bingley had had the foresight to produce some excellent port." "I hear from Jane," said Elizabeth, "that he does not avoid or seek the mention of Kitty, and she thinks he is trying to give up all hope of her." "Her absence for a few weeks will no doubt materially assist him," said Mr. Bennet. Kitty seized the opportunity offered by this visit to speak a private word to her brother-in-law with reference to the hero, as Bingley persisted in calling him. She herself had no news, for Mrs. Knightley's frequent letters reported him still at Portsmouth, and Bingley had heard nothing, but promised to write and renew his invitation as soon as October was fairly in. The same silence prevailed at Pemberley with regard to Miss Crawford. No announcement of her marriage had reached any of them, and Elizabeth had a half inclination to make some inquiries, but was dissuaded by Darcy, who said: "Whatever precisely has happened, Elizabeth, we can be sure of one thing, that Miss Crawford has allowed Fitzwilliam to understand that she does not wish him to approach her again. Under these circumstances it is better that you should have no news to give him." Elizabeth sighed as she agreed to the wisdom of this decision, but when shortly after her father's departure a letter was received from Colonel Fitzwilliam to say he would be returning at the end of the month, she could not help wishing that she was more fully informed of the present state of affairs. It would be a relief, even though a sad one, to Fitzwilliam's mind to know that Miss Crawford was actually married and he would be unselfish enough to wish to hear that she was happy. Nothing occurred, however, to enlighten them, and Fitzwilliam arrived on the appointed day, looking much as usual except for a few more lines about the eyes and an increased number of grey hairs. It was the first time he and Georgiana had been together at Pemberley since the rupture of their engagement, and both must have felt conscious of it, Georgiana in particular being prepared to be miserable for a time, from the belief that her cousin, instead of being cheered and invigorated as formerly by his return home, must be reminded at every turn of the failure of their experiment, the failure caused by her wretched weakness and incapacity. Worse still, her brother must be reminded of it, and there might be a repetition of his stern looks, his cold manner. She trembled at the thought, unaware that Darcy had long been persuaded of the wisdom of their parting, ever since events in Bath had shown him where his cousin's real affections were likely to be bestowed, and the only difference which Georgiana perceived after Fitzwilliam's arrival was in the particular kindness he showed her, and the complete renewal of the old comfortable relations amongst them all. When inquiries after the Hursts and Mrs. Annesley had been made, and Georgiana had mentioned the dinner-party and the persons who had been present, little more was said with reference to London; indeed, there was little more for either to say, for Georgiana dared not refer to the person who had chiefly occupied his mind there. Fitzwilliam talked of his book and of Ireland, inquired about the prospects of the shooting, showed interest in the minutest details of life in the neighbourhood, and in every way endeavoured to prove that he was exactly his old self; and only when walking with Elizabeth in the Park one morning did he betray how far that was from being the case. There was no doubt that his disappointment had coloured his whole life. He had allowed himself to think of Miss Crawford, and to build high upon his hopes, and to find himself again mistaken had been a blow which cut at the foundations of all his happiness. His gaiety was feigned, his pursuits had lost their zest, his friends no longer sufficed him: and as he said to Elizabeth, he had felt he had better adopt some country occupation and settle down to it, and there grow old as quietly and quickly as might be. Elizabeth's heart was wrung; the spectacle of her cousin's fine nature locked away, as it were, in a closed room, as a thing no one had any need for, was inexpressively painful to her, and nothing else would have caused her to venture upon a reopening of the subject which he himself had not approached. With the utmost gentleness she spoke a few words of commiseration, and then, still proceeding with extreme caution, she told him of the absence of news and her assumption that Miss Crawford's marriage with Sir Walter Elliot had been delayed. "I daresay it has," returned Colonel Fitzwilliam, with a kind of listlessness, striking with his stick at the head of some tall grasses which bordered their path. "There can be no doubt of it, I suppose?" pursued Elizabeth. "None at all, I should imagine," replied the Colonel. "Miss Crawford is not the kind of woman who would break her word, once the engagement had been announced." "No, of course not," said Elizabeth; "but I had expected that she or Mrs. Grant would have written to me, or even Mrs. Wentworth, as they must know I should be interested." Colonel Fitzwilliam could not immediately recall anything of Mrs. Wentworth beyond her name, and on being reminded that she was Sir Walter Elliot's daughter, presently replied: "I do not think it altogether surprising she should not have written to you. She probably cares little for the marriage, and still less for the one which it was anticipated would follow it--I mean Miss Elliot's to Mr. Crawford." This was a new idea to Elizabeth, and while she was pondering over it, and the inferences to be drawn from it, Colonel Fitzwilliam broke the silence by saying: "Perhaps we had better not speak of this anymore, Elizabeth. I know your great kindness of heart, but I feel it does no good, rather harm, to be reviving thoughts which I must in honour suppress as much as possible. I was anxious to know whether you had heard anything, and to ask you again, when you have the chance, to tell her that I wish her well; but now we have mentioned it, it would, I think, be best for my contemptibly weak character to put it as far away as possible." With tears in her eyes, Elizabeth assured him that through the tenderest regard for him, not through any fear of overtaxing his fortitude, she would respect his wishes, but could not help begging him to remain with them at Pemberley as heretofore, so as to give them an opportunity of showing him how completely their happiness was bound up with his, and of making use of any opportunity which might arise for them to be of service to him. Fitzwilliam gratefully promised to stay for the present, and said that his only engagement was to go to some friends in Leicestershire in November, for the hunting. Elizabeth was, nevertheless, not perfectly satisfied, and took occasion to ask Georgiana shortly afterwards whether it was from Mrs. Wentworth that she had heard confirmation of the fact that Sir Walter Elliot was engaged to Miss Crawford. "No," said Georgiana, in surprise, "it was from Mr. Price. Mrs. Wentworth never mentioned it. Mrs. Wentworth! Of course, I recollect now, she is Sir Walter Elliot's daughter; but at the time I never thought of it, for, you see, I did not know Sir Walter was the man." "Very true; I had also forgotten that you did not know," said Elizabeth, "and would never connect her with Miss Crawford. I have been thinking that I should like, for our own satisfaction, to know when the wedding is going to take place, and the simplest way will be to write and ask Mrs. Wentworth. I wish I had done so before, but I did not wish to be in haste, and I felt so convinced we should hear from others." Georgiana agreed that this was the best course to pursue, and Elizabeth, having told Darcy of her intention, to which, on account of her promise to Fitzwilliam, he could no longer object, wrote and dispatched her letter. The season was now drawing on, and with the shortening days the family at Pemberley found themselves thrown more upon the resources of their own immediate circle for amusement. The weather was consistently bad, and though this did not prevent the gentlemen from covering great distances for the purpose of slaughtering their game, the ladies were of necessity restricted to a smaller area, and their walks seldom extended beyond the park, except when their inclinations led them along a tolerably clean road towards the Rectory. This happened pretty frequently, for both Elizabeth and Georgiana were extremely attached to Elinor Ferrars. Their friendship was of a particularly sincere and well-balanced kind, and was not marred by their constant intercourse, as each knew how to maintain that degree of reserve which prevents indiscriminate confidences and so greatly strengthens mutual respect. Kitty was the one who perhaps found the society of the Rectory the least congenial; but it is to be feared that she was extremely difficult to please that autumn, and in the impatience with which she waited for one young man she might have sometimes regretted the solace which the company of the other would have afforded. In such a small neighbourhood everyone was of some value, and they all heard with interest of the approaching visit to Mr. and Mrs. Edward Ferrars of an old friend, Mrs. Jennings, who was coming early in October to spend six or seven weeks with them. Mrs. Ferrars was in delicate health, and Mrs. Jennings, besides having an almost maternal affection for her, was well qualified to be of service as sick nurse and enlivening companion, so that Elinor's warning to Mrs. Darcy that her friend, although the kindest of women, had not always the most refined manner of expressing herself, did not prevent them from being anxious to make her acquaintance. Mrs. Jennings performed in safety the long journey from her son-in-law's house in Devonshire, and arrived in her customary high spirits. It was her first visit to the Ferrars's since their removal from Delaford, and she had to examine the house, to criticize minutely the arrangement of their furniture, and to compare their surroundings, social and material, with what they had been in their old home. Mrs. Darcy paid an early call on the new arrival, and the morning after her visit Georgiana and Kitty also found their way to the Rectory. Mrs. Jennings's exuberance, her loud laugh and general noisy cheerfulness did not recommend her strongly to either of the girls in the first few minutes, and Georgiana was glad to move to a chair by Mrs. Ferrars, to enter into a quieter conversation with her; but before long, judging by the sounds which reached them, Mrs. Jennings and Kitty had found some subjects in common. This perhaps was not so surprising, as Mrs. Jennings was exceedingly fond of the society of all young girls, and cared not at all whether they returned her partiality or no. In this case she had begun, with the utmost frankness, to discourse on the subject nearest her heart at the moment, namely, her dear Mrs. Ferrars, and was relating all the circumstances under which their friendship had been formed, the Dashwood girls' visit to London, the disagreeable conduct of Mrs. Ferrars's mother and sister, and the absurd misunderstanding as to Colonel Brandon's attentions, the whole being punctuated by frequent bursts of laughter; and she would doubtless have gone on to describe in detail the events attending the engagement of her two young friends, had not Elinor mildly but decisively interposed. "Dear madam," she said, breaking off in the midst of a remark to Georgiana, "I am sure Miss Bennet does not wish to hear the history of such a very dull old couple as ourselves. You are so kind as to be more interested in it than most people could be." "Lord, my dear," cried Mrs. Jennings, "why did you not stop me? I declare I am very sorry if I said a word I ought not. I know my tongue does run on, and Miss Bennet must excuse me, for it was only for the pleasure of talking to you and Mr. Edward. And as for its being dull, I don't believe there is anybody who does not like to hear of other people's love-affairs; it makes one think of one's own, now, does it not, Miss Bennet?" Kitty blushed and looked embarrassed, and Mrs. Jennings laughed heartily, saying: "It is just as I thought; Miss Bennet could tell us a pretty tale too, I'll be bound, if only she would." "Miss Bennet can tell us some wonderful tales of the West Indies," said Elinor, endeavouring to turn Mrs. Jennings's mind from her favourite topic; "she has a sister there, who writes to her constantly, does she not, Miss Bennet? Those tropical places must be very beautiful. Do you remember how Colonel Brandon used to talk to us of his travels in the East, ma'am?" "That I do, my dear," replied Mrs. Jennings emphatically, "and I never want to hear again of such fearful things as he had seen--swamps, and great things like alligators ... and insects that did everything insects ought not. I hope you will tell your sister not to get amongst them, Miss Bennet." Kitty replied that her sister had written chiefly of the beautiful balls and illuminations which they frequently had, and lately of some shocks of earthquake which had frightened them terribly. Mrs. Jennings exclaimed at this, and declared that the finest ball in the world would not compensate her if there was the fear that the ground would open under her feet while she was dancing. "But I know young people do not care what risks they run," said she. "There was Sir John Middleton three weeks ago wanted to have a moonlight picnic; my daughter Middleton was all against it, for the weather was so threatening, but have it he would, and the consequence was that they all ate their supper, or as much of it as they could, in a roaring thunderstorm. I can tell you they were in a pretty pickle when they got back! All the girls so cross, and the young men not a dry thread among them through trying to protect the ladies. But Sir John, he made no bones about it at all, but said they would go again another night, when for sure it would be fine." Her hearers could not help laughing at such a picture of undaunted pleasure-seeking, and Elinor inquired if the second party had taken place. "Oh, Lord, yes; they all came, but their fathers and mothers made them promise not to stir beyond the grounds. I heard, at any rate, they turned it into a dance instead. But, as I say, young people don't care for a drop of rain. I am sure, when I was young, I would as lief have had it as not, for there was no hardship in sheltering under a hedge, with the right young man to hold an umbrella over you, do you think so, Miss Bennet?" "Still, I fancy that most people, old or young, prefer outdoor expeditions to be in dry weather," said Elinor. "That reminds me that I must show you what terrible havoc last night's rain and wind worked in my flower borders. When I looked out first, I was quite in despair, thinking I should not have another nosegay all the autumn. There is a gleam of sunshine now, so shall we take a turn in the garden?" Georgiana gladly walked out with her, and Mrs. Jennings and Kitty followed at a distance, the former questioning her young companion about her sister abroad and hearing laments over the gaieties which that sister had been able to offer her, but which she had never been able to accept. Mrs. Jennings's hearty comments of "Well, there now, that is a shame!" and "A regiment too! You would have broken all their hearts, I vow!" and other such remarks pleased Kitty, while she knew in her heart they ought not to do so. The two girls shortly after took their leave, and while walking homeward naturally compared notes upon the stranger whom they had just met. Georgiana expressed herself guardedly, not wishing to condemn any friend of Mrs. Ferrars's, although feeling as if that friend could not be in any way an accession to their party; but Kitty's first unfavorable impression seemed to have been obliterated, and she declared frankly that she liked Mrs. Jennings and thought she was very merry and good-natured. Georgiana could not quite agree with this, for she found Mrs. Jennings's style of raillery not at all to her mind, but admitted that she might be pleasanter when one got to know her well. At dinner these opinions were canvassed, and Georgiana found, as she expected, that her own were largely shared by Elizabeth, who, however, was amused at her severity, and told her that she would often meet people who, with more refined manners, were yet at heart far more vulgar than Mrs. Jennings and had not a tenth part of her redeeming qualities. "I do not think I want to meet them, then," said Georgiana. "But I am sure you are right, Elizabeth, and I daresay she will be a great comfort to Mrs. Ferrars." When the ladies were together after dinner, Kitty, whose gravity and preoccupation had been noticeable for the last half-hour, after wandering several times round the room, stationed herself near to her sister and began, in a solemn tone: "Lizzie, I want to ask you something very important." Elizabeth, smiling, professed herself all attention, and Kitty continued: "You know you have never kept your promise, that you made before you were married, of having a ball here, for each winter something has happened to prevent it." "Quite true, Kitty; so a ball is in your mind; and what made you think of it just now?" "I never come here without thinking of it, but I had somehow not expected to be staying long enough this year, as I imagined I should go home directly after the shooting party. But Mrs. Jennings said to-day she supposed you sometimes had balls in this lovely house, and she was sure Georgiana and I were fond of dancing." "And Mrs. Jennings is quite right about the latter statement, is she not?" Georgiana looked up with a smile, to assent to her share of the question, and Kitty clasped her hands rapturously, exclaiming: "Oh, Lizzie, you know how much I love a ball! It would be so kind of you and Darcy! Everyone would enjoy it!" "I am very

wishes

How many times the word 'wishes' appears in the text?

will do it, but life is so uncertain that I think for the present I had better refrain. Have you ascertained whether Kitty can cook, make her own gowns, and trim hats? I understand it is a great promoter of married happiness when the wife can do so, and I am not sure whether all my girls have turned their education to such good account." Mr. Morland only replied by asking if he might be allowed to see Miss Bennet at once, and her father left the room, foreseeing that, whatever happened, he should not have one more quiet hour during that day. His anticipations were soon in the way to be fulfilled, for on finding his daughters, and sending Kitty to the library, he had to give Jane an outline of what had just passed, then repeat it to Bingley, who joined them, and listened to their exclamations of surprise, and regret at the probable downfall of Mr. Morland's hopes. Jane and Bingley were both too convinced of Kitty's prior attachment to have the slightest expectation of his success, and Mr. Bennet was put in full possession of the facts relating to it, while they anxiously awaited the termination of the interview. It came, after some minutes, in a glimpse of Kitty emerging from the library and hurrying upstairs with streaming eyes, and while they all debated as to their next move, Mr. Morland was seen to cross the hall rapidly, looking nowhere but in front of him, and leave the house with precipitation. Jane herself, almost equally distressed, longed to go to Kitty, and Bingley questioned whether he ought not to hasten after the young man, while Mr. Bennet was disposed to think they would be better left to themselves for a time, and wished heartily that there were only just enough lovers in the world to go round, one to each young lady, and none over. In spite of this, Jane was not long in finding her way to her agitated sister and in showing her the tenderest consideration. Kitty's distress was very great, and also very sincere, for she had in truth been far from guessing that Mr. Morland took a more than common interest in her, and as is usual in such cases, the declaration of the young man's love woke in her feelings which she had not known to exist, of reciprocal kindness and even affection, which only did not share the nature and strength of his. Kitty could never have been hard-hearted to any lover, least of all to one whom she liked as much as she did James Morland, and his devotion touched her as deeply as the knowledge that she could not accept it wounded her. Between regrets for what had happened, pity for him and for herself, and the excited thoughts of William Price which the incident itself was bound to evoke, she was in a sad state, and Jane easily prevailed upon her to have her dinner upstairs and go early to bed. Not so easily could she check the tears which flowed continuously, and Jane, to occupy her mind and body, proposed that she should go to-morrow to Pemberley, instead of in three days' time, as arranged; she could very well be sent over, and the change would be beneficial; besides, she was not really leaving them, for there was the November visit to look forward to. Kitty caught at the suggestion, and declining the offices of the maid, began to busy herself about her packing, as Jane hoped she would do, while the latter descended to consult with her husband and father. Mr. Bennet and Bingley both approved, and Jane hastily wrote a few lines to Elizabeth to apprise her of what had happened, that she might be prepared for Kitty's arrival. The two gentlemen walked to the nearest post town to convey the letter; and after dinner the indefatigable Bingley again set out, this time to the Rectory, to perform the same kind office by James Morland as his wife had been doing by Kitty. The young man, though calmer, proved far more unreceptive of consolation. He had felt his rebuff acutely, for Kitty had been too much taken by surprise, too sure of herself, to make it otherwise than decisive, and even the modest hopes he had ventured to entertain, of being able to make more progress with her once the subject was opened between them, had been most thoroughly dispelled. Miss Bennet would not hear another word of it--begged him never to speak of it again--with tears reproached him for having spoilt everything, so that in addition to his own disappointment he had the pain of feeling that she thought less well of him than before. Bingley could deny this, but could not affirm anything else likely to give him comfort. It remained for Morland himself to declare, which he did in a firm though melancholy tone, that he regretted having distressed Miss Bennet, and would endeavour so to meet her in the future that she would not suffer through being reminded of it by any act of word of his. Bingley commended his courage, told him of Kitty's departure, and begged him to continue coming to Desborough just the same; and walked home with a full report of what had just passed. Jane shook her head over it, for, while sympathizing with both, she was more truly sorry for Mr. Morland, since for him she could see no immediate prospect of compensation, in spite of her father's assurances that a young clergyman was seldom allowed to remain inconsolable for more than six months, and if Kitty's other young man only did what was expected of him, her fate would be a certainty in half that time. Chapter XIII Needless to say, Kitty was heartily welcomed by Georgiana and Elizabeth, and given every opportunity to relieve her mind by descriptions of the tragical affair in all its aspects. Both regretted it deeply for Mr. Morland's sake, and Elizabeth privately did so for Kitty's sake, having such a good opinion of him as to make her wish that Kitty could have been persuaded out of her fancy for a young man, who, however excellent, was comparatively a stranger to them all, and whose intentions, at present, were extremely uncertain. She would have rejoiced if Kitty and Morland could have made each other happy, and had entertained a slight hope that her hint to Kitty might perhaps have helped matters, in directing her thoughts into another channel, but it seemed to be of no avail, and Georgiana gave her friend her warmest support, implying entire agreement with her point of view. "I could not help it, now, could I, Georgiana? You know yourself, Lizzie, that I never dreamt it. How could I do anything else but refuse him outright? I was amazingly grieved to do so, but you know very well, Georgiana, that if I could think of one man more than another, _he_ is not that one." She paused for assent, which Georgiana gave by a silent caress, and then continued: "It is all so unfortunate. It will never be as pleasant at Desborough now. Poor Mr. Morland! I wish I had not had to hurt him. He does want someone so badly in the Rectory." "Well, my dear, do not make yourself ill with these vain regrets," said Elizabeth. "It is, as you say, very unfortunate, but no one blames you. If you could not care for him, you could not do it, and someone else will have to inhabit that nice Rectory." Kitty looked as if this prospect were not very pleasing either, but Georgiana, seeing what Elizabeth wished, began to talk cheerfully of something else, and Kitty gradually joined in, though whenever the two girls were alone together she found it difficult to abstain long from referring to some branch of the subject. Georgiana's loyalty and patience never failed, but she wished for November almost as earnestly as Kitty herself, so that matters might reach some definite conclusion, for Kitty's restlessness had considerably increased since she had received James Morland's offer, and she was constantly nervous and excitable and not mistress of herself. On the day when the Bingleys and Mr. Bennet came over for the latter to take leave before returning to Longbourn, this was specially noticeable in her state of anxious flutter when drawing Jane aside to inquire after Mr. Morland. Mr. Bennet bade her farewell gravely and more affectionately than was his wont, telling her that he left her in good hands, and would only give her one piece of advice, namely, that second thoughts were sometimes best. Kitty blushed deeply and could not pretend to misunderstand him, but told Georgiana afterwards that it was impossible to have better second thoughts when Price was the first. With his elder daughter Mr. Bennet was rather more explicit, telling Elizabeth that he considered it was a great pity that so unobjectionable a young man should have been sent about his business. Elizabeth entirely agreed with him, and thought it would not be going too far to express Mr. Morland's praise in even warmer terms. "He will never set the Thames on fire, but there seems good stuff in him," was Mr. Bennet's reply. "When he proposed for her I had not taken much notice of him, except to think him a tolerably sensible fellow, and of course I had to readjust my ideas; but I soon began to see that he must not be judged by that alone. I have really liked him better, too, for his way of taking his refusal." "My dear father, it does not always indicate a want of sense to wish to be married," interposed Elizabeth. "Perhaps not, but Morland is much better off as he is than in marrying a girl he knows so little about. Kitty is flighty and expensive; she ought to stay longer with you and Jane, and not think of being married for the next ten years." Elizabeth smiled and said she thought that it was unnecessary, but that it would certainly be better for Kitty to marry a clergyman than an officer in the navy, who would be compelled to spend long periods away from home. "As to that, of course it is a complete absurdity, and I cannot think why you women, who are so fond of making matches, did not originate something less ridiculously unsuitable among yourselves." Elizabeth thought it wiser not to explain who actually had originated the idea, and said after a pause: "You were saying that you have liked Mr. Morland better of late?" "Yes, he has positively shown some sort of self-command and dignity. He turned up at the house a day or two afterwards, apparently _not_ bent on making us all uncomfortable by the sight of his misery, as most rejected lovers do. Besides, Bingley had had the foresight to produce some excellent port." "I hear from Jane," said Elizabeth, "that he does not avoid or seek the mention of Kitty, and she thinks he is trying to give up all hope of her." "Her absence for a few weeks will no doubt materially assist him," said Mr. Bennet. Kitty seized the opportunity offered by this visit to speak a private word to her brother-in-law with reference to the hero, as Bingley persisted in calling him. She herself had no news, for Mrs. Knightley's frequent letters reported him still at Portsmouth, and Bingley had heard nothing, but promised to write and renew his invitation as soon as October was fairly in. The same silence prevailed at Pemberley with regard to Miss Crawford. No announcement of her marriage had reached any of them, and Elizabeth had a half inclination to make some inquiries, but was dissuaded by Darcy, who said: "Whatever precisely has happened, Elizabeth, we can be sure of one thing, that Miss Crawford has allowed Fitzwilliam to understand that she does not wish him to approach her again. Under these circumstances it is better that you should have no news to give him." Elizabeth sighed as she agreed to the wisdom of this decision, but when shortly after her father's departure a letter was received from Colonel Fitzwilliam to say he would be returning at the end of the month, she could not help wishing that she was more fully informed of the present state of affairs. It would be a relief, even though a sad one, to Fitzwilliam's mind to know that Miss Crawford was actually married and he would be unselfish enough to wish to hear that she was happy. Nothing occurred, however, to enlighten them, and Fitzwilliam arrived on the appointed day, looking much as usual except for a few more lines about the eyes and an increased number of grey hairs. It was the first time he and Georgiana had been together at Pemberley since the rupture of their engagement, and both must have felt conscious of it, Georgiana in particular being prepared to be miserable for a time, from the belief that her cousin, instead of being cheered and invigorated as formerly by his return home, must be reminded at every turn of the failure of their experiment, the failure caused by her wretched weakness and incapacity. Worse still, her brother must be reminded of it, and there might be a repetition of his stern looks, his cold manner. She trembled at the thought, unaware that Darcy had long been persuaded of the wisdom of their parting, ever since events in Bath had shown him where his cousin's real affections were likely to be bestowed, and the only difference which Georgiana perceived after Fitzwilliam's arrival was in the particular kindness he showed her, and the complete renewal of the old comfortable relations amongst them all. When inquiries after the Hursts and Mrs. Annesley had been made, and Georgiana had mentioned the dinner-party and the persons who had been present, little more was said with reference to London; indeed, there was little more for either to say, for Georgiana dared not refer to the person who had chiefly occupied his mind there. Fitzwilliam talked of his book and of Ireland, inquired about the prospects of the shooting, showed interest in the minutest details of life in the neighbourhood, and in every way endeavoured to prove that he was exactly his old self; and only when walking with Elizabeth in the Park one morning did he betray how far that was from being the case. There was no doubt that his disappointment had coloured his whole life. He had allowed himself to think of Miss Crawford, and to build high upon his hopes, and to find himself again mistaken had been a blow which cut at the foundations of all his happiness. His gaiety was feigned, his pursuits had lost their zest, his friends no longer sufficed him: and as he said to Elizabeth, he had felt he had better adopt some country occupation and settle down to it, and there grow old as quietly and quickly as might be. Elizabeth's heart was wrung; the spectacle of her cousin's fine nature locked away, as it were, in a closed room, as a thing no one had any need for, was inexpressively painful to her, and nothing else would have caused her to venture upon a reopening of the subject which he himself had not approached. With the utmost gentleness she spoke a few words of commiseration, and then, still proceeding with extreme caution, she told him of the absence of news and her assumption that Miss Crawford's marriage with Sir Walter Elliot had been delayed. "I daresay it has," returned Colonel Fitzwilliam, with a kind of listlessness, striking with his stick at the head of some tall grasses which bordered their path. "There can be no doubt of it, I suppose?" pursued Elizabeth. "None at all, I should imagine," replied the Colonel. "Miss Crawford is not the kind of woman who would break her word, once the engagement had been announced." "No, of course not," said Elizabeth; "but I had expected that she or Mrs. Grant would have written to me, or even Mrs. Wentworth, as they must know I should be interested." Colonel Fitzwilliam could not immediately recall anything of Mrs. Wentworth beyond her name, and on being reminded that she was Sir Walter Elliot's daughter, presently replied: "I do not think it altogether surprising she should not have written to you. She probably cares little for the marriage, and still less for the one which it was anticipated would follow it--I mean Miss Elliot's to Mr. Crawford." This was a new idea to Elizabeth, and while she was pondering over it, and the inferences to be drawn from it, Colonel Fitzwilliam broke the silence by saying: "Perhaps we had better not speak of this anymore, Elizabeth. I know your great kindness of heart, but I feel it does no good, rather harm, to be reviving thoughts which I must in honour suppress as much as possible. I was anxious to know whether you had heard anything, and to ask you again, when you have the chance, to tell her that I wish her well; but now we have mentioned it, it would, I think, be best for my contemptibly weak character to put it as far away as possible." With tears in her eyes, Elizabeth assured him that through the tenderest regard for him, not through any fear of overtaxing his fortitude, she would respect his wishes, but could not help begging him to remain with them at Pemberley as heretofore, so as to give them an opportunity of showing him how completely their happiness was bound up with his, and of making use of any opportunity which might arise for them to be of service to him. Fitzwilliam gratefully promised to stay for the present, and said that his only engagement was to go to some friends in Leicestershire in November, for the hunting. Elizabeth was, nevertheless, not perfectly satisfied, and took occasion to ask Georgiana shortly afterwards whether it was from Mrs. Wentworth that she had heard confirmation of the fact that Sir Walter Elliot was engaged to Miss Crawford. "No," said Georgiana, in surprise, "it was from Mr. Price. Mrs. Wentworth never mentioned it. Mrs. Wentworth! Of course, I recollect now, she is Sir Walter Elliot's daughter; but at the time I never thought of it, for, you see, I did not know Sir Walter was the man." "Very true; I had also forgotten that you did not know," said Elizabeth, "and would never connect her with Miss Crawford. I have been thinking that I should like, for our own satisfaction, to know when the wedding is going to take place, and the simplest way will be to write and ask Mrs. Wentworth. I wish I had done so before, but I did not wish to be in haste, and I felt so convinced we should hear from others." Georgiana agreed that this was the best course to pursue, and Elizabeth, having told Darcy of her intention, to which, on account of her promise to Fitzwilliam, he could no longer object, wrote and dispatched her letter. The season was now drawing on, and with the shortening days the family at Pemberley found themselves thrown more upon the resources of their own immediate circle for amusement. The weather was consistently bad, and though this did not prevent the gentlemen from covering great distances for the purpose of slaughtering their game, the ladies were of necessity restricted to a smaller area, and their walks seldom extended beyond the park, except when their inclinations led them along a tolerably clean road towards the Rectory. This happened pretty frequently, for both Elizabeth and Georgiana were extremely attached to Elinor Ferrars. Their friendship was of a particularly sincere and well-balanced kind, and was not marred by their constant intercourse, as each knew how to maintain that degree of reserve which prevents indiscriminate confidences and so greatly strengthens mutual respect. Kitty was the one who perhaps found the society of the Rectory the least congenial; but it is to be feared that she was extremely difficult to please that autumn, and in the impatience with which she waited for one young man she might have sometimes regretted the solace which the company of the other would have afforded. In such a small neighbourhood everyone was of some value, and they all heard with interest of the approaching visit to Mr. and Mrs. Edward Ferrars of an old friend, Mrs. Jennings, who was coming early in October to spend six or seven weeks with them. Mrs. Ferrars was in delicate health, and Mrs. Jennings, besides having an almost maternal affection for her, was well qualified to be of service as sick nurse and enlivening companion, so that Elinor's warning to Mrs. Darcy that her friend, although the kindest of women, had not always the most refined manner of expressing herself, did not prevent them from being anxious to make her acquaintance. Mrs. Jennings performed in safety the long journey from her son-in-law's house in Devonshire, and arrived in her customary high spirits. It was her first visit to the Ferrars's since their removal from Delaford, and she had to examine the house, to criticize minutely the arrangement of their furniture, and to compare their surroundings, social and material, with what they had been in their old home. Mrs. Darcy paid an early call on the new arrival, and the morning after her visit Georgiana and Kitty also found their way to the Rectory. Mrs. Jennings's exuberance, her loud laugh and general noisy cheerfulness did not recommend her strongly to either of the girls in the first few minutes, and Georgiana was glad to move to a chair by Mrs. Ferrars, to enter into a quieter conversation with her; but before long, judging by the sounds which reached them, Mrs. Jennings and Kitty had found some subjects in common. This perhaps was not so surprising, as Mrs. Jennings was exceedingly fond of the society of all young girls, and cared not at all whether they returned her partiality or no. In this case she had begun, with the utmost frankness, to discourse on the subject nearest her heart at the moment, namely, her dear Mrs. Ferrars, and was relating all the circumstances under which their friendship had been formed, the Dashwood girls' visit to London, the disagreeable conduct of Mrs. Ferrars's mother and sister, and the absurd misunderstanding as to Colonel Brandon's attentions, the whole being punctuated by frequent bursts of laughter; and she would doubtless have gone on to describe in detail the events attending the engagement of her two young friends, had not Elinor mildly but decisively interposed. "Dear madam," she said, breaking off in the midst of a remark to Georgiana, "I am sure Miss Bennet does not wish to hear the history of such a very dull old couple as ourselves. You are so kind as to be more interested in it than most people could be." "Lord, my dear," cried Mrs. Jennings, "why did you not stop me? I declare I am very sorry if I said a word I ought not. I know my tongue does run on, and Miss Bennet must excuse me, for it was only for the pleasure of talking to you and Mr. Edward. And as for its being dull, I don't believe there is anybody who does not like to hear of other people's love-affairs; it makes one think of one's own, now, does it not, Miss Bennet?" Kitty blushed and looked embarrassed, and Mrs. Jennings laughed heartily, saying: "It is just as I thought; Miss Bennet could tell us a pretty tale too, I'll be bound, if only she would." "Miss Bennet can tell us some wonderful tales of the West Indies," said Elinor, endeavouring to turn Mrs. Jennings's mind from her favourite topic; "she has a sister there, who writes to her constantly, does she not, Miss Bennet? Those tropical places must be very beautiful. Do you remember how Colonel Brandon used to talk to us of his travels in the East, ma'am?" "That I do, my dear," replied Mrs. Jennings emphatically, "and I never want to hear again of such fearful things as he had seen--swamps, and great things like alligators ... and insects that did everything insects ought not. I hope you will tell your sister not to get amongst them, Miss Bennet." Kitty replied that her sister had written chiefly of the beautiful balls and illuminations which they frequently had, and lately of some shocks of earthquake which had frightened them terribly. Mrs. Jennings exclaimed at this, and declared that the finest ball in the world would not compensate her if there was the fear that the ground would open under her feet while she was dancing. "But I know young people do not care what risks they run," said she. "There was Sir John Middleton three weeks ago wanted to have a moonlight picnic; my daughter Middleton was all against it, for the weather was so threatening, but have it he would, and the consequence was that they all ate their supper, or as much of it as they could, in a roaring thunderstorm. I can tell you they were in a pretty pickle when they got back! All the girls so cross, and the young men not a dry thread among them through trying to protect the ladies. But Sir John, he made no bones about it at all, but said they would go again another night, when for sure it would be fine." Her hearers could not help laughing at such a picture of undaunted pleasure-seeking, and Elinor inquired if the second party had taken place. "Oh, Lord, yes; they all came, but their fathers and mothers made them promise not to stir beyond the grounds. I heard, at any rate, they turned it into a dance instead. But, as I say, young people don't care for a drop of rain. I am sure, when I was young, I would as lief have had it as not, for there was no hardship in sheltering under a hedge, with the right young man to hold an umbrella over you, do you think so, Miss Bennet?" "Still, I fancy that most people, old or young, prefer outdoor expeditions to be in dry weather," said Elinor. "That reminds me that I must show you what terrible havoc last night's rain and wind worked in my flower borders. When I looked out first, I was quite in despair, thinking I should not have another nosegay all the autumn. There is a gleam of sunshine now, so shall we take a turn in the garden?" Georgiana gladly walked out with her, and Mrs. Jennings and Kitty followed at a distance, the former questioning her young companion about her sister abroad and hearing laments over the gaieties which that sister had been able to offer her, but which she had never been able to accept. Mrs. Jennings's hearty comments of "Well, there now, that is a shame!" and "A regiment too! You would have broken all their hearts, I vow!" and other such remarks pleased Kitty, while she knew in her heart they ought not to do so. The two girls shortly after took their leave, and while walking homeward naturally compared notes upon the stranger whom they had just met. Georgiana expressed herself guardedly, not wishing to condemn any friend of Mrs. Ferrars's, although feeling as if that friend could not be in any way an accession to their party; but Kitty's first unfavorable impression seemed to have been obliterated, and she declared frankly that she liked Mrs. Jennings and thought she was very merry and good-natured. Georgiana could not quite agree with this, for she found Mrs. Jennings's style of raillery not at all to her mind, but admitted that she might be pleasanter when one got to know her well. At dinner these opinions were canvassed, and Georgiana found, as she expected, that her own were largely shared by Elizabeth, who, however, was amused at her severity, and told her that she would often meet people who, with more refined manners, were yet at heart far more vulgar than Mrs. Jennings and had not a tenth part of her redeeming qualities. "I do not think I want to meet them, then," said Georgiana. "But I am sure you are right, Elizabeth, and I daresay she will be a great comfort to Mrs. Ferrars." When the ladies were together after dinner, Kitty, whose gravity and preoccupation had been noticeable for the last half-hour, after wandering several times round the room, stationed herself near to her sister and began, in a solemn tone: "Lizzie, I want to ask you something very important." Elizabeth, smiling, professed herself all attention, and Kitty continued: "You know you have never kept your promise, that you made before you were married, of having a ball here, for each winter something has happened to prevent it." "Quite true, Kitty; so a ball is in your mind; and what made you think of it just now?" "I never come here without thinking of it, but I had somehow not expected to be staying long enough this year, as I imagined I should go home directly after the shooting party. But Mrs. Jennings said to-day she supposed you sometimes had balls in this lovely house, and she was sure Georgiana and I were fond of dancing." "And Mrs. Jennings is quite right about the latter statement, is she not?" Georgiana looked up with a smile, to assent to her share of the question, and Kitty clasped her hands rapturously, exclaiming: "Oh, Lizzie, you know how much I love a ball! It would be so kind of you and Darcy! Everyone would enjoy it!" "I am very

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will do it, but life is so uncertain that I think for the present I had better refrain. Have you ascertained whether Kitty can cook, make her own gowns, and trim hats? I understand it is a great promoter of married happiness when the wife can do so, and I am not sure whether all my girls have turned their education to such good account." Mr. Morland only replied by asking if he might be allowed to see Miss Bennet at once, and her father left the room, foreseeing that, whatever happened, he should not have one more quiet hour during that day. His anticipations were soon in the way to be fulfilled, for on finding his daughters, and sending Kitty to the library, he had to give Jane an outline of what had just passed, then repeat it to Bingley, who joined them, and listened to their exclamations of surprise, and regret at the probable downfall of Mr. Morland's hopes. Jane and Bingley were both too convinced of Kitty's prior attachment to have the slightest expectation of his success, and Mr. Bennet was put in full possession of the facts relating to it, while they anxiously awaited the termination of the interview. It came, after some minutes, in a glimpse of Kitty emerging from the library and hurrying upstairs with streaming eyes, and while they all debated as to their next move, Mr. Morland was seen to cross the hall rapidly, looking nowhere but in front of him, and leave the house with precipitation. Jane herself, almost equally distressed, longed to go to Kitty, and Bingley questioned whether he ought not to hasten after the young man, while Mr. Bennet was disposed to think they would be better left to themselves for a time, and wished heartily that there were only just enough lovers in the world to go round, one to each young lady, and none over. In spite of this, Jane was not long in finding her way to her agitated sister and in showing her the tenderest consideration. Kitty's distress was very great, and also very sincere, for she had in truth been far from guessing that Mr. Morland took a more than common interest in her, and as is usual in such cases, the declaration of the young man's love woke in her feelings which she had not known to exist, of reciprocal kindness and even affection, which only did not share the nature and strength of his. Kitty could never have been hard-hearted to any lover, least of all to one whom she liked as much as she did James Morland, and his devotion touched her as deeply as the knowledge that she could not accept it wounded her. Between regrets for what had happened, pity for him and for herself, and the excited thoughts of William Price which the incident itself was bound to evoke, she was in a sad state, and Jane easily prevailed upon her to have her dinner upstairs and go early to bed. Not so easily could she check the tears which flowed continuously, and Jane, to occupy her mind and body, proposed that she should go to-morrow to Pemberley, instead of in three days' time, as arranged; she could very well be sent over, and the change would be beneficial; besides, she was not really leaving them, for there was the November visit to look forward to. Kitty caught at the suggestion, and declining the offices of the maid, began to busy herself about her packing, as Jane hoped she would do, while the latter descended to consult with her husband and father. Mr. Bennet and Bingley both approved, and Jane hastily wrote a few lines to Elizabeth to apprise her of what had happened, that she might be prepared for Kitty's arrival. The two gentlemen walked to the nearest post town to convey the letter; and after dinner the indefatigable Bingley again set out, this time to the Rectory, to perform the same kind office by James Morland as his wife had been doing by Kitty. The young man, though calmer, proved far more unreceptive of consolation. He had felt his rebuff acutely, for Kitty had been too much taken by surprise, too sure of herself, to make it otherwise than decisive, and even the modest hopes he had ventured to entertain, of being able to make more progress with her once the subject was opened between them, had been most thoroughly dispelled. Miss Bennet would not hear another word of it--begged him never to speak of it again--with tears reproached him for having spoilt everything, so that in addition to his own disappointment he had the pain of feeling that she thought less well of him than before. Bingley could deny this, but could not affirm anything else likely to give him comfort. It remained for Morland himself to declare, which he did in a firm though melancholy tone, that he regretted having distressed Miss Bennet, and would endeavour so to meet her in the future that she would not suffer through being reminded of it by any act of word of his. Bingley commended his courage, told him of Kitty's departure, and begged him to continue coming to Desborough just the same; and walked home with a full report of what had just passed. Jane shook her head over it, for, while sympathizing with both, she was more truly sorry for Mr. Morland, since for him she could see no immediate prospect of compensation, in spite of her father's assurances that a young clergyman was seldom allowed to remain inconsolable for more than six months, and if Kitty's other young man only did what was expected of him, her fate would be a certainty in half that time. Chapter XIII Needless to say, Kitty was heartily welcomed by Georgiana and Elizabeth, and given every opportunity to relieve her mind by descriptions of the tragical affair in all its aspects. Both regretted it deeply for Mr. Morland's sake, and Elizabeth privately did so for Kitty's sake, having such a good opinion of him as to make her wish that Kitty could have been persuaded out of her fancy for a young man, who, however excellent, was comparatively a stranger to them all, and whose intentions, at present, were extremely uncertain. She would have rejoiced if Kitty and Morland could have made each other happy, and had entertained a slight hope that her hint to Kitty might perhaps have helped matters, in directing her thoughts into another channel, but it seemed to be of no avail, and Georgiana gave her friend her warmest support, implying entire agreement with her point of view. "I could not help it, now, could I, Georgiana? You know yourself, Lizzie, that I never dreamt it. How could I do anything else but refuse him outright? I was amazingly grieved to do so, but you know very well, Georgiana, that if I could think of one man more than another, _he_ is not that one." She paused for assent, which Georgiana gave by a silent caress, and then continued: "It is all so unfortunate. It will never be as pleasant at Desborough now. Poor Mr. Morland! I wish I had not had to hurt him. He does want someone so badly in the Rectory." "Well, my dear, do not make yourself ill with these vain regrets," said Elizabeth. "It is, as you say, very unfortunate, but no one blames you. If you could not care for him, you could not do it, and someone else will have to inhabit that nice Rectory." Kitty looked as if this prospect were not very pleasing either, but Georgiana, seeing what Elizabeth wished, began to talk cheerfully of something else, and Kitty gradually joined in, though whenever the two girls were alone together she found it difficult to abstain long from referring to some branch of the subject. Georgiana's loyalty and patience never failed, but she wished for November almost as earnestly as Kitty herself, so that matters might reach some definite conclusion, for Kitty's restlessness had considerably increased since she had received James Morland's offer, and she was constantly nervous and excitable and not mistress of herself. On the day when the Bingleys and Mr. Bennet came over for the latter to take leave before returning to Longbourn, this was specially noticeable in her state of anxious flutter when drawing Jane aside to inquire after Mr. Morland. Mr. Bennet bade her farewell gravely and more affectionately than was his wont, telling her that he left her in good hands, and would only give her one piece of advice, namely, that second thoughts were sometimes best. Kitty blushed deeply and could not pretend to misunderstand him, but told Georgiana afterwards that it was impossible to have better second thoughts when Price was the first. With his elder daughter Mr. Bennet was rather more explicit, telling Elizabeth that he considered it was a great pity that so unobjectionable a young man should have been sent about his business. Elizabeth entirely agreed with him, and thought it would not be going too far to express Mr. Morland's praise in even warmer terms. "He will never set the Thames on fire, but there seems good stuff in him," was Mr. Bennet's reply. "When he proposed for her I had not taken much notice of him, except to think him a tolerably sensible fellow, and of course I had to readjust my ideas; but I soon began to see that he must not be judged by that alone. I have really liked him better, too, for his way of taking his refusal." "My dear father, it does not always indicate a want of sense to wish to be married," interposed Elizabeth. "Perhaps not, but Morland is much better off as he is than in marrying a girl he knows so little about. Kitty is flighty and expensive; she ought to stay longer with you and Jane, and not think of being married for the next ten years." Elizabeth smiled and said she thought that it was unnecessary, but that it would certainly be better for Kitty to marry a clergyman than an officer in the navy, who would be compelled to spend long periods away from home. "As to that, of course it is a complete absurdity, and I cannot think why you women, who are so fond of making matches, did not originate something less ridiculously unsuitable among yourselves." Elizabeth thought it wiser not to explain who actually had originated the idea, and said after a pause: "You were saying that you have liked Mr. Morland better of late?" "Yes, he has positively shown some sort of self-command and dignity. He turned up at the house a day or two afterwards, apparently _not_ bent on making us all uncomfortable by the sight of his misery, as most rejected lovers do. Besides, Bingley had had the foresight to produce some excellent port." "I hear from Jane," said Elizabeth, "that he does not avoid or seek the mention of Kitty, and she thinks he is trying to give up all hope of her." "Her absence for a few weeks will no doubt materially assist him," said Mr. Bennet. Kitty seized the opportunity offered by this visit to speak a private word to her brother-in-law with reference to the hero, as Bingley persisted in calling him. She herself had no news, for Mrs. Knightley's frequent letters reported him still at Portsmouth, and Bingley had heard nothing, but promised to write and renew his invitation as soon as October was fairly in. The same silence prevailed at Pemberley with regard to Miss Crawford. No announcement of her marriage had reached any of them, and Elizabeth had a half inclination to make some inquiries, but was dissuaded by Darcy, who said: "Whatever precisely has happened, Elizabeth, we can be sure of one thing, that Miss Crawford has allowed Fitzwilliam to understand that she does not wish him to approach her again. Under these circumstances it is better that you should have no news to give him." Elizabeth sighed as she agreed to the wisdom of this decision, but when shortly after her father's departure a letter was received from Colonel Fitzwilliam to say he would be returning at the end of the month, she could not help wishing that she was more fully informed of the present state of affairs. It would be a relief, even though a sad one, to Fitzwilliam's mind to know that Miss Crawford was actually married and he would be unselfish enough to wish to hear that she was happy. Nothing occurred, however, to enlighten them, and Fitzwilliam arrived on the appointed day, looking much as usual except for a few more lines about the eyes and an increased number of grey hairs. It was the first time he and Georgiana had been together at Pemberley since the rupture of their engagement, and both must have felt conscious of it, Georgiana in particular being prepared to be miserable for a time, from the belief that her cousin, instead of being cheered and invigorated as formerly by his return home, must be reminded at every turn of the failure of their experiment, the failure caused by her wretched weakness and incapacity. Worse still, her brother must be reminded of it, and there might be a repetition of his stern looks, his cold manner. She trembled at the thought, unaware that Darcy had long been persuaded of the wisdom of their parting, ever since events in Bath had shown him where his cousin's real affections were likely to be bestowed, and the only difference which Georgiana perceived after Fitzwilliam's arrival was in the particular kindness he showed her, and the complete renewal of the old comfortable relations amongst them all. When inquiries after the Hursts and Mrs. Annesley had been made, and Georgiana had mentioned the dinner-party and the persons who had been present, little more was said with reference to London; indeed, there was little more for either to say, for Georgiana dared not refer to the person who had chiefly occupied his mind there. Fitzwilliam talked of his book and of Ireland, inquired about the prospects of the shooting, showed interest in the minutest details of life in the neighbourhood, and in every way endeavoured to prove that he was exactly his old self; and only when walking with Elizabeth in the Park one morning did he betray how far that was from being the case. There was no doubt that his disappointment had coloured his whole life. He had allowed himself to think of Miss Crawford, and to build high upon his hopes, and to find himself again mistaken had been a blow which cut at the foundations of all his happiness. His gaiety was feigned, his pursuits had lost their zest, his friends no longer sufficed him: and as he said to Elizabeth, he had felt he had better adopt some country occupation and settle down to it, and there grow old as quietly and quickly as might be. Elizabeth's heart was wrung; the spectacle of her cousin's fine nature locked away, as it were, in a closed room, as a thing no one had any need for, was inexpressively painful to her, and nothing else would have caused her to venture upon a reopening of the subject which he himself had not approached. With the utmost gentleness she spoke a few words of commiseration, and then, still proceeding with extreme caution, she told him of the absence of news and her assumption that Miss Crawford's marriage with Sir Walter Elliot had been delayed. "I daresay it has," returned Colonel Fitzwilliam, with a kind of listlessness, striking with his stick at the head of some tall grasses which bordered their path. "There can be no doubt of it, I suppose?" pursued Elizabeth. "None at all, I should imagine," replied the Colonel. "Miss Crawford is not the kind of woman who would break her word, once the engagement had been announced." "No, of course not," said Elizabeth; "but I had expected that she or Mrs. Grant would have written to me, or even Mrs. Wentworth, as they must know I should be interested." Colonel Fitzwilliam could not immediately recall anything of Mrs. Wentworth beyond her name, and on being reminded that she was Sir Walter Elliot's daughter, presently replied: "I do not think it altogether surprising she should not have written to you. She probably cares little for the marriage, and still less for the one which it was anticipated would follow it--I mean Miss Elliot's to Mr. Crawford." This was a new idea to Elizabeth, and while she was pondering over it, and the inferences to be drawn from it, Colonel Fitzwilliam broke the silence by saying: "Perhaps we had better not speak of this anymore, Elizabeth. I know your great kindness of heart, but I feel it does no good, rather harm, to be reviving thoughts which I must in honour suppress as much as possible. I was anxious to know whether you had heard anything, and to ask you again, when you have the chance, to tell her that I wish her well; but now we have mentioned it, it would, I think, be best for my contemptibly weak character to put it as far away as possible." With tears in her eyes, Elizabeth assured him that through the tenderest regard for him, not through any fear of overtaxing his fortitude, she would respect his wishes, but could not help begging him to remain with them at Pemberley as heretofore, so as to give them an opportunity of showing him how completely their happiness was bound up with his, and of making use of any opportunity which might arise for them to be of service to him. Fitzwilliam gratefully promised to stay for the present, and said that his only engagement was to go to some friends in Leicestershire in November, for the hunting. Elizabeth was, nevertheless, not perfectly satisfied, and took occasion to ask Georgiana shortly afterwards whether it was from Mrs. Wentworth that she had heard confirmation of the fact that Sir Walter Elliot was engaged to Miss Crawford. "No," said Georgiana, in surprise, "it was from Mr. Price. Mrs. Wentworth never mentioned it. Mrs. Wentworth! Of course, I recollect now, she is Sir Walter Elliot's daughter; but at the time I never thought of it, for, you see, I did not know Sir Walter was the man." "Very true; I had also forgotten that you did not know," said Elizabeth, "and would never connect her with Miss Crawford. I have been thinking that I should like, for our own satisfaction, to know when the wedding is going to take place, and the simplest way will be to write and ask Mrs. Wentworth. I wish I had done so before, but I did not wish to be in haste, and I felt so convinced we should hear from others." Georgiana agreed that this was the best course to pursue, and Elizabeth, having told Darcy of her intention, to which, on account of her promise to Fitzwilliam, he could no longer object, wrote and dispatched her letter. The season was now drawing on, and with the shortening days the family at Pemberley found themselves thrown more upon the resources of their own immediate circle for amusement. The weather was consistently bad, and though this did not prevent the gentlemen from covering great distances for the purpose of slaughtering their game, the ladies were of necessity restricted to a smaller area, and their walks seldom extended beyond the park, except when their inclinations led them along a tolerably clean road towards the Rectory. This happened pretty frequently, for both Elizabeth and Georgiana were extremely attached to Elinor Ferrars. Their friendship was of a particularly sincere and well-balanced kind, and was not marred by their constant intercourse, as each knew how to maintain that degree of reserve which prevents indiscriminate confidences and so greatly strengthens mutual respect. Kitty was the one who perhaps found the society of the Rectory the least congenial; but it is to be feared that she was extremely difficult to please that autumn, and in the impatience with which she waited for one young man she might have sometimes regretted the solace which the company of the other would have afforded. In such a small neighbourhood everyone was of some value, and they all heard with interest of the approaching visit to Mr. and Mrs. Edward Ferrars of an old friend, Mrs. Jennings, who was coming early in October to spend six or seven weeks with them. Mrs. Ferrars was in delicate health, and Mrs. Jennings, besides having an almost maternal affection for her, was well qualified to be of service as sick nurse and enlivening companion, so that Elinor's warning to Mrs. Darcy that her friend, although the kindest of women, had not always the most refined manner of expressing herself, did not prevent them from being anxious to make her acquaintance. Mrs. Jennings performed in safety the long journey from her son-in-law's house in Devonshire, and arrived in her customary high spirits. It was her first visit to the Ferrars's since their removal from Delaford, and she had to examine the house, to criticize minutely the arrangement of their furniture, and to compare their surroundings, social and material, with what they had been in their old home. Mrs. Darcy paid an early call on the new arrival, and the morning after her visit Georgiana and Kitty also found their way to the Rectory. Mrs. Jennings's exuberance, her loud laugh and general noisy cheerfulness did not recommend her strongly to either of the girls in the first few minutes, and Georgiana was glad to move to a chair by Mrs. Ferrars, to enter into a quieter conversation with her; but before long, judging by the sounds which reached them, Mrs. Jennings and Kitty had found some subjects in common. This perhaps was not so surprising, as Mrs. Jennings was exceedingly fond of the society of all young girls, and cared not at all whether they returned her partiality or no. In this case she had begun, with the utmost frankness, to discourse on the subject nearest her heart at the moment, namely, her dear Mrs. Ferrars, and was relating all the circumstances under which their friendship had been formed, the Dashwood girls' visit to London, the disagreeable conduct of Mrs. Ferrars's mother and sister, and the absurd misunderstanding as to Colonel Brandon's attentions, the whole being punctuated by frequent bursts of laughter; and she would doubtless have gone on to describe in detail the events attending the engagement of her two young friends, had not Elinor mildly but decisively interposed. "Dear madam," she said, breaking off in the midst of a remark to Georgiana, "I am sure Miss Bennet does not wish to hear the history of such a very dull old couple as ourselves. You are so kind as to be more interested in it than most people could be." "Lord, my dear," cried Mrs. Jennings, "why did you not stop me? I declare I am very sorry if I said a word I ought not. I know my tongue does run on, and Miss Bennet must excuse me, for it was only for the pleasure of talking to you and Mr. Edward. And as for its being dull, I don't believe there is anybody who does not like to hear of other people's love-affairs; it makes one think of one's own, now, does it not, Miss Bennet?" Kitty blushed and looked embarrassed, and Mrs. Jennings laughed heartily, saying: "It is just as I thought; Miss Bennet could tell us a pretty tale too, I'll be bound, if only she would." "Miss Bennet can tell us some wonderful tales of the West Indies," said Elinor, endeavouring to turn Mrs. Jennings's mind from her favourite topic; "she has a sister there, who writes to her constantly, does she not, Miss Bennet? Those tropical places must be very beautiful. Do you remember how Colonel Brandon used to talk to us of his travels in the East, ma'am?" "That I do, my dear," replied Mrs. Jennings emphatically, "and I never want to hear again of such fearful things as he had seen--swamps, and great things like alligators ... and insects that did everything insects ought not. I hope you will tell your sister not to get amongst them, Miss Bennet." Kitty replied that her sister had written chiefly of the beautiful balls and illuminations which they frequently had, and lately of some shocks of earthquake which had frightened them terribly. Mrs. Jennings exclaimed at this, and declared that the finest ball in the world would not compensate her if there was the fear that the ground would open under her feet while she was dancing. "But I know young people do not care what risks they run," said she. "There was Sir John Middleton three weeks ago wanted to have a moonlight picnic; my daughter Middleton was all against it, for the weather was so threatening, but have it he would, and the consequence was that they all ate their supper, or as much of it as they could, in a roaring thunderstorm. I can tell you they were in a pretty pickle when they got back! All the girls so cross, and the young men not a dry thread among them through trying to protect the ladies. But Sir John, he made no bones about it at all, but said they would go again another night, when for sure it would be fine." Her hearers could not help laughing at such a picture of undaunted pleasure-seeking, and Elinor inquired if the second party had taken place. "Oh, Lord, yes; they all came, but their fathers and mothers made them promise not to stir beyond the grounds. I heard, at any rate, they turned it into a dance instead. But, as I say, young people don't care for a drop of rain. I am sure, when I was young, I would as lief have had it as not, for there was no hardship in sheltering under a hedge, with the right young man to hold an umbrella over you, do you think so, Miss Bennet?" "Still, I fancy that most people, old or young, prefer outdoor expeditions to be in dry weather," said Elinor. "That reminds me that I must show you what terrible havoc last night's rain and wind worked in my flower borders. When I looked out first, I was quite in despair, thinking I should not have another nosegay all the autumn. There is a gleam of sunshine now, so shall we take a turn in the garden?" Georgiana gladly walked out with her, and Mrs. Jennings and Kitty followed at a distance, the former questioning her young companion about her sister abroad and hearing laments over the gaieties which that sister had been able to offer her, but which she had never been able to accept. Mrs. Jennings's hearty comments of "Well, there now, that is a shame!" and "A regiment too! You would have broken all their hearts, I vow!" and other such remarks pleased Kitty, while she knew in her heart they ought not to do so. The two girls shortly after took their leave, and while walking homeward naturally compared notes upon the stranger whom they had just met. Georgiana expressed herself guardedly, not wishing to condemn any friend of Mrs. Ferrars's, although feeling as if that friend could not be in any way an accession to their party; but Kitty's first unfavorable impression seemed to have been obliterated, and she declared frankly that she liked Mrs. Jennings and thought she was very merry and good-natured. Georgiana could not quite agree with this, for she found Mrs. Jennings's style of raillery not at all to her mind, but admitted that she might be pleasanter when one got to know her well. At dinner these opinions were canvassed, and Georgiana found, as she expected, that her own were largely shared by Elizabeth, who, however, was amused at her severity, and told her that she would often meet people who, with more refined manners, were yet at heart far more vulgar than Mrs. Jennings and had not a tenth part of her redeeming qualities. "I do not think I want to meet them, then," said Georgiana. "But I am sure you are right, Elizabeth, and I daresay she will be a great comfort to Mrs. Ferrars." When the ladies were together after dinner, Kitty, whose gravity and preoccupation had been noticeable for the last half-hour, after wandering several times round the room, stationed herself near to her sister and began, in a solemn tone: "Lizzie, I want to ask you something very important." Elizabeth, smiling, professed herself all attention, and Kitty continued: "You know you have never kept your promise, that you made before you were married, of having a ball here, for each winter something has happened to prevent it." "Quite true, Kitty; so a ball is in your mind; and what made you think of it just now?" "I never come here without thinking of it, but I had somehow not expected to be staying long enough this year, as I imagined I should go home directly after the shooting party. But Mrs. Jennings said to-day she supposed you sometimes had balls in this lovely house, and she was sure Georgiana and I were fond of dancing." "And Mrs. Jennings is quite right about the latter statement, is she not?" Georgiana looked up with a smile, to assent to her share of the question, and Kitty clasped her hands rapturously, exclaiming: "Oh, Lizzie, you know how much I love a ball! It would be so kind of you and Darcy! Everyone would enjoy it!" "I am very

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will do it, but life is so uncertain that I think for the present I had better refrain. Have you ascertained whether Kitty can cook, make her own gowns, and trim hats? I understand it is a great promoter of married happiness when the wife can do so, and I am not sure whether all my girls have turned their education to such good account." Mr. Morland only replied by asking if he might be allowed to see Miss Bennet at once, and her father left the room, foreseeing that, whatever happened, he should not have one more quiet hour during that day. His anticipations were soon in the way to be fulfilled, for on finding his daughters, and sending Kitty to the library, he had to give Jane an outline of what had just passed, then repeat it to Bingley, who joined them, and listened to their exclamations of surprise, and regret at the probable downfall of Mr. Morland's hopes. Jane and Bingley were both too convinced of Kitty's prior attachment to have the slightest expectation of his success, and Mr. Bennet was put in full possession of the facts relating to it, while they anxiously awaited the termination of the interview. It came, after some minutes, in a glimpse of Kitty emerging from the library and hurrying upstairs with streaming eyes, and while they all debated as to their next move, Mr. Morland was seen to cross the hall rapidly, looking nowhere but in front of him, and leave the house with precipitation. Jane herself, almost equally distressed, longed to go to Kitty, and Bingley questioned whether he ought not to hasten after the young man, while Mr. Bennet was disposed to think they would be better left to themselves for a time, and wished heartily that there were only just enough lovers in the world to go round, one to each young lady, and none over. In spite of this, Jane was not long in finding her way to her agitated sister and in showing her the tenderest consideration. Kitty's distress was very great, and also very sincere, for she had in truth been far from guessing that Mr. Morland took a more than common interest in her, and as is usual in such cases, the declaration of the young man's love woke in her feelings which she had not known to exist, of reciprocal kindness and even affection, which only did not share the nature and strength of his. Kitty could never have been hard-hearted to any lover, least of all to one whom she liked as much as she did James Morland, and his devotion touched her as deeply as the knowledge that she could not accept it wounded her. Between regrets for what had happened, pity for him and for herself, and the excited thoughts of William Price which the incident itself was bound to evoke, she was in a sad state, and Jane easily prevailed upon her to have her dinner upstairs and go early to bed. Not so easily could she check the tears which flowed continuously, and Jane, to occupy her mind and body, proposed that she should go to-morrow to Pemberley, instead of in three days' time, as arranged; she could very well be sent over, and the change would be beneficial; besides, she was not really leaving them, for there was the November visit to look forward to. Kitty caught at the suggestion, and declining the offices of the maid, began to busy herself about her packing, as Jane hoped she would do, while the latter descended to consult with her husband and father. Mr. Bennet and Bingley both approved, and Jane hastily wrote a few lines to Elizabeth to apprise her of what had happened, that she might be prepared for Kitty's arrival. The two gentlemen walked to the nearest post town to convey the letter; and after dinner the indefatigable Bingley again set out, this time to the Rectory, to perform the same kind office by James Morland as his wife had been doing by Kitty. The young man, though calmer, proved far more unreceptive of consolation. He had felt his rebuff acutely, for Kitty had been too much taken by surprise, too sure of herself, to make it otherwise than decisive, and even the modest hopes he had ventured to entertain, of being able to make more progress with her once the subject was opened between them, had been most thoroughly dispelled. Miss Bennet would not hear another word of it--begged him never to speak of it again--with tears reproached him for having spoilt everything, so that in addition to his own disappointment he had the pain of feeling that she thought less well of him than before. Bingley could deny this, but could not affirm anything else likely to give him comfort. It remained for Morland himself to declare, which he did in a firm though melancholy tone, that he regretted having distressed Miss Bennet, and would endeavour so to meet her in the future that she would not suffer through being reminded of it by any act of word of his. Bingley commended his courage, told him of Kitty's departure, and begged him to continue coming to Desborough just the same; and walked home with a full report of what had just passed. Jane shook her head over it, for, while sympathizing with both, she was more truly sorry for Mr. Morland, since for him she could see no immediate prospect of compensation, in spite of her father's assurances that a young clergyman was seldom allowed to remain inconsolable for more than six months, and if Kitty's other young man only did what was expected of him, her fate would be a certainty in half that time. Chapter XIII Needless to say, Kitty was heartily welcomed by Georgiana and Elizabeth, and given every opportunity to relieve her mind by descriptions of the tragical affair in all its aspects. Both regretted it deeply for Mr. Morland's sake, and Elizabeth privately did so for Kitty's sake, having such a good opinion of him as to make her wish that Kitty could have been persuaded out of her fancy for a young man, who, however excellent, was comparatively a stranger to them all, and whose intentions, at present, were extremely uncertain. She would have rejoiced if Kitty and Morland could have made each other happy, and had entertained a slight hope that her hint to Kitty might perhaps have helped matters, in directing her thoughts into another channel, but it seemed to be of no avail, and Georgiana gave her friend her warmest support, implying entire agreement with her point of view. "I could not help it, now, could I, Georgiana? You know yourself, Lizzie, that I never dreamt it. How could I do anything else but refuse him outright? I was amazingly grieved to do so, but you know very well, Georgiana, that if I could think of one man more than another, _he_ is not that one." She paused for assent, which Georgiana gave by a silent caress, and then continued: "It is all so unfortunate. It will never be as pleasant at Desborough now. Poor Mr. Morland! I wish I had not had to hurt him. He does want someone so badly in the Rectory." "Well, my dear, do not make yourself ill with these vain regrets," said Elizabeth. "It is, as you say, very unfortunate, but no one blames you. If you could not care for him, you could not do it, and someone else will have to inhabit that nice Rectory." Kitty looked as if this prospect were not very pleasing either, but Georgiana, seeing what Elizabeth wished, began to talk cheerfully of something else, and Kitty gradually joined in, though whenever the two girls were alone together she found it difficult to abstain long from referring to some branch of the subject. Georgiana's loyalty and patience never failed, but she wished for November almost as earnestly as Kitty herself, so that matters might reach some definite conclusion, for Kitty's restlessness had considerably increased since she had received James Morland's offer, and she was constantly nervous and excitable and not mistress of herself. On the day when the Bingleys and Mr. Bennet came over for the latter to take leave before returning to Longbourn, this was specially noticeable in her state of anxious flutter when drawing Jane aside to inquire after Mr. Morland. Mr. Bennet bade her farewell gravely and more affectionately than was his wont, telling her that he left her in good hands, and would only give her one piece of advice, namely, that second thoughts were sometimes best. Kitty blushed deeply and could not pretend to misunderstand him, but told Georgiana afterwards that it was impossible to have better second thoughts when Price was the first. With his elder daughter Mr. Bennet was rather more explicit, telling Elizabeth that he considered it was a great pity that so unobjectionable a young man should have been sent about his business. Elizabeth entirely agreed with him, and thought it would not be going too far to express Mr. Morland's praise in even warmer terms. "He will never set the Thames on fire, but there seems good stuff in him," was Mr. Bennet's reply. "When he proposed for her I had not taken much notice of him, except to think him a tolerably sensible fellow, and of course I had to readjust my ideas; but I soon began to see that he must not be judged by that alone. I have really liked him better, too, for his way of taking his refusal." "My dear father, it does not always indicate a want of sense to wish to be married," interposed Elizabeth. "Perhaps not, but Morland is much better off as he is than in marrying a girl he knows so little about. Kitty is flighty and expensive; she ought to stay longer with you and Jane, and not think of being married for the next ten years." Elizabeth smiled and said she thought that it was unnecessary, but that it would certainly be better for Kitty to marry a clergyman than an officer in the navy, who would be compelled to spend long periods away from home. "As to that, of course it is a complete absurdity, and I cannot think why you women, who are so fond of making matches, did not originate something less ridiculously unsuitable among yourselves." Elizabeth thought it wiser not to explain who actually had originated the idea, and said after a pause: "You were saying that you have liked Mr. Morland better of late?" "Yes, he has positively shown some sort of self-command and dignity. He turned up at the house a day or two afterwards, apparently _not_ bent on making us all uncomfortable by the sight of his misery, as most rejected lovers do. Besides, Bingley had had the foresight to produce some excellent port." "I hear from Jane," said Elizabeth, "that he does not avoid or seek the mention of Kitty, and she thinks he is trying to give up all hope of her." "Her absence for a few weeks will no doubt materially assist him," said Mr. Bennet. Kitty seized the opportunity offered by this visit to speak a private word to her brother-in-law with reference to the hero, as Bingley persisted in calling him. She herself had no news, for Mrs. Knightley's frequent letters reported him still at Portsmouth, and Bingley had heard nothing, but promised to write and renew his invitation as soon as October was fairly in. The same silence prevailed at Pemberley with regard to Miss Crawford. No announcement of her marriage had reached any of them, and Elizabeth had a half inclination to make some inquiries, but was dissuaded by Darcy, who said: "Whatever precisely has happened, Elizabeth, we can be sure of one thing, that Miss Crawford has allowed Fitzwilliam to understand that she does not wish him to approach her again. Under these circumstances it is better that you should have no news to give him." Elizabeth sighed as she agreed to the wisdom of this decision, but when shortly after her father's departure a letter was received from Colonel Fitzwilliam to say he would be returning at the end of the month, she could not help wishing that she was more fully informed of the present state of affairs. It would be a relief, even though a sad one, to Fitzwilliam's mind to know that Miss Crawford was actually married and he would be unselfish enough to wish to hear that she was happy. Nothing occurred, however, to enlighten them, and Fitzwilliam arrived on the appointed day, looking much as usual except for a few more lines about the eyes and an increased number of grey hairs. It was the first time he and Georgiana had been together at Pemberley since the rupture of their engagement, and both must have felt conscious of it, Georgiana in particular being prepared to be miserable for a time, from the belief that her cousin, instead of being cheered and invigorated as formerly by his return home, must be reminded at every turn of the failure of their experiment, the failure caused by her wretched weakness and incapacity. Worse still, her brother must be reminded of it, and there might be a repetition of his stern looks, his cold manner. She trembled at the thought, unaware that Darcy had long been persuaded of the wisdom of their parting, ever since events in Bath had shown him where his cousin's real affections were likely to be bestowed, and the only difference which Georgiana perceived after Fitzwilliam's arrival was in the particular kindness he showed her, and the complete renewal of the old comfortable relations amongst them all. When inquiries after the Hursts and Mrs. Annesley had been made, and Georgiana had mentioned the dinner-party and the persons who had been present, little more was said with reference to London; indeed, there was little more for either to say, for Georgiana dared not refer to the person who had chiefly occupied his mind there. Fitzwilliam talked of his book and of Ireland, inquired about the prospects of the shooting, showed interest in the minutest details of life in the neighbourhood, and in every way endeavoured to prove that he was exactly his old self; and only when walking with Elizabeth in the Park one morning did he betray how far that was from being the case. There was no doubt that his disappointment had coloured his whole life. He had allowed himself to think of Miss Crawford, and to build high upon his hopes, and to find himself again mistaken had been a blow which cut at the foundations of all his happiness. His gaiety was feigned, his pursuits had lost their zest, his friends no longer sufficed him: and as he said to Elizabeth, he had felt he had better adopt some country occupation and settle down to it, and there grow old as quietly and quickly as might be. Elizabeth's heart was wrung; the spectacle of her cousin's fine nature locked away, as it were, in a closed room, as a thing no one had any need for, was inexpressively painful to her, and nothing else would have caused her to venture upon a reopening of the subject which he himself had not approached. With the utmost gentleness she spoke a few words of commiseration, and then, still proceeding with extreme caution, she told him of the absence of news and her assumption that Miss Crawford's marriage with Sir Walter Elliot had been delayed. "I daresay it has," returned Colonel Fitzwilliam, with a kind of listlessness, striking with his stick at the head of some tall grasses which bordered their path. "There can be no doubt of it, I suppose?" pursued Elizabeth. "None at all, I should imagine," replied the Colonel. "Miss Crawford is not the kind of woman who would break her word, once the engagement had been announced." "No, of course not," said Elizabeth; "but I had expected that she or Mrs. Grant would have written to me, or even Mrs. Wentworth, as they must know I should be interested." Colonel Fitzwilliam could not immediately recall anything of Mrs. Wentworth beyond her name, and on being reminded that she was Sir Walter Elliot's daughter, presently replied: "I do not think it altogether surprising she should not have written to you. She probably cares little for the marriage, and still less for the one which it was anticipated would follow it--I mean Miss Elliot's to Mr. Crawford." This was a new idea to Elizabeth, and while she was pondering over it, and the inferences to be drawn from it, Colonel Fitzwilliam broke the silence by saying: "Perhaps we had better not speak of this anymore, Elizabeth. I know your great kindness of heart, but I feel it does no good, rather harm, to be reviving thoughts which I must in honour suppress as much as possible. I was anxious to know whether you had heard anything, and to ask you again, when you have the chance, to tell her that I wish her well; but now we have mentioned it, it would, I think, be best for my contemptibly weak character to put it as far away as possible." With tears in her eyes, Elizabeth assured him that through the tenderest regard for him, not through any fear of overtaxing his fortitude, she would respect his wishes, but could not help begging him to remain with them at Pemberley as heretofore, so as to give them an opportunity of showing him how completely their happiness was bound up with his, and of making use of any opportunity which might arise for them to be of service to him. Fitzwilliam gratefully promised to stay for the present, and said that his only engagement was to go to some friends in Leicestershire in November, for the hunting. Elizabeth was, nevertheless, not perfectly satisfied, and took occasion to ask Georgiana shortly afterwards whether it was from Mrs. Wentworth that she had heard confirmation of the fact that Sir Walter Elliot was engaged to Miss Crawford. "No," said Georgiana, in surprise, "it was from Mr. Price. Mrs. Wentworth never mentioned it. Mrs. Wentworth! Of course, I recollect now, she is Sir Walter Elliot's daughter; but at the time I never thought of it, for, you see, I did not know Sir Walter was the man." "Very true; I had also forgotten that you did not know," said Elizabeth, "and would never connect her with Miss Crawford. I have been thinking that I should like, for our own satisfaction, to know when the wedding is going to take place, and the simplest way will be to write and ask Mrs. Wentworth. I wish I had done so before, but I did not wish to be in haste, and I felt so convinced we should hear from others." Georgiana agreed that this was the best course to pursue, and Elizabeth, having told Darcy of her intention, to which, on account of her promise to Fitzwilliam, he could no longer object, wrote and dispatched her letter. The season was now drawing on, and with the shortening days the family at Pemberley found themselves thrown more upon the resources of their own immediate circle for amusement. The weather was consistently bad, and though this did not prevent the gentlemen from covering great distances for the purpose of slaughtering their game, the ladies were of necessity restricted to a smaller area, and their walks seldom extended beyond the park, except when their inclinations led them along a tolerably clean road towards the Rectory. This happened pretty frequently, for both Elizabeth and Georgiana were extremely attached to Elinor Ferrars. Their friendship was of a particularly sincere and well-balanced kind, and was not marred by their constant intercourse, as each knew how to maintain that degree of reserve which prevents indiscriminate confidences and so greatly strengthens mutual respect. Kitty was the one who perhaps found the society of the Rectory the least congenial; but it is to be feared that she was extremely difficult to please that autumn, and in the impatience with which she waited for one young man she might have sometimes regretted the solace which the company of the other would have afforded. In such a small neighbourhood everyone was of some value, and they all heard with interest of the approaching visit to Mr. and Mrs. Edward Ferrars of an old friend, Mrs. Jennings, who was coming early in October to spend six or seven weeks with them. Mrs. Ferrars was in delicate health, and Mrs. Jennings, besides having an almost maternal affection for her, was well qualified to be of service as sick nurse and enlivening companion, so that Elinor's warning to Mrs. Darcy that her friend, although the kindest of women, had not always the most refined manner of expressing herself, did not prevent them from being anxious to make her acquaintance. Mrs. Jennings performed in safety the long journey from her son-in-law's house in Devonshire, and arrived in her customary high spirits. It was her first visit to the Ferrars's since their removal from Delaford, and she had to examine the house, to criticize minutely the arrangement of their furniture, and to compare their surroundings, social and material, with what they had been in their old home. Mrs. Darcy paid an early call on the new arrival, and the morning after her visit Georgiana and Kitty also found their way to the Rectory. Mrs. Jennings's exuberance, her loud laugh and general noisy cheerfulness did not recommend her strongly to either of the girls in the first few minutes, and Georgiana was glad to move to a chair by Mrs. Ferrars, to enter into a quieter conversation with her; but before long, judging by the sounds which reached them, Mrs. Jennings and Kitty had found some subjects in common. This perhaps was not so surprising, as Mrs. Jennings was exceedingly fond of the society of all young girls, and cared not at all whether they returned her partiality or no. In this case she had begun, with the utmost frankness, to discourse on the subject nearest her heart at the moment, namely, her dear Mrs. Ferrars, and was relating all the circumstances under which their friendship had been formed, the Dashwood girls' visit to London, the disagreeable conduct of Mrs. Ferrars's mother and sister, and the absurd misunderstanding as to Colonel Brandon's attentions, the whole being punctuated by frequent bursts of laughter; and she would doubtless have gone on to describe in detail the events attending the engagement of her two young friends, had not Elinor mildly but decisively interposed. "Dear madam," she said, breaking off in the midst of a remark to Georgiana, "I am sure Miss Bennet does not wish to hear the history of such a very dull old couple as ourselves. You are so kind as to be more interested in it than most people could be." "Lord, my dear," cried Mrs. Jennings, "why did you not stop me? I declare I am very sorry if I said a word I ought not. I know my tongue does run on, and Miss Bennet must excuse me, for it was only for the pleasure of talking to you and Mr. Edward. And as for its being dull, I don't believe there is anybody who does not like to hear of other people's love-affairs; it makes one think of one's own, now, does it not, Miss Bennet?" Kitty blushed and looked embarrassed, and Mrs. Jennings laughed heartily, saying: "It is just as I thought; Miss Bennet could tell us a pretty tale too, I'll be bound, if only she would." "Miss Bennet can tell us some wonderful tales of the West Indies," said Elinor, endeavouring to turn Mrs. Jennings's mind from her favourite topic; "she has a sister there, who writes to her constantly, does she not, Miss Bennet? Those tropical places must be very beautiful. Do you remember how Colonel Brandon used to talk to us of his travels in the East, ma'am?" "That I do, my dear," replied Mrs. Jennings emphatically, "and I never want to hear again of such fearful things as he had seen--swamps, and great things like alligators ... and insects that did everything insects ought not. I hope you will tell your sister not to get amongst them, Miss Bennet." Kitty replied that her sister had written chiefly of the beautiful balls and illuminations which they frequently had, and lately of some shocks of earthquake which had frightened them terribly. Mrs. Jennings exclaimed at this, and declared that the finest ball in the world would not compensate her if there was the fear that the ground would open under her feet while she was dancing. "But I know young people do not care what risks they run," said she. "There was Sir John Middleton three weeks ago wanted to have a moonlight picnic; my daughter Middleton was all against it, for the weather was so threatening, but have it he would, and the consequence was that they all ate their supper, or as much of it as they could, in a roaring thunderstorm. I can tell you they were in a pretty pickle when they got back! All the girls so cross, and the young men not a dry thread among them through trying to protect the ladies. But Sir John, he made no bones about it at all, but said they would go again another night, when for sure it would be fine." Her hearers could not help laughing at such a picture of undaunted pleasure-seeking, and Elinor inquired if the second party had taken place. "Oh, Lord, yes; they all came, but their fathers and mothers made them promise not to stir beyond the grounds. I heard, at any rate, they turned it into a dance instead. But, as I say, young people don't care for a drop of rain. I am sure, when I was young, I would as lief have had it as not, for there was no hardship in sheltering under a hedge, with the right young man to hold an umbrella over you, do you think so, Miss Bennet?" "Still, I fancy that most people, old or young, prefer outdoor expeditions to be in dry weather," said Elinor. "That reminds me that I must show you what terrible havoc last night's rain and wind worked in my flower borders. When I looked out first, I was quite in despair, thinking I should not have another nosegay all the autumn. There is a gleam of sunshine now, so shall we take a turn in the garden?" Georgiana gladly walked out with her, and Mrs. Jennings and Kitty followed at a distance, the former questioning her young companion about her sister abroad and hearing laments over the gaieties which that sister had been able to offer her, but which she had never been able to accept. Mrs. Jennings's hearty comments of "Well, there now, that is a shame!" and "A regiment too! You would have broken all their hearts, I vow!" and other such remarks pleased Kitty, while she knew in her heart they ought not to do so. The two girls shortly after took their leave, and while walking homeward naturally compared notes upon the stranger whom they had just met. Georgiana expressed herself guardedly, not wishing to condemn any friend of Mrs. Ferrars's, although feeling as if that friend could not be in any way an accession to their party; but Kitty's first unfavorable impression seemed to have been obliterated, and she declared frankly that she liked Mrs. Jennings and thought she was very merry and good-natured. Georgiana could not quite agree with this, for she found Mrs. Jennings's style of raillery not at all to her mind, but admitted that she might be pleasanter when one got to know her well. At dinner these opinions were canvassed, and Georgiana found, as she expected, that her own were largely shared by Elizabeth, who, however, was amused at her severity, and told her that she would often meet people who, with more refined manners, were yet at heart far more vulgar than Mrs. Jennings and had not a tenth part of her redeeming qualities. "I do not think I want to meet them, then," said Georgiana. "But I am sure you are right, Elizabeth, and I daresay she will be a great comfort to Mrs. Ferrars." When the ladies were together after dinner, Kitty, whose gravity and preoccupation had been noticeable for the last half-hour, after wandering several times round the room, stationed herself near to her sister and began, in a solemn tone: "Lizzie, I want to ask you something very important." Elizabeth, smiling, professed herself all attention, and Kitty continued: "You know you have never kept your promise, that you made before you were married, of having a ball here, for each winter something has happened to prevent it." "Quite true, Kitty; so a ball is in your mind; and what made you think of it just now?" "I never come here without thinking of it, but I had somehow not expected to be staying long enough this year, as I imagined I should go home directly after the shooting party. But Mrs. Jennings said to-day she supposed you sometimes had balls in this lovely house, and she was sure Georgiana and I were fond of dancing." "And Mrs. Jennings is quite right about the latter statement, is she not?" Georgiana looked up with a smile, to assent to her share of the question, and Kitty clasped her hands rapturously, exclaiming: "Oh, Lizzie, you know how much I love a ball! It would be so kind of you and Darcy! Everyone would enjoy it!" "I am very

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