University of Virginia Library

IV

THE passage home was rough, and the young wife kept her cabin. Harry rejoiced to have her quite to himself, and also, half guiltily, to have her out of harm's way. Sometimes he felt the relief one has at knowing that a lunatic is protected from his own vagaries, even though it were a gentle and adored lunatic.

The family met them on the wharf, and after the first outcry of salutations was over, Agatha's brother drew her husband on one side.

"Well?" he said expectantly.

Harry made no answer.

"What did you bring home?" asked the persistent Percy.

Harry looked him straight in the eye, and answered in clear, distinct tones:

"We have brought home one Dutch market-garden woman, one lovesick Belgian soldier, and one lost and strayed American negress from the Pyrenees."

Percy looked immovably grave. He was very fond of Agatha himself, and he would not smile, but once more he said, as he had in the spring:

"Shake, old man!"

There were many times in after years when Harry was proud to remember that he had refused the proffered hand, and had said with an emphasis as unfaltering as before:

"My Agatha is an angel, no less!"

One of these occasions was when he and Percy were joined in a New York restaurant by a mutual friend who had recently dined at the Peabodys' home in East Orange.

"I say, Harry," the other man exclaimed, "I never ate such a dinner as you gave us. Where, in all this mad outcry about the impossibility of keeping servants in the suburbs, did you get such a cook, and how do you keep her?"

"It's not a woman," Harry answered carelessly. "It's a man — a Frenchman

we picked up abroad; comes of a long line of cooks. As for his leaving us, you couldn't drive him away. He worships the ground my wife walks on — just devotes his life to pleasing her."

Again, a year or two later, the president of his company came out to East Orange to visit them. He was an ardent gardener, and was overcome with astonished envy over the Peabodys' small but exquisitely kept grounds.

"Great Scotland, man! How can you afford to pay a gardener to keep things looking so? You must have a professional!"

"Yes," returned Harry gravely; "a Dutch expert — a woman, oddly enough, whom my wife brought home from Holland. She's so fond of Agatha that it's pathetic to see — just follows her around like a dog, and absolutely refuses to take decent wages. Everybody's fond of Agatha, though!"

From the open door he heard his wife explaining:

"Oh, I'm awfully spoiled about house-servants. My second girl, Nancy, always dresses my hair and does my small sewing. She was a lady's-maid before she came to us, and she massages as beautifully as she waits on the table."

Mrs. Percy's voice said wistfully:

"Yes, it's perfectly shameful how she coddles Agatha. She keeps her wrapped up in cotton-wool. And although everybody in East Orange has tried to get her away by every possible inducement, she won't stir. She thinks she belongs to Aggie — doesn't think of anything but new ways to make the household run smoothly."

Harry, listening, smiled and turned to Percy. He thought of his brother-in-law's dreary hours spent in dirty intelligence offices; he thought of the inevitable domestic upheavals which overwhelmed the other couple at irregular intervals; he thought of their hopeless struggle against incompetence and exorbitant demands, and he smiled sympathetically at Agatha's brother.

"Shake, old man!" he said.